The Congress-led UPA Government is desperate to see through the Communal Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2013. Therefore, the Union Home Ministry wants to hide some home truths about religion-wise population figures
Most data pertaining to Census 2011 has been finalised and released online by the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, Union Ministry of Home Affairs. There is, however, a noticeable exclusion. The religion-wise population figures are still being kept under wraps. On Monday, I called up at the Data Dissemination Centre at the headquarters of the Registrar General only to learn that it has no clue to its release schedule. There is no technical reason for withholding the headline data in one particular category, when data in other categories have been rendered in great details.
The provisional Census figures have been appearing online since 2012, except for the religion-wise data. There were two volumes on provisional population data containing minute statistics. While the provisional figures have now been largely finalised, absolute secrecy is being maintained on religion-wise population figures. I have been trying since February 21 to retrieve these concealed figures under the Right to Information Act, 2005. The replies that I received were deceptive and unsatisfactory, prompting me to file a second appeal before the Central Information Commission on May 30. It is being pending before Ms Sushma Singh, then Information Commissioner, since then. The appointment of five new Information Commissioners at CIC recently might cut down the waiting list.
But I am left with no doubt that the religion-wise data is being purposely concealed. It is unlikely to be released before the upcoming general election. The reason is that the religion-wise census is sure to confirm an upsurge in Muslim population that militates against all predictions by sociologists. It is likely to reveal that the Hindu population has fallen below 80 per cent in India for the first time after independence. It implies severe micro-level changes in the entire northern belt running from western Uttar Pradesh to Assam covering trans-Ganga districts of Bihar and a chunk of West Bengal. Parts of northern Kerala, Haryana (Mewat district) and some districts of Jammu have become red zones for the Hindus. This also has severe implications for internal security.
A dispassionate analysis would reveal clear linkages between micro-level population shifts with acts of communal violence. A study of western Uttar Pradesh rocked by riots like in Bareilly (2010), Moradabad (2011) and Muzaffarnagar (2013) in the recent past will confirm the ground-level changes in religious demography.
It might be argued that India is constitutionally a secular nation-state. The results of the religion-wise data in Census should have absolutely no bearing on public policy. Quite so. Why then is the Government holding back only the results of the religion-wise data collected under Census 2011IJ At least the headline data should have been revealed as ungrudgingly those related to Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes’ population, gender ratio, literacy figure and slum population etc. Thus, a proclaimed secular Government is itself contravening the precepts of secularism. A political answer might be that the UPA would not like to provide the BJP a handle in the forthcoming elections. The Hindu fear psychosis might drive voters into the fold of the BJP.
The Ministry of Home Affairs has begun concealment on another front. Its annual reports contain figures of casualties in communal conflicts. Earlier, there used to be two separate passages on Hindu-Muslim conflicts and Hindu-Christian conflicts, of which the latter one was quite insignificant. Major issues for Hindu-Muslim conflicts were identified as carrying and slaughtering of cattle, routing religious processions through mixed localities, desecration of places of worship, distribution and playing of provocative CDs/cassettes, disputes for land/property, eve-teasing and personal enmity.
Regarding the slaughter of cattle, the religious identity of the offender becomes quite clear. The other community generally resists such attempts, and it leads to flare-ups. The cow has been a flashpoint of communal trouble throughout the medieval ages. Hindu monarchs like Rana Kumbha and Shivaji have been lavishly praised for the protection of the animal. Desecrations of religious places have also been systematically done by a particular religious community for its fundamental iconoclastic zeal. It would be wrong to say that the tendency has been left behind. The reverse aggressions, if ever, were freak. As regarding eve-teasing (sexual harassment) incidents like in Muzaffarnagar, Kamduni, Raniganj and Moradabad etc, these have shown from which religious community the offender hails from when there is an
inter-religious angle.
From the Ministry of Home Affairs Annual Report 2011-2012, the practice of mentioning the major factors behind Hindu-Muslim communal conflicts has been discontinued. It was presumably done to help the Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011, premised on the assumption that the majority community is the conventional aggressor and the minority community the victim. In all States of India except Jammu & Kashmir, the Muslims are in a minority. In most States of India the Hindus are in a majority. Yet there were attacks against the majority community, by the minorities, especially in pockets were the latter dominated. Acknowledging the actual factors in case of Hindu-Muslim riots would falsify assumptions on which the communal violence Bill was premised. Thus, it was necessary to conceal the jaded communal reality.
When Mr P Chidambaram was the Home Affairs Minister, he ‘disarmed’ the Border Security Force personnel against the cattle trafficking mafia at the India-Bangladesh frontier. This was apparently done to please a ‘friendly regime’ in Dhaka and appease some human rights groups. Several cattle traffickers had fallen prey to bullets of the BSF personnel over the years. This was perceived by some jholawallahs as a grave violation of human rights.
The Minister concurred and strictly enforced the rule that BSF personnel on the India-Bangladesh border should carry non-lethal weapons. This reversed the trend of attacks. Since 2012, the BSF personnel began to come under heavy attack from cattle traffickers. For instance, on July 22, Rajender Singh of 91st Battalion passed away in a Kolkata hospital. He had been attacked by a group of violent cattle traffickers wielding sharp weapons at Jhorpada border in Nadia district of West Bengal. This was only a fortnight prior to when India exploded in anger at the beheading of five soldiers at the line of Control by Pakistani Armed Forces. But while those five soldiers who fell victims of a cross-border raid were fully armed and entitled to shoot back, the hands of many like Rajender Singh were tied by an order of the Home Minister. No television channel, no Member of Parliament bothered to raise the issue.
The Communal Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2013, is not yet in the public domain for comments. The Prime Minister’s Office had sent the draft to Chief Ministers in confidence. Going by their adverse reaction, it appears to be a thinly disguised version of the controversial Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011 that was prepared by the National Advisory Committee. For the Bill to succeed, it is necessary that the Ministry of Home Affairs hides some home truths about communal reality in India.