From: ag3l+@andrew.cmu.edu (Arun K. Gupta)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.pakistan,soc.culture.bangladesh,soc.culture.indian
Subject: I. Conflict: Ahmedabad 1969
Date: 13 Apr 92 16:13:21 GMT
Organization: Physics, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA


Hindu-Muslim Conflict in India: Causes and Remedies

by Iqbal Ansari (Dept. of English, Aligarh Muslim University)

The roots of Hindu-Muslim communal conflict, which on occasions erupts
into violence and bloodshed, are traceable to the communal reading of
Indian history. The situation cannot, however, be remedied merely by
rewriting the medieval and modern Indian history on objective,
scientific lines because it is not only a question of giving school and
college students a decommunalised scientific perspective on history.
The maliase is a much large and deeper one. Communal perceptions of
history have got entrenched in the collective psyche of the Indian
people.  they have got settled in the average Indian mind as myths and
symbols and constitute the essential ingredient of their folklore,
having widespread currency through the spoken and written word.
Ordinary events and incidents in the contemporary social and cultural
life affecting Hindu-Muslim relations thus get transformed in hue and
shape by the potent mythic-psychic-folklorish operant of the average
Indian mind.  It is this widespread ever-present animosity that makes
it possible for manipulators from among politicians and bigoted
religious leaders as well as vested interests to convert large sections
of people into either rioters or passive and willing spectators of
scenes of arson, loot and killings.

The best illustration of this psychic-mythic-folklorish process
creating havoc is provided by the Ahmedabad riots of 1969 where a
fracas was converted into a holocaust claiming two or three thousand
human lives and destruction of property running into crores of rupees.
I investigated the riot as thoroughly as I could, meeting and
interviewing people from all sections and strata, collecting
information about every noteworthy religious and political event in
Ahmedabad for the preceding one year, delving into the files of most
local dailies from the library and scanning all leaflets and handbills
that were circulated during the whole period of rioting.

The incident that sparked off the riots that shook the country in
September 1969 can be reconstructed as follows:


A fair celebrating some Muslim saints `urs' was held adjacent to Shri
Jaganathji Temple over whose gate there was a big glass case containing
a `murti'. Some cows, which were being led by Sadhus after routine
pasturing, ploughed into the fair, injuring some children.

Exchange of hot words between some `urs' people (Muslims) and the
Sadhus was followed by the beating up of a few Sadhus (Hindus). When
the latter informed their fellow Sadhus inside the temple, they got
infuriated and came out excitedly with sticks and tridents.

Squatting outside the temple gate were mostly women (Muslim) and
children and hawkers and peddlers selling eatables, and some volunteers
-- all part of the `urs' fair.

The excited Sadhus went on a rampage creating panic among the women,
some of whom received injuries or lost their jewelry. They screamed and
ran for their life. Youngsters (Muslim) started brickbatting. Some of
the hawkers (Muslim) with boiling oil in the frying pan threw it on the
attacking Sadhus (which was taken by Sadhus and later by press
reporters as acid.)

Meanwhile a reinforcement of a group of young Muslims, who had seen
their womenfolk running in panic for safety, arrived from the
neighborhood. They attacked the Sadhus with stick, brickbats and the
bottles available with the hawkers, resulting in simple injuries to
10-13 sadhus, three of whom were hospitalized.


During this fight a stray bottle seems to have struck the glass-case
containing the sacred `murti'. Only a part of the glass, however, was
broken; no harm was done to the sacred `murti'.

How this very secular incident was perceived by the mythic-psychic
transformer as a religious battle can very well be realized if we have
a look at the following parts of the handbill that was widely
circulated among Hindus soon after the event by a body calling itself
the Hindu Sangram Samiti (Hindu War/Struggle Committee.)

"Muslims have meanly attacked Ahmedabad's famous Jaganathji Temple and
desecrated idols. Muslims are repeating history.  Their main aim is not
to destroy maximum possible Hindu temples, but to destroy Hindu
religion and Hindu culture and to rape Hindu ladies. When India was
partitioned lakhs of Hindus were converted to Islam and their wives and
daughters were taken to harems. They were raped and were converted to
Islam"

Drawing upon mythic/folklorish elements of modern history, Hindu
Sangram Samiti handbills read: " At the time of the Indo-Pak. war
(1965) Muslims bombarded India's old Dwarika temple and damaged it. In
Pakistan all remaining temples were razed to the ground and idols of
gods and goddesses were desecrated and they were used as step-stones in
mosques."

After describing imaginary stories of rape, arson and killings by
Muslims of Hindus, especially raping of Hindu women in particular
localities of the city, the handbill says, "If Hindus do not awaken
with these incidents, Hindu religion and Hindu culture would be
finished. Your sisters and daughters will be turned into wayside
prostitutes."


At the end came an exhortation to Hindus to leave defensive policy and
attack Muslims for which they were asked to prepare and use bombs,
bows, burning missiles, sticks, dharias (sharp edged weapons): " Arise
to avenge insult to our temples and ladies and rush to Muslim areas
with weapons and finish them."
The Hindu Dharm Raksha Samiti (Committee for the Protection of Hindu
Religion) also viewed the incident as an attack on the temple. This
perception got so wide a currency that this writer realised that
"attack on the temple" had become part of the common parlance of even
those who, if reminded, would not own up its communal-historical
connotations consciously. The "invasion of the temple" was how the
event was referred to by a Delhi journalist.

Earlier in August 1969, about a month before the temple incident,
Muslims had taken out a procession of about one lakh (=100,000), the
largest Muslim procession in Ahmedabad's recent history, protesting
against the attempt at burning of the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

I was reminded by quite a large number of educated Hindus, journalists
and social and political workers that the slogans that were raised by
the processionists were:

Jo hum se takraega, mitti mein mil jaiga (those who challenge and
oppose us will be ground in the dust)

and also

Jo Islam se takraega, mitti mein mil jaiga.
The procession, comprising all shades and sections and sects of
Muslims, passed through Hindu localities. Was it that the Hindu
spectators' psyche received in some part of their subconscious this
procession and the slogans, although raised against a foreign power, as
a menace to themselves with historical associations of Islamic
militancy -- to be roused into conscious-
 ness by the temple incident about a month later ?

On the walls of the partly burnt Qamar hostel in Ahmedabad, built by
Muslim charity, mainly, though not exclusively for Muslim students, I
saw daubed the slogans "For Hindus only". In nearby Baroda a poster was
seen asking Muslims to "Quit India".

***
[to be continued]

[The above is taken from "The Muslim Situation in India",
edited by Iqbal Ansari,  which is a publication of a seminar
held by the Institute of Objective Studies in New Delhi, July 4-5,
1987.

On May 22-23, 1987, there were riots in and around Meerut.
These cast a long and gloomy shadow on the deliberations reported
here.]
***