From: bond@jupiter.sun.csd.unb.ca (Girish)
Subject: Sitamarhi Riots: Yet Another Example of Muslim Intolerance
Keywords: Riots, Muslim
Organization: University of New Brunswick
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 22:13:08 GMT


       Sitamarhi Riots: Yet Another Example of Muslim Intolerance
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 (Taken from "News India", Nov. 13, 1992, originally from weekly "Sunday")
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However much we love to despise Laloo Prasad Yadav, it is simply  bad  form
to gloat over his discomfiture at the horrible riots in Sitamarhi which, by
official count,  left 44 people dead. From all accounts,  and  despite  the
chief minister's disclaimer, the riots were communal in character, and like
Bhagalpur in 1989, spread from the town of Sitamarhi to adjoining villages.
There are also reasons to believe that had the chief minister not camped in
Sitamarhi  and  personally  supervised  the  policing  and   administration
arrangements,  the  casualty  figure would have been much higher. The local
Muslim community in particular should be greatful that communal harmony  is
sufficiently  high  on  Laloo  Yadav's list of priorities for him to inform
fellow Yadavs in characteristically blunt terms: "sab lok lathi lekar  duty
karo. Tum apneko Laloo Yadav samajho aur Musalmanoko bachao."

As with any communal riot,  there  are  many  lessons  to  be  learnt  from
Sitamarhi.   The  local  reaction to the special courts that the Bihar govt
has promised to establish to try rioters, will demonstrate whether  or  not
prompt  action is a suitable deterrent against future riots. The chief min-
ister, ever anxious to preserve his casteist and communal vote banks,  will
need  to monitor the impact of Sitamarhi on his much touted "Maya" alliance
of Muslims and Yadavas. Any cracks in the electoral coalition  could  prove
disastrous for Janata Dal. The chief minister will also need to ponder over
the implications of the reports that the local Janata  Dal  MLA,  Syed  Ali
Khan,  encouraged  Muslim  bellicosity  while  another  party leader, Nawal
Kishore Rai, was in the vanguard of Hindu retaliation. Most important,  the
wider  political  fallout of the departure from the tendency of blaming the
BJP and RSS for each and every riot will also need to be studied.

Obviously, there is enough in Sitamarhi to keep Laloo Yadav and  the  Bihar
administration  preoccupied  for  some  time.  But the lessons of Sitamarhi
stretch beyond the frontiers of localism. This should be apparent from  the
fact  that  the  events which triggered rioting in the town on Dusserah day
were by no means unique.

Facts, as reported in the press is seen beyond dispute. The river in  which
the  idols of the Goddess Durga are immersed on Dusserah had apparently run
dry. The organizers of the local puja selected a pond for the immersion and
the  details  of  the new route to be followed by the procession was worked
out in consultation with a local 'peace committee'  which  included  Muslim
representatives. The committee had been set up a few days earlier following
tension over the harassment of some  women  attending  the  Durga  Puja  in
Sitamarhi. In any event, the decision of the committee remained confined to
the paper. When the immersion procession approached Mehsaul Chowk  -  Dumra
Road,  it  was stopped near the local Jama Masjid by the supporters of Syed
Ali Khan and Anwarul Huq, a former Congress MLA. The Janata Dal MP,  Harik-
ishore Singh, attempted to reason with the Muslim crowd. Unfortunately, his
attempt met with little success. As the procession attempted to advance, it
was greeted with brickbats which prompted the police to fire. The immersion
was disrupted and by the next morning riots broke out in Sitamarhi.

To attribute the disturbances in Sitamarhi to the localized tensions  aris-
ing  from an incident of so-called "eve-teasing", as the BJP delegation has
done, would be tantamount to missing the wood for the  trees.  Riots  which
have  their origin in attacks - often quite unprovoked - on Hindu religious
processions, are becoming increasingly common.

In 1990, a bomb was hurled on a  Durga  Puja  procession  in  the  town  of
Colonelgang  in  Gonda  district  of  Uttar Pradesh and resulted in vicious
rioting, affecting neighboring villages as well.  Like  in  Sitamarhi,  the
needle  of  suspicion  pointed  to an MP, Munnan Khan, an activist of Babri
Masjid Action Committee (BMAC) and  a  close  associate  of  Mulayam  Singh
Yadav.  Last  year,  a  Kalibari procession was obstructed in the Madanpura
locality of Varanasi which led to riots. And earlier this  year,  Ahmedabad
exploded  once  again following an attack on the Jagannath rath yatra. In a
single day, 300 shops were looted and burnt, and reports suggested  a  link
between  the  attack  on  rath  yatra  and  earlier  arrest  of a notorious
bootlegger, Abdul Latif.

Nor is it accurate to suggest that these attacks are  a  recent  phenomenon
which  can  be attributed to a wave of majoritarian assertiveness linked to
the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. True, the unresolved  dispute  and  the  per-
sistence  of pseudosecularist tendencies in the policy have made Hindus far
more conscious of their religious identity. For example, Durga Puja,  which
was  earlier  an  exclusively Bengali celebration, has transcended regional
boundaries and become popular in Bombay, Bihar and eastern  Uttar  Pradesh.
There  are some indications of similar rise in the popularity of the Jagan-
nath rath yatra and the Ganapati festival. But these  important  milestones
in  the construction of pan-Indian Hindu identity do not by themselves pose
threat to communal harmony. The danger arises when rising Hindu  conscious-
ness  is confronted by intemperate Muslim moves to enlarge boundries of the
community's sacred place.

In a nutshell, this means the rising Muslim demand  for  demarcating  no-go
areas  for  Muslim religious processions. The inspiration for these prepos-
terous attempts to creat communal ghettoes comes from the pattern of Muslim
mobilization  in the 1920s and 1930s. Although the earliest recorded "music
before mosque" dispute dates back to a clash before the Hooghly Emambara in
Bengal  in  1863,  it  became  a recurrent feature of communal mobilization
after an Arya Samaj procession was attacked  in  Calcutta  in  April  1926.
Later,  the  traditional  Janmashtami  procession  was  obstructed in Dacca
(which, incidentally was a Hindu majority city  till  partition)  the  same
year.  The  pattern  was repeated throughout small towns in East Bengal and
reached such alarming proportions that Satindranath Sen, a Congress  leader
of  Bakarganj  district, felt compelled to organize a 4-month satyagraha in
Patuakhali to press for "civil rights" of Hindus to play music on all  pub-
lic  thoroughfares. The satyagraha attracted nationwide attension, was sup-
ported by the Bengal Congress, but failed to move the Muslim leadership.

It is a matter of utmost shame  that  in  independent  India,  the  day  is
approaching when some local leader will have to undertake a Patuakhali-type
satyagraha to press for the right of free passage of all religious  proces-
sions.  Certainly, the need for such an assertion has arisen in view of the
inability of the secular leadership to discern  that  what  took  place  in
Sitamarhi  opens  up dangerous possibilities of segregation, ghettoisation,
exclusivism and, finally, separatism.  The  responsible  Muslim  leadership
must  take  note  of  what  happened  in Sitamarhi because, in the ultimate
analysis, it is the minorities who are at the receiving end of riots.

It is easy, as the Munnan Khans, Abdul  Latifs  and  Syed  Ali  Khans  have
vividly  demonstrated,  to  start a riot. For more distressing is having to
face up to its horrible consequences.
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