The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) couldn't have asked for more. Two years of failed efforts to instigate trouble against the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government were transformed into success overnight when violence erupted in Malegaon, Nanded and Amravati first on November 12. The Hindu-Muslim clashes that broke out the next day in Amravati marked the first riot to mar the Maharashtra government's record. Credit for it goes to the stupidity of the government itself.
First, it allowed the Mumbai-based Raza Academy to hold a state-wide bandh on November 12; then, it allowed the BJP to hold a retaliatory bandh on November 13. Both times, police were unprepared for the violence that broke out, violence that should have been anticipated given the record of both the organisers.
The Raza Academy has long enjoyed the patronage of the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the two parties that ruled Maharashtra from 1999-2014. So though its agitations resulted in violence, often against the police, it was never touched.
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In Bhiwandi in 2006, two Muslims died when police fired on a mob throwing stones at them; later that night, two policemen were lynched there. In Mumbai in 2012, a section of a Muslim rally attacked police personnel, including women and photographers; again, two Muslims lost their lives in police firing. In both, the mobs had responded to the Raza Academy's call.
The police might have been bound by their political masters' diktats, but what prevented them from being adequately prepared? Have the lessons of 2012 already been forgotten? Then too, the police claimed they didn't expect the massive response to the protest against violence against Muslims in Assam and Rohingyas in Myanmar. At that time, too, WhatsApp messages, replete with fake videos, brought in the numbers, half of whom didn't even know whether Assam was a part of India.
This time too, Muslims from Amravati told this reporter, many among the 35,000 who marched to the Collectorate on November 12 didn't know where Tripura was. Their WhatsApp messages had told them that their Prophet had been insulted, and Muslims were under attack in Tripura and everywhere in India. Obviously, police intelligence regarding Muslims continues to be bankrupt.
Finally, it is unbelievable that the police expected the BJP's retaliatory bandh in Amravati to be peaceful after videos of Muslim attacks on Hindu properties and police personnel the previous day had gone viral.
Interestingly, when the Raza Academy organises protests in Mumbai against French President Emmanuel Macron for his stand against Islamists or iconoclastic Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen or Saudi Arabia's move to open cinema halls in Medina, not more than a handful of Muslims turn up. But when it decides to take up an emotive pan-India issue concerning the community, other religious organisations support it, unwilling to be seen as indifferent. Then the full might of digital technology is set in motion to mobilise Muslims. If some lumpen then turn violent, as happened in 2012 and during the November 12 bandh, no one takes responsibility.
This shows the standing this outfit, comprising a handful of Sunni Ulema, has in the community. Indeed, as in 2012, this time too, a large number of Muslims are furious with it. Today, the anger is even more, for not only is Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray held in high regard among Muslims both for his continued opposition to the BJP and his non-communal attitude but also because BJP has been gifted the opportunity to create communal trouble. Its attempt to incite Hindus after the April 2020 Palghar lynching of two sadhus failed; the news anchor who tried to portray a restive gathering of migrant labour outside a railway station during last year's lockdown as a gathering of angry Muslims outside a mosque had an FIR filed against him; the Aryan Khan episode bombed. But now, the party has enough inflammatory propaganda to fight the February 2022 state-wide municipal elections.
So why did Uddhav Thackeray allow an outfit that has never hidden its fanaticism and belief in violence so much leeway? Has he left it to his "secular" coalition partners to handle Muslims? Or was it just his absence from office – he underwent surgery on November 12?
This time, the communal violence had two saving graces: no lives were lost, and for the first time, BJP leaders were arrested. But what of those shopkeepers and motorbike owners whose life savings were destroyed after two devastating lockdowns and those youth randomly picked up and now face criminal charges? For the BJP, all this is par for the course. But will the Raza Academy again be allowed to turn its back on the damage it has done?
(Jyoti Punwani is a journalist based in Mumbai)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.
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