Flare-ups in Himachal reveal Congress not immune to communalism: Prashant Bhushan

New Delhi: Sectarian flare-ups in Himachal Pradesh is a proof that Congress is not immune to communal politics, senior advocate Prashant Bhushan said on Tuesday.

The northern hill state is afflicted with Hindu-Muslim confrontations for over a month, ostensibly over a mosque in Sanjauli near Shimla which some partisan groups are demanding must be demolished.

"The way this incident happened and spread to other parts of Himachal shows that due to the work done by the Hindutva organisations, communal poison has spread. So they could mobilise people.

"It also shows that even Congress is not immune to this disease," Bhushan said at the launch of a fact-finding report which carried its investigations from HP.

"Even Congress has people who are opportunistically communal, even if they do not have a communal ideology. They feel they can use communalisation for gaining votes," he said, terming the trend dangerous.

He said that while Rahul Gandhi did Bharat Jodo Yatra, some leaders of his party were not above indulging in communal politics. He urged him to "throw such people out of the party." He said the Congress often chooses not to take action against such leaders thinking about short-term gains but the practice is counterproductive.

"Many such people have been kept in Congress who are known to be corrupt or communal. They should understand it is counter-productive in the long run. You can't play this game better than the BJP, you will not gain anything out of it," he said.

Former deputy mayor of Shimla and CPI(M) leader Tikender Singh Panwar said the current demographic makeup of the hill states was a result of several migrations that happened over decades and that towns and cities there, especially those built in the British period, were migration-based.

"People were brought from far-off places to settle in these mountain towns. In Shimla, which was once even the capital of India, Kashmiri Muslims were brought to work as labourer..." he said.

"Migration is the base for every mountain city..." he added.

Panwar said attempts to vitiate the atmosphere in the state have been ramped up in the past few months.

"A pernicious agenda is being run. Himachal has only around two per cent Muslim population, but that does not mean communal polarisation cannot be done," he said.

"The whole discourse around legal or illegal (building) is meaningless in cities. There are more than 25,000 buildings in Shimla today which are illegal," he said.

There are at least 20 temples in Shimla which are on government land or forest land, Panwar added.

According to the report - Creating the Muslim 'Outsider': Hate Speech, Migrant Vulnerability and Faltering Law & Order in Himachal Pradesh — violent protests against Muslims spread from Sanjauli to the entire state, including Shimla's Nerwa and Kasumpti, Mandi, Chamba, Bilaspur, Una, Palampur, and Nagrota Bagwan of Kangra, Hamirpur, and Sirmaur.

It criticised the role of Congress leaders as ineffective as it alleged that the party failed to address growing tensions, leading to increased fear in the Muslim community.

The situation escalated to a point where protesters clashed with police and vandalised shops in Mandi, Palampur, Sanjauli, Kullu, and Solan.

Recounting his experience, activist Nadeem Khan, who was a part of the fact-finding team, said BJP leader Kamal Gautam circulated their photographs accusing them of being "terrorists".

"Imagine the level of vulnerability, we did not even know about it," he said, adding, no action has yet been taken on a police complaint they filed.

Srishti Jaswar, a journalist part of the team, said the state police confessed to them that they had never dealt with such communal polarisation in the state earlier.

Himachal Pradesh saw massive protests after a scuffle between a Muslim barber and a Hindu businessman in Malyana area in the suburbs of Shimla on August 30 turned into a communal issue.

Hindu groups have been demanding the demolition of mosques they say are unauthorised, while residents at large are demanding that outsiders coming into the state be identified.