BJP governments are combating lawlessness with lawlessness

Bhajan Lal Sharma ordered that the accused student’s home be demolished. Leaving aside the dubious nature of this punishment, the chief minister seemed not to care that the house in question did not belong to the student’s family

It started with a knife in the hands of a 15-year-old, and ended with a bulldozer.

In Udaipur last week, the lawlessness set in motion by a knife-wielding student reached its climax in the lawlessness of the State. Schools in the city may now have forbidden sharp objects on their premises, but who will forbid the use of bulldozers by the State to demolish the homes of the accused?

In a government school, a boy attacked his classmate with a knife. The aggressor happened to be Muslim, and the victim was a Hindu. Most classmates reacted with shock, but two of them rushed to the victim’s rescue. Showing remarkable presence of mind, one rushed for the key to the principal’s scooter to take the victim to the hospital, while the other tore off his shirt to staunch the latter’s bleeding wounds. Coincidentally, the first happened to be a Hindu, while the second was a Muslim.

Obviously, for the classmates, the violent brawl wasn’t a communal incident. They acted with maturity, aiming only to save the victim, who alas, passed away three days later.

The same, however, couldn’t be said of Udaipur’s adults, especially the self-styled defenders of Hinduism, who couldn’t wait to display their outrage. Predictably, they did this in the only way they knew: by pelting stones, burning cars, damaging a mall, and almost storming two places of worship.

The police swung into action, arresting the student and his father, though on what charges the latter was arrested is still not known. However, it remains unclear what action — if any — was taken against the rioters.

Acts of arson count as serious offences: unlike simple rioting, they can be tried only by the sessions courts, and are non-bailable. The police don’t have to wait for orders to stop the arson — unless the arsonists are a special lot. Obviously, Udaipur’s were.

Appealing to people to keep calm, telling them the offender had been arrested, and most importantly, that this was not a Hindu-Muslim fight, was what the Rajasthan government should have done. Alas! When faced with communal violence, which chief minister has done this? Not even those belonging to the ‘secular’ parties. Then how can one expect a chief minister nurtured by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) — as Rajasthan’s Bhajan Lal Sharma has been — to go on air to clarify that the fight between the two teens was not motivated by religion?

What Sharma did was much worse, but unfortunately, totally in keeping with today’s ‘criminal justice’ system. He ordered that the accused student’s home be demolished. Leaving aside the dubious nature of this punishment, the chief minister seemed not to care that the house in question did not belong to the student’s family. They were just tenants there. So, their landlord and four other tenants who lived on the premises also came to be punished when the bulldozers brought the house down. That seems to have made no difference to Sharma; perhaps because all of these rendered homeless for no fault of their own were Muslims.

India’s original ‘Bulldozer Baba’ is the saffron-clad Uttar Pradesh chief minister. But in the four years since he began ordering the demolition of homes of select offenders (many ‘bahubalis’ have been exempt from this list) other chief ministers of his party have also adopted this extra-judicial punishment seeing how it has contributed to Yogi Adityanath’s popularity.

The desire for instant and visible punishment has always been widespread in India — police ‘encounters’ have enjoyed people’s support, even though they are generally believed to be staged. But the euphoria generated by ‘bulldozer justice’ has an added dimension. The anti-Muslim rhetoric of ruling party politicians that’s become commonplace since 2014 has contributed significantly to this euphoria. The sight of Muslim families being rendered homeless by the long arm of the bulldozer, has become the ultimate blood sport. Muslims don’t even need to have committed any misdemeanour to merit this punishment: in Madhya Pradesh, the home of a youth was demolished only because he eloped with a Hindu girl, who made it clear she went with him voluntarily.

Under Rajasthan’s new government, however, the bulldozer is not used only against Muslims. In the eight months that Sharma has been in power, his administration has demolished the homes of two accused: one allegedly involved in the killing of the Karni Sena chief; the other suspected of having been responsible for a police exam paper leak. Both happen to be Hindus. Not surprisingly, the homes of the cow vigilantes who thrashed two truckers last month were not demolished, even though their victims were Hindu.

The classmates who fought in Udaipur were good students, said their principal. What then provoked such violence by one of them? That’s the answer the Rajasthan government should have looked for. Instead, by demolishing the home of the juvenile offender, it became a part of the violence.

(Jyoti Punwani is a senior journalist.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.