By Mohd. Ismail Khan, TwoCircles.net,
Hyderabad: Since last few years religious events in the city have been on rise. Ten years ago Ramazan, Ganesh Visarjan, Bonalu (regional festival) were the only main events. Now this has undergone a radical change.
There is an increase of Durga idols installations and Panadals with festivities spreading across nine days during Dashehra festival, as it used to be for Ganesh festival in the past. Unlike in the past Hyderabad is becoming a Kolkata during Dashehra. Taking out religious possessions during Sri Ram Navami, Milad-un-Nabi and Hanuman Jayanthi was rare in the past, but now these three events have turned out to be the main events in the city on the law & order point of view. Rise in these religious processions has also adversely impacted the traffic situation.
First time in the history of Hyderabad Marwadi women had taken out procession in the old city last year, to mark the birth anniversary of Sri Ram. More often the long convoys of two wheelers are taken out shouting slogans and carrying banners and flags.
One more worrying factor is the growing number of people participating in these events. Since last few years the number of individuals partipating in the rallies has grown to thousands. Last year in the annual Milad rally organized by Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen had attracted nearly 50,000 strong crowds. Two years ago what started as a small fight between two communities at the Hanuman Jayanthi festival in Hussainialam on the issue of tying of flags, soon transformed into a series of violent clashes in which 3 people died and three mosques and two Mandirs were burned down. Police was forced to implement curfew in the whole old city and some parts of new city for whole one month to control the riot situation. Section 144 is still imposed in all the curfew ridden area even after two years.
It is being seen that different communities in Hyderabad are organizing events as an element to show off strength. The decorations are being done spending lakhs of rupees. Sometimes those decorations are not being restricted to particular locality of a community, those decorations are spread to the localities of other communities to annoy them. Even the processions and rallies are taken out in the night time in the localities of other communities raising objectionable slogans, which will be repeated by the members of those other communities during their own festive events. This competition between the communities during their respective events and ostentation associated with those events are sowing the seeds of distrust between groups of a plural society.
The next few days are going to be critical and tough task for the Hyderabad police to control the law and order in the Milad procession and rallies and the subsequent Sri Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanthi. Since all the top brass of the city police is being deployed in maintaining law and order, investigations in the grave cases have come to a halt. For the next few days all the police officers from the central crime station are going to be deployed near the Jalsa grounds, Pandals, and routes of processions or rallies.