By Sajad Ahmad Dar for TwoCircles.net
On Monday, 7th of August 2017, a person named Suresh (a history-sheeter) allegedly shot at and killed two brothers (Mohammad Wasim, allegedly with some criminal antecedence, and Mohammad Aashu), who otherwise, reportedly, happened to have been his friends. This twin murder was carried out at one of the busiest places of the Aligarh city, the Railway Road, in broad daylight. Given the fact that the city is historically prone to communal violence, the incident was likely to degenerate into a communal violence. Fortunately, it did not. The town has experienced several major communal clashes, in the decades following the independence of the country, e.g., in 1961, 1971, 1978, 1990-91. However, since 1990-1991 there has been no major communal violence in Aligarh (except a relatively minor clash in 2006), which in itself needs an academic probing, as to why and how did this city, prone to communal violence, remain peaceful since 1990-91.
The USA-based political scientist, Paul Brass in his book, ‘Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India’ (2003), has written a comprehensive political history of communal violence in Aligarh. The thrust of his argument is: this violence are politically engineered/produced, rather than being spontaneous. He, therefore, classifies them into three stages: rehearsal/preparation, activation/enactment, and explanation/interpretation.
But the question here is why the twin killing of Muslims by a Hindu degenerate /flare into a riot? Was it because:
- One of the victims was supposed to be a criminal.
- The victims resided in a Hindu majority locale of the city, hence did not have much of clout within his co-religionists.
- The two deceased did not belong to the community of Qureshis, the upwardly mobile community of Muslims, who are supposed to be little more organised and assertive in retaliating in Aligarh? The two deceased belonged to non-Qureshi Pasmanda biradri (caste) of Muslims—Bhishti (water-carrier).
- The BJP is in power both at the Centre and in the State, whose police could have unleashed repression against the protest or the retaliation, thus the fear factor may have prevented these Muslim groups from retaliating.
Elisabeth Mann, in her study of Aligarh, Boundaries and Identities (1992) identifies twenty-four Muslim biradris in Aligarh city, among which the most “prominent,” socially, economically, and politically in her view are, the Qureshis (meat-sellers), the Ansaris (weavers), the Saifis (iron-smiths) and the Pathans. The first three would fall in the Pasmanda category, whereas the last would fall in the Ashraf category. Of these, as said earlier, the Qureshis are supposed to have undergone “rapid economic growth” and have produced some Muslim politicians of Aligarh, viz., Mohammad Sufiyan of Janata Dal (who was a close runner in the Assembly elections, 1991). The Qureshis have often been at ‘loggerheads’, in electoral politics, with Saifis who are relatively backward than Qureshis, in this part of the country. Yet, from the community of Saifis, Abdul Khaliq of Samajwadi Party registered an electoral success in 1996 when he was elected to the provincial assembly.
However, the interesting thing about the incident of was that the Muslim communities of the town did not respond immediately. The ‘inaction’ of the Muslims of the town broke only after a statement came from the BJP MLA of Aligarh, Sanjeev Raja. He justified the killings as an act of “self-defence. This statement demonstrated that the alleged killer, Suresh, a history-sheeter, has got the political patronage of the MLA.
Quite expectedly, the remarks of the BJP MLA were provocative enough to worsen the situation.
11 August a section of Muslim youth protested against the statement of the BJP MLA, after offering their Friday prayers in the afternoon. This statement of the BJP MLA created a strong apprehension among a section of the Muslims of the city that the state machinery would be influenced to unduly safeguard the accused. The protesting people were also asking for a compensation of Rs. 50 lakhs for the family of the deceased. Some of the protesters reportedly resorted to brick-batting. The police had to resort to lathi (baton) charge, teargas and chilli bombs to control the irate mob. According to the locals, the police fired gun-shots in the air. However, the Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Rajesh Pandey, denied this accusation of the locals.
A host of questions arises against the stand of the MLA and the SSP. Suresh reportedly fired four shots from a close distance of about 50 meters which clearly demonstrates that the act was not done in ‘self-defense’. This shooting to kill, according to those present on the spot, though insisting on their anonymity, had no provocation on the spot, nor was any scuffle between them. Reportedly, a scuffle between them had taken place a day ago.
Sanjeev Raja’s utterances just re-confirmed what Paul Brass had argued that the promoters of the violence recognize illegitimacy of violence by claiming that the aggressor community was not aggressing, but was acting only in “self-defence”.
While talking to one of the neighbours of the deceased duo, the respondents said, “Bheem (nick name of Waseem, and a term used in the locality for the strong men, after a character of the Hindu epic, Mahabharata) Suresh jo ki history-sheeter hai, Ek saath sharab peetey they lekin uska bhai Aashu bahut shareef tha”. [Bheem, and Suresh, who have a history of crimes, drank wine together, but his brother Aashu, was very gentle). From one of the residents of Upar Kot, a Muslim-majority locality in Aligarh, I got to know that the BJP MLA had some problems with Wasim (he didn’t mention exactly what). When I enquired the same from the neighbour, he added, “Wasim ne kabhi kissi se kaha tha ki arre woh (Sanjeev Raja) kya bigaade gaa mera” (Wasim had told someone that Sanjeev wouldn’t do any harm to him), presumably because he had proximity with the MLA, through his friend turned foe, Suresh. Wasim perhaps chose to forget that the MLA has a long list of accusations of crimes and therefore fell prey along with his brother. One of the residents shared with me that the MLA has earned notoriety for his anti-Muslim provocative remarks earlier also. He has been charged six times with offences related to the punishment for Rioting (IPC Section-147), for four times in offences related to intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace (IPC Section-504), three times related to Rioting, armed with deadly weapons (IPC Section-148), not less than two times related to attempt to murder (IPC Section-307), and the list goes on. No wonder, the recent statement from him came in support of the alleged murderer, Suresh.
There is, however, more to the incident than meets the eye. The victims’ is the only Muslim family living in what otherwise is a predominantly Hindu locality. This takes us to the ‘Economics of a murder’ and also corroborates one of my interviewee’s points that the murders were carried out because Suresh was eyeing on the property (a plot of land) of the deceased. One may argue that the murders were carried out in order to terrify or intimidate the deceased family and force them to leave the locale. India, more specifically Aligarh, has a long history of such cases where a minority is subjected to scare and is forced to leave the place and go to live in ‘ghettos’.
The most noticeable thing—and which seems to have become a norm in today’s India—is that while the SSP and the district administration should have taken action against the BJP MLA for his provocative remarks, they instead were busy in lodging cases against those demanding action against the MLA and justice for the two deceased. The entire incident of the Friday protest was video-graphed by the police. More than hundred (100) Muslims have already been booked. The district administration is hell-bent upon adding more to the list. The inaction against the BJP MLA sends a message that the enforcers of law have chosen to act in a partisan manner. Yet, there has not been any protest and significant news reporting on such a partisan roles of the police.
Even though an old, centrally funded huge residential university is located in the city, quite intriguingly, hardly any voice of protest against the roles of the police and the BJP MLA could be heard.
Given the fact that the Muslim University remained silent on this, could one deduce that the Muslim minorities in the BJP era have really been muted, coercively?
However, this is also a sad reality that, even in the pre-BJP era, one could find instances of such silences. For instance, the Muslim leadership did not ask for justice in the Aligarh riots of 1990-91, when a “Muslim friendly regime” headed by Mulayam Singh Yadav was there. Similarly, the Muslim leadership hardly ever asked Lalu to deliver justice by booking the culprits in the Bhagalpur riots (1989-90), and Sitamarhi-Riga riots (October 1992). Even in the riots of Muzaffarnagar 2013, the wilful failures of the Akhilesh regime in preventing, and controlling the riots, and in rehabilitating the victims and in bringing the perpetrators to justice has largely been ignored by the Muslim politicians and intelligentsia, as also by the liberal-left. Unlike the Gujarat riots (2002), the perpetrators and collaborating police officers have not been chased by the civil society groups up to the higher judiciary. Let us recall that in the case of Gujarat 2002, some high police officers and even ministers have also been incarcerated for judicial trials and have even been convicted.
Some of the vocal Muslims could be co-opted by the “Muslim friendly regimes”, and this is how their silence on injustices could be, sort of, purchased. The only difference this time, in the era of BJP’s dominance and hegemony is that they have been muted without having been offered any favour to some individual elites of the community. “Even the intelligentsia has become palpably partisan. They shout against the omissions and commissions of saffron establishments, but they choose to become less shrill and less strident when they are needed to speak against the non-saffron forces. The liberals, for instance, did not speak out against the Akhilesh Yadav’s regime whose police in Dadri (September 2015), in Muzaffarnagar (2013), and elsewhere in Uttar Pradesh failed to uphold Constitutional values”, argued Prof. Mohammad Sajjad.
It may perhaps be argued that this kind of political practice in the past (in “Pre-BJP era”) has contributed towards a lack of confidence and moral courage in speaking out against such issues. Therefore, today when more than 100 Muslims have been arrested for protesting against the provocative remarks of the BJP MLA, even this seems to be going unnoticed by the civil societies. This also raises a question about the political and intellectual efficacy of the Muslim University. Even the Aligarh Muslim University Teachers Association (AMUTA), Aligarh Muslim University Students Union (AMUSU), and informal students’ groups like Aligarh Activist’s Society (AAS) and Students of AMU (SOA) did not speak out on the issue. Even the Urdu dailies have not carried opinion pieces on this kind of partisan administrative repression carried out in Aligarh in August 2017.
Isn’t it indeed a time of deep introspection?
[The author is pursuing doctoral research on the urban history of Aligarh in 20th century, at the Centre of Advanced Study in History, Aligarh Muslim University, India]