The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India

3. Hindu-Muslim Violence in India and Aligarh

31 Hindu-Muslim Violence in India and Aligarh THE INCIDENCE OF HINDU-MUSLIM RIOTS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES FOR THE MEMBERS OF THE TWO COMMUNITIES Incidence and Basic Facts: 1950-95 The annual reports ofthe Home Ministry ofthe government of India, whose responsibility includes reporting on the state of law and order in the country, including the incidence ofcommunal riots, has failed to produce its annual reports for the past fifteen years, the most recent one available being for the year 1984-85. Those reports that were produced in earlier years have many defects, including absence of a definition of what constitutes a communal incidentl and a failure to specify for most years the numbers of persons killed according to religious community as well as the numbers killed in communal clashes and those killed bythe police. The latter types of figures certainly exist, but have been available even unofficially only for the years 1968 to 1980. Official figures compiled from several sources, including the Home Ministry, calculate the total number of incidents of communal violence between 1954 and 1982 as 6,933, but provide no other details between 1954 and 1967 and after 1980. Between 1968 and 1980, the Home Ministry reported that there had been 3,949 communal incidents in which 530 Hindus, 1,598 Muslims , and 159 "other" persons and police personnel were killed.2 The latter figures confirm, at least in the period for which such a breakdown by community is available, the often-stated fact that a disproportionate number of Muslims have been killed in communal riots. In some riots, the ratio ofMusHms to Hindus killed has been very much higher. For example, during the 60 Hindu-Muslim Violence in India andAligarh /61 riots of September 1969 in the city of Ahmadabad, 512 persons were killed of whom 24 were Hindus, 430 Muslims, 58 "others" and unidentified;3 the latter category is a rather grislyone since itsuggests either burning ofthe murdered person's bodybeyond recognition, or mutilation. The official figures that are available as well as media and other reports concerning police treatment of Muslims during riots demonstrate clearly, also, that police arrest, fire upon, and kill disproportionately more Muslims than Hindus.4 Moreover, concerning several major riots, commissions of inquiry have established that the police arrest innocent Muslims, kill them inside their homes, and enter mosques to shoot and kill Muslims as well. Varshneyand Wilkinson, using news reports from the Times ofIndia, have compiled setsof figures on the numbers ofriots-defined as communal incidents in which there was at least one death-for India as a whole and by state for the period 1960-93. Unfortunately, the figures have been published only in chart form; consequently, exact numbers for the entire period or for any part ofit cannotbe calculated. The trends, however, are quite clear from their charts. The number of Hindu-Muslim riots rose during the 1960s, reaching a peak in 1969, declined between 1971 and 1977, then began "an unambiguous and alarming increase during the years from 1978-93."5 Rioting and killings in the years between 1990 and 1993 reached peaks not seen since 1947. In these threeyears, there were two waves ofriots across large parts of northern and western India, associated with the mass mobilizations and provocative and incendiary tactics used by two of the organizations in the RSS family, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the BJP, to mobilize the Hindu communitybehind the demand to remove the Babri Mosque from its site in Ayodhya. This movementwas also associatedwith the electoralstrategyofthe BJP to displace the Congress from power in the northern and western states and at the Center byconsolidating the Hindu vote in its favor. Since the lastwave ofriots occurring in December 1992 and January1993 in the aftermath of the destruction of the mosque, there has been a marked decline in the incidence of communal riots, but no exact figures are available at this writing.6 Among the fifteen largest states in the Indian Union, five ranked especially high in the incidence of Hindu-Muslim clashes involving fatalities; in rank order by number of such clashes, they were Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh.? In Uttar Pradesh (U.P.), which is the focus ofour inquiries here, Wilkinson identified 193 riots in the periodbetween 1950 and 1993, in which 1,313deaths occurred.8 Varshney's figures for riot deaths 62/ Hindu-Muslim Violence in India and Aligarh in D...