COMMUNAL VIOLENCE
PUCL: Report on 1989 Bhagalpur Riots
Conclusion
Official response in the aftermath of a riot thus follows a two-pronged channel. One, through the criminal justice system and two, through the Commission of Inquiry. It is to prevent possible biases in the normal process of prosecuting the cases through filing a police report, framing charges and going to the courts - that a Commission of Inquiry is instituted. For, as in the case of Bhagalpur, state representatives are often directly involved in the rioting. Then those guilty of abetment, connivance, dereliction of duty and negligence are not likely to charge themselves or prosecute others responsible. The data collated from the annexures stands testimony to the fact that intentional dereliction of duty and negligence by police continue in the aftermath of the riot.
Time bound commissions of inquiry are appointed to perform two tasks. (1) to identify the guilty officials so that they can be charged and that the administration can be reorganised to prevent the guilty persons from hampering the process of justice; and (2) to suggest measures to prevent such occurrences in the future.
The failure of the state government to initially appoint an impartial inquiry prepared the way for delays in the Commission. The play of communal politics and an insensitive judiciary furthered these delays. Consequently, while five years of reconstitution dragged on the same administration, which was later indicted by the Commission for connivance with the rioters, continued to register, investigate and prosecute the crimes committed during the riots. Necessarily this resulted in non-registration of crimes, cursory investigation and weak prosecution.
Hence, the Members Report apart from making suggestions and fixing responsibility also points to the need for proper investigation and prosecution of crimes which had occurred five years ago. And this aspect of the recommendations of the Commission has neither been publicized nor any action taken or promised regarding it. The Bihar government has not yet even submitted the Memorandum of Action Taken, violating the legal stipulation of six months.
The real problem lies in the failure of the state to safeguard the lives and property of its citizens both airing the riots and in their aftermath. That the Commission of Inquiry is properly constituted, allowed to function, and justice done according to its recommendations depends on the political will of the government. This will is singularly lacking. For it inherently follows from the lack of political will to prevent riots i the first place. So, first, representatives of the state allow, if not actively instigate communal riots. Then they shield those who have perpetrated the arson, loot and killings through formal measures like departmental inquiries. The state seis up a Commission of Inquiry, whose functioning can be thwarted by vested interests in the state itself. The circle is complete, and the subversion of rule of law, total.
The fate of the Srikrishna Inquiry Commission probing into the Bombay communal riots in December, 1992 and January, 1993 is the worst example of this process. On 23 January, 1996, the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party government in the state decided to wind up the Commission. The reason provided was that the government has spent Rs. 1.7 crore on the Commission and that its term had been extended five times since its inception. Worse still the government defended its decision by saying that the Commission "had become an exercise in futility". And that ever since the new government took charge "Maharashtra has been witnessing complete communal harmony. The Commission's proceedings would have unwittingly vitiated this atmosphere" (Times of India, January 24, 1996). Masked by these arguments for efficiency is the original reason for setting up the Commission. The deaths of over a thousand people and large scale destruction of property three years ago which the Commission had been investigating hang in the balance.
The gradual dilution of this democratic institution today has reached a point where it has been explicitly debunked on grounds of futility and expenditure. What becomes evident from the aftermath of the 1989 Bhagalpur riots is the deliberate nature of the delays and attempts at rendering the institution of the Commission futile.
The arbitrariness of this decision of the Maharashtra government has ominous implications for democracy. The NHRC has now taken over the inquiry into the Bombay riots. After one institution is made hollow from within and its working obstructed at every step, the work is taken over by another newly created institution. Exposed in this is an absence of commitment to the rule of law by ruling and opposition parties. In Bhagalpur the Congress was in power when the riots occurred, the BJP provided the immediate occasion for the riots, and the Janata Dal that came to power after the riots has failed to prosecute guilty officials even after half a decade.
The fundamental principles of the Constitution - the right to life and equality before the law holds little meaning for the political parties, the government, the administration, and the police. It has little meaning for the general public itself, except when various sections suffer the consequences of the deliberate flouting of the constitutional guarantees by the state and its institutions.
And for some of the victims of this failure, such as the families of the 628 killed in Bhagalpur for whose murder no FIR has been filed, the hope for redressal is faint. Thus for many of those who died in these riots, there is inequality not only in life but in death.
Thus rule of law, the mainstay of the Constitution, gets subverted out only during the functioning of the Commission of Inquiry, but more insidiously and dangerously, because of its very invisibility, in the subversion of the normal procedures of the Cr. P.C. and the IPC. The sad chronicle of the Bhagalpur riots and its aftermath is a pointer to the erosion of the Constitution from within by those very authorities who have pledged themselves to obey and preserve it. Our hope lies in that small minority which hearkens to the dangerous portents of our times and are willing to struggle for the right to life and equality for all our people.
Fate of the Cases All Murder
Pending 87 26
Acquittal 44 11
Conviction 11 1
Total 142 38
Punishment to the Guilty In all Cases In Murder Cases
Accused 1392 406
Trial Pending 961 311
Acquitted 381 94
Convicted 50 1
Total 2784 812
Government Statement on Handing Over of Bodhgaya Temple to Buddhists
The National Commission for Minorities has recommended enactment of suitable and appropriate legislation to vest the management of Bodh Gaya Temple exclusively in the Buddhist community. The Commission has also suggested to the local administration various steps for keeping the temple clean, maintaining unhindered access of pilgrims to the holy place, proper accounting of offerings and drawing up a plan for long term development of the area and construction of guest houses.
The report has been received on 28th February and is being examined.
Sudhir Kakar's Colours of Violence A Review by Dipankar Gupta
Once again Sudhir Kakar the psychoanalyst steps out of his clinic to examine live issues which are of intellectual concern to both specialists and laypeople. This book is about the victims and the perpetrators of communal violence, and the setting, quite appropriately, is the riot-prone walled city of Hyderabad.
Kakar begins by making his methodological assumptions clear. According to him, it is important to factor in the author's subjectivity in order to render analytical exercises meaningful. This privileging of subjectivity allows Kakar to go back to his childhood and tell us about how he gradually accumulated his bag of prejudices, and how these prejudices keep returning in spite of his self-conscious exorcising of them. This section, in which he ruminates about his childhood, sets the stage for his study and also cases the reader into a kind of easy informality with the author.
After demonstrating the need for subjectivity, Kakar trains his guns at the naivete of secular historians who believe that communal identities, like Muslim and Hindu, were non-existent in the past and are only recent colonial creations. I believe this is a good point to make.
I find Kakar's position against idealized versions of traditional Hindu-Muslim tolerance quite refreshing. According to Kakar, what passed for tolerance was really a function of indifference, "sometimes bordering on brutal incomprehension of the imperial bureaucrats to local conflicts of the peoples they rule". I think this is an excellent point which can and should stir many researches. Kakar is not encumbered by the secularist myth of tolerance, he can squarely face the conundrum as to why British beef-eaters were not disliked by Hindus the way the Muslims were. His answer is interesting too. According to Kakar, the British took their proteins in secluded bungalows and remained "strangers" to the end, while the Muslims were the immediate "other" as they lived cheek by jowl with the Hindus.
Elsewhere, Kakar tries to probe into what would be considered appropriate behavior by Hindus and Muslims, both in times of peace and during riots. The exercise suffers on two counts. The first is that the sample is very small. The more serious drawback is that these interviews were conducted in normal times and. therefore, the standard ethic comes to the fore and not emotions inflamed by the heat of the riot. This is why the interviews concluded that for both Hindus and Muslims, it is improper to rape at all times, and that it is proper to give shelter to members of the persecuted community. Anybody who has seen a riot will find such conclusions highly dubious.
(Source: the India Today, 15 December, 1995)
