COMMUNAL VIOLENCE

Mohd. Zeyaul Haque on Bhatkal; A Divided Town

Bhatkal (Karnataka): This picturesque coastal town of 45,000 inhabitants is sitting atop a seething volcano of hatred and latent violence. The locals who had been living together in peace for centuries are now firmly divided on communal lines, thanks to political mechanization.

For the first time the population was communally polarized in 1991 at the height of the all-India anti- Muslim campaign in the name of Hindutva and Ayodhya Communal hatred was being consistently built up though yatras, shakti pradarshan (show of force) and venomous speeches of Sadhvi Rithambra and Uma Bharti. Together, they built up a mass hysteria that destroyed Babari Masjid and 23 other mosques and mazars in Ayodhya.

In 1991, Hindus brought out the annual chariot procession and, under the stewardship of local BJP leaders, insisted on making a long halt at the gate of a mosque. "Soon they started playing a cassette of Uma Bharti at the gate of the mosque", recalls Aftab Kola, a local journalist. Muslims objected to the highly inflammatory speech which sought to demonize them. Argument led to exchange of hot words, which degenerated into fisticuffs and, finally, into communal riot.

"The whole episode was planned to trigger a riot and cripple Muslims financially" says a veteran journalist. The partisan police role fueled animosities. "We are treated like the enemy by our own police", says a victim, "The police allowed BJP rioters to create havoc and shot two Muslim teenagers without rhyme or reason", says Kola.

What happened in 1991 was mere warm-up for the bigger trouble to come. The storm finally hit the town in early 1993. After the Bhatkal began to have riots every other month. All of them were engineered by political interests inimical to Muslims. "The main idea was to polarize the population to make BJP victory easy", says Kola. Finally, BIP's Dr. U. Chitranjan entered Karnataka assembly in 1994 riding a wave of anti- Muslim hysteria. Sadly, the MLA was shot dead in April 1996 in mysterious circumstances.

The local Muslims form a distinct ethnic group called Nawayats. Their forefathers came sailing from Arabia and settled here a thousand years ago. They have a distinct cultural identity, sartorial preferences and crusine. They constitute 70 per cent of the town's population.

Intermittent riots caused demoralization and huge loss of property. Theirs’s is a remittance economy: 8,000 Nawayatis are NRIs working in South-East Asia, West Asia, the Gulf, Europe and America. (This) gives them a financial edge. It also created jealousies among the less privileged sections. BJP has encased the resentment to its advantage.

Nawayat Muslims have taken care that some benefits of affluence percolate down to others as well. They have subsidized a bus service and given interest-free loans to Hindus from their Cooperative Bank Anjuman Arts, Science and Commerce College built and run by Nawayats, caters to all.

If you talk to the Nawayat or Hindu leaders like Dr. Suresh Naik, Surendra Shanbagh or N.G. Kolle, you find that beneath the burning ambers of resentment lurks a grudging affection for each other. The Hindu-Muslim relationship is a fine example of love-hate pattern.

Muslims, who feel that Dr. Chitranjan was killed by political interests which want communal animosity to prevail in Bhatkal, are bitter at the police and the local media. A delegation of Muslim NRIs met the chief minister and complained against police harassment. They have some ghastly tales of police highhandedness to tell. Their version of police brutality has been corroborated by the deposition of T.Y. Nayaz Ahamad, the ex-deputy- commissioner of Karwar (of which Bhatkal is a taluka). before Justice Jaganath Shetti Commission. The Commission is investigating the causes of the 1993 riots in which the police took a partisan position. Many Muslims and Hindus today want to forget about the bitter past and concentrate on the future. Many people do want to make a fresh-break rather than apportion blame, even at the cost of being denied justice.

The desire for peace notwithstanding, it would be against all norms of fair play if the victims of the riots go uncompensated and the perpetrators unpunished. In 1993 alone many lives were lost and property belonging to Nawayats worth Rs. 4 crore was destroyed.

The latest in the anti-Muslim campaign is the concocted story of massive arms dumping in Bhatkal through the sea route by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence and other shadowy outfits in foreign countries.

In the final analysis, there are five different features at play in Bhatkal: BJP, Muslims, common Hindus, police and press. Fortunately, today the chances of peace are bright because:

With Anand Kumar Hegde as MP, BJP is no longer in need of playing the Hindutva card, at least till the next election;

Muslims are fed up with communal discord;

Common Hindus never wanted to quarrel with Muslims until hate-mongers like Uma Bharti or Rithambhara urged them to take on the Muslims.

The police have yet to promote peace but with the above three being pro-peace, police cannot remain far behind.

Muslims have begun to appeal to newspapers to keep restraint and verify anti-Muslim reports before publishing them. The press on the its own too might know the futility of canard-mongering.

In short, the lurking affection between local Hindus and Muslims would reassert itself sooner than later.

 (Source: The Nation and the World)