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Journalism of Courage
The Uttar Pradesh government has announced that it will table in the Assembly the Justice M P Saxena Commission’s report on the monthslong riots of 1980, in which close to 300 individuals were killed in several districts of the state. Saxena, who had retired as a judge of the Allahabad High Court on August 1 of that year, submitted his report in November 1983. But its contents were never made public, and no action was taken on its recommendations.
The violence that began on August 13, 1980 at the Eidgah in Moradabad town, continued in Sambhal, Aligarh, Bareilly, Allahabad (now Prayagraj), and the rural areas of Moradabad until early 1981. The death toll, including those who were missing and were considered dead, was 289, then state Home Minister Swarup Kumari Bakshi told the Assembly.
This was the first time UP had seen communal violence of this scale; even after Partition, when large parts of northern and eastern India were burning, the United Provinces remained largely peaceful.
Near the Moradabad Eidgah, there was a locality of Scheduled Castes. On August 13, Eid-ul-Fitr, more than 50,000 Muslims had gathered at the Eidgah for namaaz. A rumour spread that a stray animal had been spotted at the prayer ground.
There was heavy police deployment at the site, and as demands were made that the animal should be removed, a heated argument began and stones were thrown at the police. In response, the police and Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) opened fire. Many people were allegedly killed, both in the firing and in a stampede as people tried to flee.
D P Singh, a magistrate who was present at the spot, was seriously injured after he was hit by a stone, and later died.
State govt response
In the UP Assembly, V P Singh, who had become Chief Minister weeks earlier on June 9, 1980, said that on August 12, the Intelligence branch had reported that “any stray animal could cause trouble the next day when a large assembly of Muslims would meet at Eidgah”.
Several people were preventively arrested under the National Security Act, and were released only after Holi in March 1981. Singh justified their prolonged incarceration saying he had to choose between “innocents dead or innocents in jail”.
Indira’s ‘foreign hand’
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who had returned to power in January that year after the collapse of the Janata experiment, quickly alleged that a “foreign hand” that wanted to hurt the stability of the country was involved.
But after visiting the affected areas, she said there was no foreign hand. This was a period when Indira frequently raised the bogey of the “foreign hand” for a range of issues.
Two days after the riots, in her Independence Day speech, Indira said the Moradabad incident “has inflicted an injury to our country. I would like to say that whoever has played mischief or is guilty, whether he is an official or a non-official, will be very severely punished”.
Even then, violent ripples from the Moradabad riots were seen in the Ballimaran and Chawri Bazar areas in Delhi that same day, and a curfew had to be imposed and the Army was called in.
Blaming the RSS
Then Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Yogendra Makwana accused the BJP (which had been formed in April 1980) and RSS of engineering the riots. On October 28, 1980, Indira’s government reiterated an earlier circular from November 30, 1966 that had said government servants who joined the RSS or Jamaat-e-Islami would face “disciplinary action”.
“In the context of the current situation in the country, the need to ensure a secular outlook on the part of Government servants is all the more important. The need to eradicate communal feelings and communal bias cannot be overemphasized,” the October 1980 circular said.
Uproar in Houses
The opposition repeatedly criticised the state and central governments for failing to prevent the riots.
Ravindra Verma, the Janata MP from Mumbai North, mocked the “foreign hand” thesis and the government’s response: “[The government says] all over the country, there are foreign hands and my Hon’ble friend gets up and says, ‘we will cut the foreign hand’. But we have not seen a single hand that has been cut down by him.”
In Parliament’s Winter Session that December, G M Banatwala of the Muslim League moved a motion expressing “serious concern” of the House over the “situation arising out of recent communal riots”. Chitta Basu of the Forward Bloc alleged that “Moradabad is nothing but an example of unbridled violence of the State perpetrated upon the Muslims.”
In the UP Assembly, Janata Party MLA Rajendra Singh compared the police action in Moradabad with the Jalianwalla Bagh massacre. V P Singh responded: “I have not stood up to give any explanation. I have stood up to seek punishment [for myself].”
