Avoidable tragedy

The tragic sequence of events that led to 10 deaths in Friday's police firing in Mumbai and a bandh in the city on Saturday runs true to a ...

The tragic sequence of events that led to 10 deaths in Friday8217;s police firing in Mumbai and a bandh in the city on Saturday runs true to a pre-determined pattern that has been played out time after time. The incident revealed the deep and abiding rift between Dalits and the Shiv Sena in the State, one that has expressed itself in numerous street battles, murders and riots. The ding-dong battle over the renaming of Marathawada University even after the Maharashtra Legislature had passed a resolution in 1978 favouring it, was just one manifestation of this visceral hatred. The controversy over Dr B.R. Ambedkar8217;s Riddles of Hinduism saw some of the biggest street mobilisations that both the Shiv Sena and Dalit political formations have ever mustered. Characteristically enough, Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray has not wasted much time in commiserating with the victims of police brutality. His public statement justifying police action smacked of a lack of sensitivity not just to Dalit but human sentiments. Chief Minister Manohar Joshi and Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde were more circumspect, perhaps because they realised the political implications that such an incident has for the State Government. Munde even went on to promise regular police surveillance of the 10,000 Ambedkar statues in the State, so that they are not subject to such sacrilegious attacks.

This suggestion, delivered perhaps in good faith, reveals a naivety that is hard to believe. Munde should realise that Ambedkar8217;s statues would remain untouched if political parties desist from playing loaded political games in the name of caste. Acts of provocation like garlanding these statues with chappals are meant not just to insult the memory of Dr Ambedkar but to deliberately provoke caste violence. Just this March, Shrirampur in Ahmednagar district saw a round of violence and the death of a Dalit youth following the desecration of an Ambedkar statue. And it is not just in Maharashtra alone that incidents like this surface with a frightening regularity. Early last year, B.T. Lalitha Naik, the Minister for Culture in Karnataka, had to resign on charges that her son was involved in destroying an Ambedkar statue.

The Maharashtra Chief Minister has also stated that a judicial inquiry into the incident will be conducted. His promise lacks conviction because of the manner his government had tried to scuttle the Srikrishna Committee hearings in January 1996. Still, it is to be hoped that such an inquiry would reveal some of the poison in the system, including the cavalier fashion in which bullets were employed to control the rampaging mob. To graduate from a lathi-charge to bullets, as the SRP personnel did in Mumbai on Friday, betrays a complete ignorance of proper crowd policing methods. Where were the rubber bullets, the water canons, the procedure that police should first shoot in the air, then at the feet of protestors before going in for more drastic action? This, in a city that saw hundreds die in the post-Babri Masjid demolition riots. Truly the Maharashtra Government has learnt nothing from those harrowing times.