Tags:
Journalism of Courage
The communal violence in Mau has hurt more than just the image of the Mulayam Singh Yadav government in Uttar Pradesh, it has dented a nation’s complacency. For a while back then after the horrors of Gujarat 2002, the country was convulsed by a questioning. With varying degrees of sincerity and immediacy, civil society activists and policy-makers debated how to ensure, not just justice in Gujarat, but also a riot-free future for the country. Then, the urgency began to recede as public discussion shifted to other issues. This, despite the promise in the UPA’s National Common Minimum Programme to enact a ‘‘comprehensive law on communal violence’’. This, despite the draft Communal Violence (Suppression) Bill 2005 wending its way into the public domain. The moment seemed to have passed.
The past few days in Mau have shown us why communal violence and how to prevent it should be a national priority. The trigger in Mau, as it often is, was incidental. Violence erupted over the organising of Dussehra celebrations, traditionally held peacefully in this eastern UP town. The killings and the violence have now been controlled after the Mulayam Singh government brought in a new team of officers in the local administration and deployed additional forces in the affected region but the questions will not go away. Was the government just irresponsibly unaware of the build-up of tensions, or did it criminally ignore it? How did it happen that a local MLA, Mukhtar Ansari, already notorious with 36 criminal cases against him and a conviction under TADA, could ‘‘take charge’’ of the town as it burned and later seethed under curfew? Actually, these questions can be pared down to a single fundamental question: what are the series of abdications that make up the vacuum which the likes of Mukhtar Ansari then rush in to fill?
The Mulayam Singh government has instituted a time-bound probe into the violence. Those in the UP administration who could have prevented and then controlled the violence, and did not, must be identified and punished. But the rest of us are not off the hook either. We must renew the search for mechanisms and negotiations, involving both civil society and government, that can help India to keep its tryst with the future without blood on its hands.
