Polarised politics in hi-tech city

Even Bangalore’s worst communal riots did not come immediately after Babri Masjid demolition of December 1992. It came almost a year later, in October 1993, in the form of a dispute over a Congress move to introduce Urdu news broadcasts, which left 17 people dead in two days of violence. There have been dozens of other incidents in the past two decades, but most of them will really go down as minor skirmishes compared to the Cauvery riots or the Urdu news riots. In 1997, the demolition of a stone structure in a mosque in Jayanagar in south Bangalore led to communal violence in the sensitive regions across the city, leaving four dead. In 2002, a Hindu-Muslim marriage resulted in a brief spell of violence. In 2003, following the India-Pakistan World Cup cricket game in Bangalore, violence was reported in some sensitive areas as jubilant fans celebrating an Indian victory drove around taunting people in Muslim-dominated areas. Most recently, in April 2005, violence broke out in the JJ Nagar area after a boy found urinating near a place of worship was beaten up.

Bangalore has its clearly demarcated communally sensitive spots, like Shivajinagar and Frazer Town in the east, K.R. Market and JJ Nagar in the west and Gurappanapalya and Tilaknagar in the south. But what surprises most about the clashes over the weekend is that unlike previous communal clashes, they did not happen out of the blue. There was clear evidence that there could be tension on Sunday and yet the state administration reacted in a leaden manner. On January 19 evening, when people marching to a rally, organised by Congress leader C.K. Jaffer Sharief, to protest against Saddam Hussein’s execution, pulled down advertisements for a Virat Hindu rally in the Shivajinagar area, the first clashes occurred. The police then had nearly 48 hours to prepare for the three Virat Hindu rallies in east, north and south Bangalore, organised on January 21 by the Sangh Parivar. That one of the rallies would be held in a zone where the wounds of violence were fresh and there could be retaliation when another group of people march through the sensitive areas was obvious.

Bangalore’s Police Commissioner N. Achutha Rao argues that it was because the organisers of the Virat Hindu Samajothsava turned down the suggestion that the rally be cancelled in the eastern part of the city that the situation got out of hand. The police commissioner’s remarks indicate a sense of police hesitancy under the present BJP-JD(S) dispensation to nip communally fraught situations in the bud. There are now accusations that the police force did not receive a clear directive from the state government to ensure that there should be no violence. With three similar Hindu rallies in three different parts of the city and a CITU conference also to handle, the police was clearly hard-pressed. Similarly, the Sangh Parivar Virat Hindu Samajothsava rallies were held in Mangalore, Mysore and other parts of Karnataka over the past month in relative calm.

What is particularly significant about the recent violence in Bangalore was that it was the first big round of communal violence since the city emerged as a major info tech hub. It was also the first period of communal violence in Bangalore since the BJP engineered an alliance with the JD(S) to come to power in Karnataka exactly a year ago. It is, however, not the first incidence of communal violence in the state under the present government. Last October, communal tension had peaked in BJP-dominated Mangalore district.

The present riots, taken with earlier outbreaks of communal violence, point to the increasingly polarised nature of politics in Karnataka, with the BJP-JD(S), on one side, and the Congress, on the other. Power games between the two entities could keep the state on edge. There is greater incentive now than ever before for political forces to drive a wedge between communities which had earlier lived in complete harmony.