Policy run riot

What does a government do when a judicial probe into the state8217;s worst instance of communal rioting yields proof of political and bureaucratic complicity? By the example of Kerala, as in so many other cases across India, it simply withholds the findings of the commission from public scrutiny. A copy of the report of the Thomas P. Joseph commission probing violence in 2002-2003 in Marad, a fishing town near Kozhikode, has been accessed by The Indian Express. It indicts, among others, politicians belonging to the ruling United Democratic Front and the Kozhikode district collector.

Kerala is now in the throes of a bitterly contested election campaign. Among the first tasks that must be taken up by the coalition that assumes power must be to act upon the recommendations of that commission. The sequence of events in Marad attests to the suspicion that they were not exactly spontaneous bursts of communal animosity and, even more dangerously, that those in positions of power abetted the atrocities by failing to act upon the advance information in their possession. On January 2, 2003, a clash occurred over drinking water at a public tap. It left five dead, and lingering tension between the town8217;s Muslims and Hindus. More than a year later, on May 2, 2003, eight Hindus were killed, in what appeared from the very beginning to be a premeditated attack. The killers allegedly took refuge in a mosque, and the commission says their links to extremist organisations funded from abroad as well as the preliminary finding that a Muslim League politician, now in the Central government, was involved need to be investigated further.

Marad continues to suffer with a shaming series of absences. In the aftermath of that massacre, Sangh organisations drove out all the Muslim families from the town. Return to old patterns of social and economic cooperation will be made that much more difficult unless the town8217;s people are allowed a cathartic trial. On trial must be the officials and extremists whose role is made explicit in the judicial

commission8217;s report.