Opinion Riots and wrongs

We cannot be complacent on communal violence. But the UPA’s bill is no solution.

February 7, 2014 02:29 AM IST First published on: Feb 7, 2014 at 02:29 AM IST

We cannot be complacent on communal violence. But the UPA’s bill is no solution.

The communal violence bill championed by the Congress-led UPA has been unanimously rejected by state governments and political parties. It has been nearly 10 years since the UPA first floated the bill, not very long after the 2002 Gujarat riots. It was meant to enforce accountability of the police and administrative machinery, and establish clear terms for relief and reparation. But that first version has undergone several revisions.

The NAC’s ill-conceived draft in 2011 tilted dangerously towards the Centre, overriding the states’ control of law and order. Many objected to the way the proposed law exerted all its pressure on civil servants, and sought to set up a special riots bureaucracy of “clear moral character”. Some parties objected to the way its defaults seemed to be set in favour of religious and linguistic minorities, pre-emptively assigning victimhood and responsibility.

Some of those clauses have now been amended — the central committee has been replaced with the NHRC, and the bill addresses all acts of group violence. But the bill’s fate in the Rajya Sabha has made it clear that no opposition party is willing to accept it. The government insists that the NHRC can only act with the state government’s permission, and that “control of law and order” could not apply in cases of state-sponsored violence, but opposition parties maintain that it is an incursion on states’ rights. It is clear that the UPA should stop wasting valuable parliamentary time on this project now.

This is not to say that communal violence does not need urgent attention. Muzaffarnagar, Gopalgarh and other troubled places have demolished complacencies about the waning of these tensions or the likelihood of them flaring into active conflict. Home ministry data shows a sharp 30 per cent rise in such incidents in the last year alone. The fact that these communal tensions can be used as political tinder, even now, shows that the state needs to devise new ways to contain them. The argument is about how best to do so. Does a longstanding social problem disappear by creating a new, specially named law?

A communal violence bill is no remedy if the political resolve is weak and the government dithers instead of taking prompt action. A new law will not solve the underlying issue — of making sure that in incidents of communal violence, FIRs and investigations are acted upon and followed through seriously.