Opinion Simmering dangerously

The 2002 communal violence in Gujarat is one of the most shameful moments in the life of this country. But it also seemed to mark the last such conflagration. Ever since, while there have been incidents of conflict between communities, the large-scale communal riot appeared to have been left behind. Till Muzaffarnagar. The raging of violence in western UP last year, and the toll it took in terms of loss of life and displacement, came as a sobering warning and reproach against complacency. Subsequently, the campaign for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls saw political parties trade on the cleavages that had been reopened and deepened. In western UP, at least, the election was won and lost by the polarisation on the ground. As an investigation by this paper into “communal” incidents recorded by the police in UP after the Lok Sabha results shows, that polarisation has not receded, only taken a new tenor and form. It persists as a carefully calibrated state of unrest.

In this grim drama of tensions kept on slow burn and stoked opportunistically, the lead players are an aggressive BJP emboldened by its performance in the Lok Sabha polls, an SP reduced to a rump in Parliament and desperately trying to hold on to its bastions in the face of the BJP advance and a BSP in retreat in the state that provided it with its most remarkable success story in its leap from a “movement” to a political party. The provocation that turns small skirmishes into bloody confrontations comes from all sides, but the incidents are clustered around the 12 assembly constituencies bound for bypolls over the next few months. The communal riot, seen as a primarily urban eruption, is spreading into the countryside. And the religious polarisation that is both its cause and consequence is tearing apart the existing social coalitions. The RLD’s Muslim-Jat alliance appears to have disintegrated in western UP and the BSP’s social engineering looks particularly vulnerable with an increasing number of the conflicts ranging Dalits against Muslims.

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All parties must take responsibility for what is happening in UP — particularly the ruling SP. While there is evidence that the local administration intervened in several cases to prevent minor incidents from flaring, greater vigilance is needed. It is the SP that must summon the political will to initiate a change of subject in the state, and break the bleak cycle of polarisation and counter polarisation. For that, it need only take a cue from the mandate that swept it to power in 2012, won on a promise that touched a chord in all communities.