Communal tensions have been stoked in the Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh in the last few days amid rallies taken out by Hindutva groups to raise awareness about the fund collection drive for the Ram temple in Ayodhya. There has been stone-pelting on processions taken out in Ujjain, Indore, Mandsaur and Dhar districts with participants reportedly shouting provocative slogans as they go through Muslim mohallas. The administration has arrested the alleged stone-pelters, and in one case, razed the house of a labourer, who reportedly had nothing to do with the incident. However, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has condoned the heavy-handed administration response. On Sunday, he announced that a new law will be formulated on the lines of the draconian Uttar Pradesh Recovery of Damage to Public and Private Property Ordinance, 2020, with more stringent provisions. Existing laws are sufficient to deal with stone-pelting or any action that causes public disturbance. The UP ordinance, itself an exercise in legal and administrative excess, is no model to follow — the MP cabinet has already followed UP’s bad example on the anti-conversion bill against inter-faith marriage. It can also be argued that a prudent administration could have averted the flaring of communal tensions if it had acted with alacrity.
For Chouhan, there is much at stake, therefore, and a political and administrative record to build on. By pushing through a draconian law, by being seen as impervious or intolerant to the anxieties of minorities in the state, he would be taking a disquieting political turn and letting down all those who have looked to him for a calmer and sober politics.
