Prateep K. Lahiri - Decoding Intolerance: Riots and the Emergence of Terrorism in India

The rioting in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, in 1961 was a watershed event for India. After the Partition, it was the first time such large-scale communal violence had taken place. The author, Prateep K. Lahiri, on his first posting, was involved in bringing the situation under control. Sometime later in 1969, as district magistrate of Indore, Lahiri played a key role in dealing with the outbreak of communal violence in that city. While the violence in both instances appeared to have been spontaneously provoked by an incident - just like in Gujarat in 2002 - the reasons that later emerged for the rioting revealed the deeper malaise that continues to affect our social system. Decoding Intolerance: Riots and the Emergence of Terrorism in India is a significant book by an administrator, who has observed the minutiae of the crisis from close quarters and scrutinized the role of the police and the state administration. The author synthesizes various dimensions of the issue, including the changing perceptions of Indian Muslims in the recent past, the history of religious fundamentalism and how it manifests as communal unrest, both in India and elsewhere. The phenomenon of terrorism, which has reared its ugly head over India and the world, is also touched upon to understand the implications it has had on the shifting political scenario. Decoding Intolerance critically analyzes the recurrence of communal violence and offers a persuasive argument about the problem, with a focus on its prevention in the future.

Prateep K. Lahiri is the Chairman of the General Council and Executive Board of the ISM University, Dhanbad, a leading institute for technical education in the country. Lahiri has had a distinguished career in the civil service as an IAS officer, spanning thirty-six years, and has held the positions of secretary in the Government of India successively in two ministries: the Ministry of Mines and the Ministry of Finance. Early in his career, as district magistrate in several districts, he had first-hand experience of dealing with communal conflicts and riots. For about four years, he was India's executive director on the Resident Board of Directors of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Manila, with the personal rank of ambassador. After retiring from the civil service, Lahiri was also associated with the media in the capacity of secretary general of the Indian Newspaper Society (INS), an apex chamber of the newspaper industry in India.

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This book is dedicated to my father

Shri B.N. Lahiri (IP), a true karmayogi:

the first Indian Inspector General of Police, Uttar

Pradesh.

D E C O D I N G

I N T O L E R A N C E

Bashir returns home after the first day at school and asks his mother why the boy who shares his desk calls himself Ram. Why is his name different from his or his cousins, Imtiaz? The mother explains that we are Muslims and they are Hindu. Ram is theirs. Bashir keeps quiet but remains unconvinced about why the different names should make them separate communities.

Do such perceptions take birth in schools? Or is it the home where the differences are articulated? True, the two religions, Hinduism and Islam, are poles apart. But how similar do their followers look when they bow at the prayers? It is not the faith that divides them. It is the assertion that one is superior to the other that injects the bias. Both Bashir and Ram, or for that matter, Muslims and Hindus, harbour the belief that their religion alone teaches what is right, what is god-ordained.

In India where both communities share the same history and the same culture, their nationality is the same. Some are Muslims and some Hindus but both are Indians. Differences are deliberately cultivated and then exaggerated by vested interests or religious leaders so as to keep the two communities distant for electoral and other reasons. This separation feeds prejudice and fanaticism.

If one were to analyze the causes of any riot, whether at Jamshedpur, Bhagalpur or Mumbai, one would not but come to the same conclusion: bigotry takes over when the voice of reason weakens. Both communities kill in the name of religion which teaches them amity and accord. Worse, the police force too has become partisan. Many riots begin with a clash between Hindus and Muslims and end up with the confrontation between Muslims and the police. Many inquiry reports have pointed out how the police force has got contaminated and how it often sides with the majority community.

Whether it was a tug of conscience or sheer sensitivity, some senior police officers have been meeting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to argue that any communal disturbance can be effectively contained within a few hours. Their experience tells them that wherever riots prolong, there is the partisanship of police to contend with.

More than a decade ago, a senior police officer from UP studied ten major riots for a research project on police neutrality during communal riots. He came to the conclusion that in all the riots he had analyzed, the police did not act as a neutral law enforcement agency. He also found a perceptible discrimination in the use of the force, preventive arrests made, reporting of the facts, investigation, prosecution, etc. His study showed that no communal riot could last beyond twenty-four hours without the connivance of the authorities.

Every commission of inquiry some thirty of them since independence has brought out how utterly negligent and callous the local police were. The mandatory supervision by senior officers even in heinous offences has been absent. For example, the various probes which went into the 1984 riots came to infer that in a large number of cases, complaints made to the police were simply mentioned in the case diaries of FIRs and considered as good as disposed of. No attempt was made to record evidence of witnesses. Nor was there any identification of the accused.

Strange, the authorities have learnt no lesson. The Gujarat riots were worse. In fact, they were not riots. It was a pogrom. The cadre of a political party imbued by communal considerations, indulged in killing, looting, arson, etc., with impunity. It was a major failure of governance. Till today the government remains prejudiced and the citizen indifferent.

Two recommendations made by many inquiry committees are pertinent. One, the administration and its officers should be held accountable. Two, the victims of mob violence should be fully compensated as if they were insured and their homes and sources of livelihood fully restored. The hitch comes when the state is itself involved as is the case in Gujarat. Such instances erode the confidence of Muslims and other minorities in the commitment of India to protect their life and property.