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However much we love to despise Laloo Prasad Yadav, it is simply bad form to gloat over his discomfiture at the horrible riots in Sitamarhi which, by official count, left 44 people dead. From all accounts, and despite the chief minister's disclaimer, the riots were communal in character, and like Bhagalpur in 1989, spread from the town of Sitamarhi to adjoining villages. There are also reasons to believe that had the chief minister not camped in Sitamarhi and personally supervised the policing and administration arrangements, the casualty figure would have been much higher. The local Muslim community in particular should be greatful that communal harmony is sufficiently high on Laloo Yadav's list of priorities for him to inform fellow Yadavs in characteristically blunt terms: "sab lok lathi lekar duty karo. Tum apneko Laloo Yadav samajho aur Musalmanoko bachao."
As with any communal riot, there are many lessons to be learnt from Sitamarhi. The local reaction to the special courts that the Bihar govt has promised to establish to try rioters, will demonstrate whether or not prompt action is a suitable deterrent against future riots. The chief min- ister, ever anxious to preserve his casteist and communal vote banks, will need to monitor the impact of Sitamarhi on his much touted "Maya" alliance of Muslims and Yadavas. Any cracks in the electoral coalition could prove disastrous for Janata Dal. The chief minister will also need to ponder over the implications of the reports that the local Janata Dal MLA, Syed Ali Khan, encouraged Muslim bellicosity while another party leader, Nawal Kishore Rai, was in the vanguard of Hindu retaliation. Most important, the wider political fallout of the departure from the tendency of blaming the BJP and RSS for each and every riot will also need to be studied.
Obviously, there is enough in Sitamarhi to keep Laloo Yadav and the Bihar administration preoccupied for some time. But the lessons of Sitamarhi stretch beyond the frontiers of localism. This should be apparent from the fact that the events which triggered rioting in the town on Dusserah day were by no means unique.
Facts, as reported in the press is seen beyond dispute. The river in which the idols of the Goddess Durga are immersed on Dusserah had apparently run dry. The organizers of the local puja selected a pond for the immersion and the details of the new route to be followed by the procession was worked out in consultation with a local 'peace committee' which included Muslim representatives. The committee had been set up a few days earlier following tension over the harassment of some women attending the Durga Puja in Sitamarhi. In any event, the decision of the committee remained confined to the paper. When the immersion procession approached Mehsaul Chowk - Dumra Road, it was stopped near the local Jama Masjid by the supporters of Syed Ali Khan and Anwarul Huq, a former Congress MLA. The Janata Dal MP, Harik- ishore Singh, attempted to reason with the Muslim crowd. Unfortunately, his attempt met with little success. As the procession attempted to advance, it was greeted with brickbats which prompted the police to fire. The immersion was disrupted and by the next morning riots broke out in Sitamarhi.
To attribute the disturbances in Sitamarhi to the localized tensions aris- ing from an incident of so-called "eve-teasing", as the BJP delegation has done, would be tantamount to missing the wood for the trees. Riots which have their origin in attacks - often quite unprovoked - on Hindu religious processions, are becoming increasingly common.
In 1990, a bomb was hurled on a Durga Puja procession in the town of Colonelgang in Gonda district of Uttar Pradesh and resulted in vicious rioting, affecting neighboring villages as well. Like in Sitamarhi, the needle of suspicion pointed to an MP, Munnan Khan, an activist of Babri Masjid Action Committee (BMAC) and a close associate of Mulayam Singh Yadav. Last year, a Kalibari procession was obstructed in the Madanpura locality of Varanasi which led to riots. And earlier this year, Ahmedabad exploded once again following an attack on the Jagannath rath yatra. In a single day, 300 shops were looted and burnt, and reports suggested a link between the attack on rath yatra and earlier arrest of a notorious bootlegger, Abdul Latif.
Nor is it accurate to suggest that these attacks are a recent phenomenon which can be attributed to a wave of majoritarian assertiveness linked to the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. True, the unresolved dispute and the per- sistence of pseudosecularist tendencies in the policy have made Hindus far more conscious of their religious identity. For example, Durga Puja, which was earlier an exclusively Bengali celebration, has transcended regional boundaries and become popular in Bombay, Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh. There are some indications of similar rise in the popularity of the Jagan- nath rath yatra and the Ganapati festival. But these important milestones in the construction of pan-Indian Hindu identity do not by themselves pose threat to communal harmony. The danger arises when rising Hindu conscious- ness is confronted by intemperate Muslim moves to enlarge boundries of the community's sacred place.
In a nutshell, this means the rising Muslim demand for demarcating no-go areas for Muslim religious processions. The inspiration for these prepos- terous attempts to creat communal ghettoes comes from the pattern of Muslim mobilization in the 1920s and 1930s. Although the earliest recorded "music before mosque" dispute dates back to a clash before the Hooghly Emambara in Bengal in 1863, it became a recurrent feature of communal mobilization after an Arya Samaj procession was attacked in Calcutta in April 1926. Later, the traditional Janmashtami procession was obstructed in Dacca (which, incidentally was a Hindu majority city till partition) the same year. The pattern was repeated throughout small towns in East Bengal and reached such alarming proportions that Satindranath Sen, a Congress leader of Bakarganj district, felt compelled to organize a 4-month satyagraha in Patuakhali to press for "civil rights" of Hindus to play music on all pub- lic thoroughfares. The satyagraha attracted nationwide attension, was sup- ported by the Bengal Congress, but failed to move the Muslim leadership.
It is a matter of utmost shame that in independent India, the day is approaching when some local leader will have to undertake a Patuakhali-type satyagraha to press for the right of free passage of all religious proces- sions. Certainly, the need for such an assertion has arisen in view of the inability of the secular leadership to discern that what took place in Sitamarhi opens up dangerous possibilities of segregation, ghettoisation, exclusivism and, finally, separatism. The responsible Muslim leadership must take note of what happened in Sitamarhi because, in the ultimate analysis, it is the minorities who are at the receiving end of riots.
It is easy, as the Munnan Khans,
Abdul Latifs and Syed Ali Khans have vividly demonstrated, to start a riot.
For more distressing is having to face up to its horrible consequences.
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