Religious violence keeps UP’s political pot boiling

MEERUT/SHAMLI: On July 31, 2014, several torn pages of the Bhagwad Gita were found scattered along with meat pieces in the courtyard of a temple in Shamli’s Jalalabad.

MEERUT/SHAMLI: On July 31, 2014, several torn pages of the Bhagwad Gita were found scattered along with meat pieces in the courtyard of a temple in Shamli’s Jalalabad. The news travelled and Hindus from nearby villages poured into the fields surrounding the temple located in a Muslim neighbourhood.

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On the same day, parents of a 22-year old girl in Kharkhauda, south of Meerut, filed a first information report (FIR) alleging kidnapping and conversion attempts by a local Muslim cleric. Hindu right-wing groups quickly took up the cause and Meerut city was soon on the brink of a riot.

Though separated by nearly 100 kms, the two seemingly isolated incidents fell within a larger pattern of low-intensity communal flare-ups erupting across Uttar Pradesh.

As the state heads for crucial assembly elections next year, an HT investigation based on police records sourced from all its 75 districts show that there have been over 12,000 such incidents since 2010.

After the last assembly polls in 2012, there have been over 11,000 incidents. Since June 2013, not a single day, barring Christmas in 2014, has passed without a communal conflagration – triggered by a variety of reasons from disputes over beef to alleged conversions – somewhere in the state.

A majority of the incidents were localised flare-ups and did not hit the national headlines, but nevertheless contributed in keeping the state on the edge.

Police records suggest that 23% of all communal incidents in the state since 2012 were sparked by “religious intolerance” – violent disputes over vandalism or use of loudspeakers at places of worship.

Alleged smuggling and slaughter of cows accounted for 19% of the violence. Elopement and sexual harassment came next, making up for 15% of the total cases.

In Meerut, the alleged abduction and conversion of the girl was cited as a textbook case of “love jihad” — the term used by Hindu right-wing groups alleging an Islamist conspiracy to lure and convert Hindu girls.

As different versions of the “Meerut girl’s” ordeal started circulating on social media, the police rushed its first team to the city’s Lisari Gate, a bustling mixed neighbourhood with narrow alleys and crumbling buildings. A big flare up was averted.

But the communal divide is yet to be bridged. Meerut, which recorded just 27 communal incidents in 2010, witnessed 234 religious confrontations in 2015. There have been 64 such incidents in the first four months of 2016 alone. It now stands polarised.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a well-known political analyst and commentator, says the localised flare-ups are part of a “strategy out to produce polarisation through surgical strikes which do not escalate and ladder up to the national level.”

“In case there is a major communal conflagration, this local consolidation will prevent political parties from forming a secular axis against a communal axis,” he added.

Other political experts say the direct consequence of these communal incidents has been a consolidation of Hindu identity in favour of the BJP and the Muslims in favour of incumbent Samajwadi Party (SP).

“In a casteist UP, only religious identity can overwhelm caste identity,” says Asmer Beg, a political scientist. According to him, consolidation of votes on communal lines resulting in a 2 -3% swing could clinch next year’s elections for either the SP, BJP or Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). The day both Lisari Gate and Shamli’s Jalalabad were on the boil, Saharanpur in the state’s north was into its fourth day of curfew after a Muslim mob targeted shops owned by Sikhs.

There were 13 other such incidents reported from the state on the same day. It was a particularly bad week for UP: between July 27 and August 2, the state recorded 106 incidents, mostly concentrated in the 17 districts of western UP. Sujith Pandey, an inspector general of police who till recently was in-charge of western UP, says, “Intolerance levels have increased, even the most trivial issue becomes a potential riot. The police response time is what is keeping the riots on hold. It will take along time before this generation reconciles.” HT analysis also shows that the trigger for riots varies from region.