Qurban Ali; Centre for Study of Society and Secularism
The dominant discourse on nationalism in the country today has narrowed down to superficial parameters and litmus test of chanting of slogans like Vande Mataram and organising aggressive bike rallies by Hindu supremacists in Muslim majority areas as a show of strength and assertion of their supremacy. This recently took place in Bhagalpur on the occasion of Ram Navami and was followed by communal violence. This is not the first and the only time such provocation was made. This is also largely the story of the violence that unfolded in Kasganj on 26 January 2018. The youth from Sankalp Foundation in Kasganj organised a bike rally on 26th January 2018 without the necessary permission and insisted on passage through a Muslim dominated area where the Muslim residents had organised a flag hoisting event on the occasion of Republic day. In the violence that ensued, a youth called Chandan Gupta was shot and succumbed to his injury. One Naushad too was shot in his leg. Violence was orchestrated on 26, 27 and 28 January by Hindu supremacists in which shops belonging predominantly to Muslim owners were burnt down.
A fact finding team visited violence-hit Kasganj near Etah in Uttar Pradesh on 2 February 2018 and released its report to the media on 5 February. The fact finding team consisted of Irfan Engineer, Director of Centre for Study of Society and Secularism (CSSS), author and social activist, Neha Dabhade, Dy. Director of CSSS and Akram Akhtar Chowdhary, social activist, Afkar India Foundation. The team spoke to the family of Chandan Gupta, the family of Salim, shop owners in the area where the shops were attacked and vandalised, journalists, residents in Badu Nagar, the police (SP), the Congress chief from Kasganj, Shashilata Chauhan, BSP leader Rajeev Sharma, and a businessman Anupam Sharma.
The findings of the committee very clearly point towards the communal politics that is encouraged and brewing in Uttar Pradesh and which seeks to render the Muslim community as second-class citizens. Uttar Pradesh, once known for its ganga jamuna tehzeeb, has today become infamous for communal violence. It has an interesting chequered political history of mobilisation and counter mobilisation around the Ram Jamnabhoomi movement. The issue has been manipulated to polarise communities and project a single consolidated ‘Hindu’ identity, taking in its fold Dalits and other oppressed castes by invisibilising their exploitation, for electoral benefits. There is a steady but unfortunate shift from the politics of social and economic justice to politics of communalism. The Aligarh, Meerut and Muzaffarnagar riots are some of the recent riots that took place on very large scale. Post-2014, no riots have taken place on such large scale, but there has been continuous, sub radar, low intensity violence. The issues of cow slaughter and inter religious marriages are being exploited to spread hatred and violence in different forms, including lynching. This has made the State volatile and the marginalised sections in the State like Dalits, Muslims and women very vulnerable.
Different narratives in Kasganj
There are two narratives that emerged from the interactions of the team with the different individuals. The first narrative is that of Sushil Gupta, father of the deceased Chandan Gupta. According to Sushil Gupta, Sankalp Foundation was an organisation of youth which engaged in charity activities like distribution of food, clothes and blankets to the poor. Chandan Gupta was very active in serving the poor, particularly through blood donation. He donated blood thrice and all three times to Muslim recipients, as claimed by his father. He fixed the blame for the violence in Kasganj squarely on the Muslim residents of Badu Nagar. He explained the happenings on the fateful day with the help of a video shot on that day.
He narrated that Sankalp Foundation planned a bike rally to be taken out on 26 January. He claimed that the youth were carrying Indian flags. The rally went to Badu Nagar and there were chairs organised there at the Veer Abdul Hamid Chauraha. The youth insisted that the chairs be removed and they be given passage through the Chauraha. According to Sushil Gupta, there was no flag hoisting taking place there, since no flag hoisting takes place so late at 10 am. Pointing to one man in the video, whose name he wasn’t ready to disclose, he accused him for the violence. He said there was stone pelting by the residents on the unarmed and helpless youth which forced them to abandon their vehicles and flee from the area.
In the video shown to them by Sushil Kumar, the fact finding team noticed that the youth in the rally were very aggressive and were carrying saffron flags. They were aggressively shouting slogans. There were very few Muslim residents waiting at the Veer Abdul Hamid Chauraha, and none of them had arms. The video doesn’t show any attack by the Muslim residents. While Sushil Gupta refrained from blaming the whole Muslim community for the violence, he believed that some ‘bad elements’ from the community were responsible for the violence.
The Congress leader in Kasganj, Shashilata Chauhan attributed this violence to personal enmity between the youth from both the communities. And this fight was given a communal hue. She rued that innocent youth from both Hindu and Muslim communities had been arrested by the police. But she strongly pointed out to the speech of the BJP MP, Rajveer Singh on the evening of 26 January after the death of Chandan Gupta and how it deteriorated the atmosphere and fanned violence. Rajveer Singh said, “I myself with the force have come amongst you. The incidence which has happened cannot be forgotten in any case. I haven’t seen such kind of anger in Kasganj before this. In this incident, there’s no mistake of ‘our people’. This fight has happened in a preplanned fashion in which ‘one of us’ has died. I have gathered the information that Chandan Gupta, ‘one of us’, has died in this fight. The investigation of this matter would be done without in any delay.”
Narrative by Muslim residents
The second narrative is that of the residents of Badu Nagar. Dr. Asif Hussain has a house at the Abdul Hamid Chauraha in Badu Nagar and the rally that day passed outside his house. He said that this was the first time a flag hoisting program was organised at the chauraha. Every year, the Muslims organise flag hoisting in schools. But this year the community wanted to demonstrate to the government and people that Muslims too hoist flags and are patriotic, in contrast to the popular stereotypes that Muslims are disloyal to India. In the past, the RSS wanted the madrasas in the State to provide video documentation to prove that they hoisted the Indian flag on Republic Day. And so, elaborate preparations were made, and one Mufti Kubeb was invited to hoist the flag at 9.30 am. School children were also invited. Chairs were arranged at the small chauraha for the audience to sit.
He also furnished several videos for the fact finding team which were essentially footage of the CCTV. It can be seen in the video that approximately at 10 am on 26 January, 60 to 70 bikes in the rally came to the chauraha and started demanding aggressively that the chairs be removed and the rally be allowed to pass through. The organisers of the flag hoisting program requested the youth to attend the flag hoisting and assured them that after the flag hoisting, the chairs will be removed for the rally to pass. The youth in the rally were carrying saffron flags, and were aggressively shouting slogans like “Hindustan mein rehna hoga to Vande Mataram kahana hoga” and “Radhe Radhe”. The residents refused to chant these slogans and instead raised their own slogans of “Godse murdabad”. One of the youth from the bike rally pulled a stick and attacked one of the residents. The residents then threw chairs on the youth. More residents also came out in the chauraha. The youth got intimidated and fled the chauraha to regroup at Tehsil Road.
The residents noted down the registration numbers of all the bikes left behind and called the police and handed over to them the list of the bikes left behind. The police came to the chauraha after the youth had fled and removed the bikes.
Meanwhile, the youth regrouped at Tehsil Road. They were armed with pistols and sticks. They started attacking the Muslims on the road and vandalised their shops. In the ensuing violence, Chandan Gupta received bullet shots and one Naushad was shot in the leg.
When the team visited Veer Abdul Hamid Chauraha, it saw how small the chauraha is. The roads in Badu Nagar leading to and in and around Veer Abdul Hamid Chauraha are narrow lanes, not broader than 8 feet. These lanes are flanked with open sewages on both the sides and have small shops and houses on either side with their stairs and platforms jutting out on to the street. The lanes are so narrow that it’s impossible for two motorcycles to cross each other from opposite directions. One single bike can pass at any given point of time after great manoeuvering with the pedestrians and other obstacles. In the best of times, the bikes can navigate at a speed of less than 10 kmph with frequent breaks to negotiate with the people walking on the lane. With chairs arranged for the flag hoisting, the lanes were temporarily blocked. Any prudent citizen wouldn’t want to ride on bikes through these lanes in a rally even without the chairs temporarily kept there. The only purpose behind demanding passage on bikes through these narrow lanes can be to create mischief or to provoke the Muslim residents. The other probable reason can be the arrogance that the Muslim residents of the area mean nothing and the Hindu youth can ride rough shod over them, to demonstrate that they wield superior strength / power as it is their government which is in power.
Role of the Police
The role of the police has been shameful. The police action was biased and served the political agenda of the ruling regime in UP. The SP of Kasganj made an irresponsible statement saying that it was not possible to control the riot since there are never as many police personnel as rioters! And thus he shirked away the responsibility of the security forces to contain the violence. The police also dismissed the communal angle to this violence by blaming anti-social elements for the violence, and in this way protecting the wrong doers. The police complicity in the riots is on many accounts.
Firstly the police, in spite of having prior information about the rally, didn’t take any steps to stop it. Police conceded that Sankalp Foundation didn’t have the permission to take out this rally. The shops and other property belonging to Muslim owners, a mosque and hawker stalls were attacked for three days in different places in Kasganj. The police could have taken strict action against the youth since they didn’t have the necessary permission and their bikes were seized. The registration numbers of the bikes could have easily led the police to the perpetrators of the violence. But the police released the property used in the crime (bikes) without pressing any charges!
A reading of the FIRs filed show deliberate lapses on the part of the police which will deny justice to the victims. In the FIRs filed by the Hindus against Muslims, names of the accused are mentioned. However, no names have been mentioned in the FIRs where Muslims are victims. In fact, the names of the Muslim owners or the names of the shops which were attacked are not named in the FIR, making it very vague for any proper investigation and prosecution.
Most of the arrested are innocent Muslims who were arbitrarily arrested by the police. Those arrested are innocent and happened to be on the road when the police were making arrests—some had come out to shut their shops after the violence or some were buying daily supplies like milk. One of the arrested is a Muslim youth with 70 percent disability. One is a senior citizen whose wife passed away while he was incarcerated. The sections slapped against them are stringent like murder, rioting, etc., while there are very few Hindus named and all the other accused are “unknown”. However, the arrested Hindus are also innocent and mere scapegoats, perhaps under political pressure to save the real culprits. The real culprits who were in the rally are absconding; they have been neither named nor arrested. The police refused to take the FIRs of the Muslim residents and thus they are compelled to send their complaints in forms of application to the courts.
Salim who is the main accused in the case of Chandan Gupta’s death has a strong alibi. His brother Shamim showed the fact finding team a video which shows that Salim who is reputed businessman in Kasganj was in a flag hoisting programme in a school at around 10 am on 26 January. The other shopkeepers vouch for his good character. It is important to note that Sushil Gupta filed the FIR about his son’s death after more than 13 hours of his death, naming 20 Muslim residents including Salim, without even being present there! This indicates that there is a strong possibility that he was tutored by persons having vested interests and the death is being used as a political tool to implicate innocent citizens. Instead of taking Chandan Gupta to the hospital after being shot, which would have been the natural reaction to save him, he was taken to the police station first. Yet the FIR was not filed at that time.
Conclusions / Findings
There are many lessons to take from this incident of communal violence. The incident is reflective of the dominant discourse in the country where Hindu supremacists, due to the political patronage they enjoy, are openly displaying their arrogance and power. The bike rally through a majority Muslim area was a demonstration and reminder that the Hindu supremacists and their ideology have legitimacy with the coming to power of the BJP. The aim is to render the Muslims as second class citizens and make them submit to the BJP political ideology of exclusion, inequality and hatred. The State is criminalising the victims and protecting the perpetrators and thus encouraging this violence and hatred. The fact finding team recommends that investigation be made into the role of the speech made by Rajveer Singh in this violence. Compensation should be given to the victims in adherence to international standards. And lastly, that civil society organisations collectively create platforms for dialogue and better understanding between communities. The team was relieved to see that this violence hasn’t deepened the communal divide and polarisation. The Hindu community in Kasganj had sympathy for the Muslims and their losses and condemned the violence. All is not lost in Kasganj!
