Politicizing the Riots

In a country where a Sikh Prime Minister is sworn in by a Muslim President, to govern a nation of over 80% Hindus; A country with 31 states, 1618 registered languages, 6400 castes, 6 religions, 6 ethnic groups, and 29 major festivals; India is also a country where thousands of people lost their lives in it’s independent history of over 60 years to Communal Violence. Let it be the 1984’s Sikh Riots or the 1992’s Babri Mosque Demolition. The Godhra incidence and the Nellie Massacre of Assam in 1983 are also a couple of examples which saw thousands of people on roads, and mass human slaughter at the name of religion.

As the biggest internal exodus of independent India’s history, these Assam riots have triggered a new agenda for the politicians to be politicized in the parliament and outside of it with the 2014 Lok Sabha polls looming in. Instead of resolving the issue and showing some resistance to the situation, our great leaders are busy hitting each other with an array of accusations. Political parties like BJP call North-East Muslims as ‘'foreigner'’ and '‘illegal Bangladeshi immigrants’'. This conflict over land ownership is getting communalized and those ‘responsible people’ are sitting in their homes and trying to never let it go easily, with elections so close. They are trying to make the most of it by cooking a Hindu-Muslim agenda.

The religion politics seemed to have taken a backseat amidst the economic boost of the country in the last decade, but the long rule by the Muslim invaders over India has fuelled a hatred between Hindu and Muslims which has been further exploited by the Brits and has double folded after the bloody Indo-Pak partition. The 170 million strong Muslim population has always suffered and politically provoked for riots, Babri mosque demolition and Gujarat riots being some finest examples of it.

With over 5lakh people already rendered homeless because of Assam riots, we must be looking at India’s largest refugee situations with post-Godhra riots accounting for 2.5lakh people being displaced. And what our politicians are doing? Sitting comfortably at the back of their homes and trying to clean their names anyhow, but not leaving any opportunity of reminding the others of their responsibilities and failures. Tarun Gogoi, C.M of Assam pleads to the centre for help and reckons some “foreign Involvement” in the situation, while BJP leader Arun Jaitley meditates that Congress has no right to “import” illegal immigrants to increase their vote bank, which ironically reflects the party’s perception of Muslims!! The Centre too thinks Pakistani involvement, as ‘their’ Intelligence finds Pakistan as the centre from where the provocative text messages, doing rounds in India, have been sent.

Making up to 14% of India’s 1.2 billion population, Muslims play a vital role as the vote bank, as they are the largest minority group of the country. It might also be noted that their vote defines the political situation of key states like Uttar Pradesh, Assam, West Bengal, and Kerala among others. The riots are not new to the country, but the politicization of these communal riots is also old to country’ history. It’s high time that minority groups are treated merely as vote-bank and exploited by the politicians for their political gain.

It’s time for not only the government, but also the opposition parties to stand hand in hand to fight out the situation, rather than accusing each other and shying away from their responsibilities. They should stop politicizing the simmering tension of Hindu-Muslims for electoral gain. The people of this country are living in a fear of their own people, which has to be irradiated, instead of politicizing the communal clashes of the country. A secular approach is all, which is the requisite of the country at the present scenario, and would be the only solution of the problem. It’s time that we should understand that words like ‘Hindutva’ makes no sense for modern Hindustan.