THE MUZAFFARNAGAR COMMUNAL AGGRESSION
After seven months on 10th April 11, 2014, the day of election in the communally ravaged Muzaffarnagar region of Western U.P. scores of villagers were seen visiting their villages with many heart-rending memories to cast their votes. It was a visit 7 months after they had to flee leaving behind their homes, fields and belongings. Among such a group going with police escort on a tractor were villagers of Phugana who were emotionally narrating the devastating events that destroyed their homes stating that still they do not want to return and stay in their villages, all they had had been destroyed. Among another group was a sobbing woman in front of whom during one of those violent September days, when she was then in a state of pregnancy, she had seen her husband killed in front of her. The actual pictures of destruction of numerous lives and property in the communal violence of Muzaffarnagar had been initially scarce and low-key. Only from the later reports of the horrendous experience of the thousands of families in the make-shift so-called relief camps, evicted from their ages-old inhabitations and from the discussions with them about the happenings in the villages surrounding Muzaffarnagar during those violent days of September 2013 published by the various fact finding teams of students, teachers, and human rights activists the alarming extent and scale of the recent communal violence could be gauged. But in almost all such reports there have been descriptions of the miserable, helpless conditions of the affected, and depiction of anecdotes heard from them, the overwhelming majority of whom are poor muslim families apart from a few hundred dalits who also got trapped in this violence. No doubt these are valuable for understanding the severity of the episode. But what is glaringly found to be the limits of various analyses, even expressed in a much muted form in the general capitalist controlled ?mainstream' media, is putting the blame for the incidents on all the established political parties, specially the hindutva fanning BJP and the muslim-saviour SP, for utilizing communal hatred to consolidate respective vote-banks in view of this Lok Sabha elections. Even the biased actions of the SP state government has been criticized. And the matter has ended there.
Undoubtedly the fiery communal speeches of SP, BSP even Congress party leaders in assemblies of muslims or the BJP, Bhartiya Kisan Union and hindutva forces' mobilised ?ma-bahu-beti samman bachao' rallies of mahapanchayats in aggressive style, or the fraud committed by the communally instigative campaign to the extent of using an MMS picture of a two-year old mob-lynching incident of Sialkot in Pakistan portrayed falsely to be the picture of lynching of Gaurav and Sachin, the two cousins of the girl of Kawal village whose eve-teasing incident is said to have ballooned into this whole episode of communal violence, had played a disgraceful role. All such actions of the political parties have definitely added to the spread of venom of communal mistrust and hatred. Even the SP govts' pulling the strings to manipulate and substantiate their muslim-saviour image or the region's BJP MLA Hukum Singh's influence through kinship with the high police official who was specially present during the fateful mahapanchayat of 7th September have surely added to the communal polarization not only among the masses at large but also within the state machinery. In fact now with the TV channels flashing those inconsolable pictures and news on that 10th April election day they were also reporting that there will be highly polarised polling between these communities. The aim of these parties to divide the masses into fratricidal enmity must have succeeded
In fact the way the events unfolded also supports this conspiracy thesis that these vote-hungry parties have indeed been mainly responsible for escalation of the situation to lead to such a violent end. After the August 27th incident of eve-teasing at Kawal village and the subsequent killing of the so-called eve-teaser and the two relatives of the girl in counter-retaliation almost ten days passed without any noticeable outburst of violence. Only after the assembly of the muslims and more specifically after the huge, aggressive mahapanchayat of September 7th, both of which were conspicuous by the presence of leaders of the main contending political forces, the violence suddenly leaped and spread widely. Hence this was not an episode of spontaneous breakout of riots sparked straightaway from the incidents at Kawal village. Rather the fire of hate campaigns of these political parties played an important role in precipitating this range of violence, which in many instances spreading and covering upto 94 villages can be called a one-sided targeting, destruction and eviction of the muslim inhabitants other than a much smaller scale of confrontation between the two communities. Out of about 60 killed as officially reported the majority had been muslims and 13 hindu jats on the other. Out of about 42000 evicted apart from 700 dalits the rest has been muslims. Naturally can we call this a riot or an overwhelmingly one-sided violent aggression that the readers themselves may decide..
But a still deeper question of grave concern is, is it possible that simply the tirade of communal campaigns carried out in this short period by the political parties is able to create such a scale of violence and eviction? Each and every of these political parties have been increasingly utilizing communal, casteist, regionalist, and all sorts of reactionary-sectarian cards for a long time throughout the country. Some like the BJP use it more overtly and others covertly as the electoral battle has become stinking and rotten devoid of real issues of the masses everywhere. In fact most of these leaders on both sides of the communal divide frequently change parties, contribute to open opportunism on one hand and prolong and intensify distorted expressions of caste, language, religious, regional contradictions within society on the other. But not on many such cases do such campaigns result in such violence.
Looking from another angle, in numerous other such incidents of outraging the modesty of women that is being revealed in different parts of the country in the recent times even if the people are out on the streets they are protesting against the incompetence of the state machinery for being unable to provide security to women and not delivering speedy justice. Even where such incidents involving different castes or clan etc. are occurring in the rural areas, caste or inter-community clashes in that locality may erupt in some cases but such wide-scale violence and aggression affecting as large as 42000 people in several districts is seen nowhere. The Muzaffarnagar Kawal village incident assumed such proportions that it spread over 94 villages in adjoining four districts of Muzaffarnagar, Shamli, Bagpat and Meerut.
Without the accumulation of considerable amount of such inflammable communal material within the masses of the region from beforehand i.e. a churning hostility and bitterness between two communities such a scale of violence cannot just be explained by the electoral-communal opportunism of the political parties. Here lies that deeper question seeking the answer to which is much more important, that to what extent the masses had already become communalized and what are the reasons behind it.
Especially this is true for this rural region of Muzaffarnagar and its surroundings. In this rural belt of Western Uttar Pradesh communal behaviour of the masses quite naturally must be existent as it is throughout the country. But in this region it never boiled over into such violent hatred and enmity affecting such a large mass. On the contrary, even when there were the infamous riots and killings in Meerut city's Maliana and Hashimpura in the late 1980s or the rath yatra culminating in the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the riots over large parts of the country in 1992 this rural region did not witness riots.
When it has started happening now something must have changed within the masses at the ground level. For that very reason the present violent episode surrounding Muzaffarnagar is being discussed as an alarming signal of communal riots that has even entered the villages which could not spread and engulf the rural masses even during those riot-torn days from the adjoining cities and suburbs earlier. The history up till now had been quite different. From the time of independence there was the Congress party's upper-caste nobility based rainbow coalition which with the rise of the middle-caste peasant-proprietor jats through the benefits acquired via the green revolution transformed into the jat rich peasant led MAJGAR (muslim, ahir, jat, gujjar, rajput) alliance whose prominent representative in the national politics had been Choudhary Charan Singh. It peaked during the time of rise of other land-owning peasant middle castes breaking the Congress party's upper caste led hegemony and forming the Janata Party government at the centre. Later during the 1980s emergence of the rich peasant movement led by Bhartiya Kisan Union of Mahendra Singh Tikait the jat muslim unity was consciously preserved in this very region of active rich peasant movement. In 1989 the forty day old "Naeema Lao" (bring Naeema, a girl, back) agitation reverberated throughout this very region of Muzaffarnagar under Tikait-led BKU's leadership demanding the return of a kidnapped muslim girl, until her dead body was recovered and returned by the police to be buried with full honour in the presence of people of both hindu and muslim communities. Later even though the rath yatra and babri-masjid demolition episode along with the anti-mandal agitation prior to it during the V P Singh government signaled an important turn towards communalization of the masses of these region it was still unable to spread fratricidal riots into these rural areas.
For this very reason without remaining restricted to the superficial criticism of the communal instigative politics of the electoral players it is much more important to understand the latest changes that is somewhere occurring within the masses of this region and the conditions responsible for it. It is the change of becoming inclined to open aggressive communal enmity and violence from the earlier existing semblance of amity and harmony (that existed within the premises of wide religious influence of the Arya Samaj movement that has been anti-brahmin in a limited sense fitting with the jat masses middle position but at the same time carrying with it the traditions of domination and oppression over lower castes and the revivalism of sanatan hindu dharma). The unsettled question that remains is why is this dangerous change occurring? What lay at its root in the present condition? Further, apart from the increasing influence of divisive, fratricidal communalism isn't there any urge or current among any section of the masses for unity and democracy? Doesn't the toiling mass of different caste, religion or clan whatever feel the necessity for their unity and common struggle for life and livelihood? All this is far more important because the position of the masses, particularly that of the toiling masses is very much necessary for understanding the forces that may play a real, positive role in this society against the communal destructive designs of regressive forces.
One fact that must be noted is that in the whole episode two sections are mainly involved---- the jats and the muslims. The people of other castes viz. the brahmins, rajputs, ahirs, dalits etc have been much less involved directly. An important feature is the jats on the basis of their leading role in the region's agrarian economy and the rich peasant struggles emerging from it have been politically represented by the Rashtriya Lok Dal or even to an extent by the Congress. Their turn towards the communal BJP has been much slower. While on the other hand many of the leaders or MLAs whose names have been heard a number of times during this episode for playing a leading role in the communal flare-up are from other castes, viz. Hukum Singh----gujjar, Sangeet Singh Som---thakur, Suresh Rana---thakur, Laxmi Kant Bajpayi---brahmin----all of BJP. With more of a passive support of these other prominent castes the BJP and other communal forces active in the region have to a great extent been able to turn this jat versus muslim conflict into a hindu versus muslim communal conflict. That is the reason that the Congress Party and the Ajit Singh's RLD have now on the very eve of election tried to woo away the jats through declarations of reservations of jats in central government jobs and services.
Lets see how one eve-teasing incident and three deaths boiled over to such a large communal reaction among the masses. The reaction created out of the so-called eve-teasing incident (so-called because in the FIR it has been mentioned as a scuffle over some motorcycle collision; so-called because decades back it was the rumour that numerous hindus have been killed in a hostel that triggered the infamous Bhagalpur riots, because recently in Haryana on the basis of rumour that two muslims, who were actually dalits, were accused of killing cattle on Dussehra day they were beaten up before the police, in this way many rumours have been used to fan up the destruction of riots) was so intense and wide-spread because it had already been made a very prominently gossiped emotive issue among the masses communalized by naming and explaining it to be ?love-jihad' launched by muslim youth bent on alluring and eloping away hindu girls. An identical campaign was also built up in the recent past in Karnataka by different shady hindutva forces. In this region of West U P also prior to the Kawal incident for over a year a series of protests had been repeatedly organized and publicized against this so-called ?love-jihad' somewhere on the incident of relation between a girl or boy of the two communities or assault of a girl, along communal lines by the BJP and its allied communal outfits.
The wide campaign and repulsion created against this invented ?love-jihad' has become possible also due to another important reason underlying it. It is because the issue of inter-mixing of young girls and boys in this and the adjoining region of Haryana has become a subject of quite a controversy due to tremendous and often crude, brutal ways of opposition by the patriarchal khap panchayats to inter-caste, intra-gotra, and inter-religious relations emerging out of it. Both the khap panchayats and the muslim maulvis quite active in this region and also Haryana are seen to issue fatwas against girls going outside singly, for the kind of dresses to be worn, mobiles not to be carried by them as these youth are more and more compelled to come out of their homes for jobs or studies in the cities. Boycotts, harassments of the concerned families, brutal ?honour killings' imposed by these archaic feudal forces still controlling much dominance and authority in the rural areas, could not even be stopped by the state and the courts in spite of orders to ensure safeguarding the constitutional rights of the new generation of the youth. Thus the masses have already been in the midst of this problem of individual freedom and free inter-mixing of young boys and girls.
In such a prevalent situation the incident between a muslim boy and jat girl could be exploited as the fertile ground for further communalizing and aggravating the issue already existed. Thus the ma-bahu-beti bachao rally during the jat mahapanchayat evoked large response from huge number of masses. It was so high-pitched and war-like, with the presence of the jats even from haryana. It represented the well-known ?bahu-bali' culture of this dominant caste in what is known as the ?jatland'. The open presence of communal BJP and hindutva leaders along with the BKU leaders in these meetings revealed the influence they have been able to acquire for themselves. The regressive communal forces have been able to get hold of the issue and force the wheels of change further back. The increasing mobility and inter-mixing of youth of different castes, clans, and different religions with opening of new opportunities in jobs, and studies in the midst of stagnating agrarian economy and life in the villages has brought forward an urge among the new generation to break old traditions existing in the villages and adjust to new ways of life. This has been creating the regressive reaction among the old feudal forces whose authority seems to be more and more questioned. Age-old dictums are being forced upon in crude forms and along with it the communal question has been made to acquire confrontational proportions.
For the dominant rich jat peasants controlling this rural region for decades this situation of increase of conflict and crude and barbaric actions on the oppressed castes and disobeying youth and now on the muslims in the recent years is an expression of a more deeper crisis . The very economic basis of dominance of the rich jat peasants in the once thriving agricultural economy of this ?sugar-bowl' of western U P is also getting fractured. Here also the competition and conflict in the regions economy seems to be with the muslims. Once the jats and muslims the two major communities here were thought to be the cornerstones of the social fabric of these rural areas centred on the thriving rich peasant agricultural economy. The jats (mostly hindus) have around 30% population in this region controlling the main agricultural economy apart from less important shares of the other prominent castes like thakurs, gujjars, ahirs. The muslims have a population of about 33% in the twelve districts of these region and in some places even up to 40% (2001 census).Out of 77 MLAs from this region there are 26 muslim MLAs in the 2012 assembly election. Among this muslim populace there is a significant section of muslims belonging to the upper class----landowners, fruit-traders, other businessmen and also a large section of agricultural labourers working in the jat peasants' sugarcane fields, artisans and small job workers. The dominant, rich jat peasants have for all these years been dependent on them for such occupations and the basis of the social fabric of amity existed on their rich peasant led thriving agrarian economy.
With the stagnation in green revolution fed agriculture, rising costs, dropping incomes and the recurrent upper-hand of the sugar mill owners backed by successive governments over decisions on state administered prices and timings of procurement of sugarcane--the main source of income, the haggling over long unpaid dues to the peasants, the jat rich peasant led sugarcane based agricultural economy's dominance has declined over the years. Further the repeated partition of land have reduced the jat peasants' land-holdings, reduced demand for agriculture labour and other agriculture related jobs. Compared to that a section of upper strata muslims have thrived and another large section with engagement in so-called rural non-farm occupations or jobs in the cities even like building construction work having relatively better income sources have started defying the till now unquestioned dictates of the jats (the dalits and other lower castes have also, as the locals say, started defying the jats these years). Of course this is happening within the slow pace of development as is seen everywhere.
Simultaneously the effects of increasing communalization of the masses throughout the country and the sub-continent has its impacts also. If the BJP leader Sangeet Som has been so communal to spread the false MMS picture of an incident from Pakistan as reported then, the once SP and now RLD candidate Haji Yaqub Qureshi is the other side of coin who declared a prize of 51 lakhs for anyone who could get the head of the Danish cartoonist who have hurt the Islamists. If Sadvi Prachi or Hukum Singh's [ not Amit Shah who is a leader from Gujarat] name came in for open communally rash speeches then the recent Imran Masud's speech on cutting Modi into pieces is another side of the same fanatic, communalist coin. These are the leaders whose allegiance to any party or its ideology is very temporary and opportunistic as revealed by the repeated hopping of each of them from one party to another. But the deep entrenchment of divisions of caste, gotra/clan, religion in society are the realities they cannot disregard in spite of all their opportunism for political power. This is the most alarming thing, the increasingly communal confrontationist position being taken by the people. It has been seen that the regions which have witnessed the rise of rich peasant led movements since the 1980s have with passage of time shown inclination to come closer and closer to such regressive hindutva right forces be it the BJP or elsewhere the Shiv Sena (especially from the Babri Masjid episode). The rich peasant led movement and later political aspirations emerging from it have brought in the influence of the communal right within these regions.
Obviously due to this the upper rich sections of these communities have more and more actively taken up this communal role as a result of compulsions created by the stagnation and loss of control over a declining agrarian economy and the rising conflicts over the old feudal legacies of social domination in villages with the emerging defiance among the labouring masses, lower castes and youth. If Mahendra Singh Tikayet strove to hold on to the jat muslim social fabric under the leadership of the jat rich peasantry the earlier thriving rich peasant economy and the rich peasant movement enabled him. His sons Mohan and Rakesh Tikayet now leading the BKU and their khaps are more openly pro-hindutva and in close link with the BJP in the midst of jat peasants dwindling economic clout, broken social amity and rising communal tensions. In contrast the masses of poor, ordinary labouring class people in the relief camps have been still heard to recollect the good relations their children and families had with the jat neighbours; how in many cases the jat women tried to protect them but in vain in the face of targeted attacks and destruction of their men. The lower strata of such different communities, castes, clans specially from the common masses, the oppressed, subjugated people, the new generation of youth whose inter-mingling is often the cause of ire of these old, dominating, dictating elders of the villages, assembled in the khaps, possess that spirit of breaking out of the confines of caste, gotra, religion. There have been experiences of jat families protecting, often secretly their muslim neighbours. When the earlier relation of amity is being torn open in this violent fashion these aspirations for a democratic, secular space is getting submerged under the stronger regressive forces still dominating. The BJP is successful in projecting this into hindu muslim conflict, involve other prominent castes so that it can be capitalized in the electoral battle.
It shows the distortions of a society where the old feudal values of patriarchy, casteism, oppression in different spheres of social life by the dominant jats combined with aggressive, violent communalism has given rise to a venomous potion. Heart breaking news of numerous infant deaths in the bitter cold, mass marriages of teenaged girls in the hope of their security in the plastic tents called relief camps, and the unwillingness of the evicted muslim families to go back to their ages old homes and lands have revealed the extent of disaster. The old relations of interdependence existing within same villages are being brutally segregated on mistrust and hatred. It has pushed the muslims (mainly from those villages where they were in minority) one step towards ghettoisation restricting them within their own community boundaries far away from their original homes. On the other hand this will surely be the opportunity for the rich upper strata of jats who have been waiting for to occupy and colonise part of these left away lands. One account says even if the evicted families possessed 10% land that will add up to thousands of acres. In one village Loi only 3000 acres of land was found to have been left behind. In many places the properties have been sold to the jats under distress or duress.
The complex, slow evolution in society from the top started by the green revolution has become stagnant, while the old feudal values still persist strongly. The social relations based on this agricultural economy is showing signs of collapsing both from inside and also due to influences of capitalist development in the cities, and surroundings. But that is also part of the same painfully slow, distorted path carrying with it on one hand the unsuccessful urge of the labouring masses and the youth to break out of the old oppressive system but still unable to rise befittingly to the dominating regressive old forces of communalism, casteism that is reviving amidst gloom and rising problems of society and economy. Only the new forces, the elements of which are scattered among the toiling masses, the workers and peasants, the new generation of the youth in society, can break this impasse moving ahead for a thorough-going upheaval uprooting the feudal institutions and establishing a real democratic society free from communalism, caste and all other forms of discrimination and oppression. The more that struggle of the working class and toiling masses remain postponed and delayed the more complex, distorted aspirations in society will rise involving the masses in such brutal reactionary revivalist actions creating separation, enmity and ghettoisation among them.
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