The BJP Unwinds its Winning Strategy in Election-Yielding States – Communal Riots
*Paromita Das
If there was any doubt that communal violence could be used to secure an electoral majority, clashes between Hindus and Muslims in poll-bound states over the last two months may have dispelled it.
Over the last two decades, hardline saffron groups have used low-intensity communal riots to polarize a large section of Hindus against minorities in order to secure electoral wins in various parts of India. In comparison to the aftermath of Gujarat’s anti-Muslim riots in 2002, or even the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, which left many dead and families shattered, the initial furor surrounding these low-intensity riots often fades.
Both the media and civil society tend to weigh communal clashes in terms of the number of dead and critical injuries.
What is frequently buried in the aftermath of these low-intensity communal clashes are critical aspects of minority community displacement in an environment rife with majority The 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots in western Uttar Pradesh, which immediately boosted the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) electoral prospects in the region, displaced at least 60,000 Muslims. Their uprooting was so severe that the riots effectively caused a demographic shift in the region.
These riots are often the first seeds sown by majoritarian forces seeking to sow hatred between communities.
Even as some political segments of the minority community defend their rights in the face of such aggression, Hindutva organizations in most riot-affected cities and even adjacent areas wage a concerted campaign to further marginalise Muslims.
Over the last decade, these fringe Hindutva organizations have received support from elected MPs, MLAs, and other BJP leaders. Some BJP leaders were seen fueling communal passions in the immediate\saftermath of the riots\sinstead of creating situations to control the rage. Meanwhile, a gullible media only aided the campaign to undermine what is known as “secular common sense.”
Most would agree that such impunity is drawn directly from the top level of the saffron party by BJP leaders and other Hindutva After all, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who have both led the BJP in recent years, have not shied away from expressing their disdain for Muslims in electoral campaigns and policy initiatives.
Such an aggressive campaign only serves to protect the main perpetrators of the riots, who are almost always activists from hardline groups like the Bajrang Dal, Sri Ram Sene, and others. A concerted Hindutva campaign is clearly aimed at achieving consensus among Hindus who, in other circumstances, might not have bothered to think along communal lines.
A review of communal riots over the last two months reveals a clear pattern.
One, in all of these riots, Hindutva agents were the first to incite violence.
The incitement could have come in the form of aggressive rallies in front of mosques, a bigoted meme, a social media post, or a skirmish between individuals that was given a communal color, making almost all riots appear to be an organized attempt to sow hatred among communities.
Second, all of the riots occurred during Hindu festivals that drew the most attention.
Ram Navami\s,\sHanuman Jayanti\s,\sEid\s- all of these festivals became a rallying point for Hindutva aggressors to unleash minor or major attacks on Muslims.
Three, the majority of the states affected by these low-intensity riots have assembly elections scheduled for later this year or next year. Communal riots have erupted in three cities in poll-bound Gujarat. The Jahangirpuri riots occurred just before Delhi’s municipal elections this year. Following a particularly aggressive communal campaign by the BJP, north-east Delhi experienced its worst communal riots shortly after the Aam Aadmi Party won a landslide victory in the last assembly elections.
The Congress-ruled state of Rajasthan, which has been rocked by riots in Alwar and Karauli, as well as in chief minister Ashok Gehlot’s own constituency of Jodhpur, will hold elections in 2023.
Similarly, in Madhya Pradesh, which will hold assembly elections next year, there have been numerous communal clashes over Hindutva rallies.
Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath appeared to have made decisive decisions.
His tweets indicated a zero-tolerance policy for rabble rousers of any kind. UP had seen a number of low-intensity riots in the run-up to assembly elections earlier this year. But Adityanath’s messaging following his second victory appears to have been directed at those who bought his ‘law and order’ campaign, which opposition parties saw as a dog whistle, to brand other parties as supporting miscreants among Muslims.
Four, the riots occurred in areas where the opposition has significant electoral strength. Consider Himmatnagar, Anand, and Khambat in Gujarat, where Hindu-Muslim clashes have occurred. All of these are constituencies where the Congress lost the last assembly elections to the BJP with marginal votes.
Similarly, the majority of the riots in Madhya Pradesh took place in the Nimaad region, where the Congress had performed unexpectedly well in the previous assembly elections. The Khargone riots served as a watershed moment in the state’s larger Hindutva campaign.
As the pattern suggests, the moot idea is to keep the communal pot boiling in our minds until elections.
A policy strategy
The BJP’s selective outrage against the Ashok Gehlot government demonstrates a well-planned political strategy. Most BJP leaders have blamed the Gehlot government for failing to contain communal clashes, accusing him of ‘appeasing’ Muslims at the expense of Hindu safety. Indeed, they have aggressively pushed this line in television debates and elsewhere.
This is similar to when the BJP blamed the Mulayam Singh Yadav government in Uttar Pradesh for the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, despite overwhelming evidence that Hindutva forces meticulously planned the anti-Muslim violence. The saffron party used the riots to launch a larger campaign against the Samajwadi Party’s alleged “pro-Muslim” policies and failures in law and order – a campaign on which the BJP relied heavily even in the recently concluded assembly elections in 2022.
In BJP-ruled states such as Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat, saffron party leaders have refused to speak out against the chief ministers while unilaterally holding Muslims responsible for inciting the riots.
Most BJP leaders in Gujarat have maintained that the state has not seen a single communal riot since 2002, and that only the BJP could keep the state peaceful. The fact that such peace had come at the expense of effectively silencing Muslims in the state was hardly significant to them; in fact, some of them took pride in the fact that Muslims had been effectively “shown their place” in Gujarat.
However, after narrowly avoiding defeat in the last assembly elections, it appears that the BJP has returned to its tried-and-tested political formula of riding a “hate wave” to secure an electoral victory. One has to wonder how those BJP leaders and saffron party supporters who boasted of living in a riot-free state could justify three consecutive riots in the last month.
Many people expected the prime minister to speak out about the recent spate of communal violence. To harbor such an expectation, however, would be to undermine the communal ecosystem that he helped create and now patronizes in a highly organized manner.
The Union Home Ministry recently informed parliament that there were 3,399 cases of communal or religious rioting in the country between 2016 and 2020. During this time period, there were over 2.76 lakh cases of rioting, which is an alarming number. They were all examples of what we now call low-intensity violence. Like the’smart’ governance that Modi advocates, it appears that the BJP he leads has adopted a smarter way to ride communal horses in order to win elections.
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