Patna: The fact that the nation reacted with shock and horror on August 15, when the 11 men convicted for raping Bilkis Bano and murdering members of her family during the 2002 Gujarat riots received an early release from jail, is a sign that India has not succumbed fully to the politics of hatred.After all, since 2014 – when Narendra Modi came to power at the Centre – there has been a discernible trend in Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled states to crudely hurt the interests and sentiments of Muslims ahead of assembly elections. This behaviour has helped the saffron party fuel hatred, polarise society on communal lines and reap electoral harvests. And with the Gujarat assembly elections scheduled for December this year, something as headline-grabbing as releasing the 11 rapists and killers convicted for their brutality against Bilkis Bano and her family is par for the BJP’s course.There is no doubt that India’s post-Independence history is littered with communal violence. But in the past, there was at least an attempt by the state governments concerned to secure justice for the victims. That does not appear to be the case with the Gujarat riots of 2002 and the communal aggressions that have taken place in BJP-ruled states across the country since 2014. To see the difference, let us look at the aftermaths of two of India’s worst experiences of riots since 1947.2002 Gujarat riotsNarendra Modi and Amit Shah were the chief minister and the home minister respectively of Gujarat in 2002, the year the state went through India’s worst-ever riots. The violence against the Muslim minority of the state was so brutal that the US and many other Western democracies did not grant visas to Modi, while the Gujarat high court banished Shah from the state between 2010 and 2012 and the then prime minister, A.B. Vajpayee, publicly schooled Modi – a leader of his own party – on the concept of rajdharma (non-discriminatory rule). But what the Western democracies, the law of the land and even Vajpayee had found objectionable was the very thing that helped Modi in his quest for power. He emerged as the “Hindu Hriday Samrat” (ruler of Hindu hearts) and gained enough clout to sideline L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, both senior leaders of the BJP.The Gujarat riots annihilated hundreds of Muslims’ homes, destroyed the careers of several civil servants and police officers who found “fault” with their political masters and boosted the careers of Modi, Shah and their like. When the conviction of Bilkis Bano’s predators was upheld by the Bombay high court in 2017, justice was seen to have been served. The 11 men concerned were given a sentence of life imprisonment. But on August 15, all 11 were released from jail early by a committee set up by the Gujarat government. Today, Bilkis Bano’s case features amongst the many other riot cases in Gujarat whose victims were denied justice.Also Read: Bilkis Rapists Are ‘Brahmins, Have Good Values,’ Says BJP MLA Who Sat on Panel That Freed Convicts 1989 Bhagalpur riots Till the Gujarat riots of 2002, the 1989 Bhagalpur riots in Bihar were perceived as the worst in the history of post-independent India. In terms of casualties and the brutality shown to the minorities, the communal conflagration was as horrendous as that of Gujarat.Like the Gujarat riots, the Bhagalpur riots also altered the contour of Indian politics. But in a very different way. A year after the riots, when the Bihar assembly elections took place, Lalu Prasad Yadav was catapulted to power. With the support of Nitish Kumar – an extremely influential young leader in the Janata Dal and Lalu’s most trusted ally at the time – Lalu defeated Ram Sundar Das and Raghunath Jha in a triangular contest for the Janata Dal legislative party leadership and became Bihar’s chief minister.Once established in his position, Lalu went all out to destroy the BJP even as it began gaining ground in many parts of north India under the leadership of L.K. Advani. He had Advani, who was at the height of his popularity then, arrested when the BJP leader entered Bihar with his Rath Yatra.Simultaneously, Lalu and his supporters embarked on certain actions that put fear in the minds of the top leaders of the BJP and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). In the early 1990s, the top RSS and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leaders of that time, Ashok Singhal and Parvin Togadia, had to return to Delhi immediately after landing at Patna airport, fearing a ‘threat to their lives’.Lalu further damaged the BJP by splitting its legislature party via Gyaneshwar Yadav, an old RSS hand and powerful BJP leader from the Bhagalpur region. As many as 11 BJP members of the legislative assembly led by Gyaneshwar Yadav and Inder Singh Namdhari, the then Bihar BJP president, joined Lalu’s ruling coalition. Nitish Kumar was the brain behind several of Lalu’s “operations” against the BJP.Riding on the crest of his popularity with the support of the Muslims, the backward classes and other marginalised sections of society, Lalu cast aspersions on several top RSS-BJP leaders to demoralise them. For example, he used to say at his public meetings, “Yeh Ashok Singhal dalda mein gai ka charbi milata hai (Ashok Singhal mixes cow’s intestines in the refined ghee that he sells).”The BJP leaders fought back. Street smart and media savvy, they gradually succeeded in linking Lalu with the idea of ‘anarchy’ and ‘jungle raj’. But Lalu led a combination of the Janata Dal and Left parties to win 49 of the 54 Lok Sabha seats in undivided Bihar in the 1991 Lok Sabha polls and his party secured the majority on its own in the 1995 assembly elections.The BJP got breathing space in Bihar only after Nitish Kumar’s Samata Party struck an alliance with it in 1996.Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar in happier times. Photo: PTIThe bounds of justiceIn many ways, the stories of Mallika Begum of Bhagalpur and Bilkis Bano of Gujarat are similar. Rioters killed all the members of Mallika’s family and threw the then 22-year-old woman into a pond covered with water hyacinths, believing that she was dead.Four days later, officers of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) found Mallika in the pond, alive. A CRPF jawan from Jammu and Kashmir, Taj Mohmmad, married Mallika. The couple had three children. Later, Taj deserted Mallika, but the Bihar government did not. She was given a government job in the Bhagalpur district and was paid enough compensation to construct a house and educate her children. Gujarat human rights activist Harsh Mander supported her as well.Coupled with supporting and rehabilitating Mallika and hundreds of the other 1989 riots victims, the Lalu government cracked down on RSS-VHP establishments in Bhagalpur in particular and the state in general. At the slightest indication of communal tension, the police arrested RSS-VHP operatives in hordes.Despite becoming chief minister in 2005 with the BJP’s support, Nitish Kumar followed up against the rioters, opening cases against them, having them convicted through speedy trials and paying pensions to the victims on the lines of the pensions paid to the Sikhs after the 1984 riots in Delhi. The core of the RSS-BJP did not like Nitish’s treatment of the minorities but never succeeded in stopping him from acting as he wanted to.In polls to comeThe BJP is doing in Gujarat what they did in Uttar Pradesh ahead of the assembly elections earlier this year in February. The Uttar Pradesh chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, had described the polls in UP as 20% versus 80%, referring to the state’s approximate religious demographic of 20% Muslims and 80% Hindus. In the months before the elections, Adityanath’s bulldozers ran over the homes and shops of many members of the minorities, earning him the sobriquet of ‘Bulldozer Baba”. The leaders of the December 2021 dharma sansad (religious assembly) in Haridwar, which several BJP leaders attended, called for the genocide of Muslims. This strategy of open hatred paid off for the BJP, which returned to power in Uttar Pradesh with a handsome majority.Will the BJP continue to do what it has done in Uttar Pradesh and is now doing in Gujarat in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and the 2025 assembly elections in Bihar? In Bihar at least, it won’t be easy given the combined might of Lalu and Nitish, supported by the Congress and the Left parties. To the solace of Bihar’s minorities, Tejashwi Yadav’s language against the BJP is as sharp as his father’s.Nalin Verma is a senior journalist, author and professor of journalism and mass communication at Invertis University, Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh.
