Fragile peace shatters after hiatus
By - Sonal Kellogg

The relative peace in the city has been shattered by the recurring incidents of violence by impulsive, irrational and mindless action of Bajrang Dal activists, who have been apparently operating under the umbrella of government protection.

In the past six months, there have been regular incidents of violence with the number of incidents going up in the past two months. On July 30, a small incident of a confrontation between a Muslim omelette larriwalla and his Hindu customers escalated into violence, which was quelled by the police after firing about a dozen tear gas shells in Shahpur area.

More recently, Bajrang Dal activists resorted to severely beating up Muslim vendors when they refused to give contributions for the Ganesh Mahostav. But additional commissioner of police in charge of special branch, Mr. Pramod Kumar, has a different view.

He says that in the recent years the intensity of communal riots have gone down. He said though the incidents might not have reduced in number, they tend to die down in a day or two locally only and don’t spread to other areas like they used to in the 80s and the early 90s.

He said that the main reason for this is the increased oneness of the public who want to go about their businesses peacefully, better policing, absence of a strong underworld and prompt response time of the police in times of violence.

Explaining the regular incidents of violence, commissioner of police Mr. P C Pande said that in a city like Ahmedabad with 60 lakh people and 15 per cent to 18 per cent Muslim population, there are bound to be incidents of confrontations between the two communities.

He said that this kind of incidents can’t be ruled out totally, but he added that it is one individual committing an offence against another individual because crime is an individual act and cannot be attributed to any organisation. "The moment you pick an organisation and say they are involved in an offence then the issue gets communalised and politicised," he added.

But Mr. Pande agreed that the virulence of communal riots have reduced in recent years. When asked for a reason, he felt that communal violence escalates when there is a solid cause and a real issue involved. But he felt that nothing could be said about the present situation, though he didn’t expect the violence to get out of hand.

When asked if they expected violence to increase because elections were round the corner, he said that since these were by-elections, they didn’t expect any escalation of tension but he added that one couldn’t predict such things.

But joint commissioner of police, Mr. M K Tandon, felt that more incidents of communal confrontations could be expected with elections round the corner. Mr. Kumar felt that the intensity of communal violence had reduced all over the country.

Republished from The Asian Age