A body set up by the government in New Delhi to investigate communal riots which took place in February this year in the Indian capital has found that the deaths and violence which took place were essentially planned by the government with the support of police and administration. Fifty-three persons, most of them Muslims, died during the riots while another 200 were injured. The protest was staged over the new citizenship act introduced by the government of Narendra Modi under which persons from five neighbouring countries would be given fast-track Indian citizenship, except for Muslims. The law was seen as discriminatory by many groups including India’s 170 million Muslims.
The Delhi Minorities Commission noted that the worst communal violence seen in India for decades was triggered when groups which supported the law were encouraged by administration to attack Muslims and their supporters staging the protest. While the Commission has recommended action against all those responsible, its findings are not binding and the BJP alongside the police has already denied that any BJP leader was involved in the horrendous violence that took place in the capital city of the world’s largest democracy.
India today is a democracy only on paper. The successive actions taken by the BJP make it clear that the party wishes to turn secular India into a Hindu state where Hindus enjoy superiority over other groups. Muslims, the largest minority in the country, are in particular being targeted. The rest of the world has largely watched this in silence. During the riots, 11 mosques, five madressahs, a Muslim shrine and a graveyard were attacked and badly damaged. The controversy over the law is continuing. But the BJP government has made it quite clear that it intends to continue following the controversial policies which it is currently pursuing. While human rights groups in India have protested these actions, there has been a failure to convince PM Modi to change his stance. The riots in New Delhi spelled out the nature of this stance. The report from the DMC has made it clear that the violence was quite deliberately orchestrated and was intended to hurt as many Muslims as possible as a means to prevent further protests and deter opposition to the dangerous new laws the BJP continues to bring in. We have already seen the manner in which it has effectively snatched away autonomy from the state of Kashmir, turning it into two union territories under federal control. The sentiment against Muslims has spread quickly across India, notably in the electronic media, and some way has to be found to check this before it is too late to reestablish peace in India and give the Muslim minority within it a sense of security.