The Aftermath

India’s Kristallnacht moment came and went by in the last week of February.  The architects of the Delhi pogrom, after observing that enough damage was done not only to Muslim property and livelihood, but also their spirit and sense of belongingness, they signaled their marauding, murderous mob to stop.  For days Muslim neighborhoods in north-east Delhi remained at the mercy of the fascist Hindutva mob, who showed no mercy in killing and destroying their properties and livelihoods.  The wound they have inflicted to the soul of Muslim ethos of being fellow brethren will probably never heal.  This shames India and its majority population, Hindus to no end.  Like Gujarat, like Nellie, like Muzaffarnagar, like Bhagalpur, like Bombay, and like many others this is a blot and scar on democracy and humanity of India as a nation that will never go away.  The nation has always failed its minorities.  Delhi assumes highest significance as unlike Gujarat, this pogrom was done in the capital of India right under the nose of the central government and its agencies, with the world watching in utter despair and disbelief.  It is a stab in the heart and soul of India.  If one cannot open eyes after such brutal pogrom unleashed by the ruling BJP’s Hindutva mob supported by police and state, one has no heart, and has failed as a human being.  If the collective conscience seeks any justification of what happened, the society has lost its moral compass and wallows in an ultimate moral degradation, which cannot be glossed over in any form and falls from humanity to say the least.  And, inhuman we have become.  

In the aftermath of this violence, instead of providing a healing touch and sharing the pain of the people at the receiving end, the state and the administration has chosen to maintain utter silence on the violence, and with their silence they refuse to even acknowledge what has happened to a community.  This is true of both central government and state government in Delhi.  None of their leaders showed the courage or empathy to provide some consolation to the suffering masses who lost everything in a matter of 2 – 3 days.  This despite the thumping majority that Delhi residents provided to both BJP and AAP parties in the Lok Sabha and state elections of Delhi respectively.  With 56% vote share in Delhi, one would expect Arvind Kejriwal and other AAP leaders to stand with Delhi people given the dire circumstances, even if the police were not under their control.  Their mere presence might have mitigated the scale of the tragedy, gotten the police into some action and inspired confidence in people.  Same applies to Modi and Shah who claim to move forward with everybody’s trust.  The trust was betrayed.  Their gut-wrenching and heart-rending apathy symbolizes our collective failure to act as a humane and an empathetic society – the dead reaction is truly inhuman.  The state that fails to protect its own citizens has no moral right to continue in power, but the first step to monstrosity is shamelessness. 

In addition to the dead and wounded, thousands of families have been uprooted and have lost their homes.  There are no shelters for displaced people, there are no relief camps, just some ramshackle arrangement done for namesake.  Both Delhi and the central government have refused to address the plight of the people on ground.  Nor are there any reassurances to rehabilitate people and restore their lives and dignity.  They are left to cruel fate, where rebuilding of whatever remains of their lives seems an impossibility.  The only help they can look forward to are from communities or social welfare organizations; they cannot have resources to launch a relief operation of a scale, that is needed; the region looks war-torn, it has been so badly damaged, only state power can restore it.  The human aspect here is intricately connected to the economic aspect.  This is the most marginalized region of Delhi, where poorest Muslims and Hindus live.  The region is a microcosm of microscale industries where several Muslim families had set up small loom, bangles factories, and other types of micro-industry in their homes and in their commercial area.  This was the major source of their livelihood and lives that has been brazenly destroyed and snatched away from them with complete impunity.  Thousands of people are returning to their villages and small towns in neighboring state of UP from where they came from in search of a better life.  They have been relegated and condemned to their prior mode of existence.  It also gives a clear economic advantage to the Hindu community which can now thrive better or take over what is remaining from mass displacement.  The trade and commerce now shifts towards Hindu community, earlier dominated by Muslims.  The economic boycott of Muslims by Hindu community in north-eastern part of Delhi is already in action, which leaves no chance of Muslim traders to survive.  The violence has thus managed to displace Muslims both socially and economically.  The heart-rending images of people moving out with their remaining belongings and families remind of similar refugee crises in Syria or of Rohingya Muslims, trying to escape unending violence.  The soul is lost here.

The minority commission in Delhi reports that thousands of Hindutva goons were brought in from outside Delhi to orchestrate this carnage.  The Speaker of the Lower House suspended 7 Congress MPs demanding discussion on Delhi riots.  The whole world and their governments have taken a note of this violence and have roundly and unanimously condemned it in their own parliaments or congress.  UK vouched to end trade relations if such massive human rights violations continued unabated.  India is increasingly getting isolated among Muslim countries; Iran and Turkey have condemned Indian government’s inaction and support to violence in no uncertain terms.  Iran, a long-term friend of India has been brutally critical of the Delhi massacre.  Despite strong international censure from governments all over the world, the Indian administration seems to be completely passive to any criticism.  The apathetic indifference to any call of morality from any government institution is astounding.

The compromise of government institutions is not limited to police but has reached judiciary.  The embarrassment of the government at high court of Delhi caused by Harsh Mander’s petition that resulted in court order for police to execute their duties at the peak of the pogrom by judge Muralidhar, resulted not only in transfer of judge Muralidhar within a few hours, but the supreme court charged Harsh Mander for incendiary speech and ordered a probe into it.  This is justice inverted.  Harsh Mander, who resigned the administrative service after Gujarat riots in 2002 has been an epitome of selfless social work, and has worked tirelessly to preserve and restore secular fabric of India.  His speech encouraged people to answer hate with love and called for unity of secular India.  In this surreal world, Kapil Mishra whose incendiary speech is on record has been provided with Y+ security!  No action against other actors from ruling BJP like Anurag Thakur, Parvesh Verma or Home Minister Amit Shah whose hate speeches lit the fire in which Delhi burned.  In a highly communal fashion, hundreds of FIRs have been registered largely against Muslim men who have been put in jail in no time.  Even legislator Tahir Hussain from AAP was not spared whom police has admitted to saving a day before the mob entered his house.  Secularism is being made to exist only in the pages of constitution, on ground it is Hindu Rashtra, the grand project of RSS is now taking shape in a very visible way.  AAP quickly suspended Tahir Hussain without any investigation, thus declaring him guilty without any proof or trial.  The rightward lurch of AAP towards Hindutva politics to secure Hindu votes is nauseating.   

Despite the world media focus and consistent reporting from all quarters condemning the pogrom, the Indian media instead has focused on changing the narrative to “clash” between two communities, rather than reporting the planned conspiracy with which Muslim neighborhood was attacked and razed to ground.  The so-called mainstream media, which has long ago abdicated its duty to report truth and inform people of facts, has been cacophonous in justifying what happened.  For media, only Muslims are guilty.  Hindus also died in this violence, but it is still unclear who killed them; the frenzied Hindutva mob probably killed anybody who came in their way.  Even if some killings came from Muslims, they were not the first perpetrators and is unreasonable to expect that a community under brutal attack will not have a reaction or self-defense.  This in fact is a tried and tested tactic of BJP/RSS; attack Muslims mercilessly and when they react discredit them as jihadists and extremists.  This is straight out of their playbook of riots, which they have applied in every riot in independent India.  It was largely Muslim property and mosques destroyed, Hindu temples remain unscathed; majority of people died are Muslims and not Hindus, most families displaced are Muslims and not Hindus, the population still under threat is Muslims and not Hindus; it is unjust to call it a clash; the attack was a cold, calculated conspiracy to pave way for eventual genocide.  The heartless rationalization of violence by media and upper caste Hindus is sickening to the core, and prepares the ground for shredding the secular social fabric of India.