The contentious route, a common factor in inciting violence during religious processions in India

Indian political history is peppered with instances of religious processions that led to communal strife, riots, inexcusable violence, arson, destruction of property and the tragic deaths of innocent residents of the riot-hit areas. This phenomenon has occurred regardless of the party in power and has much to do with the absence of professionalism and direct executive influence on the state police forces. 

Despite other factors as provocations, the failure of the police, administration and governments to regulate routes of such processions (religious) has been the single-most recurrent cause of such communal tension and violence. Even before independence this occurred, but since too, there appears to be a failure of institutional memory to implement steps for prevention.

The route then is the contentitious issue and the route then is what the police and administration — with dominant political groups and pressures—the state refuses to regulate.

The Indian Penal Code has recognised this. Enacted in 1860, Section 153 prescribed a punishment of six months imprisonment for wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot, and one year if the provocation resulted in rioting. Section 188, which made it an offence to disobey an order duly promulgated by a public servant, contained an illustration, which demonstrates at least one form of disobedience:

“S. 188. Disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant.

Illustration: An order is promulgated by a public servant lawfully empowered to promulgate such order, directing that a religious procession shall not pass down a certain street. A knowingly disobeys the order, and thereby causes danger of riot. A has committed the offence defined in this section.”

Besides, a clear reading of the law as it stands demands adequate preventive action

The Preventive actions that need to be undertaken by the Police are detailed in Chapter XI of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CRPC) wherein Section 144 empowers a district magistrate, a sub-divisional magistrate, or any other executive magistrate empowered by the state government, to issue orders to prevent and address urgent cases of apprehended danger or nuisance. Sections 149 onwards are related to preventive action that a police officer is required to take to prevent the commission of cognisable offences. The petition enumerates only some of the legislative measures available to the law enforcement.

The Indian Penal Code (IPC) even contains definitions of offences under sections 295A and 296 relating to deliberate acts aimed at disturbing religious assembly. The Indian Arms Act (1959, amended in 2016) has strict guidelines precluding sale and transfer of arms (read in context of Trishul deeksha—distribution of tridents). Further, the Police Act, 1861 has provisions under section 30 for “regulation of public assemblies and processions and lice sing of the same”. The Police Acts of the respective states have similar outlined measures (including Gujarat and Delhi) and these have been modified and amended in the 1950s to date.

What has been our history post-Independence?

As has been studied and analysed by this author since 1992-1993, when Bombay burned post the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992, the violence that we have faced in in diverse parts of India, under different political regimes, and the vast majority of these have been caused by the deliberate choice of communally-sensitive routes by processionists, and the deliberate reluctance of the Police in dealing with such demands. Often this reluctance has in effect been collusion and connivance in licencing such routes.

A glance at some illustrative examples of such riots will make the point published in Sabrang Communications publishing of the Justice BN Srikrishna Commission report in 1998 with an Introduction by this writer will make the point. On ground coverage by this writer in the weeks following the violence revealed that, unlike what sections of the media made out, violence erupted in Bombay not with “angry Muslims demonstrating and rampaging the streets on December 7” but on the evening of December 6, 1992 itself when this writer recorded:

“But at 2.30 p.m. on December 6, 1992, the first communal incident that took place in Mumbai after the demolition of the mosque at Ayodhya was in Dharavi, where it was not angry Muslims but rampaging Shiv Sainiks led by Sena leaders Baburao Mane and Ramkrishna Keni who caused the first provocation. The local police allowed Shiv Sainiks to conduct a cycle rally of 200–300 persons. The rally passed through several communally–sensitive, Muslim–dominated areas in Dharavi and terminated at Kala Killa, where a meeting was held and addressed by the local activists of the Shiv Sena. Provocative speeches were made at this meeting. (Pgs. 7, 94 & 197)

“Besides, Dharavi was kept simmering by the local wings of both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Shiv Sena through Ram Paduka Poojan Karyakrams and chowk sabhas between July and December 1992. Two Muslim organisations, the Tanzeem–Allah–o–Akbar and the Dalit–Muslim Suraksha Sangh, also organised meetings in the period of the run–up to the kar seva.

The police was a mute spectator. The state absent.

Lets go back even further.

Sholapur, 1967

The city of Sholapur in Maharashtra presents a curious picture of how certain religious processions have led, not unintendedly, to communal flare-ups, riots, and deaths. As found by the “Commission of Inquiry on Communal Disturbance at Sholapur – September 17, 1967”— chaired by Justice Raghubar Dayal, former judge of the Supreme Court, the Commission included Col. B.H. Zaidi, M.P., and retired bureaucrat Shri M.M. Philip — communal outbreaks had occurred on the occasions of ‘Rath Processions’ in 1925 and 1927, in connection with ‘Ganapati Immersion Processions’ in 1927 and 1966, and 18 cases of stabbing were spurred by the shouting of objectionable slogans during a procession by the Arya Samaj Satyagraha in 19391. Other mass stabbings took place in August, 1947, but those stemmed from the violence of Partition and the refugee crisis.

Bhiwandi, Jalgaon and Mahad, 1970

Bhiwandi, a powerloom centre barely 37 km from Mumbai, was the tragic site of large-scale communal disturbances and riots on May 7, 1970, which resulted in the loss of 78 lives, 59 Muslim, 17 Hindu, and two undetermined. As found by the “Commission of Inquiry to Inquire Into the Communal Disturbances at Bhiwandi, Jalgaon and Mahad in May 1970”, a one-man Inquiry by sitting Bombay High Court Judge, Justice D.P. Madon, these riots were the direct consequence of a massive Shiv Jayanti Procession comprising about 10,000 processionists armed with lathis, which insisted on a route which passed the Nizampura Jumma Mosque. The Bhiwandi riots led instantly to copycat riots on May 8, 1970 in Jalgaon and Mahad, two cities that had nothing in common with Bhiwandi; 43 died in Jalgaon, 42 Muslim and one Hindu; fortunately, no lives were lost in Mahad.

Justice Madon found that 1963 was an important year in the communal history of Bhiwandi, for that was when the Hindus started taking out processions which did not stop playing music while passing by a mosque. He found that 1964 was the year when the Shiv Jayanti Procession began its practice of stopping in front of mosques, shouting provocative and anti-Muslim slogans, and throwing excessive ‘gulal’. Coincidentally, this was also the year when the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, predecessor to the BJP, established its Bhiwandi branch. He found that these provocations were amplified in 1965, when for the very first time a procession other than a purely Muslim one went past the Nizampur Jumma Mosque.  Not surprisingly, the year 1967 witnessed the very first communal riots in Bhiwandi, which took place as the Shiv Jayanti Procession was passing by the Nizampura Jumma Mosque.

In 1969 the diverse, Shiv Jayanti Utsav Samiti was rendered defunct when 15 Jana Sangh members walked out, along with one Shiv Sena member and three of indeterminate political leanings, and formed the Rashtriya Utsav Mandal (R.U.M.), which set the stage for the 1970 processions. Justice Madon found that “the immediate or proximate cause of the Bhiwandi disturbances was the deliberate misbehaviour of the processionists in the Shiv Jayanti procession, which was taken out in Bhiwandi on May 7, 1970, in order to provoke the Muslims and the fact that at the instance and instigation the Rashtriya Utsav Mandal the majority of processionists, particularly the processionists from the villages, had participated in the procession carrying lathis to which Bhagwa flags and banners were tied in order to circumvent the ban under section 37(1) of the Bombay Police Act, 1951, prohibiting the carrying of weapons, so that the processionists would be armed to meet the contingency of the Muslims starting any trouble either on their own or as a result of the deliberate provoking of the Muslims by the processionists”.

Jamshedpur, 1979

In 1978, the RSS/VHP insisted that the traditional Ram Navami procession should follow a new route that would pass through the congested Muslim area of Sabirnagar. Anticipating communal trouble, the authorities asked them to use a route that bypassed Sabirnagar, but the procession organisers persisted in their demand. They refused several alternate routes offered, even though Sabirnagar was not the most direct, nor was it an open or convenient route, as it involved a diversion through a kachha rasta and private fields to use that route. When the authorities did not give in, the RSS/VHP mounted a protest, holding the government to ransom, refusing to hold the procession for an entire year, to build up pressure on the administration.

Finally, the Karpuri Thakur-led Janata Party Government (a coalition ruling at the Centre and in Bihar State, with the BJP a prominent member in both) caved in, and in 1979 the local administration was persuaded to agree to allow the Ram Navami procession on a route through Sabirnagar. A “compromise” was arrived at, on the promise that the main procession would continue on the normal roads and highway, while a small “sample procession” would pass through Sabirnagar, accompanied by local Muslim elders, and would then rejoin the main procession on the highway.

When this “sample procession” was being escorted by Muslim elders and a small posse of the police into Sabirnagar however, a massive 15,000-strong main procession suddenly broke away from its licenced route and followed the “sample procession” through private fields into Sabirnagar, and once they reached the Sabirnagar Masjid, they were halted by BJP MLA Dinanath Pandey, who refused to allow the procession to move, and insisted that they had a right to remain there. He stood making incendiary anti-Muslim speeches.

Agitation and the inevitable stone-throwing ensued, followed by rioting and arson by the 15,000 processionists. This led to a widespread violence all over Jamshedpur, culminating in 108 deaths, 79 Muslim, 25 Hindu, and 4 unidentified. Widespread looting, destruction of property and arson accompanied the riots, and since the epicentre was Sabirnagar, the Muslims quite naturally suffered a disproportionate impact of the loss of lives and livelihoods.

A commission of enquiry headed by Justice Jitendra Narain, a retired judge of the Patna High Court, found the RSS and Dinanath Pandey primarily responsible.

Kota, 1989

For a city that had not seen any riots in 1947, nor in the five decades that followed, 1989 proved the potency of targeted processions in fomenting riots. On this occasion, and in this calm oasis of Rajasthan, it was the Anant Chaturdashi procession for the immersion of Lord Ganesh that was used to light the communal fires. On September 14, 1989 the procession was deliberately taken on a route through a congested Muslim mohalla, and halted in front of the largest Mosque, enabling the processionists to shout communal slogans and hurl abuses at the Muslims. Inevitably, this resulted in counter-slogans, and the confrontation then descended into stonethrowing and ultimately assaults with deadly weapons. By the time the day was done, 16 Muslims and 4 Hindus were dead, thousands of Muslim street vendors and traders had had their businesses torched, and widespread arson had destroyed homes and shops in the Muslim area.

The cause of this man-made disaster was pithily summed up by the one-man “Commission of Inquiry on Communal Riots in Kota in 1989”, consisting of sitting Rajasthan High Court Judge Shri S.N. Bhargava (he was Chief Justice of the Sikkim High Court when he submitted his Report):

“53. … … In all 20 persons died out of whom 16 were Muslims and 4 were Hindus. … … As is apparent from the evidence on record, the trouble started on account of shouting of objectionable and provocative slogans by the processionists reciprocated by the Muslim community. … … Taking an overall view of the evidence on record, I am of the view that it was the processionists who had started shouting objectionable and provocative slogans and it was only on account of the provocation by these objectionable slogans that the Muslim community also reciprocated the same.”

Bhagalpur, 1989

This time it was a Ramshila procession on 24th October, 1989 that was diverted from the licensed route and taken through the congested Muslim area known as Tatarpur. Ramshila processions were by their very nature provocative and triumphalist, as these processions carried bricks (shila) consecrated by priests over a holy fire, ostensibly to be used for the construction of a Ram Temple which was proposed to be built after the proposed destruction of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya (the actual demolition of Babri Masjid was not to take place until three years later in 1992).

A commission of enquiry consisting of Justice Ram Nandan Prasad, Justice Ram Chandra Prasad Sinha, and Justice S. Shamsul Hasan, retired judges of the Patna High Court, found that though tension over Ramshila processions had already been building up in Bhagalpur for at least a year prior to 1989, yet the Administration and Police had turned a blind eye to it. The Commission noted that there was no application to route the 1989 procession through Tatarpur, and that the licence issued to the procession’s organisers did not mention Tatarpur (para 578).Yet the “mob consisting of thousands of miscreants” was permitted by the Police to deviate from the licenced route, enter Tatarpur, and wreak havoc against the defenseless Muslim populace.

“The Muslims of Bhagalpur and the surrounding areas were inflicted by divine wrath through marauding mobs in close alliance of the district police”, recorded the Commission in para 567 of its Report, and that this “is manifest by over 900 corpses with injuries and also over 900 individuals in handcuffs and manacles”. The Enquiry Commission found that “there were sufficient indications since more than a year before the commission of the riot…The District Administration as we have said, suffered from culpable amnesia, deliberate indifference and patent communal bias, incompetence in not anticipating the riot. Lack of impartiality in the District Administration also compounded the problem” (para 570).

This violence in Bhagalpur in 1989 cost a tragic 900 lives (Muslims), over three decades ago but as bad or worse is the legacy of state impunity in allowing “permissions” or “licenses” to such aggressive organisations   to pass through most congested and diverse areas. The fact that such practices result in escalated tensions around festivals, Hindu and Muslim, does not seem to affect governments. Since 2022, both Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti, falling as they did during the month of fasting for Muslims, Ramzan, these processions are allowed to carry exposed weapons and are accompanied by high-decibel concert-level music systems and DJs playing obnoxious and objectionable lyrics in front of mosques, all opening insulting to the minority community. Inevitably a provocation occurs, and violence results.

Today, from a lax complicity of the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s the State has turned active aggressor with the police in most part being either a mute spectator or weaponised itself through ideological bias.

Related:

Hindutva’s role in riots and official complicity

What was CJP’s PIL seeking directions for implementation of law for regulation of religious processions all about?