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The Asian Age, Vol.3,
No.65, Mon., 6 March 2000, p.1
New UP
Population Policy targets minorities
by Purnima S. Tripathi New Delhi, March 5:
After bringing in the controversial legislation banning
construction of religious places without prior permission of the
state authorities, the Uttar Pradesh government has now decided
to introduce a population policy which will target specific
groups and communities which have a higher rate of growth of
population.
Announcing the decision, Uttar Pradesh chief minister R.P. Gupta
said, "There are groups and communities which feel that if
they go on increasing their number they will capture power one
day. Such a way of thinking has to be disincentivised". The
disincentive, to begin with, means debarring those having more
than two children from contesting panchayat elections, he said.
The state government's new population policy, the chief minister
said, would come into effect within three months.
The chief minister said that in order to control population there
"should be some restrictions on contesting elections, only
then can the menace be controlled". Mr Gupta made these
announcements on Thursday while addressing a three-day conference
on population issues in Lucknow.
Opposition parties, however, have cried foul.
They say this obviously is yet another move by the BJP government
in Uttar Pradesh to target the minorities, especially Muslims.
Congress state president Salman Khurshid, told The Asian Age
"It is obviously directed at the minorities, especially
Muslims". Mr Khurshid said he was not at all surprised at
the announcement, knowing Mr Gupta's track record, but he was
shocked at the audacity of it all.
"Mr Gupta is blatantly implementing the RSS agenda. He
represents the core of RSS and BJP, with all its warts and moles,
without the sugar-coating that they have in Delhi. He is taking
the original RSS position, which has always been targeted against
the minorities," he said. Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh,
too, minced no words while lashing out at the Gupta government.
"This is a direct attack, the second in a row after the
religious places legislation, on the minorities. The RSS agenda,
so far hidden, is now out in the open. Gupta is only repeating
the established Sangh line on Muslims whom the RSS ideologue
Golwalkar described as "videshi" and said their
population needed to be controlled otherwise they would capture
power one day. According to Mr Amar Singh, the basic intention of
having such a policy was not to control population but target the
minorities. Population cannot be controlled by enacting
legislation. Sanjay Gandhi tried doing this during the Emergency
and that cost Indira Gandhi her government. After China, UP is
the only place to have such a legislation in the world to control
population, he said, adding, "Obviously Gupta is only
implementing the Sangh agenda with its full backing". Though
political observers feel UP needed a population policy they,
however, said there should be only one criteria, economic
criteria, for defining "groups and communities". In
this case, however, they said the Uttar Pradesh government's
intentions appeared "suspect" because of Mr Gupta's
political track record.
Mr Gupta's recent statements that he would not mind having a Ram
temple constructed at Ayodhya, provided it was done peacefully,
had political parties up in arms.
Then he brought the religious places legislation banning
construction of places of worship without prior permission of the
state government, which created yet another furore. According to
political observers, the population policy is yet another attempt
by the Gupta government to target minorities for discrimination
and attack.
The Week, Oct 31, 1999
Festering
Wounds:
Bhagalpur: Ten Years after the Communal Killings, the
Victims' Families are yet to overcome their Misery.
By Kanhaiah Bhelari
Bibi Shakina of Logai village saw her husband being chopped to
pieces ten years ago. Today, she suffers a fate worse than death
while her husband's killers roam free. "I would have
committed suicide but I want to marry off my three
daughters," she says, her eyes betraying her trauma. Chasing
a mirage: Bibi Fatima, whose husband was killed, is yet to get
compensation Her husband was among the 116 persons who were
killed in a communal riot in Logai in Bhagalpur district on
October 27, 1989. It was one of the worst communal riots, with
more than a thousand killed in the district. The rioters in Logai
buried the bodies in a field and planted vegetables there,
defying curfew.
Shakina, in her statement before a magistrate, named the killers
and a police officer in charge of Jagdishpur and the block
development officer who allegedly helped in burying the bodies.
Some of them tried to intimidate her into withdrawing the case.
They needn't have: the case has not yet come up for hearing.
Kamaru Rehman, a special public prosecutor, says the delay is
mainly because some of the accused are absconding. But he also
blames the police for not showing any keenness to trace them.
After Shakina had moved to Babura village with her young
children, some villagers in Logai started cultivating her 44
bighas of land. She holds Sadanand Singh, a former mukhiya,
responsible for inciting the encroachers. "The district
magistrate and the police superintendent haven't shown any
interest in solving the problem," she says.
Those who had migrated from Logai to Pithna and Babura, after the
massacre, never mustered courage to return, even though strangers
had usurped their land. Sadanand Singh has been trying to
persuade Shakina and others like her to sell off their land at
throwaway prices. His offered Rs 14,000 per bigha while the
market rate was Rs 50,000. Shakina alleges that he threatened to
kill her son Mohamed Ansar if she did not accept the price he
offered. Fearing for her son, she made him discontinue his
intermediate course at Bhagalpur and stay with her. The only one
who went back to his land in Logai was Mohamed Nazim, whose wife
and two children had been killed in the riots. Two years after
the return, in January 1990, he remarried but trouble has not
stopped haunting them. There have been frequent thefts, and his
mother Jilabin Khatun says, "Bad elements are doing all this
to make us leave. But we will stay here till we die."
Malka Begum, whose leg was chopped off, was rescued by soldiers
from a pond. One soldier from J&K married her but he took
away the compensation and deserted her and their children.
More wrenching is the plight of Malka Begum of Chanderi, whose
leg was chopped off. The marauders, who killed 66 persons in her
village, left her in a pond for dead. Soldiers rescued her and
took her to a hospital. A soldier, Mohamed Taj from Punchh in
J&K, who was posted in Bhagalpur to restore normalcy, married
her. He turned out to be worse than her attackers: he took away
her compensation and deserted her and their two kids. She filed a
case against him in 1993 but has got no relief till now. Nor has
she got the job that Laloo Prasad Yadav promised as chief
minister. All that she has is a monthly allowance of Rs 100 for
the handicapped, and a piece of land that Gulam Sarvar granted as
Governor. He also gave her an artificial leg.
Another casualty of the riots has been the silk industry that
employed 10,000 labourers in handlooms and powerlooms. They are
now jobless. "We became paupers," says Majahar Shamim,
who once earned crores from the industry. In all, 811 FIRs had
been filed after the riots. The police filed 302 chargesheets,
and the lower courts have disposed of 152 cases, acquitting the
accused in 119 cases. In the remaining 33 cases, the district and
sessions court punished many of the accused with life
imprisonment. Most of them have appealed to the High Court. The
other cases are pending before the special courts. The state
government gave compensation of Rs 1 lakh each to the families of
634 victims. Some also got Rs 10,000 from the Prime Minister's
Relief Fund.
The administration rejected 169 pleas for compensation. Special
public prosecutor Kamaru Rehman has referred some of these to the
Lok Ayukta. "The district administration may be short of
funds. Otherwise, there is no reason to reject the genuine claims
of the victims," says Rehman. He points out that the
sessions court has directed the district administration to pay
compensation in some of these cases. "For example, the
police have admitted in court that rioters killed the husband of
Bibi Fatima. But she hasn't got any compensation," he says.
Shakina (left, with daughters) moved to Babura village after her
husband was murdered. The villagers started cultivating her land.
Every working day, Fatima walks 10 kilometres from her village,
Sihnan, to Rehman's chamber in the court premises to find out the
progress of her case. "She doesn't have any land or money,
and one of her daughters died a few years ago," says Rehman.
As the photographer clicks, the tearful woman asks if she has
finally been awarded compensation. "Never mind. She has lost
some of her balance," says Rehman. The delay would do that
to anyone. "I suspect that the state government is
deliberately going slow on the matter," says Rehman. He says
that most of the accused have got bail while others are
persuading the appellants to withdraw their cases. Some witnesses
do not turn up during hearings as the police do not provide them
any security. Bibi Shajahan of Bhagalpur had accused a dozen
policemen of murdering her husband Hanif, who was a peon in the
district magistrate's office. All the accused got anticipatory
bail. Similarly, all the 24 accused involved in the riots in
Chanderi got bail. The hearing in these cases is yet to begin.
The state government had constituted three special courts,
exclusively for riot cases. It also appointed two special public
prosecutors (SPPs), who were later replaced by five SPPs in 1995.
A special court judge told The Week that the police were not keen
on producing the witnesses or tracing the accused, even after
receiving several court notices. On the other hand, many people
like Mohamed Shakeel Ahmed claim that the police falsely
implicated them. "I was a true follower of Mahatma Gandhi
and Jawaharlal Nehru," says Ahmed. "I got awards for
restoring peace from several organisations like the Gandhi
Pratisthan." He was in love with a girl but didn't want to
marry until he had cleared himself of the charges. On August 5
this year, he was acquitted but his sweetheart had already become
another man's wife. "The police ruined my life," he
wails. With financial help from Tisco, the district
administration had built 200 houses at three riot-hit villages
for those affected. But in Chanderi, only 5 of the 27 affected
families live in these houses. The rest are occupied by
anti-socials. Malka says that the families had suggested certain
sites for their relocation but the district administration paid
no heed. The riot-hit families have no hope that the marauders
will ever be brought to book. At best, some innocent people will
be made scapegoats, they say. Experience has made them bitter
cynics.
Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.5 (Jan. 1970), Nos.3-5
1969 Communal
Riots in Ahmedabad: Orgy of Violence
" ... Atrocities multiplied by the evening when several poor
labourers were either burnt alive or murdered. In some places
they were thrown into fires. Scythes, axes, knives and spears
were used for killing people. Women were raped or stripped bare
and forced to walk naked on the road; Muslim children were beaten
against stones or their legs were torn apart. Limbs were cut out
of dead bodies, women's breast were cut and sex organs were
mutilated or torn apart. In this mad orgy, animal instincts of
the worst kind seem to have got hold of the people of Ahmedabad.
The riots had spread from Ahmedabad into various parts of the
state. Trains were not spared. On the 20th night, when several
Muslims were escaping from Ahmedabad, four trains were stopped
and seventeen passengers killed. On the 23 September, when the
Government lifted the curfew for three hours, forty persons lost
their lives.
The orgy of violence - massacre, arson and looting - continued
non-stop for three days. By Tuesday (23 September) afternoon
Ahmedabad was under the control of the army. The coming of the
army brought about a radical change in the situation, but
scattered instances of stabbing continued to take place for more
than a month. More than one thousand people. a large majority of
them Muslim, lost their lives. Several hundreds ran away to their
native villages. About fifteen thousand took shelter in relief
camps. Fire destroyed 3969 dwellings and shops and 2317 more were
physically destroyed. About 6000 fanmiles lost their belongings
and shelter. The value of property destroyed ran into crores of
rupees. There was a loss of income of at least 33.70 crores as a
result of the inactivity caused by the imposition of the
curfew."
Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.5 (Jan. 1970), Nos.3-5
1969 Communal
Riots in Ahmedabad
20 Sept. 1969
" ... [ The ] Hindus forced the Muslims also to shout 'Jai
Jagannath'. A gruesome episode in the afternoon brings out the
depth of animosity against the Muslims. A young Muslim, enraged
by the destruction of his property said he would take revenge.
Upon this the crowd seized him, showered blows on him and tried
to force him to shout 'Jai Jagannath'. Staying firm, the youth
refused even if that meant death. To this someone in the crowd
responded that he may indeed be done away with. Wood from broken
shops were collected. a pyre prepared in the middle of the road,
petrol sprinkled on the pyre as well as the youth, and he was set
alight with ruthless efficiency. What is remarkable is that there
was no resistance from any Hindu. The wails of the Muslim
inhabitants of the area were drowned in the celebration of the
incident by the Hindus. Thereafter, the riots took a new turn -
from looting and arson to murder and physical attacks. Upto now
incidents of killing had been sporadic; they now became frequent
and organised on a large scale.
By the afternoon the flames of Gita Mandir and Raipur had spread
through the whole town - labour as well as upper class areas. The
mob violence that was let loose did not spare even the Sabarmati
Ashram, when in the evening a relatively small crowd of about
fifty people went to the Ashram to attack Imam Manzil, the house
of 70-year old Gulam Rasoon Qureishi, and Ashram inmate since
1921. For him, it should be noted, this was not the first attack
by communalists. In 1939 he had been assaulted by Muslim
Leaguers. But this time as the ashramites stood together against
the crowd, no serious damage was done to Imam Manzil. However,
the house of Qureshi's two sons one of whose Hindu wife still
practices the Hindu religion, was set aflame burning both the
Quran and the Ramayana."
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