Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, and Bengal (1947). Calcutta (1964). Ahmedabad (1969). Bhiwandi (1970). Delhi (1976). Assam (1983). Delhi and Bhiwandi (1984). Meerut (1987). Bhagalpur (1989). Somnath–Ayodhya–Bombay (1990-1993). Gujarat (2002). Muzaffarnagar (2013). Delhi (2020). Manipur and Gurugram (2023). Here is a cursory list of the big ticket #riots, the ones that get column space on the front page of newspapers; the ones that make the 9 p.m. headlines night after night, even if the victims are not always remembered.
Section 144 of the Indian Penal Code dutifully imposes a curfew; Sections 153A and 295A are used to arrest those who hurt religious sentiments, and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 is to punish those who commit crimes against castes. The Model Code of Conduct is supposed to penalise those who violate a “model code of conduct” during election time. All laws (journalists, historians and political scientists have documented in painstaking detail) have been deployed selectively, politically. The suspension of the Internet is a new device, used with equal facility to curb the spread of information and misinformation (and cheating during examinations).
Old colonial laws, new independent-India-laws, newly renamed, wannabe laws. Seventy-five years of artfully maintaining “law and order”, rinsing, repeating, and normalising an increasingly Hindu majoritarian status quo.
