The spate of riots that erupted around the recently held Ram Navami festival and Hanuman Jayanti in States such as Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Bihar, West Bengal, Rajasthan and in Delhi’s Jahangirpuri seem to be have begun a new chapter in Hindu-Muslim violence. The last time such a cycle of Hindu-Muslim violence erupted simultaneously in so many States was after the Babri Masjid demolition on December 6, 1992. While the demolition of the Babri Masjid triggered riots in various parts of India that year, no such singular tragic event could be attributed to the current cycle of violence, indicating a radical shift in not just inter-faith relations at the societal level but also in State-community relations.
In recent events, the demolition drive after the violence saw, for example, the use of a bulldozer in Jahangirpuri; the entrance of its local Jama Masjid was damaged. Thus, from the Babri Masjid’s destruction to the demolition of a part of Jahangirpuri’s Jama Masjid this year, it has been a full circle in the right’s approach to the Hindu- Muslim issue. Between 1992 to 2022, the Hindu right’s politics seems have etched the word ‘demolition’ in the journey of Muslim identity in modern India. At the time of the Babri Masjid’s demolition in 1992, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-governed four States: Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh; and these governments were dismissed by the P.V. Narasimha Rao government of the Congress after the demolition.
Some commentators who questioned these dismissals tried to justify the secular credentials of these BJP governments by citing the absence of riots in these States. But these days, such claims about BJP-ruled States cannot be made. Instead, according to reports, riots may be engineered to perpetuate polarisation even in non-BJP ruled States, with Muslim victims presented as perpetrators.
