Nuh-Gurugram Communal Violence Has No Precedence In Independent India
By
New Age Islam Staff Writer
7 August
2023
The Rise
Of Hindutva Politics Is Behind The Riots
Main
Points:
1.
Pre-Independence communal violence has raised
its ugly head in Newat.
2.
Communal polarisation in Mewat is a recent
phenomenon.
3.
The communal tensions rose only after 2021.
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Shops
that were damaged after communal clashes in Nuh, Haryana | ANI
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The
communal violence that rocked first Nuh and then Gurugram in Haryana is the
fall out of the rise of Hindutva politics in the last two years. Though the
High Court has stayed the demolition of the houses of the accused, the
government has not been able to reign in anti-social elements. The killing of
Nasir and Junaid allegedly by the gang of Monu Manesar and the government's
lackadaisical approach to dealing with the case has only contributed to the
communal polarisation. Gurugram which had become an industrial hub has been
caught in the communal violence incited by the forces which do not care for the
country's economic problems and its deteriorating image in the global community.
The Muslims and Hindus of Mewat have been living peacefully since Independence.
Cultural harmony is important factor that has cemented this bond. Even in the
height of the violence, the local Hindus and Muslims have displayed unity and
harmony and have reiterated their vow to live peacefully and harmoniously.
Mr Praveen
Swami has delved deep into the Hindu Muslim relationship since the 1930s and
the role of Tablighi Jamat and Arya Samaj in the communal polarisation in Mewat
before Independence. But after Independence, Mewat gradually returned to peace
and harmony between the two communities. This continued till 2021 when violence
on religious ground was almost non-existent. It was only in the 2022 that cow
vigilantism caused anxiety among the Muslims. The killing of Nasir and Junaid
by the cow vigilantes was a major tragedy that threatened the peace and harmony
of the region. As of now, the two communities have shown their resolve to fight
the communal politics. It remains to be seen how the government reigns in the
divisive forces.
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Gurugram’s
Is A Hard-Won Economic Gain. But Nuh Violence Shows It’s Imploding
By
Praveen Swami
06 August,
2023
An elephant
lurched down the Grand Trunk Road through Gurugram, the occupants firing at
their victims from the armoured howdah mounted on its back. From nearby
rooftops, villagers fought off the assault by using mortar forged from the rear
axle-casing of cars. “There were swords and spears by the thousand,”
Superintendent of Police William Pearce recalled, “and even some homemade Sten
guns.”
“Every
village started a gunpowder factory.”
Erased from
our memory by high-rise buildings and malls, Gurugram, and the Mewat region
that sprawled to its south, imploded into a macabre carnival of killing during
Partition. “Whole villages were razed; scores of mosques desecrated; thousands
killed or forced on pain of death to convert to Hinduism”, historian Ian
Copland writes, “and many more thousands were forced to flee.”
For months
afterwards, scholar Yasmin Khan records, corpses from Gurgaon washed up in the
irrigation canal in Mathura. Each of those bodies told the story of how
communal politics set fire to a largely peaceful region, turning it into a
stage for one of the largest ethnic-cleaning campaigns in recorded history.
The story
warns us that the incendiary politics that led to Gurugram—an icon of India’s
economic ambitions—could easily set off larger fires, with serious consequences
for the entire country.
An unquiet
peace
Even though
Haryana has earned a reputation for enabling the growth of violent
Hindu-nationalist gangs, the state has long had an excellent record of ensuring
tensions do not spiral into killings. In 2015, the first full year of Prime
Minister Narendra Modi’s time in office, National Crime Records Bureau data
states that Haryana had no murders attributed to religious reasons. The number
remained the same in 2020, the year Delhi saw 53. Then, in 2021, there was just
a single communalism-related killing.
These low
numbers are remarkable because of a context of endemic violence: Haryana
registered 3.8 murders per 100,000 population in 2021, the highest across
states and Union territories after Jharkhand.
Likely, the
low level of communal killing is an outcome of firm police action. Haryana
registered 40 cases for religious and communal rioting in 2021, the
fourth-highest among states and Union territories. The state, notably,
registered 2,253 cases of all kinds of rioting that year, or 7.6 per 100,000
population, the highest across states and Union territories.
The
neighbouring Mewat belt regions of Alwar and Bharatpur have also been
relatively peaceful. Ten people, all Muslims, were killed in Bharatpur—nine at
the hands of police—after communal violence broke out in 2011. Even though
lynchings of Muslims have been reported in Mewat for years, they have not
exploded into generalised communal rioting.
From the
history of 1947, though, we know how little it takes to ignite warfare in
fractured societies. Large populations of Meo Muslims had coexisted with Hindus
across Mewat for centuries, historian Shail Mayaram has written, often sharing
religious and cultural practices. Like the region’s Jats, the Meos had
repeatedly rebelled against the authority of Delhi.
Early in
the twentieth century, though, the Arya Samaj movement and the Tablighi Jama’at
had initiated competing proselytising movements across the region, hardening
the frontiers of Hindu and Muslim consciousness—setting the stage for
Partition.
The
Maharajas versus the Raj
Evidence of
the strains in Mewat began to emerge as early as 1932 when a Muslim procession
led by the Anjuman-i-Khadim-ul-Islam clashed with Dalits headed to inaugurate a
new caste temple. Three people were killed, and large numbers of Meo fled
across the borders of the state of Alwar into then Gurgaon, part of British
Imperial Punjab. Later that year, tax officers were beaten by a mob of Meo in
Tijara. The Maharaja of Alwar responded by burning down the village.
Alwar’s
harsh response sparked off an insurrection: Meo villages erected
fortifications, cut off roads, and began raising funds to purchase weapons. The
British, fearing the consequences of Hindu-Muslim warfare across India, agreed
to helped Alwar. There were, however, terms: the houses of Alwar and Bharatpur
were forced to hand power to British administrators.
Even though
Imperial administration brought some level of development to the region, the
communal problem continued. In 1937, Muharram processions refused to accept
police-decreed routes. In one case, Muslims insisted on marching past a disused
mosque which had been converted into a Bhairon temple, with official
permission. Hindu groups also fanned the flames, insisting on holding a Bhairon
fair during Muharram.
Fanatical
in their personal caste and religious observances, the new reagents of Alwar
and Bharatpur cultivated ties to the Hindutva movement in an effort to expand
their power, and push back against imperial domination.
Educated at
an élite boarding school in England, just eleven years old when he became king,
Maharaja Brijendra Singh of Bharatpur was possessed of arrogance matched only
by his indolence. “I must have committed some very slight sin in my previous
incarnation,” Copeland records him saying, “for instead of remaining a God I
have been sent back a Maharaja.”
The
Maharaja “treated his subordinates like an oversized prep-school bully and had
indiscreet homosexual affairs with members of the household infantry.”
Francis
Wylie, a senior colonial civil servant, described Tej Singh of Alwar as
“petty-minded, greedy both for money and power and a prig.” The opinion was
shared, across the political chasm, by to-be Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru,
who believed Tej Singh was a “paranoiac.”
As imperial
authority waned in the 1940s, the British drew back—and the rulers of Alwar and
Bharatpur made their faith a tool to seize back power.
The
Final Act
Former
Congress chief minister of the central provinces, and Hindu Mahsabha Leader
Narayan Khare arrived in Alwar early in the summer of 1947, to direct the final
act of this tragedy. Since 1946, British intelligence had been warning that the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh was holding military training camps across Alwar
and Bharatpur, with the patronage of the Maharajas. Leaders of the Muslim
League had also made an appearance, arguing for a Meo state which would ally
with Pakistan.
Like
cow-protection vigilantes operating in Mewat today, the militia operating under
the flags of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh appear to
have attracted significant numbers of lumpenised youth, using their new-found
power to loot and rape.
Khare’s
memoirs suggest that the massacres began with a series of small communal
skirmishes, which escalated into fighting between Alwar state forces and the
Meo. Later, Mayaram’s interviews with survivors show, state forces engaged in
large-scale massacres of Muslims. In other cases, Meo were spared in return for
embracing Hinduism.
From census
data gathered by Copeland, it is clear an epic ethnic cleansing took place:
Alwar’s Muslim population, which had been 26.2 per cent in 1941 and 19.2 per
cent of Bharatpur, dropped after the pogroms, conversions and flight, to 6 per
cent in both states.
Tens of
thousands of survivors limped across the border into British India, beginning
the long and dangerous journey to Bahawalpur in Pakistan. Tens of thousands
more congregated in what was then the Punjab district of Gurgaon, and its
Muslim-majority town of Nuh. Large numbers of Nuh families are descendants of
the survivors of the 1947 carnage.
Khare would
be investigated by the British Imperial States Ministry for his role in
ordering Alwar forces to engage in genocide, and ordering the destruction of
mosques. The allegations against him, followed by claims of his involvement in
the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. Neither allegation was proved, and the
investigation into the Partition violence went nowhere. Later, in 1952, Khare
was elected to the Lok Sabha from Bharatpur.
For his
part, Maharaja Brijendra Singh was also elected to the Lok Sabha, as an
independent candidate. Tej Singh of Alwar retired to his palace in Delhi, Alwar
House, in 1948, and was rarely seen in public thereafter. The Maharajas never
got the Hindu state they hoped for, nor wielded significant power in
independent India.
Among the
greatest achievements of the states which have governed the Mewat region was
healing the wounds of 1947 and ensuring that tensions did not flare into
large-scale violence. The prosperity of the Gurugram-Delhi belt, as well as the
emergence of towns like Behror and Bharatpur as industrial hubs, can be traced
to this hard-won stability. That triumph is now in peril.
-----
Praveen
Swami is National Security Editor, ThePrint. He tweets @praveenswami. Views are
personal.
(Edited by Anurag
Chaubey)
Source:
Gurugram’s
Is A Hard-Won Economic Gain. But Nuh Violence Shows It’s Imploding
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-politics/nuh-gurugram-communal-violence-independent-india/d/130403
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