The Production Ofhindu-Muslim Violencein Contemporary India

~ THE PRODUCTION OFHINDU-MUSLIM VIOLENCEIN CONTEMPORARY INDIA

~

~In memory of my teacher,

MYRON WEINER,

ever a source of inspiration, ever a friend

~OXFORD

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~THE PRODUCTION OFHINDU-MUSLIM VIOLENCEIN CONTEMPORARY INDIA

PAUL R. BRASS

OXFORD

UNIVERSITY PRESS

~CONTENTS

Abbreviations Used in This Book ix

Maps, Figures, and Tables xi

Preface and Acknowledgments xv

PART I / INTRODUCTION

1 / Explaining Communal Violence 5

PART II / COMMUNAL RIOTS IN INDIA AND ALIGARH

2, / Aligarh: Politics, Population, and Social Organization 43

3 / Hindu-Muslim Violence in India and Aligarh 60

4 / The Great Aligarh Riots of December 1990 and January 1991 116

5 / The Control of Communal Conflict in Aligarh 132

PART III / DEMOGRAPHIC, SOCIAL, AND ECONOMIC FACTORS IN THE PRODUCTION OF RIOTS

6 / The Geography and Demography of Riots 149

7 / The Economics of Riots: Economic Competition and Victimization 199

~PART IV / RIOTS AND THE POLITICAL PROCESS

8 / Riots and Elections 219

9 / The Practice of Communal Politics 240

10 / Communalization and Polarization: Selected Constituency-Wise Results for Aligarh Elections 262

11 / Communal Solidarity and Division at the Local Level 286

12 / The Decline of Communal Violence and the Transformation of Electoral Competition 296

PART V / THE PROCESS OF BLAME DISPLACEMENT

13 / Riot Interpretation, Blame Displacement, and the Communal Discourse 305

14 / Police Views of Hindu-Muslim Violence 328

15 / The Role of the Media 344

PART VI / CONCLUSION

16 / The Persistence of Hindu-Muslim Violence: The Dynamics of Riot Production 355

Postscript: Aligarh and Gujarat 385

Appendices 393

Notes 413

Index 463

Index of Mohallas 475

~ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THIS BOOK

ADMadditional district magistrate

AMUAligarh Muslim University

AMUSUAligarh Muslim University Students Union

BJPBharatiya Janata Party

BJSBharatiya Jan Sangh

BKDBharatiya Kranti Dal

BLDBharatiya Lok Dal

BSFBorder Security Force

BSPBahujan Samaj Party

CPICommunist Party of India

CRPFCentral Reserve Police Force

DMdistrict magistrate

DSPdeputy superintendent of police

FIRFirst Information Report

INCIndian National Congress

ISIInter Services Intelligence

LALegislative Assembly

LSLok Sabha (Indian Parliament)

MLAMember, Legislative Assembly

MPMember of Parliament

~x / Abbreviations Used in This Book

PACProvincial Armed Constabulary

PUCLPeople’s Union for Civil Liberties

RPIRepublican Party of India

RSSRashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh

SOstation officer

SPSamajwadi Party

SSPsenior superintendent of police

SUAstandard urban area

U.P.Uttar Pradesh (United Provinces before Independence)

VHPVishwa Hindu Parishad

~MAPS, FIGURES, AND TABLES

India 4

map 1.Aligarh City 151

map 2.UparKot 154

map 3.Location and population composition of mohallaofficially designated as communally sensitive, riot-hit,and/or crime-prone 164

map 4.Riot sites, 1990-91174

fig.2.1.Achal Talab, 199952

fig. 3.1.Number of deaths in Hindu-Muslim riots in Aligarhby five-year periods, 1946-9568

fig. 3.2.Shiv temple at akhara site 91

fig. 3.3.Wrestlers 92

fig. 3.4.Wrestling pit 93

fig. 3.5.Police picket at Phul Chauraha 114

fig. 5.1.Mufti shahar, Aligarh, Upar Kot, December 1984140

fig. 6.1.Posh new house in the Civil Lines area, March 1999153

fig. 6.2.Mosque, Upar Kot155

fig. 6.3.Mosque, Aligarh Muslim University campus, 1962156

fig. 6.4.Number of deaths and number of sites of riotous activity inAligarh riots in which there were five or more deaths161

fig. 6.5.Phul Chauraha165

fig. 6.6.Lock manufacturing, Sarai Sultani, Aligarh, 1999187

fig. 6.7.Victim of bomb blast in 1990 riots195

fig. 6.8.Riot damage, Sarai Sultani, 1999196

~fig. 7.1. Muslim medical clinic in Sarai Hakim202

fig. 8.1.Number of deaths in riots by political period224

fig. 8.2.Vote shares for Congress and militant Hindu parties,Legislative Assembly elections, 1952-96226

fig. 8.3.Valid votes turnout in Aligarh City Legislative Assemblyelections, 1952-96 228

fig. 8.4.Percent interval between winning and runner-up candidates,Aligarh City Legislative Assembly elections, 1952—96 230

fig. 8.5.Correlations for Congress and militant Hindu candidate vote shares with percentage of Hindus and others, 1957-91238

fig. 8.6. Correlations for militant Hindu party vote shares withpercentage of religious/caste groups, 1957-91 238

fig. 8.7.Correlations for Congress vote shares with percentageof religious/caste groups, 1957-91 239

fig. 9.1.Krishna Kumar Navman, November 1997 244

fig. 10.1. Vote shares for two leading parties, 1989 LegislativeAssembly election 277

fig. 10.2. Vote shares for two leading parties, 1991 LegislativeAssembly election 281

fig. 11.1. Militant Hindu vote share in Aligarh Legislative Assemblyconstituency and Manik Chauk mohalla, 1957-91 288

fig. 11.2. Congress vote in Aligarh Legislative Assembly constituencyand Manik Chauk mohalla, 1957-91 289

fig. 11.3. Vote shares for all militant Hindu candidates and for theCongress, Manik Chauk mohalla, 1957-91 290

fig. 11.4. Militant Hindu party vote shares in Aligarh constituency andManik Chauk and Sarai Sultani mohallas, 1980-91 293

fig. 11.5. Congress vote shares in Aligarh constituency and ManikChauk and Sarai Sultani mohallas, 1980-91 293

fig. 11.6. Party vote shares in Sarai Sultani mohalla, 1980-91 294

fig. 14.1. PAC encampment, Aligarh, 1999 332

table 2.1.Population (in percentages) of Aligarh City by religion andcaste, 1951-91 47

table 2.2.Mohallas in which particular castes/baradaris/sects arepredominant 54

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table 2.3.Caste/community of members of the Aligarh municipalcorporation, 1995 57

table 2.4.Caste/community of members (in percentages) of theAligarh municipal corporation, 1995 58

table 2.5. Political identification of members of the Aligarh municipalcorporation by caste/community, 1995 58

table 3.1.Riots and riot deaths in Aligarh City, 1925-95 63

table 6.1.Population of Aligarh City wards, 1951 158

table 6.2. Correspondence between 1951 and 1995 wards and thedistribution of corporators by new ward number 159

table 6.3.Major Aligarh mohallas not included in the 1951 census 175

table 8.1. Winning party or independent candidate, Aligarh CityLegislative Assembly, Lok Sabha, and mayoral elections,1951-98 222

table 8.2. Winning party in 14 Legislative Assembly contests, Aligarhconstituency, 1952-96 225

table 8.3. Comparison of turnout rates in Aligarh and Uttar PradeshLegislative Assembly elections, 1952-96 227

table 8.4. Riots and elections 232

table 8.5. Correlations between votes for militant Hindu candidatesand local population composition across Aligarh mohallain selected elections, 1957-91 236

table 8.6. Correlations between votes for Congress and local population composition across Aligarh mohallas in selectedelections, 1957-91 236

table 10.1. Election results for Aligarh City Legislative Assemblyconstituency, 1962 263

table 10.2. Vote shares for party candidates in their top and bottomfive polling stations, 1962 Legislative Assembly elections,and demographic data for the mohallas included in them,according to the 1951 census 265

table 10.3. Election results for Aligarh City segment of Aligarh LokSabha constituency, 1962 268

table 10.4. Correlation coefficients of party vote shares with percentpopulation Muslim, Hindus and others, and ScheduledCastes, 1962 Legislative Assembly (LA) and Lok Sabha (LS)elections 271

~table 10.5. Election results for Aligarh City Legislative Assemblyconstituency, 1989 274

table 10.6. Vote shares for party candidates in their top and bottomfive polling stations, 1989 Legislative Assembly elections,and demographic data for the mohallas included in them,according to the 1951 census 275

table 10.7. Correlation coefficients of party vote shares with percentpopulation Muslim, Hindus and others, and ScheduledCastes, 1989 Legislative Assembly elections 278

table 10.8. Election results for Aligarh Legislative Assemblyconstituency, 1991 280

table 10.9. Vote shares for party candidates in their top and bottompolling stations, 1991 elections, and demographic data forthe mohallas included in them, according to the 1951 censusor 1995 voters’ lists 282

table 10.10. Election results for Aligarh City Legislative Assemblyconstituency, 1993 284

table 12.1. Election results for Aligarh City Legislative Assemblyconstituency, 1996 299

table A.1. Demographic data from 1951 census, by Muslim population percentage, for sensitive, riot-hit, and crime-pronemohallas 395

table a.2. Mohallas and other sites identified as riot-hit in majorAligarh riots, 1956-95 397

table a.3. Vote shares for party candidates in their top and bottompolling stations, 1957 Legislative Assembly elections, anddemographic data for the mohallas included in themaccording to the 1951 census 402

ta ble a.4. The twentieth-century decline in Muslim representationin the U.P. police 402

table c.1. Community and caste composition of three mohallas, 1951census 408

table c.2. Number and percentage of registered voters by communityin Ward 26,1995 410

table c.3. Party vote shares in Ward 26,1995 corporation elections410

~PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book follows upon my last two books on collective violence, Riots and Pogroms and Theft of an Idol, published in 1996 and 1997, respectively. Although temporally earlier than this book, many of the ideas contained in them were developed first in my work on riots in Aligarh. It was here, during my field work in 1983, that I first developed the notion of the “institutionalized riot system” as a central factor in the production of Hindu-Muslim violence.

I had originally intended to include my work on Hindu-Muslim riots in Aligarh in Theft of an Idol, but concluded that the material was too extensive to go alongside the other case studies in that volume. My next thought was to produce a book focusing specifically on Hindu-Muslim violence based on my research in several districts of Uttar Pradesh (U.P.), including especially Meerut and Kanpur, on which I have collected very considerable materials over the years, as in Aligarh. However, after looking over my interview data in Aligarh over thirty-eight years and digging into boxes of documentary material and election data that I had collected in the same period, I decided finally on a book in which the city of Aligarh, standing in for so many other cities and towns in India, would form the center. That decision has allowed me to do something that I believe is unprecedented in studies of collective violence, namely, to carry out a diachronic study at a single site, keeping my analysis sharply focused—so I hope the reader will agree—on the same set of questions and problems throughout. Although studies have been done of riot-prone cities (such as, for example, Detroit) that analyze each riot in succession, those I have looked at treat each riot as something new and different from its predecessor. Here, on the contrary, 1 have discovered continuity, extension, and development of what I intuitively felt in 1983 was an institutionalized system of riot production. I now feel that I have established my case in

~this book and that the findings herein can be generalized to other parts of India and to other times and places in the world.

I first visited Aligarh in the winter of 1961-62 to carry out field research for my Ph.D. dissertation on the Congress Party in Uttar Pradesh. That was a different time in many respects. Aligarh then was a relatively small town with a population around 185,000, now over half a million. The Congress was the dominant party in the district. Many of the prominent politicians I interviewed then are now gone. Although party politics then was not lacking in volatility, bitter conflict, and some violence, it appears relatively genteel in retrospect compared to the atmosphere of recent years. During the past twenty years, a new generation of militant Hindu politicians has risen to prominence; I have met most of the leading persons among them. I have also maintained and extended my contact with politicians from all other political parties and organizations in Aligarh, Hindu and Muslim alike, and with members of the faculty of the Aligarh Muslim University. In most of my visits to Aligarh, I have always also interviewed key members of the civilian administration and police, and many subordinate civilian and police officials as well.

Aligarh was very different in 1961-62 in many other respects as well. It was a relatively much quieter and more peaceful place in general, not only with respect to incidents of violence. Persons of prominence from the pre-Independence era were still present in those days, including not only most senior Congressmen, but men like the Nawab of Chhatari, former leader of the National Agriculturalist Party and later a member of the Muslim League, and A. M. Khwaja, a leading so-called nationalist Muslim, and others of similar aristocratic or landlord backgrounds. Upper-caste and upper-class persons dominated in all spheres of life, something that has changed considerably since then with the rise to self-assertion of the middle and lower castes in politics. Most of the senior politicians spoke good English then, fewer do so now. One could breathe the air everywhere in the absence of the internal combustion engine, which now pollutes the atmosphere even in this place far from any major industrial conurbation.

The Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) in the Civil Lines area of the city, like the whole area around it, was then a kind of oasis, a quiet, appealing, and peaceful place, though the AMU simmered internally with conflicts between so-called conservative/communal and progressive/Communist faculty. The AMU now has the appearance more of a fortification, surrounded with high walls in an effort to keep out rowdy, criminal, and other unfriendly elements from the campus. It is at the same time a place of internal turmoil, where confrontation and violence between groups of students, students and faculty,

~faculty against each other, and students and faculty against the vice-chancellor have occurred repeatedly over the years.

I had selected Aligarh as one of five districts for my research in 1961-62 specifically for the purpose of analyzing how the Congress functioned in an environment of Hindu-Muslim tension. As if to demonstrate the validity of my selection of this district for that purpose, my visit, between December 25 and January 20, occurred between the riots of October 1961 and the General Elections of 1962, held in February. I returned to Aligarh again in September 1962 to continue the research on that district in the aftermath of the elections that were influenced decisively in the city by the riots that had occurred the previous October. I did not visit Aligarh again for seventeen years. Since then, I have visited the city and the district numerous times, for short trips during elections when I toured U.P. in connection with several election studies projects, for an extended research period in August 1983, and since then on several occasions when I have returned to India for research, conferences, and workshops. On more than a few occasions in those years, I arrived to find that another riot had recently occurred, or, as in 1990—91, I arrived just as the great riots of December 1991—January 1992 were coming to an end.

My experiences in this latter respect were mirrored in others of the districts that I have visited repeatedly during the past thirty-eight years. So, during these later years, I increasingly built in to my research visits to north India more focused and increasingly systematic questions, interviews, and data on the reasons for the recrudescence of Hindu-Muslim violence. I continued this practice during the writing of this manuscript in my most recent visits to Aligarh in November 1997 and March-April 1999.

I have presented earlier versions of aspects of my research on Hindu-Muslim violence in Al’igarh at many universities, conferences, and workshops between 1987 and 2000, far too many to note here. It is more important that 1 note and acknowledge with appreciation colleagues and others who have assisted me in the final preparation of this rather complex manuscript. At the top of the list are two persons who read the entire manuscript in earlier versions. David Laitin read the first version when it was several hundred pages longer and still in preliminary form. Kanchan Chandra read a complete, but still imperfect, second draft. The comments of both were indispensable to me in making the revisions that preceded my submission of the manuscript for review by the University of Washington Press. Elizabeth Mann read several chapters of the earliest version of the manuscript and her comments also led me to make several changes. Walter Andersen and Richard Flathman gave

~

me the benefit of their comments on particular chapters. The two anonymous reviewers for the press and Michael Duckworth, the acquisitions editor, will, I hope, also note that I have taken their criticisms and suggestions seriously. Of course, 1 am alone responsible for the arguments and points of view adopted as well as any errors that may be found herein.

Naresh Saxena facilitated my visits to Aligarh during the past twenty years. Kanchan Chandra and Violette Graff provided me with valuable maps of Aligarh that I had not been able to obtain. Iqbal A. Ansari and Asghar Ali Engineer cleared up in correspondence with me a few details on which I needed information. Several persons have accompanied me to Aligarh over the years to assist me in moving about the city and interpreting when necessary; they include Pallav Kumar, Gyan and Jayati Chaturvedi, Sumit Mehta, and Aftab Ahmad. Arup Singh has been unfailingly helpful to me during all my recent visits to India.

My past practice in citing interviews has been to provide simply the date and place of the interview. I have modified that practice somewhat in this manuscript. I have masked most of my sources for interviews. However, I no longer invariably promise my respondents confidentiality, and carry out the great majority of my interviews with a tape recorder plainly in view. Since so much of my material comprises direct quotes that lose part of their significance if the identity of the respondent is masked, I felt it important not to do so in such cases where no confidentiality was promised.