When state sides with killers

The communal violence that started in the aftermath of killing of Swami Lakshmanananda last month in Orissa’s Kandhamal district seems not to die down, as if communal forces were waiting for such an incident to prosecute a community in the name of religion. Rioters were given free ride to kill innocent people and burn down houses and churches. In the communal strife in Orissa as many 30 people perished and more than 9,000 people have taken shelter in the seven relief camps opened in different areas of Kandhamal to help families affected by the violence.

The fire that was ignited in Orissa spread to Karnataka where the attacks on Christian prayer halls reveal the hand of organised groups operating with a sinister political agenda. The attacks in Karnataka show the bearing of a systematic, planned assault on the minority community. Though the motive and the identity the Swami’s killers in Orissa is still to be proved, VHP and Bajrang Dal in Orissa as well as in Karnataka went on rampage in an orgy of violence as waiting for an alibi to kill Christians.

One thing is common in the violence incident in both Orissa and Karnataka is obvious: state administration either sided with rioters or remained mute spectators to the killings of innocent people. Even Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik when he visited a relief camp Tikabali faced the ire of angry protesters. Similar is the case in Karnataka where CM B.S. Yeddyurappa, instead of bringing the culprit to book or condemning the incidents, called it a fallout of conversion activities, as if giving licence to free ride to rioters and goons.

There is another similarity between both the CMs: they both denied probe by Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Clearly, they are everything to protect the killers of innocent people. While Patnaik expressed the hope that the State police would be able to arrest the culprits, as if he does not know how the police remained as mute spectators to the merciless killings and arson.

A fact-finding team assessing attacks against Christians in Karnataka has held the state government “directly responsible for allowing violence to spread”. Even “policemen were found to beating up innocent women and children and the top state officials and ministers remained mute spectators”. The fact-finding team also found the pattern of attacks similar to those in Orissa. It was also revealed that Bajrang Dal men involved in rioting and terrorising people. What can be said of law and order or safety of people when the states side with criminals? Unlike the protestors in J&K or elsewhere, where the police or security forces open fire to kill, we have no such instance in case of rioting mobs being fired by the police, neither in Orissa, nor Karnataka, nor Gujarat. In case of riots, states have hardly played a neutral role, which is a matter of serious concern for the country.

Unfortunately, in all the riots against minorities in India for last 50 years, thousands of innocent people have been killed and property worth billions have been lost, except a few almost all the rioters escaped the legal punishment due to state’s role as protector of killers or inept handling of cases by the police. While the killers are stamped as “unknown figures”, not terror mongers, for investigating agencies, the riot has been indented weapon for communal forces in this country. This logic is not followed in other cases of violence.