Wai violence: Blame the Congress–NCP govt.

Advocate Varsha Deshpande, the Satara-based vice-president of the Yuva Kranti Dal (YKD), and her colleagues could clearly see the step-by-step build-up to the communal violence in Wai, four months before it actually erupted. Ears to the ground, they kept close watch as the communal temperature was maliciously brought to a boil under the aegis of the Pratapgarh Utsav Samiti. And they did what they could to fight it.

Among other things, they repeatedly drew the attention of Satara district collector, Om Prakash Gupta, and superintendent of police, Prashant Burde, to the need for urgent preventive measures. They also made several written complaints to Maharashtra’s deputy chief minister and in-charge of the home portfolio, Chhagan Bhujbal. A BJP municipal councillor from Pune, Milind Ekbote, who is also a VHP leader and vice-president of the Pratapgarh Utsav Samiti, was identified as the mastermind behind the deliberate communalisation process and action was sought against him. But the collector, the SP and Bhujbal failed to act.

Amin Khandwani, chairman of the Maharashtra State Minorities Commission, also addressed several missives to Bhujbal from October 2001, urging action against Ekbote and a few others. The last such letter from the Commission was addressed to Bhujbal in May 2003. Deshpande complained to Bhujbal yet again, just four days before Ekbote and his ilk launched an entirely unprovoked and completely one-sided attack on the Muslims of Wai on the night of November 16.

If Bhujbal of the Nationalist Congress Party is guilty of failing to live up to his constitutional obligation and to his party’s professed commitment to secular politics, the culpability of the Congress (I), the party of the state’s chief minister, Sushil Kumar Shinde, goes one step further. Vikas Shinde, the Wai president of secular Congress(I) was simultaneously the Wai town vice-president of Hindu Ekta, an offshoot of the Hindu Mahasabha, as also the Wai president of the VHP-created Pratapgarh Utsav Samiti!

On November 18, a Shabana Azmi-led delegation of Muslims for Secular Democracy (of which this correspondent was a part) met Bhujbal to protest government inaction against the hate mongers despite repeated complaints by the Yuva Kranti Dal as well as the government’s own creation, the Maharashtra State Minorities Commission. Bhujbal assured the delegation that he had asked for stern action against the culprits. During their visit to Wai the next day, MSD members learnt that Milind Ekbote, Vikas Shinde and Wai town’s BJP president, Ajit Varanasi, were all behind bars, along with others of the BJP/VHP. They had all been charged with dacoity and rioting, both non-bailable offences. According to unconfirmed reports, Shinde has now been thrown out of the Congress (I).

While the belated action of the state government merits appreciation, the moot point remains that Wai town and its Muslim inhabitants would have been spared the week-long trauma and travail had the two secular parties and their coalition government acted against the likes of Milind Ekbote and Vikas Shinde in good time.

The violence that erupted on the night of November 16 was supposedly the result of "enraged Hindu sentiments", when a tempo carrying 39 cows was intercepted. This was compounded by rumours that a calf had already been slaughtered. While most Muslim males were engaged in night-time namaaz, a mob allegedly brought into the town from outside attacked the Muslim families living in Patel Galli.

Fortunately, lives and limbs were spared, but the loss of property amounted to several lakhs. The mob targeted the local mosque and the property of the attached madrassa, set vehicles on fire, entered homes and looted or destroyed property belonging to local Muslims. This was followed by selective looting of Muslim shops in the market area. Throughout the attack, which lasted for a few hours, the local police simply watched.

Understandably, while talking to an MSD fact-finding team that visited Wai on November 19, local Muslims and the activists of the Yuva Kranti Dal concentrated their ire not so much against the perpetrators of violence as against the police, the administration and the two parties that take their votes for granted – Congress (I) and NCP.

It is evident from subsequent developments that stories of the alleged slaughter of a calf were entirely baseless, (some members of the Maang community had brought a dead buffalo calf from a neighbouring village and were stuffing it with straw), and the interception of 39 cows supposedly being transported for slaughter highly suspicious, to say the least. In less than 20 hours after the police had taken charge of the cows, only 24 remained, while 15 had simply vanished under the very nose of the police. The Yuva Kranti Dal and Wai’s Muslims have demanded a thorough probe into the mystery of the cows and calf slaughter, the ostensible cause of ‘Hindu outrage’.