The Side Show

 TADA, a brutal preventive detention law that precursed POTA was used against Muslims in the wake of the brutal blasts that ripped the city in March 1993. Justice BN Srikrishna has clearly identified the blasts as a reaction to systemic state failure to address grievances.

Besides, Bollywood stepped in films like Mani Rathnam’s Bombay and Mahesh Bhatt’s Zakhm  chronicled the darkness albeit from different perspectives. Years later Khalid Mohammed’s Fiza also re-visited those months of 1992-1993.

Most significantly of all, December of 1992 and what followed was brute and bitter manifestation of the institutions of governance (state) and culture and organisation  (society) be it the police, judiciary, trade unions and women’s organisations being permeated by a supremacist ideology that was at its core, anti-democratic and anti-Constitutional. This posed then, and continues to challenge even now, specific challenges to the deliverance of justice, equal opportunities in employment, equality before the law etc etc. One of the most corrosive aspects of the violence of 1992-1993 was the blatant communal bias displayed by sections of the Bombay police, until then seen as among the most professional forces in the country.

Twenty years down, is there open and real acknowledgement of this malaise and danger?