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?