Riots to be continued….?? (Mazid Khan)

Going through the newspaper reports in those days of bloody riots, I was dispelled of my notion that in the era of great information and technology, riots of this magnitude are not possible. I used to delve myself in to altercations with my fellow beings for non-riots environment one year of now but Muzaffarnagar riots proved me wrong.

Generally communal riots start with some petty issues but no one knows whether these are spontaneous or deliberate. After that what follows are meetings of different communities called by clerics and local [vested interest] politicians to protect their respective community and lastly the evergreen “Action-Reaction” theory comes into the picture. In the midst of this aghast journey, the humanity loses somewhere. One thing gets clear, sooner or later, that riots are politically motivated. Muzaffarnagar riots smacks of ethnic cleansing too because Muslims fled their places where they have a large bearing on the winability of a candidate in elections. The most affected and vulnerable in the riots were children and women. Scores of women were raped and children died. Victims are so terrified that even today for them returning their homes is not less than a nightmare.

Riots can go uncontrolled for one day or two but not for several days. How can state machinery let a meeting called by right wing radicals in spite of highly fragile situation prevailing in the area? Two inferences can be drawn out of these riots, either the government was complicit somewhere or it was incompetent to check the riots. If the government was complicit then it must have been dissolved out rightly. And if they were not competent enough to control the situation then they have no moral rights to run the government.

All the more frustrating was the callous comment by politicians and officials alike on victims’ plight. One of the top U.P govt. officials said that children were not dying from cold but of Pneumonia. Who would tell this gentleman that pneumonia is the fallout of severe cold affecting children badly? Neta Ji, the Party Chief, had described the victims taking refuge in the camps as professional beggars. So if they are professional beggars, then who runs this professional institution, bureaucracy or the government itself. Nothing can be worst mockery of poor populace than this one.

We used to read stories of a kind king who devoted himself to the betterment of his kingdom even at the cost of his own personal life. Now in the modern era, on the contrary, we have a king or rather a CM who prefers enjoying Bollywood dance in the name of Mahotsav for caring and rehabilitating the riots victims. Even as the victims were severing form the chilling cold in the open and waiting futilely for the relief, the whole U.P administration were enjoying Madhuri’s ek do teen dance.

Many of the young people including me have had a hope when Akhilesh Yadav was promoted as CM of the vast UP because of his clean image, educational background, young age and many other things. But in the course of 18 months tenure he failed miserably. May be because of his inability to govern or he is unable to free himself from the clutch of political heavyweights like Azam Khan, Mulayam Singh and Ram Gopal Yadav.

Let’s hope against the hope that the riots would not happen again.

*Mazid Khan is pursuing MBA at FMSR, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh.