Violence in Sambhal . . . along expected lines of the Sangh’s Agenda | Humra Quraishi

27 November 2024

What is taking place in Sambhal in Uttar Pradesh is not just too shocking but along the expected format of the Sangh’s Agenda plans, getting executed in town after town. Pulling down age-old historic structures, silencing voices of dissent, killing and destroying all those trying to come up with facts. Above all, heaping charges on the victims of violence, that is, members of the minority community!

I’m writing this column in the backdrop of the communal violence that hit Sambhal in Uttar Pradesh. The context is the centuries-old Shahi mosque of this town, which has suddenly come into focus with the Right-Wing alleging it was built on a temple site and a survey team was sent to the mosque.

Disturbing shots of the build-ups and of the very handling of the situation by the government machinery under the Right-Wing rulers of the day… Five Muslim men were killed in the firing in Sambhal. And the latest news coming in is that lawyer Zafar Ali, chief of Mosque Sadar and Shahi Mosque Committee, representing the Shahi mosque side, has been detained for questioning by the police. Quite apparent, pressuring tactics were used to make him keep shut. Just a day back he had spoken out in that forthright way that he overheard orders of the police firing, and with that, it is the police force that killed and not the Muslims as alleged by the local administration. And now, with a man of the stature of lawyer Zafar Ali in the grip of the administration, the relays are just too unnerving and shocking … Leaving the Muslim minority community just too stunned and in a state of shock and dismay. They cannot even speak out and bare out basic facts! Otherwise, all possible charges could be heaped on them.

Opposition parties in Uttar Pradesh blamed the BJP for the violence in Sambhal, alleging the survey team was sent to the mosque by the ruling BJP party to nurture its "politics of hatred". Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav lashed out at the BJP, saying its government and the administration orchestrated the violence "to divert attention from electoral malpractice…A survey team was deliberately sent in the morning to disrupt discussions about the election. The intention was to create chaos so that no debate on election issues could happen,"

UP Congress chief Ajay Rai said the incidents of violence were increasing day by day in the state under the Yogi Adityanath government. "When the Chief Minister of the state himself gives statements like ’batenge toh katenge,’ then how can there be an atmosphere of peace in the state? This is a completely planned incident.”

The core fact is that today communal unleashes and blatant targeted attacks have crossed all limits. Instead of trying to find a way out of this vicious atmosphere, the political rulers of the day have been coming up with hate-dripping speeches! There seems a well-planned strategy to demoralize the Muslim community to such an extent they sit all too quiet and much too subdued in their mohallas and ghettos with just no relief. They are anyway facing severe discrimination on every possible front and the realities are only turning darker by the day.

Mind you, this strategy of the Sangh has been on for the last several years. I recall around the phase of the Babri Masjid demolition, Khushwant Singh had asked BJP’s K.R. Malkani that how many more masjids would the Sangh target and demolish! Khushwant was far-sighted and with that certain that the Babri Masjid destruction was the start of the Sangh’s Agenda plans to carry forward the destruction of many more structures, human and otherwise.

And when I interviewed Professor Irfan Habib he had gone on to warn:

“Such a post-factor rationalization of what was done on 6 December 1992, would place in jeopardy the fate of numerous historical monuments all over the country, an increasing number of which are being targeted for destruction by the communal Right-Wing forces.”

This Aligarh-based internationally known historian is the former chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research and also the former Professor of History at the Centre for Advanced Study in History at AMU; author of books on the Mughal rule; prominent amongst them, Agrarian System of Mughal India, An Atlas of Mughal Empire, Prehistory. He was forthright in his criticism of the Right-Wing forces and the destruction of the Babri Masjid that took place.

“There are no ’Left’ or ’Right’ Wing historians! All this is a creation of the BJP. If anyone speaks with a scientific outlook he’s called ’Leftist’ by them.” He had gone on to say, “There wasn’t a Hindu or Muslim reaction to the destruction of the Babri Masjid. The very destruction was an insult to the country and its citizens; an assault on the Indian secular consciousness. As an Indian I felt insulted …it was a blow to the image of my country.”

Professor Habib minced no words in stating that destruction could be repeated. And with that, the chances of other mosques getting targeted cannot be ruled out. During the course of the interview, I had asked him to comment on the Babri Masjid, whether it was built on a temple site or did it exist for centuries on that very site? Did the ASI conduct the excavation independently? Also, why those claims by the Right-Wing parties that they do possess evidence that the Ram Janambhoomi temple was originally there?

“Can’t say much about the competence of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to conduct rigorous, scientific and impartial excavations. One must remember that the archaeological finds are subject to a wide range of interpretations. If it is trying to find out whether the Babri Masjid was immediately built upon a temple than any stratum of lime-mortar bound rubble or medieval baked bricks or glazed pottery below the mosque should be enough to prove that such was not the case. If the search is on anything that could possibly belong to a non-Muslim shrine of any sort of any earlier time then almost anything could be defined as a temple relic: a pre-13 century carved stone or image or even a Kushana period brick, though such might easily have come from a domestic house. In that case the dispute could be unending; or could simply give the VHP the benefit of doubt and declare that ASI has spoken and decided in its favour.”

Today, as 2024 is fast coming to a close, the Muslim community in the country is facing a severe crisis as different alibis are being used by the rulers of the day to dent and demolish and destroy the very basics to a community. Day-to-day survival and its identity is getting targeted so very steadily and blatantly.