NEW DELHI: Riot police beat back mobs of Hindu nationalists trying to reach Parliament for a massive demonstration to demand new elections.
Hundreds of people charged police lines at. A crossroads two miles from the government complex but retreated under volleys of tear gas and blows from long bamboo riot sticks.
In the largest security operation ever seen in the capital, police sealed off the lawns outside Parliament with razor-edged wire to block an antigovernment rally by the rightwing Bharatiya Janata Party.
Clashes were reported at several of the five assembly points where supporters of the militant party gathered to march toward the red sandstone government complex.
Demonstrators waved their arms and shouted “Long Live Lord Ram.”
Reports saw police swing their clubs at the backs and heads of the demonstrators, but there appeared to be no serious injuries.
The government banned the rally, fearing it may reignite Hindu Muslim riots that claimed the lives of nearly 2,000 people after Hindu zealots demolished a centuries old mosque in December.
With the governing Congress Party weakened and increasingly ineffective, the night wing’s rising influence on the Indian subcontinent could mean further trouble for this huge multi religious, multiethnic society.
It even has the potential to spill over India’s borders, affecting Muslims in Afghanistan and Buddhist nationalists in Sri Lanka.
More than 200,000 policemen armed with wooden clubs and rifles had massed behind barbed wire and iron fencing near Parliament.
The massive security crackdown, the largest ever seen in India’s capital, paralyzed the sprawling city but succeeded in preventing widespread violence by militant Hindu fundamentalists who have vowed to bring down the secular government of the world’s largest democracy and replace it with a rightwing Hindu State, Many arrests were voluntary and peaceful.
But hundreds of people were pushed and kicked onto buses and driven to makeshift detention camps in three sports stadiums to join more than 20,000 people reported arrested here the last week of February.
Indian news services said at least 60,000 people were pulled from trains, arrested in their homes and otherwise detained across the country in an attempt to block Hindus from attending the political rally, Analysts said the heavy-handed tactics by tens of thousands of riot police and paramilitary troops who turned the heart of New Delhi into a virtual armed camp was likely to increase polarization in the country and opposition to the beleaguered minority government of Prime Minister P.V.Narasimha Rao, “We’ve been saved from what could have been a fairly disastrous day,” said Dr.Rajni Kothari, a respected political analyst and human rights activist. “But there is no improvement”
The rally was called by the rightwing Bharatiya Janata Party, India’s main opposition party, once a political fringe group, the BJP has ridden a wave of Hindu nationalism and anti-Muslim militancy since the destruction by Hindu zealots of a disputed 16th century mosque in the north Indian town of Ayodhya Dec.6 during what was billed as a peaceful religious ceremony.
As an uneasy calm returned to New Delhi by late afternoon, BJP leaders complained at a news conference that police used unwarranted force to block a peaceful rally, they said 1,000 protesters were injured and 35,000 arrested.
But police Chief Mulhand Behair Kanshal told reporters that only 88 people were injured and 135 were arrested, including 110 members of Parliament. Rajesh Pilot, the minister for internal security, said the crackdown was necessary, given the explosion of Hindu Muslim violence since December.
All roads into New Delhi were heavily barricaded, and the city’s center was cordoned off as helmeted police on foot and horseback blocked all traffic with wire fences and roadblocks made of oil drums. Major streets were deserted; schools and shops were closed; offices were empty as residents stayed home.
The “Boat Club,” a popular esplanade near the Parliament where the rally was to be held, was blocked by several thousand police and thick rolls of razor lipped concertina wire,
Police snipers were posted atop the government complex of looming, red sandstone buildings.
Article extracted from this publication >> March 5, 1993
