VARANASER; Riots are no strangers to this city. However, it is the first time since the late seventies that communal unrest has come to creating a permanent schism between two communities. The administration on spar, with the near proverbial “acts of omission and commission” has only alienated the two communities further.

On hindsight, it can be safely said the riots this time were planned and that the plotting was the handiwork of Hindu fund a mentalists. The fact that the ruling party no doubt emboldened them to take the   lead The result, in any case, was that the minority community reciprocated in the same coin.

The first killings followed a religious procession taken out by a “club” of Hindu youths. This particular club there is many such clubs in Varanasi has as its main patron sitting MLA of the ruling party. Eyewitness said the procession, while on its way to the immersion ghats, passed through the Madanpura locality, populated mostly by Muslims.

As the procession wended its way through the area, overzealous youth among it were said to have shouted not only full throated Hindu slogans but insults that hurt Muslim sentiments. Despite this the procession crossed the sensitive locality without any incident; the violence was perhaps destined to take place, but elsewhere.

Stray members of the minority community were grabbed by militant Hindu youth and lynched. In the Godowlia market. One young man was pulled out of a cinema theater. All the four to five men who fell victim were dealt in the same brutal way stoned and then burnt to death after kerosene was poured over them.

The killings were ruthless and fast members of the minority community could at do a thing, the authority’s clamped curfew, before they could retaliate

But Madanpura struck back on November 13. Only four days after the brutal killings in Godowlia market, the administration decided the danger was over. Curfew was relaxed for varying durations in the nine police station areas of the city where it was imposed. On the first day, things passed off peacefully. Buoyed, the authorities increased the duration of the curfew relaxation period a move that turned out to be a mistake.

The incidents of November 13 were as immaculately planned out as those of November 8, But the plotters, though of the same bent of mind, were different, Bran dishing meat cleavers they came rushing out of narrow congested Janes of Madanpura and attacked men and women trying to beat the curfew relaxation deadline.

Seven people were killed that afternoon and another 11 were taken to various hospitals, cut and bleeding from a dozen places. One of the injured later died.

When the killers went about carrying out their deadly chore, the cops were there in force but failed to do a thing, their laxity and the overconfidence of the administration are as much to blame for the deaths of November as the men who killed

The post violence operations of the police on both the occasions are also open to question. Answers to which would not only lay open the lawn forcing agencies to charges of being partisan in their dealings but would also put a question mark on their ability 10 handle such crisis situations.

On November 8, t00, the police had failed. A large contingent had been deployed in the area to oversee the procession, However, when innocent members of the minority community were being, massacred they were nowhere.

Article extracted from this publication >> November 29, 1991