The Toronto Star editorialized about the inept and prejudiced police who failed to do their jobs and the obvious inclination of the Central Govt. to oppress its non-Hindu minorities.
Asia Watch a New York-based human rights group has put its finger on one of Indias biggest problems: public security forces often collide with the majority Hindus against the minority Sikh and Muslim communities.
The agency has asked the Indian government to examine the police role in sectarian battles that have left at least 1210 dead and 4600 injured since Dec.6 when Hindu militants destroyed a mosque at Ayodhya in the province of Uttar Pradesh.
TV footage of the incident showed Para-military forces standing idly by as young fanatics attacked and dismantled the Muslim shrine.
And in the orgy of Hindu-Muslim slaughters that followed “almost 80 to 90% of the killings across Uttar Pradesh have been of Muslims with police bullets” says former Prime Minister V.P.Singh himself a Hindu.
This goes beyond the usual ineptitude of Indian police forces which receive minimal training.
It confirms what the minority communities have been saying all along: that members of law enforcement agencies let their own prejudices get in the way of providing basic protection to all citizens.
Sikhs in New Delhi had similar experiences when confronted by angry Hindu mobs in the wake of the 1984 assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. The pattern has been repeated in countless Hindu-Muslim clashes which get litte attention in the West.
India has rightly prided itself on its secular constitution unlike the neighboring Islamic state of Pakistan. Indeed the outrage that greeted the Ayodhya incident has reflected this democratic creed:
Prime Minister Narsimha Rao condemned it and pledged to rebuild the mosque; and editorial outrage was universal –The nation must hang its head in shame said the Hindustan Times; The republic besmirched lamented the Times; The death of a dream said the Statesman.
These declarations of sadness however need to be channeled into the most fundamental requirement of a democracy: that all the instruments of the state including police treat and protect all its citizens equally.
Article extracted from this publication >> December 30, 1992
