The conviction of Sajjan Kumar 34 years after the mass murders of Sikhs he led in Delhi has generated a predominantly political debate. With Rajiv Gandhi having dismissed the riots as no more than the earth shaking after a big tree falls, it is difficult for the Congress to shake off its association with that mass crime.
In the current whataboutery that dominates Indian debates they may believe they need to do no more than point to similar excesses of the BJP, especially in Gujarat. In the process a critical question will once again be brushed under the carpet: What is it about Indian cities that make them so vulnerable to political violence?
The extent of this vulnerability is not in doubt. Political violence has quietly emerged as the most important form of mass violence in urban India. The violence is not confined to cities with a reputation for aggressive behaviour. A city like Mumbai has all the demonstrations of culture. It has one of the more vibrant theatre traditions in India. Its citizens even line up in queues when needed. It is a city where women can usually travel alone quite late at night. Yet it is also a city where political violence around the Babri Masjid issue generated mass murders.
Criminal link
The rise of political violence will no doubt raise all kinds of issues about politicians. Fingers can be pointed at the rise of the lumpen element among them. Figures can be, and have been, found about the high levels of criminality in this class. This has in fact become so much the norm that candidates in elections do not appear to be particularly bothered by the Election Commission’s requirement that they declare the criminal cases against them.
Identifying mass political violence in our cities with the criminality of politicians would, however, be a case of putting the cart before the horse. Criminals would not be in politics if politics did not offer them the space to demonstrate their criminality. The uncomfortable fact is that this space for criminality has been generated by the political class in order to meet a demand of voters. Indians, particularly urban Indians, have become increasingly self-righteous. We do not need to put on our televisions for more than five minutes, or glance at tweets from more than a few eminent personalities, to notice the complete absence of introspection in public debate.
Each side in the debate promotes a very narrow self-interest usually gravitating towards one or the other political party. This approach completely removes the possibility of participants in a debate influencing each other. With rational debate being taken out of the equation politics begins to rely more on more muscular methods; methods that criminals are rather good at.
What makes matters worse is the ability of politicians to convert local acts of criminality into mass violence. And they have an unexpected teacher here. In the Salt Satyagraha, Gandhiji demonstrated that Indians can be mobilised around symbols as much as by specific demands. He was quite aware that such a form of mobilisation of large numbers without organisational control placed a great moral responsibility on the leadership to ensure things did not go out of hand. His insistence on non-violence was thus an essential condition to ensure his mass mobilisations retained their moral authority.
For modern Indian politicians the first part of the lesson is attractive while the latter is not. They try to identify symbols that bring together diverse groups of people. Arguably, the most successful of these efforts in recent times has been the Ram temple issue with its ability to reach out to diverse sets of Hindus. At more local levels of caste mobilisation, a general demand for reservations often plays a similar role. In neither case is there always sufficient commitment to ensure the mass mobilisation does not turn violent. Indeed, the competition for leadership of these mobilisations often prompts leaders to incite mass violence.
The intensity of the violence may make it seem that there is nothing to be done other than beat our breasts about the decline in the standards of politics. But we need to step back and recognise that this space for criminality has been created by reason and morality giving way to predetermined commitment to a political position.
Reclaiming the space for reason and morality is no doubt a long and arduous task, but it is important to start somewhere. It would be useful to begin by setting up a museum for the victims of mass violence in India on the lines of the Holocaust museum. It is by reminding ourselves, and future generations, of just how terrible the Sikh riots, the Gujarat riots, the riots in Mumbai and elsewhere have been that we begin to make it more difficult for them to happen again.
The writer is Professor, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru