Why Bombay Burned
D'MONTE 5, DARRYL
A CRISIS OF COMMUNALISM Why Bombay Burned BY DARRYL D'MONTE Bombay An Indian journalist visiting Karachi in early May was persistently asked about the condition of the Moslems in India. He...
...In a little over a week beginning May 18, India's commercial and industrial capital was engulfed in a wave of bloody communal riots that left 230 dead and perhaps 50,000 people homeless...
...As a consequence, Hindus have tended to see the "unseen hand" of Arab money behind the construction of many mosques across the country and the arming of Moslems...
...In outlying areas like Bhiwandi, where a kind of parallel administration exists, there is a relentless free-for-all...
...For their part, Moslems are saying that they should be the first to attack the next time, that it is the only way to deal with militant Hindus...
...The immediate blame for the trouble can be squarely placed on the Shiv Sena, an avowedly Hindu and Maharashtrian organization (Bombay is the capital of the Maharashtra State) that has been agitating for a better deal for local, Mara-thi-speaking citizens from its founding in 1966...
...In a public speech in April, Thackeray, an unabashed admirer of Hitler, used a derogatory Marathi expression meaning "circumcised" in referring to Moslems...
...The Shiv Sena, which has been straining at its leash ever since it faded into semiob-scurity in recent years and found itself losing out on most of the more lucrative protection rackets and underworld deals, is making a determined bid to take over such territories, mini-mafia style...
...But if the provocation was undeniably the Shiv Sena's attempt to flex its muscle, the causes of the conflict go far deeper...
...The present Chief Minister, Vas-antrao Patil, is aged, infirm and racked by internal party fighting...
...The object was clear: to rid these areas of their rag-and-burlap homes so that slumlords could resell the sites at a vast profit...
...He replied that in the Northern states, in the Hindi-speaking hinterland of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the situation was always a bit perilous, but that in modern, prosperous Bombay, where he lived, the two communities existed in perfect amity...
...The savagery has left everyone shaken...
...These suspicions were strengthened by the much-publicized conversion of a few Harijans (untouchables) to Islam in south India...
...Worse, when the police came upon Moslem attackers, as they did in several shanty areas, they opened fire on the mobs without hesitation...
...The prefix "Shiv" comes from Shivaji, the 17th-century Maratha warlord who held the Moslem conquerors of India at bay...
...The Moslems had merged with their surroundings in the poorer sections...
...Last January, its leader, Bal Thackeray, urged the formation of pro-Hindu parties called the Hindu Maha Sangh—a move clearly intended to stake his claim as the leader of all members of the majority community and not simply the disgruntled Maharashtrians who have made the Shiv Sena a purely urban phenomenon, confined to Bombay and Poona...
...their presence became apparent only when minor, localized, skirmishes broke out...
...Underlying the problem is the unchecked growth of this metropolis—a magnet that draws to it the dispossessed from villages throughout the country...
...lem sections came under severe attack from wielders of homemade gasoline bombs, knives, sticks and stones—and soon began retaliating with equal ferocity...
...Another reason why Bombay burned for several days is to be found in the fact that the victims, both Moslem and Hindu, were inevitably slum dwellers—residents of the "unintended city" that has proliferated everywhere...
...Then MosDarryl D'Monte frequently writes on Indian affairs for The New Leader...
...Many of the small town's powerlooms are not registered, enabling the owners to avoid taxes, hire and fire workers as they please, and tap electricity from the main lines...
...The celebration, meant to rekindle pride in a glorious Hindu past, had been banned since 1970 when it triggered fierce communal clashes...
...In the wake of tensions in other parts of the country—notably Punjab, where Sikhs have been fighting what they consider Hindu hegemony, and earlier Assam, where the Hindu population resents the entry of Moslem migrants from Bangladesh—there has been a gradual yet perceptible resurgence of Hindu nationalism everywhere...
...Legendary characters have risen from this underbelly of the city—men like Haji Mastan, who has had the gall to act in a Hindi film based on his eventful life...
...Now, with the two camps piling up arms and on guard, even trivial incidents could escalate into fullblown conflicts...
...Half the city's population lives in slums or simply on the pavements...
...Although they took the step to register their protest against the oppression they faced from caste Hindus, the allegation was that their conversion was oiled by petrodollars...
...The police, meanwhile, demonstrated their rank communalism by refusing to respond to desperate Moslem appeals for protection, or by dispersing Moslem youths who had assembled to fight back the marauders...
...The large-scale exodus of Indian Moslem workers to the Gulf States, a source of new-found prosperity, has aroused envy...
...A petty criminal society, consisting of rack-renters, pickpockets, scrap collectors, and small-time thieves has bred in this environment...
...Thus the educated middle-class among them, too, wonder whether the Hindus have been made to feel like a minority in a country where they are the overwhelming majority...
...They were spreading like cancer, he went on, and should be excised accordingly...
...Now, suddenly, citizens are being painfully reminded that religious identities remain strong...
...Even during the conflagration following partition in 1947, Bombay had not witnessed anything like this...
...The spark came when the state government agreed to let Hindu groups in Bhiwandi, a small town on the outskirts of Bombay that is 55 percent Moslem, hold the Shiv Jayan-ti procession...
...The hand of the underworld has been quite evident...
...Moreover, because the city has direct links with the countryside through migrants retaining family ties in the villages, any shock waves here are bound to reverberate in the potentially more communally explosive areas in north...
...Many of the poor shanty towns near Bhiwandi were indiscriminately attacked...
...A significant percentage of the lumpen elements happen to be Moslem, particularly in such profitable occupations as smuggling Scotch and watches into the city, and pilfering goods from Bombay's docks...
...Given the tremendous shortage of space, in prime shanty areas slumlords " sell" 15-square-foot plots barely adequate for a hovel for as much as $2,000...
...Only days after he returned home, however, that myth was forever shattered...
...Only the arrival of the Indian Army put an end to the strife...
...Yet unless the government attends to Bombay's pressing problems, the most vulnerable groups—slum dwellers generally and Moslems specifically—will remain insecure, creating a permanently volatile situation...
...The booming city, with a population of around 8.5 million, had seemed so dedicated to the pursuit of making money that animosities between communities and castes appeared to have been forgotten...
...So the lines between the Hindu and Moslem communities in Bombay—both geographically and psychologically—promise to be drawn much more sharply than ever before...
...And all of this has persuaded the Hindus that it is high time they asserted their rights—hence their insistence on holding the Shiv Jayanti procession this year...
...Previously, the Shiv Sena had reserved its ire for "outsiders" like the south Indians, who have cornered most of the clerical jobs in the city and have moved en masse into the coveted hawking zones...
...Urdu magazines picked up these remarks and embellished them...
...Rumor has it that Mastan has said his men should spare no expense in arming themselves now...
...First the Shiv Sena (Shivaji Army) enforced bandhs, or closures of shops, restaurants and other establishments in many parts of this port city...
...Successive Chief Ministers of Maharashtra, under her benign eye, have treated Bombay as a virtually inexhaustible source of funds for Congress I. One of them, Abdul Rehman Antulay, was a past master in the art of milking high-rise apartment builders and smugglers in return for official favors, and lost his job after being exposed...
...An unfounded belief that Indian Moslems secretly owe their allegiance to Pakistan also persists...
...Moslem leaders warned that this might be the case again, and violence not only erupted in the noted powerloom textile center but quickly spread to Bombay...
...Some recent trends have heightened the disquiet...
...Bombay will never be the same again" is a frequent refrain, and indeed it will not...
...It explains how whole shantytowns where notorious smugglers and slumlords hold sway were left untouched, as were some poor middle-class precincts...
...It is hard, in any outbreak of violence in India, not to point the finger at Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her Congress I Party for their negligence or sheer manipulation...
...Instead of trying to come to terms with this breakdown of city services, the authorities merely evict the hapless slumdwellers periodically, putting an even higher premium on land...
Vol. 67 • May 1984 • No. 69
