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Vadodara crisis : Tragedy averted |
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B.I. Saini
Vadodara could have become another post-Godhra riots case if the Centre and the Supreme Court had not intervened effectively. The ill-advised demolition of the 300-year old dargah (shrine) of a sufi saint by the Municipal Authorities had created a situation where the police forces were unable to put down the violence and restore the confidence of the people in the impartiality of the administration. In the circumstances, after waiting for a day, the Centre made it plain to the Gujarat Government and Chief Minister Narendra Modi that they must take effective steps to restore law and order. Luckily better sense prevailed and the Chief Minister himself requested the Centre to deploy the Army in the riot-torn city. The impact was immediate and within a matter of days, the situation is well set to return to normal despite the problem of demolition of the dargah.
It is apparent that the municipal corporation which is controlled by the BJP acted in unnecessary haste to demolish the dargah. Negotiations with the Muslim community were going on and it is within the realm of possibility that an amicable solution could have been worked out. There is no challenge to the authorities’ objective of removing encroachments on public land, be it by ordinary citizens or by religious institutions. But in the instant case, the dargah appears to have come up hundreds of years back when the road it was said to be obstructing had not even been thought of. It stretches one’s credibility to imagine that this was an unauthorised structure when even the rules and regulations of the municipal corporation had not been framed at the time it was built.
The role of the police forces during the days of communal violence in Vadodara is not anything to write home about. There are any number of reports that the police and even some of the senior officers failed to respond to the people’s appeal for protection from frenzied mobs targeting a section of the community. Perhaps nothing better could be expected from a police force which has got a new Director General of Police who could not be bothered to take action to check violence during the post-Godhra riots of 2002.
The effective action taken by the Centre as well as the State Government this time is in sharp contrast with the situation which prevailed during the 2002 riots. As brought out by late President K.R. Narayanan, the then Government at the Centre headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee failed to act promptly on his advice for quick deployment of the Army in Gujarat to check the communal conflagration. This resulted in the loss of hundreds of lives.
The High Court order directing the police and other authorities to take immediate steps for the removal of encroachments by religious structures on public space brings out the dangers of judicial activism, if pushed to the extreme. The order now stayed by the Supreme Court may have further aggravated the situation.
The biggest lesson to be learnt from the Vadodara episode is that firm action, which was not forthcoming at the time of the post-Godhra riots, can effectively defuse such situations and restore law and order.
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