A senior police official argues that there are “absolutely no biases” within the force. That is far from the truth, says Ram Punyani, an activist working on communal issues. At a workshop conducted for lower-ranking policemen, Punyani said it was found that all of them read Saamna (a daily published by the Shiv Sena, a fundamentalist political party). One of the policemen said, “If they can eat the cow, they can do anything.”
Its very interesting to note the break-up of policemen in various states and the associated violence.
and then the big question Will more Muslims in India’s police forces help combat communal violence?
PRAVEEN SWAMI in the Frontline
Two of the States with the best record of containing communal violence in the post-Independence period – West Bengal and Kerala – have a poor record on ensuring adequate representation of Muslims in the police. While a little over a quarter of the population of West Bengal is Muslim, the third highest figure after Jammu and Kashmir and Assam, just over 7 per cent of its police force is drawn from the Muslim community. Kerala, where almost 13 per cent of the police force is Muslim, does somewhat better – but this figure still falls well short of proportional representation. Indeed, the percentage-point gap between Muslim representation in the police force and among the general population is worse in West Bengal and Kerala than in Gujarat and Maharashtra. This hammers home the fact that more representative police forces are not necessarily less partisan.
By way of contrast, Andhra Pradesh has succeeded in ensuring more-than-adequate representation for Muslims in the police, but not in containing communal violence or bias. Of the Andhra Pradesh Police’s 77,850 personnel, 10,312 are Muslims, making it the only State where the community has a greater representation in service than the population as a whole. Yet, the city of Hyderabad has seen some of the worst and most sustained urban communal violence in India, and the police in Andhra Pradesh have often faced allegations of bias. Despite the high representation of Muslims in the Andhra Pradesh Police, Muslim political organisations have sometimes charged the force with using concern over terrorism as a means to harass the community as a whole.
As the Lal Bahadur Shastri Academy’s notes point out, the murder of Hindus provokes considerably more police interest than the killings of Muslims. During 1980, 89 Hindus and 275 Muslims died in communal violence. The police arrested 5,457 Hindus and 5,743 Muslims for their alleged role in the rioting. “This shows,” the notes pithily point out, “that for each Hindu who was killed in the riots, 5743/89 = 64 Muslims were arrested, whereas for each Muslim casualty [sic; fatality] 5457/275 = 20 Hindus were arrested.”
To attribute these actions only to police bias, though, fails to explain why some States have done so much better than others in containing communal violence. There is, after all, no a priori reason to believe that an “average Hindu” constable in Delhi is less hostage to communal biases than his “average Hindu” counterparts in Ahmedabad or Mumbai – and yet, India’s capital has seen no anti-Muslim pogrom of significance since 1947.
Similarly, there is no evidence that the police forces of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have been subject to ideological transformation since the rise of Laloo Prasad Yadav or Mulayam Singh Yadav. Although both States have seen episodic communal violence in recent years, the police have succeeded in ensuring that the clashes did not escalate into the generalised pogroms that these States witnessed regularly two decades ago.
The whole point is that more Muslim representation in Police doesn’t matter if Muslims are not at the higher level. You can’t expect from a Muslim constable to raise his voice against atrocities against a particular community. The Gujarat pogrom was conducted on a very planned basis which took the top officials into confidence. The truth of matter is that the police cannot be impartial in spite of efforts to make them just because they are in a society which in heavily divided on religious lines. The army fairs much better because they are away from society and feeling of patriotism and discipline is deep rooted in them. The police force is a loosely held organization, compared to the army, which has his biases. They can easily be influenced by political leaders for their ulterior motives. Any attempt to politicize the army could be lethal for the existence of peace in the country and this is precisely the reason I condemn the recent attempt by Sonia Gandhi to address the chief of army at an army club on vijay divas.
The problem is that Muslims have tolerated the “Paper Secularism” as the Hindus have been defining ever since the Congress was formed in the 19th century. This being true was the reason for the partition of India. You should not be taken by surprise by the news that before parition of the country only Hindu OBCs were having reservation and in 1950, Sikhs were added to this list. In 1990 Buddhists were added and there is hardly a reservation for Muslims and Christians. So called merit has been a shield as if these two communities can not be meritorious. The shame is this continues un-abated and the so called meritorious people get to join the offices and what not on the advantage of these ‘links’ and not the so called merit. The point of sadness is that the people who have got their links and in turn merit encashed still want this undeclared reservation, so the strike at AIMS. What the poor from north India can expect from these striking docs (dogs).Having all the merit, we find the car riders!! on any city road. You can simply make out what merit they must be having except that they are born….
The live exathemple the kashmiri pandits. what they had back home was monopoly but as their population increased, they found that the space is not enough, Jaggmohan made them to run as they truly thought that the days are not far when equally educated muslim youth of Kashmir will compete for their share as well. The ‘Paper Secular’ India irrecpective of norht or south have firm legislations that the pandits get 10% reservation and they have got more than they used to grab in the so called lopsided ‘Kashmiriyat’ . The crux of matter is that Muslims will get only Commissions and nothing else.
No matter what you do, they are bent upon proving the Pakistanis right, that the India was supposed to be for Hindus only so the Muslim League did right to get their country. Right now we find that India is a ghetto in between Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. You can not ask for any better example of cowards than the so called upper castes because they are the people who call their Muslim neighbour in town or fields to kill the rare cobra (so much so for the god) and these criminals have teeth to say that Muslims eat cow, they are able to do anything. The criminals for self serving organisation called RSS are brought up on these same lame rhetoric.
My point is that cow may be dear to you but why others are supposed to adhere to your belief. The West eats beef and you are ready to offer you female folk to them, why you have problem with Indian Mulsims only. The bottom line is that Muslims are the only Indian others are Hindus, Sikhs etc only.
The right thinking people should not tolerate the undue advantages given to these ‘upper castes’ (what can be upper in a caste, nobody other than these crimanls can define). Why to have them the special package of Income Tax. The Great Mughal Aurangzeb was the only administrator who could extract any tax from these criminals. As we all know that all the rulers used to collect tax to run the country and so did he, but these buggers who had begging as right complain that the emperor taxed them calling the tax jizia. Weren’t these criminals ever ready to pay any tax as long as they have the best of food (earned using fraudulant means like being priest, so much so for merit except that so called lower castes were not allowed to learn or do the job) and no hard work.
My final call to these creatures is that if they want to call themselves ‘Human’ and be absolved of all the ills they have been doing, come and accept all people equal by words and deed. The final equaliser is not far from you to diminish your so called meritorious standing.
I am feeling terribly secular today. I will eat beef today. Now, again I may feel very secular this Christmas and may eat pork. Well, I am the Prime Minister…got a nation to feed! Does Soniaji eat pork? Got to ask her this.
You have a good blog. I will be here, plugging in my insane insights, which come in the form extreme satire. I am usually at the The 100% unofficial blog of the Indian Prime Minister (blog.gupsup.com)
But since this is my first post here, I will put in my standard disclaimer:
What I write is designed to demonstrate my skills with HTML: Hyper Text Marked Lies. It will show lies in any of the popular, unpopular or controversial browsers. I not pro or anti any religion, faith or philosophy. I do not care about accuracy of Syntax in English, C , Java or HTML. Please feel free to experience bugs and crashes as I write! And yes I am not the Prime Minister of India
It is precisely the kind of hatred and prejudice that Kaatib displays that feeds the extreme elements on the other side (e.g. any reasonable person will see how ridiculous his arguments on the Kashmiri Pandits is). Extremists do not exist in a vacuum. The extreme elements on both sides feed on each other. They are both condemnable and should be put down. It is fortunate that a majority of people on both sides are not bitten by this ‘hatred’ bug that Kaatib displays.
I am currently in Chennai in India and am in an apartment building with a Muslim family as well as a couple of Christian ones, besides the others who are Hindus of various castes. I am gratified to see the harmony everybody lives in, sharing foods associated with their festivals and helping each other at times of need. That is the real India, though there are warts and defects everywhere and occasional breakdowns.
Girish,
Yeah thats the victimized feeling you see. You build imaginary situations around you and also aggravate the existing ones. You add some spice and you have a recipe to incite passions!