Ashutosh Varshney's pogrom of rationality

Ashutosh Varshney writes-

In the historical scale of rioting, where do the recent Delhi riots belong? And what is their larger political significance?

 The answer is that this riot is similar to the 1992 riot. Then the issue was the destruction of the Babri Masjid. This time it was triggered by the Citizenship Amendment Act. In other words, in both cases violent protests by Muslims triggered a reaction in which the majority community inflicted higher casualties. It must be said that in 1992 most Muslims were killed by police bullets.  The police shot 25 people after one of their number was stabbed.This time the Police- because of the pusillanimous attitude of the Police Chief-  was taking casualties rather than getting on top of the situation. But now a new Police Chief has come in the violence has stopped.

What was the larger political significance of Muslim opposition to the Ram Temple? The answer is that the BJP emerged as a national party able to form a Government at the Center. The Ram Mandir, by a decision of the Supreme Court, will be built.

What is the larger political significance of the recent riot? It is early days yet but I think it forebodes a split within the AAP. It is now clear that some of its Muslim MLAs are linked to bad actors. But a former AAP MLA who switched sides seems to have similar connections with even more fearsome Hindu thugs and gangsters.
Still, the fact is, as illegal colonies are regularized there is going to be plenty of opportunities for 'land sharks' and extortionists and so forth. This means that going forward there are going to be turf wars within AAP which will polarize along Muslim-non Muslim lines with each side having its own gangsters. But, as happened in Mumbai, the Muslim gangsters will get pushed out gradually. Kejriwal  has been very good at ridding himself of rivals but, because of the strength of the BJP, he will have to be very careful not to let his Muslim MLAs alienate Hindus too much. He was fortunate that the Police was under the control of the Center and that it gets the blame. Still, it must be said, the BJP benefits by this revival of the image of the fanatical Muslim out for blood.

Over all, the political significance of the recent riot is that the BJP gets a boost at a time when economic prospects are dismal. Congress and the Left have been obliterated.  The future is about regional parties with an 'insurgent', opportunistic, element while the BJP holds the center- probably in a coalition as Economic woes multiply.

Varshney takes a different view-

The first question is statistical. During early to mid-1990s, Steven Wilkinson, now teaching at Yale, and I, set up a database for all recorded Hindu-Muslim riots between 1950-1995. We did not know then that our dataset would become standard statistical reference for scholars and journalists. We simply put together the best available numbers to lend a systematic empirical base to our own books, published by Yale and Cambridge University Presses in the 2000s. Our dataset, since then, has been extended till the 2010s by younger scholars, based in the US and UK.
These statistics show that the recent riots — let me call them Delhi 2020 — are Delhi’s biggest Hindu-Muslim riots since 1950. During Partition, the city was the site of gruesome communal violence, and we also have narratives about leaders like Nehru jumping into rioting crowds trying to stop the violence. But we don’t have reliable numbers. After 1950, we do.

During the Nehru years, Delhi had several small riots, but given how resolutely the state fought what it called the “communal poison”, the sparks did not become fires. It is only in November 1966 and May 1974 that riots led to more than 5 deaths. Delhi’s largest Hindu-Muslim riots took place after the destruction of the Ayodhya mosque. We recorded 39 deaths in December 1992.
Delhi 2020 has already gone beyond Delhi 1992, even though the numbers are not yet final. Its scale is only exceeded by Delhi 1984, when horrific anti-Sikh violence rocked the city. Scholars are convinced that the anti-Sikh riots were pogroms, defined by social sciences as a special class of riots when the police, instead of acting neutrally to crush riots, looks on while mobs go on a rampage against minorities, or it explicitly aids such violent mobs.

What these figures show is that when Muslims start any trouble in Delhi they are immediately shot by the police. The City has a huge military presence. However, if the Police Commissioner is cowardly then blood gets spilt.

This takes us to the larger political significance of Delhi 2020. A raging issue in the ongoing debate is whether Delhi 2020 is a pogrom, not simply a riot.

This cretin thinks some ongoing debate between stupid academics has great importance.

To some, this is a merely academic debate, which will not alleviate the pain and suffering of the victims. There is considerable merit in this claim, but only if we only confine our analysis to the current victims. If we think of the future, the significance of how to categorise the riots will become transparent.

Why? Nobody in Delhi cares whether there was a 'pogrom' or a 'holocaust' or a 'massacre' or a 'genocide' in 1984. What matters is that hardly anybody has gone to jail for what happened. Thus, for all practical purposes, History's verdict is the Sikhs got what was coming to them.

In case Delhi 2020 is a pogrom and it reappears elsewhere, let us be clear that the future victims will be abjectly helpless.

If a minority attacks the police and people from the majority community, it gets stomped. Sadly, the abjectly helpless do become victims because it is less risky and more convenient to kill innocent people rather than go after guys with knives and molotov cocktails. Still, the police do shoot some of them and many are eventually hunted down.

Varshney seems to think that if a riot is called a pogrom then by some onomastic magic lots of innocent people die all over the place. Why? Well the word 'pogrom' refers to Cossacks slaughtering Jews in Imperial Russia. Thus 'abject helplessness' is par for the course. On the other hand, if it is discovered that the riot was actually a 'holocaust' then Gas Chambers and Concentration Camps must feature.

But what's really important is that you can get a bigger grant for researching a pogrom rather than a riot.

Those committed to a pluralistic India must be ready for an eventuality of the worst kind.

But which is the 'worst kind'? Mounted Cossacks killing Jews while a Fiddler on the Roof plays sad tunes? Is that we must ready ourselves for? Or is it rather for the spectacle of Gas Chambers going up all over the place?

After reading and watching about 50 reports, I am convinced that the first day of Delhi violence was not a pogrom. Rather, it met the classic description of a riot, defined by conflict scholarship as a violent clash between two groups or mobs, in this case one in favour of the Citizenship Amendment Act and another against. But the next two days began to look like a pogrom, as the police watched attacks on the Muslims and was either unable to intervene, or unwilling to do so, while some cops clearly abetted the violence. Luckily, before such behaviour turned into the gruesome horrors of Delhi 1984, the violence came to a halt.

But we now know what really happened. The police were demoralized. Their Chief was more concerned about media criticism than with doing his job. He has been replaced and so things have calmed down.

There was no pogrom. The death toll would have been less than in 1992 if the police had shot twenty or thirty members of any mob which attacked one of their own.

Three elementary political points are worthy of note. First, outside Kashmir, Delhi is India’s most heavily policed city. Delhi is also extensively covered by the media, national and international, capturing every newsworthy slice of the unfolding reality. Delhi is not comparable to the villages of Muzaffarnagar where, in September 2013, rioters could overwhelm the meagre police presence. If such violence can happen in Delhi, it can easily take place elsewhere.

If the police are shit at their jobs and if minorities turn murderous and end up being slaughtered wholesale.

Muslims in the BJP-ruled states are especially vulnerable.

No, because the nutters get shot immediately. In UP, with its vast population, only 21 people have been killed. Their families will get no compensation. Thus there is no incentive for the thing.

Leaving aside Delhi, India’s police is under state, not central, control. If the BJP states push the police against the Muslims, only the conscientious and brave police officers will resist.

But then they will be transferred. Does Varshney really not understand how the system works?

Can one imagine the cruelties and the suffering, especially in the distant outposts, away from the media gaze?

There is no need for people in Delhi to imagine anything. Most have relatives in UP or Bihar or Haryana etc. They visit their relatives and can see things for themselves. In any case, camera phones and the internet have spread to the villages. Varshney is hinting that some invisible pogrom is happening in some remote village. But, this isn't true. No doubt, Muslims can be ethnically cleansed in parts of India just as Hindus can be ethnically cleansed in Pakistan or Bangladesh. But it isn't happening at the moment. Why? I personally think it is because Muslim Labor power is too valuable. Why kill those whom you can otherwise exploit?

Second, the argument about police failure, raised in some quarters, is highly suspect. It implies that the cops were committed to neutrality as a functioning principle, and to maintenance of law and order as a professional imperative, but could not deliver, even though they tried.

Nonsense! We know that the police rank and file were angry at their Chief. They felt demoralized. It seemed they would get the blame if they did anything or if they did nothing. But it is safer to do nothing. Shooting rioters involves some risk because bad guys have guns too- albeit 'country-made' ones.

Only when a new Police Chief was appointed was morale restored. But once people knew the cops meant business, the nutters ran away.

This is hardly an inference one can draw, if cops allowed the lower-level politicians of the ruling party to spew hateful provocations in their presence and also told the reporters they had no instructions to act, even as violence took control of the streets.

Cops don't act on speeches by Legislators. They report them but that is all. Some people may consider Varshney to be spewing 'hateful provocation'. But the police can't take any action against him unless he has broken the law. That is a legal question.

Legally, no instructions from the government are necessary for the cops to stop killings. The police can intervene on its own.

Legally, the police are bound to follow the chain of command. They can't use lethal force unless it is sanctioned. Consider what happened in 1992. An IPS officer- not some constable- took the initiative to start shooting into a mob. His juniors followed his example. That ended the riot. The same thing could have happened in the same place some 28 years later. But no IPS man came forward to shoulder the responsibility. Instead the Police Chief was only concerned not to be blamed by the Media for any killings.

Third, why would India’s top leadership allow riots in its great moment of diplomatic glory?

They didn't 'allow' it. North East Delhi doesn't matter to Lutyen's Delhi. I was in Chanakyapuri during the anti-Sikh riots. I saw no evidence of what was happening. It was a case of out of sight, out of mind.

The leader of the world’s most powerful nation was in the country to pay tribute to India, the pictures of Trump, his family and India’s leader were on the front pages, and it seemed as though India’s rising power was given an exuberant broadcast all over the world. Even Beijing was paying attention. Within the next 48 hours, Delhi’s riots ruled the front pages. Glory quickly metamorphosed into concern, even shame. Is this how a rising India deals with its citizens?

Yes. India shoots rioters. People are cool with that because Muslims are feared where they are not hated. China, of course, puts potential rioters into re-education centers but India has a long way to go to catch up with China. As for the USA, it processes half a million through its Detention and Deportation facilities. India's Court ordered Detention centers have about a thousand residents. But that may change. If, in 1992 Muslims were protesting about a Temple which will only now be built; it may be that ten years from now the thing they fear will be a reality.

We witnessed what social scientists call the principal-agent problem in its ugliest form.

No we didn't. The BJP is supposed to be tough on Muslim mobs. Modi first made his name for precisely that reason. Amit Shah gained fame for 'encounter killing' Muslim gangsters. Yogi Adityanath has proved himself in U.P. True, few Muslims have been killed but this is because all their nutters are afraid of being killed.
In Delhi, one former AAP politician now with the BJP gave the police 3 days to end the nuisance and things panned out according to his time-table. Delhi got a new Police Chief.
Which BJP 'agents' have been guilty of appeasing Muslims? None at all. Varshney must know that Trump isn't a great fan of Islam. Indeed, in Europe, the tide has decisively turned against 'multi-culti'. Merkel's party allied with a Neo-Nazi party in one of the States. Within India, Congress is now an ally of the Shiv Sena. Rahul is a sacred thread wearing Brahman, Priyanka keeps visiting Temples, Kejriwal recites the Hanuman Chalisa, Owaisi rushes to muzzle a girl who shouts 'Pakistan Zindabad'... the world has changed while Varshney dreams of pogroms and holocausts.

When bigoted leaders are chosen to lead state governments, when terror-indicted foot soldiers are picked to run for Parliament, when ministers shouting in campaigns “goli maaro saalon ko… (shoot the traitors)” go unpunished,

because what they are doing is not a crime. It is a factual statement of what should and, henceforth in Delhi, will happen.

a recognisably clear incentive structure is created within the party.

Rubbish! A clear incentive structure stipulates rewards and penalties. So far as we know, there are no 'wets' within the BJP. We don't see the PM dismissing anyone for being too pro-Muslim. Nor do we see any special reward for punishing them precisely because the threat of punishment is sufficient to ensure the thing isn't meted out on any substantial scale.

Those displaying larger communal bigotry, those publicly abusing political dissenters as seditious traitors, think that they will be rewarded by the party.

Why? Surely, the entire party has the same attitude? Those who are rewarded are the one's who are highly effective in getting votes.

The tap can be turned off by the bosses, as happened after three days last week, but the agents below can also turn on the tap without any explicit instructions from the principals above.

Varshney must know that the problem began and ended with a stupid and cowardly Police Chief. The thing is the man was honest as far as money is concerned. He only lost the confidence of his men after lawyers beat up cops and he did nothing. Maybe Amit Shah should have kept a closer watch on him but only hindsight has 20/20 vision. Still, the BJP appears to have done well out of this.

Violence is thus built into a project that legitimates bigotry and equates dissent with national disloyalty.

Varshney has a bigoted attitude to the BJP. But Violence is not built into his project. Why? He and his ilk are weak. They have lost any influence or credibility they might once have had.

India’s rulers want to overturn the constitutional order.

The Supreme Court appears to disagree. They and they alone decide what is or isn't constitutional. Varshney can lie all he likes but what good will it do him?

Regime partisans are already calling it a “civilisational war” — to hell with the Constitution, they imply.

Why on earth would the ruling party be against the Indian Constitution? It gives them the power to do anything they like. The American Constitution is very different to what we have in India. Moreover, our Supreme Court seems to be more right wing than the Government. It gave more than the BJP was asking for on the Ram Mandir issue. But even under the UPA it was showing this proclivity. The Nationality Register in Assam was compiled under its direction. The first Detention center for illegal migrants was set up a dozen years ago on orders from the Guwahati High Court. In 2016, the Supreme Court decided that J&K had 'no shred of sovereignty'. That's why the Government's action re. Article 370 is perfectly constitutional.

India’s citizenry is well and truly into a battle for constitutional values, which must be fought, most of all, with non-violent determination and vigour.

Constitutional values? Does Varshney mean things like the Directive Principle re. cow protection? If the Muslims of Shaheen Bagh now say the Constitution is their 'Holy Book', does it mean they will henceforth consider beef haram? Will they catch hold of anyone possessing beef and hand him over to the police?

The truth is India, from Independence onward, has been a highly unitarian Hindu Nation in which Muslims have always been second class citizens. The BJP used to complain of 'Muslim appeasement' but anyone with eyes in their head could see that nothing of the sort was occurring. Now the BJP don't even need to use the 'M' word. 'Anti-National' will do. The Left Liberals had hoped to turn the anti-CAA agitation into a rainbow coalition featuring distressed farmers, and laid off factory workers, and tribals protesting against mining companies, and so on and so forth. But the rainbow failed to materialize. All you had was visibly Muslim people protesting that non Muslims were being allowed to escape Islamic persecution. The thing backfired. In Delhi, the BJP gained a few seats while Congress lost its deposit in a large majority of the seats it consisted.

Varshney has given an interview to Foreign Policy Magazine on his cock-eyed theory of 'pogroms'. In that interview he says- The danger to Muslim minorities in BJP-ruled states is grave. Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state with a population of 200 million, seems particularly vulnerable. Muslims comprise about 18 percent of the population there, and they are spread out all over the state. There was a big riot in Muzaffarnagar in 2013, for example, and the police were nowhere to be seen. UP is also ruled by a politician, Yogi Adityanath, whose anti-Muslim prejudice and fervor is well-known and has been openly displayed'

His audience won't know that the BJP was not ruling UP in 2013. Over 60 people were killed and 50,000 were housed in Camps. The Supreme Court held the Akhilesh Yadav led Samajwadi Party, prima facie guilty of negligence in preventing the violence and ordered it to immediately arrest all those accused irrespective of their political affiliation. The Court also blamed the Central government, led by the Congress Party, for its failure to provide intelligence inputs to the Samajwadi Party-governed state government in time to help sound alerts.
So, UP did have pogroms but doesn't any more. Why? The Chief Minister is not negligent. The police do their job without fear if not favour. That is why there have been so few deaths and no displaced people in UP under the BJP.