NEW YORK – An investigative report in a leading American newspaper blamedthe Delhi police for siding with Hindu mobs carrying out deadly attacksagainst Muslim neighbourhood in northeast of the Indian capital during theFebruary 24-25 violence in which 50 people were killed.
In a joint dispatch, three New York Times correspondents said in the NewDelhi-datelined team report that the worst sectarian bloodshed in years wasin the view of many “the inevitable result of Hindu extremism that hasflourished under the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.”
The report was by-lined to Jeffrey Gettleman, the Times’ South Asia bureauchief, based in New Delhi, and bureau reporters — Suhasini Raj and HariKumar.
“His (Modi’s) party has embraced a militant brand of Hindu nationalism andits leaders have openly vilified Indian Muslims. In recent months Mr. Modihas presided over a raft of policies widely seen as anti-Muslim, such aserasing the statehood of what had been India’s only Muslim-majority state,Jammu and Kashmir,” The New York Times report said.
“Now, more evidence is emerging that the Delhi police, who are under thedirect command of Mr. Modi’s government and have very few Muslim officers,concertedly moved against Muslims and at times actively helped the Hindumobs that rampaged in New Delhi in late February, burning down Muslim homesand targeting Muslim families.Several videos showed police officers beatingand throwing rocks at Muslim protesters and waving on Hindu mobs to jointhem.”
An unnamed police commander, according to the Times, said that as theviolence erupted — at that point mostly by Hindu mobs — policemen in theaffected areas were ordered to deposit their guns at the station houses.
“Several officers during the violence were later overheard by New YorkTimes journalists yelling to one another that they had only sticks and thatthey needed guns to confront the growing mobs.
“Some researchers accuse the police force of deliberately putting too fewofficers on the streets, with inadequate firepower, as the violence morphedfrom clashes between rival protesters into targeted killings of Muslims.”
Two thirds of the more than 50 people who were killed and have beenidentified were Muslim, with human rights activists calling it an organizedmassacre.
Though India’s population is 14 percent Muslim and New Delhi’s is 13percent, the total Muslim representation on the Delhi police force is lessthan 2 percent, the report said.
“India’s policing culture has long been brutal, biased, anti-minority andalmost colonial in character, a holdover from the days of British rule whenthe police had no illusions of serving the public but were used to suppressa restive population,” the report said.
“But what seems to be different now, observers contend, is how profoundlyIndia’s law enforcement machinery has been politicized by the BharatiyaJanata Party, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist governingbloc.“Police officials, especially in states controlled by Mr. Modi’s party,have been highly selective in their targets, like a Muslim school principalin Karnataka who was jailed for more than two weeks on sedition chargesafter her students performed a play about a new immigration law that policeofficials said was critical of Mr. Modi.”
“Some judges have also seemed to be caught up — or pushed out — by aHindu-nationalist wave.
“A Delhi judge who expressed disbelief that the police had yet toinvestigate members of Mr. Modi’s party who have been widely accused ofinstigating the recent violence in Delhi was taken off the case andtransferred to another state. And at the same time that the Supreme Courthas made a string of rulings in the government’s favor, one of the judges,Arun Mishra, publicly praised Mr. Modi as a ‘visionary genius.’
“The religiously mixed and extremely crowded neighbourhoods in northeasternDelhi that were on fire in late February have cooled. But some Hindupoliticians continue to lead so-called peace marches, trotting outcasualties of the violence with their heads wrapped in white medical tape,trying to upend the narrative and make Hindus seem like the victims, whichis stoking more anti-Muslim hatred.
“Some Muslims are leaving their neighborhoods, having lost all faith in thepolice. More than 1,000 have piled into a camp for internally displacedpeople that is rising on Delhi’s outskirts.
“Muslim leaders see the violence as a state-sanctioned campaign to teachthem a lesson. After years of staying quiet as Hindu lynch mobs killedMuslims with impunity and Mr. Modi’s government chipped away at theirpolitical power, India’s Muslim population awoke in December and pouredinto the streets, along with many other Indians, to protest the newimmigration law, which favours migrants belonging to every major religionin South Asia — except for Muslims.
Mr. Modi’s government, Muslim leaders say, is now trying to drive the wholecommunity back into silence.”
“There’s a method to this madness,” said Umar Khalid, a Muslim activist,was quoted as saying. “The government wants to bring the entire Muslimcommunity to their knees, to beg for their lives and beg for theirlivelihoods.”“You can read it in their books,” he said, referring to foundational textsby Hindu nationalists. “They believe India’s Muslims should live inperpetual fear.”
Read Top Stories
Noting that Modi has said little since the bloodshed erupted, except for afew anodyne tweets urging peace, the report said Delhi police officialsdeny an anti-Muslim bias and said they “acted swiftly to control law andorder,” which both Muslims and Hindus in those neighborhoods have said wasnot true.
Police officials claimed that Muslim men cited in the report were hurt byprotesters and rescued by the police — “though videos clearly show thembeing hit by police officers.
Citing experts, The Times said the violence in New Delhi “fits a pattern …of chaos being allowed to rage for a few days — with minorities beingkilled — before the government brings it under control.
In 1984, it said, under the Congress party, which often bills itself asrepresenting the interests of minorities, the police in New Delhi stoodback for several days as mobs massacred 3,000 Sikhs.
In 1993, again under a Congress government, riots swept Mumbai and hundredsof Muslims were killed.
In 2002 in Gujarat, when Modi was the state’s chief minister, Hindu mobsmassacred hundreds of Muslims. Modi was accused of complicity, though hewas cleared by a court.
Several retired Indian police commanders said that the rule in quellingcommunal violence was to deploy maximum force and make many arrests,neither of which happened in Delhi.
Ajai Raj Sharma, a former commissioner, was cited in the Tines report assaying that the performance “unexplainable.” “It can’t be forgiven,” hesaid.
“When the violence started on Feb. 23 — as Hindu men gathered to forciblyeject a peaceful Muslim protest near their neighbourhood — much of itbecame two-sided. By day’s end, both Muslims and Hindus had been attacked,and dozens had been shot, apparently with small-bore homemade guns.
“But by Feb. 25 the direction had changed. Hindu mobs fanned out andtargeted Muslim families. Violence crackled in the air.
“Police officers watched as mobs of Hindus, their foreheads marked bysaffron stripes, prowled the streets with baseball bats and rusty bars,looking for Muslims to kill. The sky was filled with smoke. Muslim homes,shops and mosques were burned down.
“When a reporter for The New York Times tried to speak to residentsstanding near police officers that day, a mob of men with darting eyessurrounded him and ripped the notebook out of his hands. When the reporterasked police officers for help, one said: ‘I can’t. These young men arevery volatile.’
“The home ministry, which controls Delhi’s police force and is led by AmitShah, one of the most combative Hindu nationalists in the B.J.P., has comeunder heavy criticism for the policing failures. Delhi police officialsdenied being instructed by the central government to go easy on thetroublemakers. The home ministry did not respond to repeated requests forcomment.
“And then there’s the composition of the police. The Delhi force, numberingaround 80,000, has fewer than 2,000 Muslim officers and just a handful ofMuslim commanders, according to an analysis done in 2017 by theCommonwealth Human Rights Initiative. Delhi police officials did not denythis, and Muslim leaders said that police behaviour was biased acrossIndia.”
“Indian police are extremely colonial and caste-ist,” said Shahid Siddiqui,a former member of Parliament, was quoted as saying in the Times dispatch.Police behaviour, he said, is always “more violent and aggressive towardthe weak.”
“India’s population is about 80 percent Hindu, and gangs of Hindusthreatened Muslims in several Delhi neighbourhoods to leave before theHindu holiday Holi that was celebrated this week.
“One Muslim woman, who goes by the name Baby, opened her door a few daysago to find 50 men outside with a notebook in their hands, listing theaddresses of Muslims. She packed up. She may be leaving soon.”
