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Why rumour-mongering or minority appeasement fail to explain the Basirhat riots in Bengal

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DailyBiteJul 13, 2017 | 17:51

Why rumour-mongering or minority appeasement fail to explain the Basirhat riots in Bengal

Last week, West Bengal witnessed another round of communal riots in the Baduria-Basirhat area of North 24 Parganas. It all started on July 2 with an allegedly offensive and anti-Islamic Facebook post by a 17-year-old Hindu boy.

The ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) quickly blamed the RSS-BJP of deliberately inciting communal tensions. Derek O’Brien, the TMC leader in Rajya Sabha, termed the RSS as the "rumour spreading society" and alleged that it has a template to create communal tensions to win elections.

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On the other hand, several senior BJP leaders blamed Mamata “Bano” Banerjee for consistently appeasing the Muslims and allowing them to attack the Hindus.

As counter-intuitive it might sound, voting data shows us that whatever Mamata Banerjee may have been doing to “appease” the minorities, after coming to power in Bengal, has not given her any electoral success in the Muslim majority areas in Baduria-Basirhat. In fact, the TMC has always done better in the adjoining Hindu majority areas.

Baduria, a Muslim majority Assembly constituency and the epicentre of the recent violence, has voted for the Congress 11 times in the past 15 Assembly elections, while the CPI(M) won the remaining four.

In the recent 2016 Assembly elections, the Congress candidate, supported by the Left won the seat with 53.17 per cent of votes handily beating the TMC candidate, by an 11 per cent margin (by over 12,000 votes). This Assembly segment has 35 per cent Hindu voters, but the BJP could only get 8.9 per cent votes in 2016.

Neighbouring Basirhat, which was also affected by the violence, had been a Muslim majority Assembly segment till 2011. Narayan Mukherjee of the CPI(M) had won all the elections here from 1977 to 2006.

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Scene from a Bhojpuri film passed off as violence against Hindus in Bengal by BJP executive member, and shared widely on social media.

In fact, most major parties had always put up Hindu candidates in Basirhat, until 2011, when it was bifurcated into north and south Assembly segments based on the recommendations of the Delimitation Commission.

Basirhat North remains largely rural, with about 70 per cent Muslim voters. The CPI(M) retained this seat in 2011 and 2016, in spite of losing handily in most other parts of the state.

Basirhat South is more urban, and there are 55 per cent Hindus. In 2011, Narayan Mukherjee retained this seat. However, he passed away while in term, and the BJP surprisingly won the resulting by-elections in 2014. It is to be noted that this win had less to do with communal polarisation, and more to do with the local political factors.

After the TMC had come to power, there has been frequent clashes between the cadres of Trinamool and the CPI(M).

The CPI(M), seriously weakened in the state, couldn’t provide adequate support to its local base, which shifted to the BJP for continued influence and protection. This has to be seen in the context of PM Narendra Modi’s astounding victory at the Centre and the subsequent attention of the BJP towards Bengal. 

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This 2015 article outlines how and why the Left cadres in the area joined the BJP. Electoral results also disprove any communal explanations for the BJP's maiden win in the area.

In fact, the TMC won the Basirhat municipal elections in 2015, and wrested control of the Basirhat South Assembly in 2016 with 40.66 per cent votes, while the BJP and the Congress-Left combine got 29.55 per cent and 26.33 per cent votes respectively. 

Thus, neither the Muslims nor the Hindus vote as a bloc in the area.

So, in the absence of any deep-seated communal cleavage, how do rumours turn into riots? Further, in the age of continual viral propaganda and misinformation spread through social media, why do some rumours incite riots while others don’t?

Donald Horowitz in his book, The Deadly Ethnic Riot, published in 2001, shows how a consistent theme of communal riot creating rumours in India has been the false stories of sexual violence on Hindu women by Muslim men.

Even in the past week, some mischievous elements, spread images from a Bhojpuri movie, alluding how Hindu women were being molested in Basirhat. Such fabricated images are known to provoke a belligerent and primordial reaction from Hindu men.

Thus, such rumours do indeed benefit the Hindu right-wing.

However, the TMC allegation of riots being caused by rumours alone cannot explain the situation. Steven Wilkinson in his 2004 book, Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India, has outlined a robust framework of electoral explanation of where riots can happen. Analysing an original data set of 2000 communal events in India between 1950-1995, he outlines two explanatory factors.

mam_071317015456.jpg
After the TMC had come to power, there has been frequent clashes between the cadres of Trinamool and the CPI(M).

First, town-level electoral incentives account for where riots will break out, and second, state-level electoral incentives determine whether the state will use its law and order machinery to its full might to prevent the spread of rioting. Wilkinson shows that if parties depend on minority votes for winning elections on their own or through their alliance partners, they will not encourage rumours to precipitate into riots.

On the other hand, if they can win without the minority vote, they have little incentive to control the riots.

Riots, most certainly, do galvanise opposing communities causing deep socio-political cleavage. The incentive for the Hindu right-wing is pretty obvious. What is less understood is how the TMC stands to gain from small-scale controllable unrests.

In India, minorities are known to value safety and security above everything else and tend to come together and vote as a bloc when threatened. A small-scale unrest likely works in TMC’s favour as well. It signals to the minorities that there is indeed a security threat that requires them to come together and the party takes adequate action to ensure their protection. By effectively controlling the unrest, the party also re-assures its Hindu voters that it will not allow the situation to spin out of control.

The local electoral calculus is the most likely explanation for rumour to riots. Also, it can be predicted that as long as the TMC, or any other party, values the Muslim votes in Bengal, the state is unlikely to witness a riot in the scale and proportion of Gujarat in 2002.

Last updated: July 13, 2017 | 17:51
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