News has been trickling in of violence marring Ram Navami celebrations in some states in India over the last few days and some provocative sloganeering including Hindu Rashtra banners across other communities’ places of worship in the lead up to Ramnavami. It is useful to take stock of some work that has been done in the course of the last one year in Goa to address a similar situation that presented itself last year. It may be recalled that last year, Ram Navami, the Catholic Palm Sunday, and the ongoing Muslim Roza all were on the same day, and violence was reported in eight or nine states on the occasion.
It is Goan civil society’s expositions, and also additional gestures of harmony, that has in fact prevented a repetition of the same this year. It is not as if the rally at Mormugao this year was not without some provocation, but that was surpassed by the gestures of assistance along the route with water being provided by Muslims on the routes where mosques are located to the Ram Navami celebrants.
Further, the manipulations and machinations by the organisers of last year’s All Goa Ram Navami Shobha Yatra at Mormugao had stood completely exposed. The Deputy Superintendent of Police and the Police Inspector, who had managed to contain the violence, according to local residents, had been abruptly transferred the very next day on the insistence of right wing elements who had prevailed on the Chief Minister Pramod Sawant. The transfers were effected without even the convening of the Police Establishment Board as per requirement. Thanks to an alert citizenry, the same Deputy Superintendent of Police is now back in office and people’s recognition of his efforts in containing the violence, and not letting it assume larger proportions, has paid off.
Columns and a fact-finding report in Goa have exposed the complicity of the State in the developments at the time. They have also exposed the ‘routes of wrath’, to borrow a phrase from the title of a recently published national report by citizens and lawyers initiative edited by Senior Advocate Chander Uday Singh with a foreword by Retired Supreme Court Judge, Justice Rohinton Nariman. For instance, last year, the permission for the rally was taken for the route from Upas Nagar but the rally actually was flagged off from outside Shantadurga temple, Sancoale, in order to incite around the Sancoale frontispiece issue. Pertinently the rally was flagged off by none other than the local Vasco BJP MLA, in the presence of the former South Goa MP Narendra Sawaikar. The rally passed through Muslim inhabited areas, and in front of mosques that it was not supposed to pass through as per the permissions, aggressive sloganeering when passing by Muslim places of worship was a characteristic feature of the rally.
An allegation was made that stones were pelted from the Aqsa Masjid or the nearby madarsa, a feat that was impossible to achieve given the location of the Masjid vis a vis the road where the rally was winding its way through. Realising that people saw through these false allegations, the rallyists then changed their tune and began to suggest that they saw a boy running towards the Aqsa Masjid and ran behind him, almost as if to possibly defend the assault that had taken place on an youth with disability, who was left injured with bleeding in his left ear, and also to defend what was anyways their plan of reaching the masjid.
These findings are reflected in a report brought out by a fact finding committee comprising of Amita Kanekar, Saranga Ugalmugle, Talulah D Silva and myself called ‘Small’ Incident Today, Bigger Tomorrow?. The Committee had been constituted by Citizens’ Initiatives for Communal Harmony to understand what exactly happened, to delve into the circumstances which caused these incidents, to ascertain the role of the State in prevention and redressal, and to give suggestions and recommendations to build communal harmony, determine accountability and prevent such incidents in the future.
The report noted that the outcome of the Chief Minister obliging the chief organiser of the rally Rajiv Jha by taking action in terms of transferring the police officers, was that Jha felt emboldened to make abusive and threatening social media posts regarding the Old Sancoale Church Frontispiece issue.
As all this was well documented, the State chose the obvious route of ignoring the fact finding report as there was no way it could contradict a single word written in the report, but obviously, the state understood that civil society is watching. Therefore the multiple civil society responses that punctured the narratives of the organisers of the rally supported by the ruling dispensation, is, what it appears, has prevented the same from recurring this year.
As general news items had made the incidents last year seem like a clash between Hindus and Muslims, the fact finding committee had made special efforts to meet lay people from all communities in the area near Aqsa majid, members of the Temple committees/ temple priests of various temples, including Ram temples in the area. It was heart warming to hear that they did not subscribe to the politics of provocation and supremacist ideas that the rally organizers have a record of propagating. While the rally organizers, supporters and participants had projected that the rally was supported by all Hindu temples and organisations, the temple committee members were clearly content to have their temple level celebrations and did not participate and in fact distanced themselves from the Ram Navami Shobha Yatra celebrations.
The State authorities have miserably failed to be accountable. The Report had demanded that the Government come out with a detailed SOP for granting permissions for rallies, to curb an arbitrariness where disturbances are forged in the garb of religious processions, and human rights organisations are denied permissions to organise meetings or rallies. Such an arbitrariness by the State does not augur well for a democracy and can put the lives of the non-dominant sections of the society including minorities under great risk.
Further, there had been a one man inquiry committee constituted by the Government that brought out a detailed report on the Sanvordem-Curchorem riots of March 2006. and made pertinent recommendations, given the way rumours were consciously and maliciously spread, and given the unpreparedness then of the police to deal with the situation. Instead of building on the recommendations of that report and the directives and guidelines of the Supreme Court on issues of hate speech, mob violence, the Government of Goa, is miserably falling behind and fails to register any cases even against extremely provocative statements made to create communal disturbances.
It is apparent that the right wing forces are constantly attempting to weaponize festivals like the Ram Navami festival as also the divisive discourses in particular locations, as they did with the insider-outsider discourse in Goa. The faster we recognise this and forge solidarities of the oppressed, exploited and minoritized, the better. Also, the State authorities must know that citizens of Goa continue to be alert and watching.
(Albertina Almeida is a lawyer and human rights activist)
