It is becoming increasingly clear that the young chief minister Akhilesh Yadav is unable to administer the state. According to a study communal violence broke out in the state every three days in the past one year. The Muzzafarnagar clashes are only one of 50 other communal clashes in the past year. While the Akhilesh government’s image is on the decline in the past one year, the SP chieftain Mulayam Singh is a worried man about the 2014 elections and is going all out to emerge as a king maker if not the king in the 2014 elections.
As it happens, invariably trivial personal issues trigger communal clashes. But when it suits politicians to fuel the fire after which it takes the shape of a full- fledged riot just as it happened in this Muzzafarnagar case. What began as a scuffle over the teasing of a Jat girl resulted in killing of a Muslim boy and that further ended in the killing of two Jat boys. If the cops had acted tough the matter would have ended. But the police registering cases only against the Jats which has unsettled the social alliance between the Jats and the Muslims .The UP watchers vouch for the fact that the Jats and Muslims had voted in tandem so far but the communal tensions have sharpened the differences between these two communities after the attack on the “ Bahu Beti Sammaan Bachao Maha panchayat” organized by the Jats after the incident. Jats feel hurt that one girl form their community has been ill-treated. The SP’s Muslim leadership led by Azam Khan claims that this panchayat meeting was the reason for flaring up the communal tension.
There are various players in U.P who will lose or gain by the Muzzafarnagar incident. On the one hand the SP and the BJP are hoping for a Hindu- Muslim polarization to help them politically and electorally. While Muslims, who are 30 per cent in many of western UP constituencies, Singh hopes to widen his base in the region while the BJP could gamble on Hindu polarization as a counter. The BJP is dreaming of the golden period of the nineties when it got 55 seats. It is strategizing on the Hindutva agenda with its campaign chief Modi as its face. The immediate impact of Muzzafarnagar incident could be an electoral benefit to both the ruling SP and the BJP.
The Congress, which got an unexpected 22 seats in 2009 elections but got almost zero in the 2012 Assembly polls is also aiming for a revival to come back to power for the third consecutive time. The Congress hopes that the people of the state might vote for the Congress for national elections even if they preferred the two regional parties – the SP or the BSP for the state polls.
There is another angle to the whole tangle. The RLD chief Ajit Singh is worried about the Jats, who have remained his supporters steadfast. The RLD as a BJP partner won five Lok Sabha seats in the 2009 polls but switched to Congress in the 2012 Assembly polls winning nine seats. With the Jats at the receiving end after the Muzzafarnagar riots the RLD and the Congress may pay dearly in the 2014 polls. The RLD chief fears that the Jat community, which was led by his father Charan Singh, had remained loyal to the RLD but it may now look elsewhere. The Jats, despite mere 6 per cent votes had considerable influence in determining the fate of several constituencies in the region. The SP, which wants to expand its sphere of influence in the region, is looking at the minority votes. In Western UP Muslims hold sway in 13 Lok Sabha constituencies. Ajit Singh fears that he may lose the Jat support while the SP and the BJP may gain.
On the whole the blame game is going on between various players at the cost of poor innocent victims. The BSP chief Mayawati is blaming the SP government fearing a danger that if the riots could help the SP and the BJP, it will be her party as well as the Congress, which would have a set back. That is why the Congress and the BSP are claiming that the whole thing is match fixing between the BJP and the SP
The Muzzafarnagar incident should not be the beginning of such disharmony but the end between communities. The political parties should be careful by not allowing it to go beyond a point. Otherwise it may become counter productive. The same is the case of the BJP. They should remember what happened in the Mandal agitation to the Prime Minister V.P Singh who was responsible for tearing the social fabric of the country. Any false step in their strategy could boomerang. (IPA Service)
LESSONS FROM RIOTS IN UTTAR PRADESH
BOTH SP AND BJP HAVE TO SHARE THE BLAME
Kalyani Shankar - 2013-09-12 11:07
Political parties are playing with fire in the name of politics in Uttar Pradesh with the only goal of electoral gains. For them all is fair in elections. The recent Muzzafarnagar communal clashes in which more than 40 people were killed is a classic example of how the indifference of the state administration in dealing with this kind of communal clashes is being used for vote bank politics. Otherwise how do you explain such incidents in Western UP where Muslims and Jats had lived in harmony and even voted together! The current Jat- Muslim divide seems to have been scripted carefully.