Maya’s growing politics of intolerance

Srawan Shukla | Uttar Pradesh | 27 July 2009 |

The burning down of Rita Bahuguna Joshi’s house in Lucknow with the tacit approval of the police only goes to show Chief Minister Mayawati’s darker side.

Democratic values touched a new low in Uttar Pradesh on July 15 2009 when a rhetorical statement by the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee president Dr Rita Bahuguna Joshi earned a fiery retaliation from maverick Chief Minister Mayawati. Dubbed as yet another ‘black day’ in the political history of the state, events on the day and the aftermath should make UP politicians hang their heads in shame.

A flash on TV screens on July 15 evening suddenly charged the otherwise dull political atmosphere in the state. TV anchors started screaming about Rita making derogatory remarks against the firebrand Mayawati in a meeting in Moradabad. While referring to the rise in rape cases in Uttar Pradesh and, subsequently, visits by the UP Director-General of Police Vikram Singh in a chopper to offer Rs 25,000 as compensation to rape victims, Rita overstepped her political limits. “I ask you to throw that compensation on Mayawati’s face. Will she settle for a compensation of Rs 1 crore should she undergo the same indignity?” screamed Rita in over-enthusiasm, not realising what’s in store for her.

Though Reeta immediately tried to correct herself saying she did not mean that and even offered an apology on TV channels and later to newspapers but by then it was too late. An infuriated Mayawati huddled with top bureaucrats and police officials at her 5 Kalidas Marg residence. She was fuming with anger and wanted to take revenge for Rita’s utterances against a Dalit Chief Minister. Orders were issued for her immediate arrest and the slapping of provisions of the SC/ST Act.

But before she could be arrested on her way to Delhi the same night, her party men and few leaders went berserk.  They reached Rita’s house situated at 45, Sarojani Naidu Marg in Lucknow and set it on fire. Raising anti-Rita and anti-Congress slogans, they also torched four vehicles parked in the compound of the historic house. Country’s first Prime Minister Pt Jawaharlal Nehru was a frequent visitor to the house, falling in the high security zone next to Mayawati’s Secretariat.

What followed was state-sponsored terrorism unleashed by the ruling party men. Unfortunately, the already tainted UP Police was hand in glove with them. The Inspector-General Lucknow Zone AK Jain was allegedly sitting in a nearby residence of a top Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader. A posse of men in khakhi was sent to get the house vacated before the attack. Five persons including Rita’s servants, their wives and a five-year-old kid Karan were forcibly taken away in a police jeep to the Hazratganj police station on the pretext that the house might be attacked and their life was in danger.

Once the house was vacated, about 100 BSP men stormed into Rita’s residence. They were carrying petrol jars. Soon they started throwing petrol-soaked clothes in all the vehicles parked in the compound and after ransacking all rooms, set the entire house on fire. It all happened with the consent and before the eyes of senior police officials and policemen.

A few wore masks on their faces when the media started arriving on the scene. Lensmen were attacked when they tried to take out cameras from their bag. “I was warned by an agitated BSP leader when I started taking shots,” says Rupesh Kumar, photographer of a local Hindi daily, who was the first to reach scene.

But when the numbers of mediapersons swelled and OB vans started arriving to catch the inferno live, BSP leaders and their supporters zipped away in their SUVs. But by that time lensmen and TV camerapersons had already captured adequate photographic evidences of BSP leaders indulging in the vandalism and arson and complicity of senior police leaders and their army. Many attempts were made by senior police officials to cover up the incident. In the process, senior police officials kept on committing blunder after blunder. “If they had the knowledge of a possible attack on my house as they told my servants while taking them to a safer place then why no attempts were made to thwart it. At whose behest was the attack executed and what role did the UP police play? fumed UPCC president Dr Rita Bahuguna Joshi demanding a CBI probe.

“That police were carrying out the ruling party directions could be gauged from the fact that fire tenders reached the incident site after two hours despite the fact that the fire stations are only three km away from the place,” points out UPCC spokesperson Akhilesh Pratap Singh.

The police immediately arrested five persons in connection with the arson. Zameer Khan, Susajit, Guddu Yadav, Indrajeet Singh and Shiv Kumar were arrested by the Cantonment police on July 15 afternoon in connection with separate street brawls but they were picked by the Hazratganj police to show that their arrests were in connection with the attack on Rita’s residence.

The BSP party office is about a km from the incident site. Eyewitnesses say that they saw hectic activities in the office that night. “Unusually, there were many men inside the party office on July 15 night. I saw a few vehicles full of men going towards the Secretariat annexe,” says Laxman Prasad, a vendor.

Despite Rita apologising to Mayawati for her utterances , a belligerent Mayawati  refused to be obliged. She put the blame on Congress president Sonia Gandhi and launched a diatribe against the Congress. After the Lok Sabha poll debacle, Mayawati seems to be jittery about Congress icon Rahul Gandhi’s plan to wean away her Dalit vote-bank. At her press conference she completely denied the involvement of her party men in the attack. “It was the handiwork of Congressmen to apportion the blame on us,” she stated on July 16.

In what could be termed as a barbaric act to tame political opponents, attempts were also made by her legal aides to deny bail to Rita in Moradabad. Lawyers were forced to boycott work to ensure that her bail application could not come up for hearing. Rita got bail two days later.

But before issuing orders for her arrest, Mayawati perhaps forgot that she had made a similar and more derogatory remark against the then chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav on January 21 2007 when she visited the Allahabad madarsa rape victims to offer monetary compensation. “Mulayam does not have any daughters but his relatives do. If they are raped, the Muslim samaj would give Rs four lakhs to them,” she had publicly stated. When her statement was aired along with Rita’s, she conveniently clarified she had just repeated what the victims’ families told her.

Since Rita’s release, a wordy dual is on between the Congress and Mayawati. Rahul Gandhi said the “language used by Rita may be wrong but her sentiments were right”.  The Opposition is on the boil. The Samajwadi Party too has demanded a CBI probe into the arson at Rita’s residence. But Mayawati ordered a probe by the CB-CID, which is otherwise known as an agency used by the ruling party to water down important inquiries.

In fact, the ongoing fight between Mayawati and Congress is for Dalit votes in Uttar Pradesh. After the stupendous success in the Lok Sabha polls in the state, the Congress’ long term plan is, somehow, to bring its traditional Dalit voters back from the BSP before the UP Assembly polls due in 2011.

In democracy, political tolerance is increasingly becoming a rare commodity, particularly in Uttar Pradesh.  Under Maya memsahib’s regime, the Samajwadi Party state president Shivpal Singh Yadav is slapped by a UP police constable. An executive engineer is brutally thrashed to death by a ruling party MLA when he refused to pay Rs 10 lakh donation for Mayawati’s birthday.  The July 15 2009 incident has earned yet another point in Maya’s kitty of political intolerance.