Muzaffarnagar Mayhem and Mohd Azam Khan

Muzaffarnagar mayhem and Mohammad Azam Khan

Mohammad Azam Khan is a former student leader of A.M.U. Aligarh, senior Cabinet Minister in U.P. and Minister in-charge of District Muzaffarnagar. He has been alleged time and again for interfering in the working of state administration. Officers in riot torn Muzaffarnagar also indicated him for his high handedness and interfering in day to day working to which he has promptly denied. However it has weekend his position and daunted in his authority. A leader who always played offensive politics is now in defensive position. 

An AMU Faculty, in an open letter to Mr. Khan wonders if the massacre does not prick him. He questioned his action of getting arrested a Dalit writer in his home constituency promptly for a mere post on Facebook, but became quite inefficient and helpless in stopping communal frenzy in the State. The Dalit writer has questioned his action of getting an old Madarsa demolished by Rampur administration, while a lady IAS was suspended without any enquiry for allegedly ordering removal an under construction wall of a religious place in NOIDA. We reproduce the letter send to him by Mohammad Sajjad, an Associate professor at the Advanced Centre of History, A.M.U. Aligarh:

Sir, Being a concerned citizen, it may not be out of place to expect from you a few things pertaining to the enormous man-made tragedy of mayhem and bloodshed in Shamli, Muzaffarnagar, Baghpat, Meerut…

By now it is abundantly clear even to a naive person that what is happening in the above-mentioned districts is absolutely motivated by desperate vote-grabbing politics. The police complicity is more than obvious and the government's studied inaction is equally evident.

What is so very distressing is that rather than waking up the administration or doing the needful in the capacity of minister, your response is like roothi huyee dulhan (bride) of the rural lower middle class. This is certainly not the kind of politics one is trained at AMU (Aligarh Muslim University), your alma mater; nor is it the kind of politics a Samajwadi (Socialist) would be expected to practice, regardless of the dilution, mutation, and transformation brought about in that egalitarian ideology.

For what you are doing is hardly politics. If at all it is politics, it is nothing but the politics of self-destruction, where you appear to destroy not only the nation, but also your own political career for good. You were so very prompt in justifying Durga Nagpal's unjustifiable suspension for her crackdown on the sand mafia and had given a bizarre spin whereby a wanton, officially sponsored, communal polarization was paraded as a step towards pre-empting any such polarization. If it was an attempt at appeasing sections of Muslims, you have failed miserably as no sane Muslim is prepared to endorse the construction of a mosque on government land without proper prior permission from the government. Consequently, except motivated workers, no common voters could be convinced by the arguments put forward by you, your government and the party. Therefore your nominee for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections from that constituency is quite unlikely to get Muslim votes from the constituency.

There were enough intelligence inputs about the impending danger of communal violence across Uttar Pradesh. Yet intermittent incidents of eve-teasing, retributive eve-teasing, and lynching, leading to deaths in both communities not far away from the police posts. Stock-piling of illegal arms and incendiary communal gatherings (Mahapanchayats), kept spiraling into the most horrific violence in the area.

The spread of this barbarity in the villages have made things even worse. It makes administrative complicity and inaction so very evident that your government is rightly alleged to be imitating what the Narendra Modi-led administration did in Gujarat in 2002.

True, this violence may have created fissures between the Jats and Muslims, and it may have an adverse impact on the Rashtriya Lok Dal's electoral prospects, and the Hindutva consolidation may be beneficial to the Bharatiya Janata Party, but what will happen to the Samajwadi Party whose government is seen to be culpable in the mayhem?

Earlier, your party suffered loss of Muslim support when it was perceived to be engaged in underhand dealings with the BJP in 1999, as also with Kalyan Singh in 2007. L K Advani’s autobiography alludes to that effect. Your Neta Ji Mulayam Singh Yadav’s two-hour meeting with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s Ashok Singhal is being interpreted in so many ways, more so after this violence in Muzaffarnagar.

My dear Azam Bhai, you were so very efficient in getting arrested a Dalit writer in your own home constituency for a mere post on Facebook, but you are so inefficient and helpless in getting arrested the instigators of the Muzaffarnagar riots.Don’t the massacres prick your conscience? How can you be so callous?

Having represented Rampur for so many years almost continuously, its people are yet to move upward in education, employment, healthcare etc. Large numbers of helpless patients from your constituency have to rush to AMU’s JN Medical College 150 Kilo Meters away for medical help. Neither the colonial Nawab of Rampur was, nor the neo-Nawab that you are often referred to by your critics, have been able to establish an adequately provisioned medical College Hospital in Rampur. (Facilities at District Hospital are inadequate and no Doctor of repute wants to serve there due to your alleged high handedness. SMA)

Aligarh knows and remembers you as a passionate orator in Hindustani which contributed in raising you as a political leader. Do you think mere oratory will win you back your voters whose kith and kin have been killed on such a large scale while your administration remained either complicit in the killings or showed willful inaction and thereby encouraging the killers?

If at all even an iota of conscience is really left in, you should embark on this mission of restoring the belief of the people in the criminal justice system. Simultaneously rehabilitating the displaced ones who number in several thousands and which include Dalits (both Hindus and Muslims), other Muslims, Jats…This is probably the only way you can save your image which has sunken deep and bleak.

Would you also ensure the nation that ‘minority’ politics moves beyond the logic of security and stakes its claim in national development through educational and economic uplift  and thereby strengthens Indian democracy?

And you need not be reminded that no words and deeds of yours should smack of prejudice. The victim is humanity, not their ascribed caste-community identities.

Mohammad Sajjad

Assistant Professor, Centre of Advanced Study in History, Aligarh Muslim University.

(This letter was first published in Rediff.com and 2CN)