69% Hindus, 30% Muslims
Chief Minister of Bihar: Satyendra Narain Sinha, Congress Party, March 1989–December 1989
One of the most remembered riots in India’s post-Independence history occurred in Bhagalpur (Bihar) and in 250 adjacent villages. The Justice Ramanandan Prasad Commission of Inquiry submitted a well-researched report in March 1995.
The «Babri Masjid/Ramjanmabhoomi controversy» had created communal tensions throughout the state of Bihar. The state government had issued directives to district and police authorities advising great caution. In the town of Bhagalpur, tension was simmering. The proximity of the festivals of Bihula Puja (Hindu) and Muharram (Shia) and the unsolved murder of a Muslim rickshaw-driver during the Hindu Bihula procession on August 20 had already antagonized the two communities. In October, local Hindu groups asked permission to organize a Ram Shila (carrying sacred bricks) procession to Ayodhya that was slated to pass through the Muslim-majority area of Tatarpur. The district administration, ignoring both the sensitivities involved in such a demand and the directives of the state government, acquiesced and granted the procession’s organizers permission to follow the proposed route.
Violence started on October 24 when the Ram Shila procession, shouting anti-Muslim slogans, was refused entry by the residents of Tatarpur. Bombs were allegedly thrown from a Muslim school and the police opened fire on the crowd, killing two persons. Around twenty Muslim students from Tatarpur-area colleges were killed in mob violence, which subsequently spread to the city. Muslim houses, shops, and religious places were looted and burned by goondas. Weavers’ mohallas (neighborhoods) were razed to the ground. On October 26, eighteen persons were brutally murdered by a mob in the area of Jamuna Kothi. Trains were also attacked: passengers, whose names were identified as Muslim on the reservation charts, were killed. The police and their superintendent, K. S. Dvivedi, participated actively in the killing of Muslims. Their involvement was so extensive, that Bihar’s Director General of Police had to call for Dvivedi’s immediate replacement. But during a visit for his electoral campaign, on October 26, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, after having listened to complaints from local policemen, declared that Superintendent Dvivedi would not be transferred, thereby legitimizing a continuation of violence. The Ramanandan Prasad Commission condemned, in the most severe terms, the partiality and active participation of the police forces-particularly that of the Bihar Military Police (BMP).
Tragic events also occurred in nearby villages. On October 26, the village of Timoni (125 households) was entirely destroyed. An evacuation of the villagers, which had been carried out earlier, on October 25, limited the casualties to eleven deaths. In Chanderi, a hundred Muslims were killed on 27–28 October by a Hindu mob. The Ramanandan Prasad Commission also reported that on October 27 a four-thousand-strong mob streaming in from adjacent villages attacked the village of Lugain for nine hours, with the active complicity of the assistant sub-inspector of the Jagdishpur police station. Two hundred persons were killed.
In all, according to official records, 396 people died in the violence. But it is likely that more than one thousand people lost their lives during these events; the police were reluctant to register all deaths. Engineer reported that 896 Muslims and 50 Hindus died, and that 106 persons were missing, bringing a plausible total death toll to 1,052. Fifty- to sixty thousand persons were also made refugees.
The conspicuous partiality of the district and police administrations; and the state government’s delay in reacting were stressed by several commentators. Five days before the riots, the Congress-led state administration had received a letter from a local officer, requesting the removal of the superintendent of police, Dvivedi, and the district magistrate, Arun Jha, who had previously acted irresponsibly in their handling of communal tensions. The state government simply ignored the proposal. That proved to be a terrible mistake.
A belated trial took place in 2007: of the considerable number of persons originally charged, only twenty-four were eventually judged. Fourteen of them, including two police officers, were found guilty.
**(India Today 15/10/1989); **(The Statesman 25/11/1989); ***(Bharti 1989); ***(Saksena 1990: 170–172); ***(Engineer 1990b); ***(A. K. Jha 1991); ***(Engineer 1995b), ***( Rizvi 1997)