Noticing the emergence of a novel trend, a just-released report based on a fact-finding team’s observations following its interaction in particular with Hindu and Muslim political activists, administrators and police officials, has claimed that a major reason why chasm between the two communities in Gujarat has lately reached new heights is, a veritable competition between Hindu right-wing groups and leaders to capture the existing communal space.

Titled “Hindu Right, Communal Riots and Demolitions: Emerging Pattern of Communal Riots in India”, the report has been prepared against the backdrop of what it calls “low intensity” communalism which has characterised rioting in Gujarat in the recent past, especially after the 2002 communal carnage, one of the worst in Independent India.

Especially focusing on riots in two Gujarat towns, Himmatnagar and Khambhat, which took place on April 10, the day clashes broke also out in different parts of India on the occasion of Ram Navmi, the report points to how Ram Sena, Antar Rashtriya Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) competed with each other to take out Shobha Yatra.

Suggesting that the pattern was not very different from West Bengal, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand, where similar processions were taken out, the report says, in Himmatnagar, a North Gujarat town, the “rivalry” between the Antar Rashtriya Hindu Parishad, founded by Pravin Togadia after he broke away from the VHP, and the VHP was instrumental in having more tensions after a second procession was taken out following the first one causing violence.

Prepared after on-the-spot interactions of a team led by Neha Dabhade of the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism and Hozefa Ujjaini of Buniyaad, Gujarat-based non-profits, the report observes, the second procession in Himmatnagar was “forcefully implemented”. In fact, one found that “there was a very visible sense of competition between Hindu right-wing groups for domination, visibility and reach out”.

This story was originally published in counterview.net . Read the full story here