It's also time to keep a watch on radical Hindu groups

Why are we not surprised to read that Hindu groups may also be behind some of the hate-propaganda during the recent Assam violence and the exodus of north-easterners from various cities in the south? The Times of India reports today that as much as 20 percent of the blocked social networking sites disseminating hate material may have been uploaded by Hindu groups seeking to polarise people on communal lines. Some of the SMSes that created panic may also have emerged from these unnamed groups. Quoting unnamed sources, the newspaper reports that “several posts had pictures or videos of Tibetan self-immolations in protest against Chinese occupation. These posts were, however, captioned as atrocities against ‘Assamese Hindus’ by ‘illegal’ migrant Muslims.” [caption id=“attachment_427374” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. Reuters[/caption] This would be amusing, if not downright dangerous, since the hate propaganda emanating from Muslim groups also used images of Tibetan self-immolations to suggest that Muslim Rohingyas were fleeing Myanmar as they were being targeted by the Buddhists there. The Assam conflagration, which should essentially be seen as conflicts over land between tribals, ethnic Assamese and settlers from Bangladesh, both legal and illegal, has provided the perfect setting for converting it into a Hindu-Muslim issue, with its hoped-for political polarisation. As Firstpost noted earlier, the scare SMSes that drove north-easterners out of places like Hyderabad, Bangalore and Pune gave Hindu groups the opportunity to surface as protectors , even though this can only come by injecting communal overtones to this tragedy. The Shiv Sena, which was upstaged by Raj Thackeray on the 11 August rioting by a Muslim group, is also said to be toying with its Hindutva moorings . With Raj playing a stronger card on Marathi manoos and carving out an anti-migrant political position for himself, the Sena is redoing its CV to display Hindutva more prominently on it. Political brinkmanship will mean that politicians will try to play the Hindu card or the Muslim card or the caste card as the build-up for the next general election begins. The Maharashtra home ministry is said to be keen to transfer Mumbai Police Commissioner Arup Patnaik, who managed to defuse a potential battle with Muslim mobs with minimal loss of lives on 11 August. This shows that politicians will not think twice about damaging the independence of the police if it serves their purpose. In this charged atmosphere, trouble-makers from both communities will seek to exploit sentiments and attempt to build vote-banks. While most radical Muslim groups are anyway under the scanner, there is need to keep a vigil on militant Hindu groups, too, this time. What we don’t need right now is another Malegaon kind of terror attack to worsen tensions between communities. Election season is approaching. India is not the tinder-box it was in the 1990s and the first five years of the 21st century. The country has presumably learnt from 1992 and 2002, but the police have to presume that things can go wrong – as they did in Assam and Mumbai. Militants from both communities need aggressive monitoring.