Communal violence is among the bloodiest and most unfortunate blots on India’s history, and deserves very particular attention in the post-Independence era of a Constitutional secular democracy that promised equality and justice to all its citizens, irrespective of caste, creed or race. Why has this promise failed? It is true that, after over half a century of freedom, the frequency of communal rioting appears to be following a long-term declining trend. Equally, it remains true that India’s minorities have lived in comparative safety and honour, and have extraordinary achievements to their credit, particularly when their accomplishments are compared with the quality of life and security of minorities in other countries in the region. Nevertheless, communal riots continue to recur with unacceptable frequency, and communal conflict has also found a different expression in at least some parts of the country in the form of terrorism. What are the roots of this persistent animus, and why have they resisted transformation despite the Constitutional mandate?

Many analysts have, in the past, focused on these issues, and they have found the political dynamics of democracy in a complex and often backward society at least in part responsible for the persistence and periodic intensification of religious tensions in India. It is, within this context, difficult to forget that independent India was born in the midst of a bloody orgy of communal violence, and the psyche of an entire generation, if not an entire nation, is certainly scarred by memories of those past slaughters and atrocities. Equally, while lip service to the idea of ‘secularism’ has been universal, the actions of all political parties – including, if not especially, those that claim ‘secularism’ as their primary platform – can hardly withstand an objective scrutiny in this regard. Opportunistic exploitation of the communal platform has been the general and shared characteristic of politics for parties virtually across the ideological spectrum, creating a tendency to polarization and ghettoisation of communities in large areas of the country, particularly, though not exclusively, among the uneducated poor. These elements have all been exacerbated by India’s history of conflict with Pakistan, and Pakistan’s continuous and intense subversive activity on Indian soil.

Nevertheless, an exclusive focus on the history of communal violence in post-Independence India cannot produce an adequate or satisfactory explanation of such violence. The roots of our predicament lie deep in history, and in the attitudes and ideologies that provoke and legitimise fanaticism and violence within and between religious communities. Much of the ‘secular’ discourse in India has been based on a ‘politically correct’ refusal to confront the nature of religious communities and institutions, and their past and present activities; and on the fiction that ‘all religions are equal’ and that their inherent message is the same. While such a perspective may be useful in dousing transient fires between communities, it cannot even begin to address the sources of such historical conflagrations. The truth is, unless communities acknowledge reality – warts and all – and recognize the transgressions of their own history within a constructive context, no real solution to the issues of communal polarization and violence in India can be brought about.

R.N.P. Singh’s Riots and Wrongs is an effort in this direction and offers a particular perspective on the history and dynamics of communal antagonisms and carnage in the South Asian region. Singh has a distinguished career in the Indian Police, and has dealt directly with the worst consequences of such hostility and violence, and his experience lends an urgency and immediacy to his analysis. The book also brings together a wealth of documentation that puts the issue in context. It is only through such processes of documentation and analysis that the discourse can eventually be broadened to accommodate perspectives that will produce the necessary movement of ideas without which no effective solution is possible. Singh’s objective through this book has been to inject a measure of realism in a discourse that has long been delusionary. It can only be hoped that he will succeed in provoking a continuous process of the rationalization of this discourse, and in catalysing a more rigorous approach to questions that have often been neglected or avoided because they are psychologically unsettling or politically disturbing.

It is really unfortunate for a secular democratic country like India to be witnessing the rage of communal conflicts even after half a century of Independence, that too when the partition of the country was agreed upon to provide a homeland for Muslims. The aim of partition was to maintain peace in the subcontinent. Even after the partition, a large number of Muslims stayed back in India, giving an impression to the Non-Muslim population that the course of Islam would get a new dimension in the subcontinent as Muslims would now prefer to live in democratic and secular India by accepting the principle of peaceful co-existence. It was also expected that Hindus, forgetting the past would embrace Muslims in keeping with their civilisational traits and traditions that had made them first welcome a group of Muslims about 1500 years back on the coast of Malabar.”

However, it did not happen so. On the contrary, the post independence era saw a marked increase in incidents of communal clashes with more intensity and ferocity. Why this sudden spurt in violence? Well, this subject requires a thorough and impartial study as any biased and partisan study would instead of solving the problem, complicate the matter, which would ultimately harm the process of nation building and prove detrimental to the peace and prosperity of both the communities. Truthful realisation of facts would not only help Muslims but also the entire Islamic world in joining the national mainstream, showing that Muslims in India are much more in peace than anywhere else in the world. It is however, a matter of satisfaction and pride that even after the continuing distrust and mistrust between the two communities, Muslims in India enjoy the best position and peace than anywhere else in the Islamic world.

The subject of Hindu-Muslim relationship has been a matter of debate, both during pre-partition and post-partition eras. Perhaps, the crux of the problem has not been looked into honestly by a section of the scholars. The main reason behind communal problems in India is the dilemma posed before the major section of Muslims, i.e. to choose between the secular democratic way and the hard line tenets of Islam, which declares that Allah is the only God, Mohammed is the only leader, Koran is the only constitution and Jihad is the only path.

Hindus, even after facing the barbaric behaviour of the Muslims for over thousands of years, always stretched their hands to embrace Muslims, which was evident in 1857 during the first War of Independence against the British. Muslims overlooked it. Another serious such attempt was made by Mahatma Gandhi in 1918-21, inspite of opposition from a section of the Congress Party. Gandhi openly declared that for the religious cause of Muslim brothers, Hindus would join the Khilafat Movement. But this attempt too received a serious setback when the Moplah Muslims turned Khilafat Movement into a horrible Hindu-Muslim riot. The subsequent situation including Direct Action Day of August 16, 1946 and partition of the country after unparalleled riots in 1947 are well known.

Is it not the nature of the Islam, which has kept Muslims fighting and indulging in violence since its inception until date? Though history has been a witness to this cruel and barbaric behaviour since Islam’s birth, only after the Muslims’ attack on World Trade Centre, New York on September 11, 2001 did the world openly realized this phenomenon. India has been facing such Islamic terror for over a thousand years, but the world ignored it. India is still facing  Islamic-terror in Kashmir and elsewhere. It is the blind faith of radical Muslims that has made them synonymous with violence and it is because of their religious faith that they are feared the world over as people who will not hesitate to resort to aggression to defend their faith..

Indians have been living a miserable life since the day in 711 A.D. when Muhammed-bin-Quasim invaded Sindh. Aurangzeb was the worst, he is considered by the Muslim Community as the purest practitioner of Islam. Similar is the case with the Taliban - and their deeds are considered a blot on humanity. Secularism is an anathema to Islam. Late General Zia-ul-Haque, the former President of Pakistan, a self-styled champion of Islam, once declared, “Islam can never be secular. Islam is as much a part and parcel of Pakistan as Zionism is life and breath of Israel.” The reaction of Muslim fundamentalists to the Supreme Court’s judgment in Shah Bano case, and their attitude towards Uniform Civil Code are well known.

Muslims whether in minority or majority remain in conflicts with the other on one cause or the other. They never remain agreeable to join the national mainstream with the non-Muslim majority and continue demanding separate laws, separate institutions, separate lands and separate identity. They remain in conflict with non-Muslim all over. Their usual behaviour is to launch Jihad against non-believers. According to one study, of the present armed conflicts in the world, Islam is involved in 16, and of 13 United Nations’ Peace Missions, 9 concern Muslim countries or Muslim interests. According to another worldwide study of an American Human Right’s Institute, 45 of the 50 states in the contemporary world defined as “un-free” are in wholly or in part Muslim.

According to the Research findings of Jonathan Fox, published in his book, ‘Islam And The West’, Islamic groups were involved in 109 ethnic conflicts during the post Cold-War period, 33 as majority groups, 38 as minority groups and 38 in which, both groups were Islamic. According to another survey, some 32 ethnic conflicts occurred during the Cold-War period. This included fault line wars between the Arabs and Israelis, Indians and Pakistanis, Sudanese Muslims and Christians, Sri Lankan Buddhists and Tamils, and Lebanese Shiaiites and Maronites. While less violence took place between non-Muslims groups, the overwhelming majority of fault-line conflicts took place along the boundary loopings across Eurasia and Africa that separates Muslims from Non-Muslims.

Muslims have fought a bloody and disastrous war in Bosnia; in Kosovo, Albanian Muslims suffer from Serbian rule; Albanian and Greek Governments are at loggerheads over their minorities in each other’s country; Turks and Greeks are at each other’s throat over Cyprus; Muslim Turks and Orthodox Greeks maintain hostile adjoining states in Caucasus; Turkey and Armenia are historic enemies; Algerians and Armenians have been at war over control of Nagorno Karabakh. In North Caucasus, Chechen, Ingush and other Muslims fought for 200 years for their independence from Russia; a bloody struggle was resumed by Russia in Chechnya in 1994. Fighting also occurred between Ingush and the orthodox Ossetians. In Volga basin,  Muslims Tatars fought the Russians and finally reached an uneasy compromise with Russia for limited sovereignty.

Analysis of the ideology would reveal that the paramount driving force for Islamic confrontationism is the desire of worldwide dominance embodied in the concept of Hukumat- e-Ilahi and Nizam-e-Mustafa driven forward by Jihad aimed at promoting Muslim brotherhood (Ummah). In the eyes of Islam, secular democracies including India are Dar-ul-Harb (Abode of war) and Kafir and are its prime target. Islamic fundamentalists, openly declare that fighting Jihad against India is an Islamic duty of the Muslim world and Kashmir issue cannot be solved by any means other than Jihad.

History has been a mute witness of Islamists’ behaviour of confrontation and barbarism. The succeeding events have further bolstered its spirit to assert Islam as the new world order. These events included: (i) Oil-boom in the Gulf countries, (ii) Revolution in Iran in late-1970s, (iii) Role of Islam in violent conflicts in Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, and Kashmir in India, (iv) Sectarian war in Lebanon, (v) Continuing Muslim rebellion in Chechenya (Russia), (vi) Violent Palestinian movement against Israel, (vii) Various conflicts in Yugoslavia, and (viii) Bombing of World Trade Centre in New York in 1993 and 2001.

The present scenario of Islam mirrors its past deeds, when it launched Jihad immediately after the death of Mohammed in 632 A.D. and was able to expand its empire from Spain to China, only within 100 years. By the end of 13^th Century, large part of India had come under its domain. The religious injunction of Islam had been the driving force behind the conflict, confrontation, invasions and establishment of Islamic empire.

Of late, the world has realized the nature of Islam and they have been forced to accept that the present scene of worldwide terrorism is Islamic terrorism. Why did the world earlier failed to realize the crudest form of Islam, which is synonymous with terrorism? Islam merges religion and politics to achieve religious objectives of the Dar-ul-Islam (Abode of Islam). As was British India, the Independent India is also Dar-ul-Harb (abode of war) for Islam.

In view of the changing situation in the world; Islamic radicals adopting new methods; consolidation Muslim force by giving the call of Ummah (Muslim brotherhood), and increasing communal flare up in India, the Islamic dangerous design is required to be given a fresh look. There has been a sharp change in the pattern of communal clashes in India since the 1980s. Earlier, the communal clashes used to be localized in a sense that the participation in the disturbances were of local people only. Now the situation is not like before. A number of cases have been reported in which the igniting participants were found from one country, taken to a second country, trained in a third country, financed by a fourth country and then pushed to the sensitive corner of India to engineer communal flare ups. Is it not indicative of the fact that the entire scheming of the communal flare up is now organized at International levels? International Islamic Institutions are being manipulated to serve the hidden agenda of Pan-Islamism; global drift towards violence and terrorism is fuelled by extreme elements operating on world levels.

Although, India faced communal discrimination and barbaric onslaught at the hands of Muslims since long, but communal riots, as defined by the British was first traced to Ahmedabad in 1713 A.D. A chronological analysis of Communal Riots in India reflects the fact that the religious causes are the main igniting factors in communal disturbances. On almost all occasions, the triggering force behind violence has been the religious intolerance from the Muslim side, to pressurize the Hindus to follow their (Muslim’s) dictates while observing the Hindus’ traditional and religious practices. Distrust and mistrust arose due to Muslims’ inflexible and non-compromising behaviour and continues till date with the result that antagonism between the two communities continues.

A feeling of mutual trust has to be inculcated in the minds of both Hindus and Muslims. This is only possible if the subject is studied with an open mind to discuss the real causes without colouring the causes with ideological and religious paints, so that both the communities come to realize their previous mistakes and maintain harmonious relations. A solution to the problem has to found out and the secular and democratic constitution of India is required to be accepted by the Muslims without giving religious tilt to it. This can be possible only when the radical package of Muslim brotherhood, tenets of Dar-ul-Harb, Dar–ul-Islam, Jihad and Islamisation of the world are kept aside in the interest of the community and the nation. The shelving of the real causes would only prolong the disease instead of fighting it out unitedly. The Hindus and Muslims, both are proud citizens of India, and saner sections from both sides should unitedly behave and work to make India a great country, forgetting the deeds and misdeeds of the past and changing the radical values of religion.