Fire and Blood Again

"We are discussing a creeping malady that is undermining our nation," lamented Socialist Leader Nath Pai in India's parliament last week. Dramatic as it seemed, his statement was no exaggeration. Once again battles had broken out between India's Hindu majority (460 million) and its Moslem minority (60 million). It was essentially the same conflict that rent the subcontinent when it achieved independence in 1947, forced its partition into the hostile states of India and Pakistan and has caused periodic upheavals ever since. This time the site was the west-coast state of Maharashtra, where eight days of rioting left at least 152 Indians dead, more than 500 injured and thousands of shops and homes looted and burned out.

The troubles began in Bhiwandi, a cotton and silk weaving center 35 miles north of Bombay, Maharashtra's capital. Bhiwandi's most prominent Moslems agreed to join Hindus in an anniversary procession honoring the 17th century warrior Shivaji, who is remembered for his rout of the Moslem Moguls who dominated India for over 200 years. So delicate are relationships between the sects that marching slogans had to be approved before the procession started out. All of them were about as inoffensive as LONG LIVE MOTHER INDIA. Midway through the parade, however, a few marchers began to shout scurrilous slogans calling Moslems thieves. Soon stones, acid-filled light bulbs and Molotov cocktails began flying, though nobody is certain who started the barrage. A force of 600 policemen firing tear gas and then bullets were unable to keep the fighting from spreading.

Haunting Face. Word of the religious riot ran through Maharashtra with predictable results. In Jalgaon, 200 miles away, Hindus forced an entire Moslem wedding party into a building and set it afire; 19 Moslems, including small children, died. In the town of Broach, 300 people rioted after a pedicab knocked down an eight-year-old boy. In Bhiwandi, Hindus chased six Moslem moneylenders into a thicket, set it afire and hacked the men to death as they fled the flames.

Hindu-Moslem enmity has been a factor in Indian life since the beginning of the tenth century. Two decades ago, it reached a peak when more than 100,000 people died in the wake of partition. Religious fanatics still stir up trouble, and police intelligence is usually not good enough to head it off. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi blamed the Hindu nationalist party, Jana Sangh, and its paramilitary arm, the Rashtrya Sewak Sangh (R.S.S.), for the latest bloodbath. "Is it a coincidence," she asked, "that when people who belong to the R.S.S. or the Jana Sangh go somewhere, soon afterward there is a riot? To me it seems a strange coincidence." A Moslem speaker in parliament noted bitterly that "most of the riots break out in areas where Moslems are prosperous." Nobody was more bitter, however, than Home Minister Y.B. Chavan, a native of Maharashtra, who after a visit to Bhiwandi told of how small children had been burned alive in front of their mothers. "I have met such a mother," said Chavan, "and her face will haunt me throughout my life."

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