Ram Navami celebrations | The lack of violence does not signify peace

That Ram Navami celebrations this year didn't even make it to the front pages of national newspapers must mean that the occasion went off uneventfully. In the last few years, this religious spectacle made the news mainly because of the violence that accompanied it.

However, the lack of violence doesn't signify peace. In West Bengal, where the governor congratulated the chief minister on a ‘peaceful’ Ram Navami, the visuals of processionists brandishing swords and daggers sent a clear message. Indeed, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokespersons' defence of such a display of arms in a religious procession left no doubt that those weapons were not just for show.

This year, the Calcutta High Court had set conditions for revoking the ban imposed by the West Bengal Police on some Ram Navami processions: the numbers wouldn’t exceed 500 per procession, and no arms would be carried. The BJP grossly flouted both conditions.

Will the police take action against those who willfully committed contempt of court? Their faces are visible in videos. If it doesn't, it will mean that the Mamata Banerjee government is fine with the main opposition party breaking the law.

The West Bengal example shows that the build-up of communal tension, which often ends in violence, has nothing to do with faith, but everything to do with power politics. In a state where Ram Navami used to be a private celebration, hundreds of processions were held on April 6.

‘Weaponisation of Hindu festivals’, a book by Irfan Engineer and Neha Dabhade, which looks into 11 riots that erupted on Ram Navami in 2022-2023 across India, provides some new insights into an old phenomenon. There’s nothing new in violence erupting during religious processions. What’s new is how routine it has become for the BJP to make these processions a display of majoritarian might.

The book shows that in places where there is no tradition of Ram Navami processions — after all, the deity is not worshipped everywhere — the BJP introduces this procession to mobilise Hindus and build up a base. This has happened in West Bengal; it has also happened in Mumbai. In the communally-sensitive suburb of Jogeshwari, after two riots took place over two months in 1990-1991, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh activist told this author they planned to celebrate Ram Navami for the first time there to encash the post-riot anger among the Hindus. More recently, in 2022, the BJP did the same in another sensitive suburban pocket: Malvani, where the hold of the Muslim Congress MLA was vexing the BJP.

In the second year of its introduction, the Ram Navami procession in Malvani provoked violence. So loud was the music played outside the area’s main mosque and for so long, that a police officer felt compelled to jump on to the truck and pull the plug on the music system.

In places where a tradition of Ram Navami processions exists, the book notes that the procession is usually a small, localised event with Muslims also participating in it. In some places, Muslims even get new clothes stitched for the event. The processionists stop their music when the azaan is called out and pause for namazis to enter masjids.

But such mutual accommodation is anathema to the Sanghis, who either try to take over the show, or take out their own processions, which are huge affairs in which all local Hindu organisations are included, and outsiders are brought in large numbers. Whichever the scenario, the objective is political: to build a vote bank, display the community’s strength, and intimidate Muslims.

No wonder that over the last three years, Ram Navami processions have been marked by objectionable songs and slogans, and frenzied dancing, all of these intensified outside mosques. Not surprisingly, this feverish atmosphere pushes some youth to scale masjid walls and plant saffron flags — as was seen this year in Prayagraj, at a dargah which is visited, according to the local police, more by Hindus than Muslims. The defilers have identified their organisational links and declared that they want the dargah of this ‘invader’ to be converted to a temple.

Will they be arrested?

Why were all these flashpoints that could have degenerated into violence — in West Bengal the unlawful display of arms, in Prayagraj the desecration of a mosque, in Kanpur the tense confrontation following the police’s confiscation of sound systems; in Mumbai the heightened bandobast to prevent a repeat of 2023 — not found worthy of mention by most of the national English press? Isn’t it their job to report how our festivals are being weaponised?

(Jyoti Punwani is a senior journalist. X: @jyotipunwani)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.