Sunday, August 19, 2012

Panic Seizes India as a Region’s Strife Radiates - By Jim Yardley assisted by Hari Kumar - The New York Times

SHAME ON TIMES OF INDIA, INDIAN EXPRESS, HINDUSTAN TIMES, THE HINDU FOR THEIR BIASED AND PREJUDICED COVERAGE OF ASSAM RIOTS. THEY CANNOT PAPER OVER DISASTER OF SUCH MAGNITUDE. THEY DESERVED TO BE CONDEMNED. TRUTH CANNOT BE COVERED UP SO EASILY. READ THE WESTERN MEDIA ACCOUNT TO JUDGE THE ABJECT FAILURE OF INDIAN MEDIA, ESPECIALLY ENGLISH LANGUAGE MEDIA, TO ADMIT THAT SITUATION IS ONE-SIDED ETHNIC CLEANSING.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
<ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>



READERS' COMMENTS - MUST READ

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/18/world/asia/panic-radiates-from-indian-state-of-assam.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y&pagewanted=all#comments

Panic Seizes India as a Region’s Strife Radiates
Jagadeesh Nv/European Pressphoto Agency
People from northeastern India boarded a train bound for Guwahati, in Assam State, at a railway station in Bangalore on Thursday. More Photos »
By
Published: August 17, 2012 44 Comments
BRAJAKHAL, India — Like a fever, fear has spread across India this week, from big cities like Bangalore to smaller places like Mysore, a contagion fueling a message: Run. Head home. Flee. And that is what thousands of migrants from the country’s distant northeastern states are doing, jamming into train stations in an exodus challenging the Indian ideals of tolerance and diversity.
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Prashanth Vishwanathan for The New York Times
The burned remains of a home belonging to Muslims in Assam State in northeastern India. Dozens have died in violence between Muslims and the Bodo tribe. More Photos »
The New York Times
India’s northeast is isolated from the rest of the country. More Photos »

Readers’ Comments

What began as an isolated communal conflict here in the remote state of Assam, a vicious if obscure fight over land and power between Muslims and the indigenous Bodo tribe, has unexpectedly set off widespread panic among northeastern migrants who had moved to more prosperous cities for a piece of India’s rising affluence.
A swirl of unfounded rumors, spread by text messages and social media, had warned of attacks by Muslims against northeastern migrants, prompting the panic and the exodus. Indian leaders, deeply alarmed, have pleaded for calm, and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appeared in Parliament on Friday to denounce the rumor mongering and offer reassurance to northeastern migrants.
“What is at stake is the unity and integrity of our country,” Mr. Singh said. “What is at stake is communal harmony.”
The hysteria in several of the country’s most advanced urban centers has underscored the deep roots of ethnic tensions in India, where communal conflict is usually simplified as Hindu versus Muslim, yet is often far more complex. For decades, Indian leaders have mostly managed to isolate and triangulate regional ethnic conflicts, if not always resolve them, but the public panic this week is a testament to how the old strategies may be less effective in an information age.
Last week, the central government started moving to stabilize Assam, where at least 78 people have been killed and more than 300,000 have fled their homes for refugee camps. Then Muslims staged a large, angry protest in Mumbai, the country’s financial capital, on the western coast. A wave of fear began sweeping through the migrant communities after several people from the northeast were beaten up in Pune, a city not far from Mumbai.
By Wednesday and Thursday, the exodus had begun. So many people were pouring into train stations in Bangalore and Chennai that the Railways Ministry later added special services to certain northeastern cities. By Friday, even as some of the fears eased in the biggest cities, people were leaving smaller cities, including Mysore and Mangalore.
To many northeastern migrants, the impulse to rush home — despite the trouble in Assam — is a reminder of how alienated many feel from mainstream India. The northeast, tethered to the rest of the country by a narrow finger of land, has always been neglected. Populated by a complex mosaic of ethnic groups, the seven states of the northeast have also been plagued by insurgencies and rivalries as different groups compete for power.
Here in Assam, the underlying frictions are over the control of land, immigration pressures and the fight for political power. The savagery and starkness of the violence have been startling. Of the 78 people killed, some were butchered. More than 14,000 homes have been burned. That 300,000 people are in refugee camps is remarkable; had so many people fled across sub-Saharan Africa to escape ethnic persecution, a humanitarian crisis almost certainly would have been declared.
“If we go back and they attack us again, who will save us?” asked Subla Mushary, 35, who is now living with her two teenage daughters at a camp for Bodos. “I have visited my home. There is nothing left.”
Assam, which has about 31 million people, has a long history of ethnic strife. The current violence is focused on the westernmost region of the state, which is claimed by the Bodos as their homeland. For years, Bodo insurgent groups fought for political autonomy, with some seeking statehood and others seeking an independent Bodo nation.
In 2003, India’s central government, then led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, brokered a deal in which Bodo insurgents agreed to cease their rebellions in exchange for the creation of a special autonomous region, now known as the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Districts. It was a formula long used by Indian leaders to subdue regional rebellions: persuade rebels to trade the power of the gun for the power of the ballot box.
Now the Bodos dominate the government overseeing the autonomous districts, even though they are not a majority, accounting for about 29 percent of a population otherwise splintered among Muslims, other indigenous tribal groups, Hindus and other native Assamese. Competition over landownership is a source of rivalry and resentment: the land rights of Muslims are tightly restricted inside the special districts, even though they constitute the region’s second-largest group, after the Bodos.
“This whole fight is about land and capturing power,” said Maulana Badruddin Ajmal, a member of Parliament and a Muslim leader in a neighboring district. “It is not a religious fight.”
These resentments exploded in July and early August, after an escalating cycle of attacks between Muslims and Bodos. Soon entire villages were being looted and burned. The authorities have made few arrests, and each side has blamed the other. The Bodos say illegal Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh are streaming into the autonomous districts and taking over vacant land; Muslims say such claims are a smokescreen intended to disguise a Bodo campaign to drive out rightful Muslim residents in a campaign similar to so-called ethnic cleansing.
During the worst violence, the state government in Assam seemed paralyzed. One issue is that many former Bodo rebels never turned over their automatic weapons; some Muslims driven from their homes say Bodos scared them off by firing AK-47s into the air.
To visit some of the affected villages is to witness the eerie silence of lives brutally interrupted. In Brajakhal, the entire Muslim section was burned and looted, while the homes of non-Muslims were left untouched. In the nearby village of Chengdala, each side apparently attacked the other — both the Bodo and Muslim homes are destroyed, with a handful of others left standing.
Sumitra Nazary, a Bodo woman, said her elderly father was bludgeoned to death with an ax.
“He was paralyzed,” she said. “He couldn’t run away.”
It is uncertain when the people in the refugee camps will be able to return to their villages. Paramilitary units and Assam police officers have erected temporary guard posts outside many of the destroyed or looted villages, promising security.
Assam’s chief minister ordered refugees to begin returning to their homes this week, even as new violence was reported in some areas.
At the camps, life is increasingly miserable. This week, two members of the National Commission for Minorities visited the region and documented problems with sanitation, malnutrition and living conditions at different camps, particularly those inhabited by Muslims. One camp had 10 makeshift toilets for 4,300 people. At another camp, they reported, more than 6,500 people were crammed into a converted high school, including 30 pregnant women.
The scene was little different at a Muslim refugee camp created at the Srirampur R.M.E. School. More than 5,200 people were living on the grounds, crowded under the shade of trees to hide from the broiling midday sun.
Goi Mohammad Sheikh, 39, brought his wife and five children to the camp, but was returning to their village at night to protect their home. It had been looted but not burned, he said, and he and a group of other men were standing guard.
“We want to protect our houses,” he said. “In some villages, it will not be possible to go back. It is too dangerous. But we will not leave our village. If they kill us, let them kill us. How do we leave our motherland?”

Hari Kumar contributed reporting.
A version of this article appeared in print on August 18, 2012, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Panic Seizes India as a Region’s Strife Radiates.
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44 Comments

Share your thoughts.
    • Gautam
    • Carlisle, MA
    Reading the previous comments, I suspect I am the only one that has actually lived in Assam. Let us get past the typical right wing rhetoric (the Republicans here, the BJP there) about illegal immigrants and the like to examine this latest eruption in Assam, emblematic of the "fissiparous tendencies" dreaded and decried by Nehru.

    Bengalis, Khasis, Nagas, Manipuris, Hindus,Muslims, Christians, now the Bodos -- from the 1950s on (sorry, that's how far back I go) each group has been attacked and attacked back (all except the Bengalis, as far as I know) in Assam. And at the end of the day we are left with a patchwork of "states" and "autonomous districts" with little viability.

    Why is that ? Because there has never been a coherent economic policy in Assam, ever. Other than the tea industry, only local agriculture along the Brahmaputra valley and "ethnic" handicrafts (Naga spears, Manipuri dolls, mostly for tourists), but virtually no industry. Tourism? Kaziranga is a mess. Forestry? Totally destroyed, the once verdant hills around Shillong and Cherrapunji denuded to brown mounds being corrosively eroded further each monsoon. Direct foreign investment? None, if you don't count the Indian Army guarding those multiple long borders, which does provide some stimulus to the local economies. Plus, migrants sending money from outside.

    Is it any wonder then that people are fighting, scapegoating "the other," trying to eke out livings from a stagnant if not shrinking economic pie?
    • Allen Manzano
    • Carlsbad, CA
    The usual suspects are rounded up in these commentary. It is difficult to resolved sectarian, cultural conflict if at all. The mix of India is inevitably volatile, reading this report and the commentaries suggest that the problem is intractable and simply part of Indian reality. Periods of calm and periods of conflict seem to alternate with each other in many regions. The amazing thing is that the nation survives and seems to be striving forward. The nature of the conflict is much like it is everywhere keyed to difference and identity rather than cohesion and tolerance. I wonder if there is anywhere in the world where a solution has ever been found and managed. The only example that springs to mind is Switzerland but to this day Britains define themselves as Scots and English, Spaniards as Gallegos and Catalans, Italians as Sicilians and Genoese, toss in religion and different levels of power and you end up with Israelis and Palestinians, Georgians and Russians. It isn't India, it's us.
    • the doctor
    • allentown, pa
    As a caucasian whose traveled to India regularly for 30 years, I am saddened by the ethnic violence, paticularly directed against migrant workers who are a routine sight in Indian cities. By any measure, India is a challenge to govern. Abject poverty exists in extremis against stunning and often obscence wealth. Still it seems to somehow co-exist ( the DNA of millenia, perhaps). But when temper and unreason flares ( as in Gujarat or Ayodhya), savagery ensues. As the subcontinent prospers (and it will - the talent and work ethic is there is spades) one hope and prays that that institional corruption and ethnic division and the moral imperative of raising the living standard of the tens of millions still destined to be born and die in the street is raised to a level of decency....
    • Truthseeker
    • Cleveland
    Land and water is going to be the next major source of contention in these extremely populated areas. Abject poverty on top makes people do savage acts.
    If these two important necessities are not resolved and are not put on the agenda by the govts of south asia things will only get worse.
    Next decades to come we will have lots of these conflicts as resources of the world crumble.
    • B
    • San Francisco, CA
    Ajitji,
    Wikipedia is only a information portal(with flaws), not a reliable source, and cannot be used to back statements.
    Second, poverty does not choose a religion or a sect, both the Bodos and the "illegal" immigrants from Bangladesh are caught in a vicious cycle. If you want to blame some one blame the government for this problem.
    • NV
    • NY, NY
    NH,
    India may not be orderly, but it is most certainly a democracy in every sense of the word.
    • princeknyc
    • New York
    I dson't think it is fair to blame Manmohan Singh - it is the majority of Indian people whose attitude towards Muslims give rise to this kind of violence. The BJP and RSS instigated by leaders like Narendra Modi have been at the forefront of fueling anti-Muslim sentiments across the country.
    • Rup
    • Jacksonville, Fl.
    ....remains of colonial attitude ...." Not everything that happens in India (good or bad) can be attributed to the colonial experience.
    • robert demko
    • crestone, co
    We usually think of India as a homogenous place where people live together without conflict, but with thiry six distinct languages and 100s if not thousands of distinct religions and sects the possibilities of violence always lurk just below the surface. North and South India have very different cultures and deep prefudices still exist between the two areas. The population is growing much faster than most developed countries and problems of water, food and sanitation have never been truly solved. Areas west of calcutta are controlled by bandits and Maoist rebels. We seem surpised when conflicts like this errupt, but the surprise is that things like this do not happen more often in this country of tenuous affiliations.
    The question your piece did not answer was why Bangalore and Mysoreso far from the northeast conflict would respond so violently. If the tensions have spread to the entire country then the situation is truly grave.
    • Humanitarian
    • Seattle
    As the world's biggest democracy and a very diverse secular country with lots of languages and religions, in many ways, India can be an inspiration to the rest of the world.

    Unfortunately, the government often doesn't deal effectively with tensions between the different communities. Often, it is politicians who seek to attain narrow political gains by stoking tensions between different communities
    In this case, the indigenous Bodos have (real or imagined) grievances that Muslims from a foreign country (Bangladesh) are illegally entering India and grabbing scant resources away from the Bodos.
    The government should have managed this situation long before it erupted in the recent violence. However, petty Indian politicians have little concerns beyond their own re-election and that is why no one bothered to resolve the tensions between (Hindu) Bodos and Muslims.

    While tragic, the violence in Assam isn't that unusual for India.
    However, it is shocking that thousands of northeasterners are now fleeing faraway places like Bangalore because of alleged rumors that Muslims will massacre them in retaliation for the Bodo/Muslim clashes in Assam.
    This reflects an abject failure of the India state to inspire confidence in its citizens. It is a tragedy that the local state governments and the federal/central government could not guarantee the safety of Indian citizens (from the northeast) and that these people are fleeing from Bangalore etc. to seek refuge in the northeast
    • Ajit
    • Sunnyvale, CA
    Shoddy report which avoids doing the research and merely quotes the various parties involved. What fraction of the Muslims in Assam speak Assamese (as opposed to Bengali-speaking Bangladeshi illegal migrants)? Recall that the Muslim-majority areas within the original boundaries of Assam (Sylhet) were already awarded to East Pakistan during Partition in 1947. What has the Indian government has done to prevent this land grab by illegal immigrants of areas inhabited by the indigenous Bodos? Wikipedia shows that 30% of Assam is Muslim and 27% of Assam residents speak Bengali (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assam). Wikipedia has entries on extremist Muslim outfits operating in Assam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_United_Liberation_Tigers_of_Assam).
    • bala srini
    • saginaw mich
    There is more to it than that meets the eye.ASSAM is a fertile yet low population density state bordering the fulminatingly overpopulous muslim bangladesh from where there is constant illegal encroachment&migration into hindu assam triggering the strife.
    With politicians more concerned for power than performance this problem gets vented like a boiling kettle from time to time&DELHI thousands of mile away&with its usual laccadaisical meandering elephantine move does too little too late.
    • Sudhir
    • Washington, DC
    Manmohan Singh's morally bankrupt and inept leadership has put India on the brink of being a failed state. He has destroyed India as we know it through aiding and abetting widespread corruption.
    • VD
    • Silver Spring, MD
    Bad governance and out of touch, corrupt politicians will only lead to more such incidents in the future. India does not need terrorism and other external shocks to destroy it-- its leaders are quite capable of doing so themselves.

    India, being so big and powerful, has no response to any attacks from terrorist elements on its own soil-- just a lot of cacophony on TV and news media by people who do not matter. India is now talking of re-starting cricket ties with Pakistan even though that country is flatly refusing to bring the terrorist elements to book. Thus, sending a message that there will be no consequences whatsoever.

    When someone like Anna Hazare tried to bring some positive changes by using non-violent means, there are the intellectuals who will argue about the "constitutionality" of the protests and oppose any changes to the status quo. They would do nothing to fix the situation, but would certainly make noises when someone is trying to do so. Sometimes, I wonder what is the use of such arguments if there will be no India as we know it in the future if the present trend continues!
    • Prasad Athota
    • Baton Rouge, LA
    Unfortunately, both the Indian central government and Assam state government are being run by the inefficient Congress party. The last eight year rule has been one of the worst phases of independent India. Present day India is plagued with power shortages, everyday scandals, terror alerts and ethnic rifts. The common man's life has become so miserable that in some cases, it can be compared to sub-Saharan Africa, if I am not exaggerating. And the pathetic thing here is the people are getting used to live with it! Does nt this makes the crooked law makers life more easy?
    • NH
    • Berkeley, CA
    this word, "democracy", should get dropped. It seems to imply an orderly system of governance.
    • Prof.Jai Prakash Sharma,
    • Jaipur, India
    • Verified
    The Assam ethnic violence, involving the Hindus, Bodos and other north-east tribals, and the Bangladeshi Muslim settlers ( coming in the wake of 1971 war), and its spread to rest of the parts of India, specially under the BJP and the rightist influence, seems the result of a curious mix of factors, blown out of proportion by the media and the scare mongers. These include, political opportunism (electoral vote bank politics) of political parties, "sons-of-the soil" fuelled native versus outsider parochialism, citizen versus non-citizen, and some genuine concerns of the natives on their shrinking space for livelihood due to immigrants, and encroachment on their physical assets, like land and property by the outsiders. The solution lies in a genuine concerted effort by the Union and state governments to redress the grievances political, cultural and economic grievances of the multitude of the tribal groups of north-east region, giving political and economic autonomy to the seven states and the respective sub-regions of the north-east region, development package to them, and identification of genuine citizens, and sending back the rest to the countries they had come from post-1971 war after persuading the concerned governments. Finally, undertaking the confidence building measures among different groups of citizens in states, beefing up the internal security and intelligence, and a strict enforcement of law and order, with cracking down heavily on the scare mongers.
    • A NY Times Reader
    • New York City, USA
    Most Bodos are neither Hindu nor Muslim nor Christian- they are like the Japanese as they worship their forefathers. Thus, if you look beneath the surface - this is a classic Hindu versus Muslim political game. The Bodos are pawn in this game.
    • wim
    • NY
    I understand your point, but 31 million people in 30,000 square miles is not low population density. That's like squeezing 31 million people into Maine.
    • Sridhar Chilimuri
    • New York
    Whatever is the instigating cause this sudden panic is clear lack of leadership. The leadership at both state and federal level lack credibility.
    An open free democracy will have social media and fear mongering but strong leadership can restore order.
    A great democracy with poor leaders will descend into chaos. This is an example of that behavior.
    • jay65
    • new york, new york
    Again! Religion has been the curse of the sub-continent for centuries. It is NOT a colonial attitude, it is endemic to that area, which is really more than a few nations. There they are bound to one another.
    • Ram
    • New york
    India is a big country, population-wise. It is bound to have issues like these. That being said, it suffers from the remains of colonial attitude, in which a powerful group attempts to subjugate other minorities. In Gorkhaland Movement, the whole Bengali dominant population sided with the Indian government to ignore Nepali-minority's legitimate demands. This phenomenon continues in other forms, such as between Bodo and Muslims. Needless-to-say, religious extremism has fueled some of the recent tragedy, as always. Well, I am speaking the obvious. But, it is worth pondering these things.
    • dannomusic43
    • Michigan
    To the doctor:
    But really, would you honestly want anyone to emulate what we have here in the US presently?
    They would do much better to study our mistakes in recent decades.
    You're suggesting that they trade one form of corruption for another?
    No, India should lead by example and find her own way and be a shining example of a lack of corruption.

    But our far bigger problem is that we have overpopulated this earth and we are beginning to pay a steeper price for that indulgence.

    It's almost unimaginable for me, in my limited experience, to picture an uber wealthy family living in India.
    They would have to be devoid of any semblance of a social conscience.
    I understand the caste system is amazingly harsh but even so it is so very wrong morally.

    Blessed are the poor--muslim and hindu alike--along with anyone else embroiled in such hardships.
    This article has humbled me when considering my own problems.
    • vineycb1a
    • Delhi, India
    Sitting in Delhi and having access only to newspapers and TV, it is difficult to make sense of what is going on in many places from where people from the northeastern states are rushing back to their home places. They have been working and living in places like Bangalore, Chennai, Mysore, Mangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Goa, and many other places for years. They have as much right to be in those places as any other citizen of the country. But there are lumpen elements in any gathering of people or even in more organized political parties. These elements couldn’t care less while they started a movement like the exodus of the northeastern people from the said places. The objective seems to be to throw out these people and free those jobs and places for the so-called “sons of the soil”, about which some political parties do not mind making even the wildest of slogans.
    It makes no sense that such a large number of people would leave these far away places because there had been clashes between Muslims and others in Assam. In these northeastern areas Muslims have not been a large number and really only a small percentage of the population. There is no doubt that some migrants have come over from Bangladesh, where conditions are even less promising than in the Indian northeastern states.
    It hurts to think that such things could happen in India. Every thinking Indian should hang his head in shame.
    V. C. Bhutani, Delhi, India, 18 Aug 2012, 1118 IST
    • Henry
    • China
    I am sad to know 78 people die because of the lack of leadership in India. I would recommend the united nation quickly get involved in this human disaster.
    • S. Ram
    • Houston, TX
    NYT Pick
    I find this whole situation very strange and shocking. I spent the last 3 weeks in India and have followed the media very closely regarding this situation and have spoken to friends/family in Bangalore and South India. Other than a few isolated incidents in Mumbai/Pune there has been no large reprisal against any group. People in Bangalore and the South are very surprised at the mass exodus as the South tends to be quite peaceful without much of the communal violence in North India. Much of the hysteria seems to be from rumors being spread by outside forces. The government has found evidence that outside forces (i.e. Pakistan) may have perpetuated the hysteria which seems to be the likely culprit. People from the NE have always worked all over India without issue and are reasonably integrated into the societies where they work.
    Please remember that in a country of 1.2 billion, with 30 languages, many religions and beliefs there will definitely be instances of communal strife with occasional lethal consequences. This is terrible and sad but overall India is still the ONLY country in the world that has had multiple Muslim presidents, a PM who is a Sikh andthe head the ruling party a Christian- all in country that is 80% Hindu. NO country on the planet can claim that level of diversity.
    • SAK
    • New Jersey
    It is a typical Indian dilemma. The problems are not resolved and
    left to fester till there is a blow up. So called elected leaders have
    no leadership quality who seem to freeze at the first sign of
    the trouble.
    There are no statistics about Bangladeshis and so called "sons of the soil".
    It is all speculation that Bodos are somehow being encroched upon by the illegal immigrants althoughthe report from Jim Yardley makes it clear that there are restrictions on land rights for the muslims and Bodos are in power and calling the shots.
    • RMK
    • Fort Lee, New Jersey
    Dear B in San Francisco, Wikepedia is a pretty reliable source of information to me for quoting in a public discussion forum like this one. I stopped using all other encyclopedias since Wikepedia has become available on internet. In cases where the article is not neutral, or properly referenced, the editors leave a note about it. Many articles are backed up by references. Ethnic violence in northeast go back to partitioning of Bengal along Muslim and Hindu lines by Curzon (1905), reunion (1911), repartition of Bengal by the departing Mountbatten (1947), Bangladesh independence by Mujibur Rehman and Indira Gandhi (1971), and then the creation of autonomous territories by NDA. The current parliamentarians were unable to assure the northeasterners from leaving different metropolis of India. These people are fleeing with all the cash they have in theri possession. What are they going to do when they reach their homes in Northeast? Will they be content with home cooked meals? New problem is looming in the horizon.
    • LK
    • Michigan
    What is this about "so called" elected leaders. They may or might not be competent, and might not agree with your prescriptions, but they are very much elected. I wonder how many of the "so called" well wishers have ever bothered to vote. There are statistics out there that show that the Indian middle class and upper class strangely has a lower voting percentage than the uneducated/poor. But clearly first class at complaining about how everything is someone else's fault.
    • keefie
    • .co
    I'm concerned that this sort of thing may serve as a spark for another major outbreak of hindu/ moslem conflict in India, possibly expanding into India/ Pakistan nuclear war. I doubt that outsiders can do much except counsel restraint.
    • the doctor
    • allentown, pa
    Sridhar: Respectfully, I disagree with the idea of of a vacumn in Indian leadership. There are many smart, capable leaders but the best of them seem to be subsumed by a system where it's almost impossible to get anything done without compromising princple. Let's face it, India is certainly corrupt. The U.S is corrupt also, but its managed to legalized its corruption in the form of, say, lobby groups and (witness the Citizens Unitied Supreme Course case) the ability to pour unlimited amounts of money into a campaign whose candidate is naturally going to feel indebted. I'm not saying this is a good template for India to follow, but it might improve the political enviornment. India is so much more diverse, more complicated, than the U.S democratic system, but it's the closet model it can follow....
    • Roger Mov
    • Bellevue, WA
    This is a terrible case of solvable problems turning into catastrophes.

    Decades of neglect and inequal opportunities build tensions among various sectarian groups that essentially remain segregated culturally, socially. and economically Add to that some locally elected corrupt officials that actively fan the flames, let alone turn a blind eye to the problems. Add to that anemic local law enforcement that's subservient to those corrupt elected officials than to stand up to the wronged. You have one huge explosive non-melting pot.

    This requires swift federal intervention fighting the bad guys who might be local authorities or power houses. Given that mistakes can be costly with nationwide repurcussions, federal reactions are anything but swift. Add to that relative apathy ("seen this before") from various Indian newspapers: Times of India, The Hindu, etc. where this is just one of the headlines, it is hard to gather enough will power to get to the root of the problem and punish the miscreants. Too bad natural disasters and foreign threats galvanize the nation more than internal problems that take a larger human toll.
    • Aminah Carroll
    • Gallipolis Ferry, WV, former New Yorker
    It isn't "us" in the sense of being genetically doomed to tribalism. It is "us" in the lack of cohesive enculturation of RESPECT in politics and culture. Egalitarianism and meritocracies always outshine narrow parochialism.

    When the Courts and government are authentically democratic and not plutocratic or autocratic; when fair and just tribunals administer justice based not upon whom you know or how much money you have to gain adequate representation, but upon the facts in any given case...when prosecutiors are not out to win at any cost but to see that justice is administered; when sharing and cooperating for the common good displaces piggery and treachery for individual gain...then such a nation embodies hundreds of years of social progress rather than regress caused by unfair ideological or ethnic preference.

    Our global culture is destroying the great civilizing institutions of humankind, most of them in the humanities; hysterically and unjustly demonizing muslims and Arabs; and saturating the globe with an oligarchical bias towards class rule by a privileged, unrepresentative, out of touch self-annointed economically but not morally or mentally elite made up to large degree of noveau riche. The upper quadrant of our own socio-economic mainstream, and the upper 3 to 10 percent of most other countries, have exerted a stranglehold on social goods and squelched evolution, which relies on a balance between the traditional & newly discovered, or currently rediscovered.
    • VM
    • San Jose, CA
    I find it interesting that rumors are being spread via social media and information age.. if anything they should put such rumors to rest pretty quickly. Assuming people can send SMS, they can quickly check on what is happening in their neighborhood and alert their friends and family. This should quickly squash any abuse of the same media by people hostile to them. Authorities can be looking at the same media and taking more proactive action. The Indian traditional media is now 24x7, can they not report on facts and calms things down a bit? If Govt wants to clams things down quickly, I think they have their channels of communication
    • NH
    • Berkeley, CA
    Enough. The NYT is not the place to conduct your Hindu pogroms.
    • SS
    • San Francisco
    It is not politically correct to ask why events a thousand miles away leads to riots and threats of violence by Muslims against other Indians. This is not the first time this has happened and it will not be the last time either. In the 1920's, on the false rumor that the Caliphate had been restored in Turkey, Moplah Muslims went on a murderous rampage in the southern state of Kerala and killed or ethnically cleansed hundreds of thousands of Hindus who had been living besides them for centuries. Who would blame the Assamese and other northeastern Indians for fleeing Kerala, Hyderabad and Bangalore today given the real possibility of these rage boys rampaging and assaulting them after their Friday prayers, as it so often happens. Is there another faith where assembly in a place of worship can lead to exhortations of violence and mob attacks on other people?
    • A.
    • B.
    S. Ram, the fact that you find this situation very strange and shocking is a testament to the lack of understanding of the micro-agressions and discrimination that North easterners may face. Ok, perhaps the flee may have been propelled by social media propaganda (I don't know for sure I am hypothesizing) and yes, individuals from the North east should have the right to stay and work freely in India. However, as a someone in the North east who has been on the receiving end of micro-aggression, assumptions made, and lack of understanding of my ethnic identity from other fellow Indians and South Asians, put that together with stereotypes, discriminatory jokes, insensitivity, when these attitudes are exacerbated in addition with ignorance, hatred and a competition of resources, you have violence against these minorities. Unfortunately, I would not rely on others or the Indian the government for protection with these underlying racial tensions.
    • sardar petal
    • NJ, USA
    Mahatma Gandhi said there is enough in the world to satisfy everyone's needs but not everyone's greed. Sadly the very rich in India are all too happy
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    • NH
    • Berkeley, CA
    So, you're saying communal violence isn't a problem in India. Are there other ostriches in India, too?
    • Sara
    • Texas
    Hindu dream of turning India in to Bharat (Ram Raj) is turned sour as Muslims are gaining majority in some areas. To solve this problem Hindus have started ethnic cleansing / genocide.






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