An uneasy calm prevails in Silchar town in the southern district of Cachar in Assam as Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and police personnel petrol parts of the town after incidents of violence started surfacing since the day of Eid al Adha.
By Sunday, the sensitivity had reduced the heavy presence of security personnel in the pockets where confrontations between vigilantes and locals had happened.
Tensions began as members of the Bajrang Dal, a Hindu far-right group, started checking door-to-door in Muslim pockets of the town to record if the Muslims sacrificed any cow on the day of Eid. The Hindutva vigilantes “armed with sharp objects and lathis” entered some homes while Muslims sacrificed livestock as part of the festival.
According to locals of Panchayat Road, where the first scuffle broke out, a mob barged into a person’s house in the area on Thursday morning to investigate the alleged slaughtering of cattle, recorded videos inside the house’s premises and created a ruckus.
The locality has marginal Muslim households amid a newly settled Hindu population.
Subsequently, this led to religious sloganeering in the area. Bajrang Dal members started to shout “Jai Sri Ram”, a religious greeting which has been co-opted by Hindutva workers as a war cry.
Thaner Ahmed, a resident of the Panchayat Road neighbourhood, said his house was raided by the Bajrang Dal mob and his brother was attacked and sustained minor injuries.
“However prompt police action doused the tension quickly and dispersed the Hindutva goons as well local Muslims from the street” Ahmed told Maktoob.
After the incident at Panchayat Road, Thursday and Friday went calmly but, in the evening, commuters were attacked by stones injuring at least four people. This includes a 65-year-old woman and an eight-year-old minor after a stone broke their car’s window.
The Muslim family was returning home from Silchar Medical College and Hospital (SMCH) when their vehicle was stopped near Tarapur area of the town. The family complained that the mob hurled abuses at them before hitting their car. Injured Ayesha Sultana and her minor grandson were taken to SMCH by the police for treatment.
According to local media, the assailants chanted “Jai Sri Ram” and threatened the family targeting their religion. SP Cachar Numal Mahatta told reports that nine people have been booked for untoward incidents since June 29.
‘Weaponising law to target Muslims’
As per the 2011 census, Silchar has a population of 172,830 with 86.31 percent Hindus and 12.17 percent Muslims. “With such demography and identifiable localities, it is easy to locate communities”, said a Silchar-based journalist who requested anonymity. “These are pre-planned activities. Everyone knows that during religious festivities people do traditional activities”, the media person added.
His point of inference was a memorandum submitted to the Silchar police on 28 June by the VHP and Bajrang Dal seeking preventive measures to stop cow slaughter on Eid.
The VHP’s president of southern Assam zone comprising Barak Valley along with Tripura, Manipur and Dima Hasao) Santanu Naik said, “We suspected there will be cattle slaughter in Silchar on Eid in violation of the Assam Cattle Preservation Act, 2021. So, we asked the police to take cognizance of the issue and take preventive measures so that cow slaughter does not happen in Hindu-dominated areas”.
Naik referred to the law passed by the Assam government in 2021 to regulate slaughter, consumption and transportation of cattle which created an uproar in the state. The cattle preservation law prohibits sale and purchase of beef or beef products in areas “predominantly inhabited by Hindu, Jain, Sikh and other non-beef-eating communities”, or “within a radius of 5 km” of any temple.
The VHP member said, “In Silchar, Muslim neighbourhood has a significant Hindu population. In some Muslim houses, Hindu tenants live. So to keep in mind the religious sentiments of Hindus, we asked police to check the violation of the law” adding that if there were no instances of slaughter in Muslim houses, why would Bajrang Dal members go to their houses?
Naik also accused the police of not taking preventive action to check the slaughter of cows in the city. “This time it (livestock sacrifice) was much more than usually happens in Silchar. Had the police taken proper measures to check the violation of the law, the incident wouldn’t have happened”, Naik said accusing the police of failing to take their memorandum seriously.
Contradicting the VHP’s claims of hurting Hindu sentiments, Ahmed of Panchayat Road said, “It is not about cow slaughter. Even if we had sacrificed a goat, they would have made an issue out of that also. See, Eid’s (Eid Ul Adha) integral part is livestock sacrifice and we have been doing this at this very place for more than 200 years as our family has been living here only”.
He mentioned the number of years his family resided in the locality to assert that Hindus and Muslims have been living in the neighbourhood for more than two centuries and nobody had gone into their homes to check what kind of animal was sacrificed on Eid.
“Silchar is a place where Muslims live along with Hindus and there are temples nearby almost every locality. So with riders such as having no temple within 5 km or no Hindu settlement to allow the slaughter of cattle, it is not possible to offer sacrifice during Eid,” added Ahmed as he requested the Assam government either to ban cow slaughter entirely or not provide scope to people to utilize the law to create communal disharmony.
