It can even be termed ‘a run-of-the-mill riot’. Marriage party revellers in Gorakhpur in eastern Uttar Pradesh clash with participants of a Moharram procession over a trifle. One of them gets killed, some vehicles are burnt, some shops torched. Curfew is clamped. This riot too could have been passed off as one of the innumerable communal skirmishes that the state is witness to. What gives importance to the Gorakhpur riot is the fact that it took place against the background of a prospective and crucial assembly election.

This also explains why the retaliatory attacks by both communities lasted for no longer than a day. There was a second phase of violence — bigger and more widespread — which was over the arrest of Mahant Yogi Adityanath, the powerful BJP MP from Gorakhpur, who had called for a bandh in eastern UP, demanding the arrest of those “responsible for the killing of a youth in the presence of policemen”.

Yogi Adityanath was arrested to ensure that he and his brigade didn’t vitiate the atmosphere by making incendiary statements. Ironically the arrest stoked the violence. In a display of quick action, the Mulayam Singh government suspended the entire district administration and police team. It may not have helped control the violence, but the purpose was served.

In the hurly-burly of Uttar Pradesh politics, it doesn’t surprise anyone if the politics of an avowed secularist and that of a confirmed communalist feed on each other. The commonly accepted logic in UP is that a communal divide in the eastern province, whose centre is Gorakhpur, directly helps the BJP. This also, indirectly, goes in favour of the Samajwadi Party, because it helps polarise the Muslim vote across the state. The hardening of the divide also undermines Mayawati’s base. Half of the Bahujan Samaj Party’s 37 seats in the state assembly came from this region in 2002.

... contd.