The smoke of conspiracies: The targeting of Professor Apoorvanand

Was there a conspiracy behind the communal conflagration in February in Northeast Delhi, which left more than 53 people dead, several hundred injured and vast properties gutted and looted?

Scholars of communal violence in post-Independence India maintain that no significant episode of communal violence is entirely spontaneous. Communal organisations systematically foster hate through hate speeches and rumour-mongering, and also organise the logistics of the assaults. And I have repeatedly affirmed, based both on my experience of handling many communal riots as a civil servant and my human rights interventions and study of many episodes of communal violence, that no riot can continue for more than even a few hours unless the government actively wishes for the violence to unfold.

In the weeks before Delhi was traumatised by the worst Hindu-Muslim communal blood-letting since the Partition riots, the city witnessed the dangerous ramping up of communal tempers by recurring hate speeches by a series of senior leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party, including Union ministers and the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh in the election campaign for the Delhi assembly. The target of the ire of most of these speakers were the protesters against the Citizenship Amendment Act, best epitomised by the indomitable working-class women...

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