Worst communal violence in Delhi in decades leaves 17 dead as Trump visits India
Toll rises to 22 in Delhi violence as Modi issues plea for calm
(about 13 hours later)
NEW DELHI — Rioters roamed the streets with iron rods and wooden sticks, demanding to know whether people were Hindus or Muslims. Mosques were damaged and shops were set ablaze, sending smoke billowing high into the air. People with gunshot wounds and blunt trauma from hurled stones rushed into a nearby hospital.
NEW DELHI — The sit-in where women had gathered to protest a new citizenship law was gone, the posters torn and trampled. The mosque next door stood charred and silent, its floor smeared with blood. Stillness filled a major road, empty except for stray dogs picking their way through debris.
Two days of communal violence in the northeastern part of Delhi have left at least 17 people dead and 150 injured in the worst such clashes in India’s capital in decades.
A tense calm settled on a swath of India’s capital Wednesday after a stunning outbreak of communal violence this week left at least 22 dead. The riots are the worst such clashes to hit Delhi in decades and came as President Trump made his first official visit to India.
The violence happened to unfold as President Trump made his first official visit to India and conducted meetings Tuesday in the tony central area of the city home to central government buildings and embassies.
Mobs of Hindus and Muslims had clashed on roads and alleyways in northeast Delhi, throwing stones and crude gasoline bombs. At least four mosques were torched, as were scores of homes and businesses. Witnesses said that instead of stopping the violence, police joined crowds shouting Hindu nationalist slogans and fired indiscriminately.
Trump’s second day in India: Violence in Delhi and support for Modi on ‘religious freedom’
Trump’s second day in India: Violence in Delhi and support for Modi on ‘religious freedom’
The riots represent a serious escalation of tensions after months of protests in response to a controversial citizenship law and growing frictions between supporters and opponents of the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
On Wednesday afternoon, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi ended days of silence on the riots. He issued an appeal for calm, urging people in Delhi to “maintain peace and brotherhood at all times” and restore normalcy.
Since winning reelection last year in a landslide victory, Modi has moved swiftly to implement his party’s agenda of Hindu primacy in India, a multireligious democracy founded as a secular nation. The citizenship law, which provides a fast track to citizenship for migrants from six religions — excluding Islam — is the most contentious step yet. While India is a Hindu-majority nation, Muslims make up about 14 percent of its 1.3 billion people.
This week’s violence marked the second time in Modi’s political career that he has presided over a significant episode of communal violence. In 2002, when he was chief minister of the state of Gujarat, more than 1,000 people were killed, mostly Muslims, in three days of riots. A court-appointed panel cleared Modi of involvement in the violence.
India’s first-time protesters: Mothers and grandmothers stage weeks-long sit-in against citizenship law
Why protests are erupting over India’s new citizenship law
Hundreds of thousands of people have participated in peaceful protests against the law. Some protests have turned violent, and the government mounted a crackdown, storming university campuses and making widespread arrests. Nearly 20 people were killed in protests in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, in December.
The riots in Delhi took place against a backdrop of rising tensions over a controversial citizenship law passed by the Modi government in December. Critics say the measure is unconstitutional and deepens fears that Muslims will be treated like second-class citizens in Modi’s India. Protests against the law have erupted nationwide, with Indians of all religions taking part.
On Tuesday night, police had barricaded the road to Maujpur, a poor and densely populated neighborhood of narrow lanes that reported some of the worst violence. Isolated gunshots punctuated the tense silence. All of the shops were shuttered.
But Muslims have led the opposition to the law. Meanwhile, members of Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have vilified the protesters, calling them traitors who deserve to be shot and seeking to associate them with India’s rival Pakistan. One such leader, Kapil Mishra, helped trigger this week’s violence: He threatened to clear a sit-in conducted by Muslim women, sparking a clash between supporters and opponents of the citizenship law.
This week’s violence in northeastern Delhi is the worst in the capital since at least 1992, when there were nationwide riots, and possibly since the anti-Sikh riots of 1984.
The way the police responded to the violence in Delhi points to a troubling conclusion, said Ashutosh Varshney, a political scientist at Brown University who has researched communal clashes in India. “The cops either looked away or participated or egged [rioters] on,” he said, adding that that means “state connivance and state culpability — it’s a pogrom.”
The trigger for the clashes came when Kapil Mishra, a local leader of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, on Sunday threatened to clear a sit-in mounted by protesters, nearly all Muslim women, against the citizenship law. He said he would take no action while Trump was visiting but that if police did not move the protesters soon, he would take matters into his own hands.
M.S. Randhawa, a spokesman for the Delhi Police, told reporters Wednesday that “sufficient force was deployed” in the northeastern part of the city, and additional paramilitary personnel were brought in to assist. The “situation is under control,” he said.
What happened next remains unclear and chaotic, but groups of Hindus and Muslims hurled stones at one another Monday.
In the afternoon, Ajit Doval, India’s national security adviser, toured a riot-hit area on foot to reassure residents. An agitated young woman in a burqa who said she was a student approached him. “We’re not safe,” she said. “You don’t have to worry,” he responded. “I give you my word.”
Adil Khan, 29, lives in the neighborhood of Kardampuri and said Muslims gathered in the street to defend themselves after a message went out that a mob was massing to attack. By the next morning, the mob was closer.
Tania Dutta contributed to this report.
“From our house, we could see the mobs burning vehicles and shops,” he said. “The mob was very close. I was scared for my life.”
Trump praises Modi’s record on religious tolerance as violence erupts over India’s treatment of Muslims
In a nearby area, groups of Hindu activists wielding sticks roamed the streets below Bilal Rabbani’s house, pounding on the hoods of passing cars and forcing them to chant “Jai Shri Ram,” or “Victory to Lord Ram,” a favorite slogan of Modi’s Hindu nationalist ruling party. Rabbani said supporters of the citizenship law — who appeared to be outsiders, rather than people who lived in the neighborhood — also set fire to Muslim shops as police looked on.
“People used to say that things will change for Muslims if [Modi] wins and I never believed them,” said Rabbani, 25, who is training to be a librarian. “But I can see it now.”
Several journalists were attacked. Saurabh Shukla, a reporter with New Delhi Television, said he and a colleague were on an overpass filming damage to a mosque Tuesday when they were spotted by rioters. The rioters came and began punching and beating his colleague with sticks, damaging three of his teeth. He and his colleague were allowed to leave only after Shukla showed them a string of prayer beads to prove he was Hindu and deleted the footage from their phones, Shukla said.
Police struggled to contain the violence, and witnesses said some joined in at points. A Reuters correspondent said he saw policemen encouraging supporters of the law to throw stones at Muslim protesters. Mohammad Sajid, 40, who works at a shop, said police arrived in his Muslim-dominated neighborhood on Tuesday afternoon and fired tear gas. When angry residents began to throw stones, the police opened fire, he said, hitting his younger brother in his back.
He said he saw five others with gunshot wounds. “It’s a dark day,” said Sajid. The “police shouldn’t have fired.” A spokesman for the Delhi police did not respond to calls and messages seeking comment on the incident.
On Tuesday night, nearly a dozen injured people arrived on motorbikes, rickshaws and ambulances at Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, several with gunshot injuries. Rajesh Kumar Singh, 36, came with a gunshot wound in his thigh. Singh’s brother Amit said he was shot by masked men near his home and blamed Muslims for the attack.
“Why are they attacking us? If they are against the [citizenship] law, they should tell the government,” said Singh.
Sajid, the shop worker, said the area was plunged into bloodshed when members of the ruling party decided to confront opponents of the law. For two months, the protest against the citizenship law in the area had unfolded “without any violence,” he said. “Things turned ugly when the [law’s] supporters came.”
Saurabh Sharma in Lucknow contributed to this report.
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