Sangeet Som and UP: PM Modi is risking another Godhra

'For years now, Narendra Modi supporters have been telling his critics to just get over Godhra. Yes, it was a tragedy. Yes, he mishandled the riots (but hey, what about Rajiv Gandhi, 1984 etc.). Yes, it is time to move on. How unfair to keep beating him on the head about one event that is now more than 12 years old. It's all going to be A-okay once he is prime minister...

Such words are heart-warming, indeed, except for the riots and the long shadow they cast on the credibility of such lofty declarations of good intent. No, not Gujarat but Muzzafarnagar.

The BJP role in fomenting the anti-Muslim violence in Uttar Pradesh, and keeping its flames alive on the campaign trail has been neatly sanitised by the label of 'reverse polarisation' -- a logical BJP response to the Congress party's own brand of communal consolidation, ie 'appeasement' of minorities. Setting the dubious logic of comparing violent mobs to job reservations aside, all these excuses have since grown threadbare in the face of actions taken by Modi and his party in the months after his ascension.

First came the elevation of Sanjeev Baliyan to minister of state (independent charge) for Agriculture. Baliyan, along with Sangeet Som and Suresh Rana, stands accused of inciting anti-Muslim violence that led to the Muzaffarnagar riots. They were among 14 politicians who defied prohibitory orders to organise and address a mahapanchayat, where Baliyan and his colleagues told the audience, armed with bamboo sticks, “Wherever we will find people belonging to the Muslim community, by killing them, we will get our revenge."..

News coverage has already moved on to another of the Muzzaffarnagar suspects, this time Sangeet Som. The MLA is back in the headlines for an even more damning reason: He was detained by the police when tried to organise yet another mahapanchayat to protest the removal of a loudspeaker from a temple... His detention sparked fresh violence and once more raised the temperature of communal tensions in an already volatile state...

If riots do break out once again in Uttar Pradesh -- polarisation of any kind, reverse, inverse or converse, leads inevitably to violence -- Modi will have none of the excuses that are trotted out in defense of the 2002 riots. No, he is not a naive or inexperienced administrator. No, he can't blame an RSS that he has already tamed and put in its place. No, he can't say that he didn't see it coming or that he didn't have enough resources. And no, he can't just blame the ruling Samajwadi Party because as communalists of all stripes would tell him, "Taali ek haath se nahin bajti."..'