“If we have lost our faith in them, we have also lost our fear of them.”
The violence that has flared up in the North East district does not appear to be a spontaneous clash between the two communities following the road occupations. It seemed to be a consequence of a slow and deliberate political build-up. On 23 February, Kapil Mishra, a prominent leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Delhi, visited Babarpur and threatened the anti-CAA protesters. He was accompanied by people who he claimed were supporters of the CAA. He told the crowd that he would give a three-day ultimatum to the police to clear the Jaffrabad road or else he would handle the matter himself. As Mishra addressed the crowd, Ved Prakash, the deputy commissioner of police of the North East district, stood beside him and made no attempt to stop him or curb his provocative speech. According to the Muslim residents of Jaffrabad and Vijay Park, the mob supporting the CAA started attacking Muslim houses in the localities barely minutes after Mishra left the venue that day.
On the night of 24 February, as I spoke to the mob supporting the CAA at Babarpur, I saw Prakash walk up to the members of the mob amid chants of “Delhi Police zindabad” and shake hands with them. Prakash’s reception by the Hindu mob was not unusual. Every time a police vehicle passed through the armed mob, the mob cheered them—some of them were casually chatting with the police with their sticks and lathis in hand. It seemed as if the armed mob was unafraid of the police.
In contrast, there was a deep distrust among the Muslim population towards the police. At Vijay Park, some of the residents told me that they had seen police assault Muslims along with the Hindu right-wing mob. The residents told me that they did not trust the police anymore and were as scared of them as of the rampaging armed right-wing mobs. The residents said that on 23 February, the police were chanting “Jai Shri Ram” as they charged at Muslim neighbourhoods along with the Hindu mobs. I, too, witnessed a deeply antagonistic attitude by the police which was deployed in the Muslim localities. The personnel stationed in Jaffrabad did not mingle with the anti-CAA protesters or even attempt to talk to them, in sharp relief to their bonhomie with even the armed mob supporting the CAA.
