Ramaswami: Gautam Navlakha 27 Feb 2020 If institutions mandated to protect The unedifying sight of National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval walking the streets of North-East Delhi is a reminder that in the capital city of India, where Police is directly controlled by the Union Home Ministry, the police machinery collapsed or was made to fold up. In the process, the glamour and glitz associated with the President of the United States’ visit to India could not save the public relations event from losing its sheen. All because Hindutva footsoldiers descended to wreck havoc, unconcerned by the importance attached to Donald Trump’s visit by their leaders. Once begun, it turned into mobs battling each other because authorities looked the other way. That the NSA, tasked with external and internal security, had to be brought in, also means that the “strong” government is incapable of handling law and order, thus raising concerns on whether they can be trusted with handling anything above its threshold. There was no Section 144 imposed for four days when the same is deployed by the Delhi Police at the ‘drop of a hat’ to prevent political dissidents and citizen protestors from coming out in public. There were no flag marches for nearly 96 hours. There was no shoot-at-sight order. Indeed the Standard Operating Procedure to handle such situations was visible nowhere. This points towards the police’s complicity, through acts of omission and commission, in allowing the situation to deteriorate and turn a matter of law and order to reach the threshold of internal security. For four days now, Delhi’s North-East areas comprising Maujpur, Jaffarabad, Gokulpuri, Bhajanpura and other suburbs burned while police was inadequately deployed or not present at all. As I sit down to write this, thirty-four people were killed (numbers are expected to rise) and more than 300 have been injured; a mosque and a mazar were destroyed, property and residences looted and burnt. Like the 1984 anti-Sikh carnage, Delhi police either stood by or facilitated anti-Muslim mobsters. This situation was in the making since the recent Delhi Assembly elections when the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) unleashed the most vicious campaign that Delhi had ever seen. Even before elections in Delhi, the role of the police in attacking students other than ABVP wallahs was there for all to behold. For such a brazenly partisan role, the Prime Minister and the Home Minister (HM) showered fulsome praise on the Delhi Police. While this is not surprising because of the Delhi Police’s role in attacking students at Jamia Milia Islamia or in Jawaharlal Nehru University, where they switched off the street lights at JNU’s main gate to allow armed goons of ABVP to enter the campus and then leave without fear of arrest. They also let inebriated men enter Gargi Girls College during their college fest to molest and harass girl students. These incidents are well recorded and much talked about. What is not, is how the Delhi Police singles out minorities, Hindus who are opposed to Hindutva, and how they hurt and injure those besieged while treating mobsters with kid gloves. Whether four days of arson, loot and killing let loose by mobsters was part of a deliberate plan for the defeated BJP politicians to punish Delhiites for voting for the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), or enacting an Uttar Pradesh-like organised attack on minorities for daring to protest and assert their rights, the police has ceased to be a force which inspires confidence that they are there for every citizen. And this is the reality citizens confront today. Retired and serving Police officers have often pointed out that any riot-like situation can be brought under control within 24 hours. And that if it continues beyond that, it indicates either complicity at the command level or because the force has turned incompetent. But truth is that a part of the capital city of Delhi was allowed to burn for more than 96 hours reviving bitter memories of the 1984 anti-Sikh carnage.