Code Green in Orange Country

As the ghost of Aurangzeb comes back to haunt the Sangh's once peaceful backyard in Nagpur that saw only two riots in a century, the police draw flak for their action targeting only the Muslims

- Shweta Desai

WHEN activists of the Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) torched an effigy of Aurangzeb on Maratha emperor Chhatrapati Shivaji’s birth anniversary in ‘Orange City’ Nagpur, the green cloth that wrapped it couldn’t go unnoticed.

On March 17, while the Vicky Kaushal-starrer Chhaava was still running to packed houses a month, with its depiction of the last years of Shivaji’s eldest son Sambhaji Maharaj and his execution by Aurangzeb, an arch-enemy of the Maratha empire, the activists had gathered beside the towering Shivaji statue at Shivaji Chowk demanding the removal of the 17th-century Mughal ruler’s grave at Khuladabad town in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar district, some 500 km away. Hindutva organisations and top BJP leaders, including Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Nitesh Rane, a minister in his cabinet, had already raised the same demand in the weeks following Chhaava’s February 14 release.

Hours after the effigy was burned, a mob of Muslim men descended on the residential areas around Shivaji Chowk in the evening, pelting stones at houses, damaging the parked cars and setting motorbikes on fire. Word had gone around that the green cloth wrapping the effigy that was burnt at the demonstration was a chador with Quranic verses on it. The ensuing clashes in the adjoining neighbourhoods of Bhaldarpura, Hansapuri and Tilak Road left one Muslim man dead, and 33 policemen, including three senior officers and a lady constable, grievously injured.

“It was on hearing that the burnt green cloth had verses from the Quran that a large crowd of Muslims came in the evening to protest near the Shivaji statue,” says Shafiq Ahmed, a resident of Bhaldarpura, one of the main sites where curfew is imposed. “As Muslims, we don’t mind the burning of Aurangzeb’s effigy or demands for the removal of his grave.”