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The speed with which tension spread from Bhima-Koregaon, a village on the outskirts of Pune, on Monday to bring cities across Maharashtra to a shutdown by Wednesday, is a pointer to multiple failings. It appears that the police had failed to anticipate the potential for trouble breaking out in Bhima-Koregaon and then ensure that normal life continued in the days after. Every year on January 1, a large number of Dalits visit a memorial in Bhima-Koregaon to mark an 1818 battle in which the East India Company, with Mahar soldiers prominent in its ranks, had defeated the Peshwa. From being a battle lauded in colonial times only to be forgotten by the British, over the years Bhima-Koregaon came to be marked as a site of Dalit valour and repudiation of caste stereotypes. With a visit by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar in 1927, it got invested with political and spiritual meaning beyond the specifics of the original battle and in a forward-looking politics. This year being the 200th anniversary, the commemoration was always going to be larger and more high-profile. The police should, therefore, have increased security. But there were also indications of tensions brewing after a vandalisation attempt in late December near the samadhi of a Mahar who it is said had performed the last rites of Sambhaji, Shivaji’s son. This is not far from Bhima-Koregaon and the administration was aware of the incident and its potential for causing trouble. The pent-up anger, which resulted in widespread incidents of arson and vandalism, ended with the bandh that brought Mumbai and other places to a halt.
The judicial inquiry promised by the Devendra Fadnavis government must determine who provoked the violence, how it spread, and to what extent right-wing Hindu groups were responsible for fomenting it. Law and order may have been restored in Maharashtra, but there is a political failing framed by the caste tensions that have bubbled over in the State. These are the result of many factors ranging from contested histories, at a more abstract level, to economic insecurities about jobs and livelihood, on the ground. The tensions of this past week have come against the backdrop of neo-reservation movements, such as by the Marathas in Maharashtra over the past couple of years.