1961 Jabalpur riots

1961 Jabalpur riots
Part of Religious violence in India
Location of Jabalpur in India
Date4 –9 February 1961
Location
Jabalpur, India
MethodsKilling, Arson, Looting
Parties
Casualties and losses
5 killed
50 killed

The 1961 Jabalpur Riots were the first major-scale riots between Hindus and Muslims in post-Partition India, which erupted in the city of Jabalpur in the state of Madhya Pradesh. This riot was linked to the emergence of a small class of successful Muslim entrepreneurs who created a new economic rivalry between Hindu and Muslim communities.[2]

These riots shook Jawaharlal Nehru as he never expected communal riots of such intensity in independent India. Hindu nationalist organizations including ABVP, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh played a major role in this riot. Officially 55 were killed, though according to unofficial accounts, 200 were killed. Nehru responded by lambasting the Bhopal Congress government which was being headed by Chief Minister Kailash Nath Katju. He angrily noted that Congress leaders were found to be 'sitting inside their houses like purdah ladies' during riots.[3]

The Congress had adopted secularism as its main ideology but had admitted, right from the anti-colonial freedom struggle, all sorts of elements. Hardly a handful of few had strong secular convictions. Even among its top leadership, there were Hindu fundamentalist elements with anti-minority proclivities. In the 1960s – A series of riots broke out, particularly in the eastern part of India – Rourkela, Jamshedpur and Ranchi – in 1964, 1965, and 1967, in places where Hindu refugees from the then East Pakistan were being settled. In the later years, post-Nehru saw violent riots including 1969 Gujarat riots, 1970 Bhiwandi Riots. These riots gave political rise to Hindu fundamentalist forces, which played a major role in engineering them and benefitting from religious polarization.[4]

  1. ^ Donald Eugene Smith (2015). India as a Secular State. Princeton University Press. p. 478. ISBN 978-1-4008-7778-2.
  2. ^ Christophe Jaffrelot (1999). The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics 1925 to the 1990s : Strategies of Identity-building, Implantation and Mobilisation. Penguin Books India. p. 165. ISBN 978-0-14-024602-5.
  3. ^ Pratinav Anil (2023). Another India: The Making of the World's Largest Muslim Minority, 1947–77. Hurst Publishers. ISBN 978-1-80526-074-5.
  4. ^ Asghar Ali Engineer (1997). Communal Riots in Post-independence India. Sangam Books Limited. ISBN 978-81-7370-102-3.