Three years after the deaths of more than 1,000 people in Bombay’s worst incident of communal violence since independence, the government of the Indian state of Maharashtra unexpectedly terminated the commission of inquiry that had been set up to investigate the riots. The focus of the Srikrishna Commission’s investigation was the violence that broke out in January 1993 and that was directed primarily against Bombay’s Muslims. The riots followed weeks of attacks on Muslims in north India in the aftermath of the destruction of a 16th-century mosque in Ayodhya. Labeled as “communal” because the violence involved communities identified by religious differences, the riots were in fact orchestrated events which depended on the connivance or outright participation of police and other officials and political leaders.
Communal Violence and the Denial of Justice