The ugly sight of a policeman kicking and slapping Muslims offering namaz on the side of a road in Delhi last week was revolting, to say the least. A serious law and order problem was averted due to the timely and mature intervention by local leaders of the Muslim community and some senior police officers. According to media reports, the errant sub-inspector, Manoj Kumar Tomar, has been suspended.
Open display of devotion by way of shouting religious slogans, taking out religious processions and singing devotional songs in public places—including on aircraft—is the latest trend in India. Such activities inconvenience the public and disrupt traffic, and hence should be restricted, irrespective of religious considerations.
Friday namaz often spills onto open spaces because of overcrowding in mosques as it is supposed to be held collectively. The Friday prayer is mostly conducted at specified places, for which the authorities accord standing permissions. It is not clear whether such permission was granted by the Delhi police last week. If not, then the police were within its authority to ask the namazis to vacate the road. However, the manner in which the officer behaved with the peacefully praying congregation was provocative and completely unlawful. He should have been humane and acted with tact instead of violently hitting and slapping them. He could have allowed them to complete their prayers and then spoken to the community leaders to avoid such congregations in future.
The deviant behaviour of the sub-inspector is confirmation that India’s police forces have become highly communalised and politicised. This attitude was also on display in the Uttar Pradesh police’s treatment of Muslims during the 2019 anti-CAA-NRC protests as well as the Delhi police’s conduct against students of JNU and Jamia Millia Islamia following the 2020 communal riots. The saving grace this time was the prompt action to prevent the situation from escalating.
Although sub-inspector Tomar has been suspended, a lot needs to be done by the top brass of the Delhi police to eradicate the virus of communalism that has taken root in the minds of those in the force.
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Responsibility of the leadership
The incident is a sad reflection of the training of police personnel and the overall poor state of management in the force. Such deviant behaviours are presumably also caused as a result of the force being overworked, partly because of the very nature of policing but more so because of the acute deficiency of manpower. The ab initio sanctioned strength of police in India—at 193 per one lakh citizens—is way below the UN recommended number of 222. The actual ratio is even lower at 153 (as of 2023) due to unfilled vacancies.
This not only adversely affects the efficiency of the police force but also disrupts the work-life balance of an average officer, leading to low morale and deviant behaviour. The political executive responsible for filling up the vacancies has its own priorities, besides limited availability of finances. Some states keep postponing this important activity until election time to project recruitment as an election issue. But this thinking has its disadvantages, as the botched recruitment drive of the Uttar Pradesh police shows.
It is a fact that resources for modernisation, infrastructure and weaponry will have to be provided by the political executive. However, the tendency of police leadership to apportion blame for all its ills to politicians is intellectual laziness and shows their unwillingness to improve the system from within. They cannot hide behind this excuse and run away from their responsibility.
A lot of workforce is wasted on nonessential tasks. One can see senior police officers moving around with a large posse of security personnel. Some lower-level officers are also diverted from policing tasks toward household work at seniors’ residences. This must change.
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Training the police officers
It is within the authority of police leaders to ensure total transparency in the recruitment process. They must ensure that only people with a humane attitude are recruited. This can be ensured by having psychologists on the recruitment board, which will ensure that those with a criminal and communal mindset are not able to enter the force.
Training of police officers is entirely the responsibility of police leadership. There is no scope for interference by politicians here. Police training, besides focusing on making personnel physically fit and imparting knowledge about legal and investigative aspects, must focus on developing a sympathetic attitude by emphasising on soft skills. The aggressive methodology must give way to more people-oriented training, which is aimed at bringing about behavioural change.
Unfortunately, postings to training institutions are not sought-after assignments in the police, unlike in the defence and central armed forces. Even special incentives, such as a substantial instructors allowance, are unable to motivate police personnel to opt for such positions. Police leadership must set an example by opting for such assignments themselves and identifying personnel with instructional abilities for such postings.
The leadership must prioritise improving living and working conditions of police officers within the allocated budget. The absence of proper facilities, especially in remote areas, gives rise to frustration among officers, which manifests in aggressive behaviour toward the public. No amount of modern equipment will have any impact on the standards of policing unless the officer on the ground is happy and satisfied.
Effective policing is the first step toward creating a safe, crime-free, and just society. The police leadership has an extremely important role in ensuring this. It must proactively change the perception of police officers from exploiters to facilitators, and transform the character of the police to that of ‘service’ as opposed to ‘force’.
A wise person once said: “Organisations die not because of outside pressures, but because of decay from within”. It is incumbent upon the leadership to redeem the situation and prevent any further decay of the police.
Sanjiv Krishan Sood is the BSF Additional Director General (Retd). He tweets @sood_2. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)