MUMBAI, 26 September 2007 — With an eye to the mid-2009 state elections, the Democratic Front (DF) government in Maharashtra — made up of an alliance between the Congress and Nationalist Congress parties — has directed police to remove Hindu religious idols and pictures from police stations and police posts in the state.
The police in the past have been accused of the maltreatment and profiling of Muslims. In the backdrop of the Sachar and Srikrishna Commission reports, the state government has come up with a plan to promote inter-faith harmony by secularizing police posts, which are staffed predominately by Hindus.
Three years ago, during his tenure as the Pune police commissioner, Anami Narayan Roy ordered city police from performing religious rites in state government properties. This order was largely ignored. Now K.L. Prasad, joint commissioner of Mumbai Police, has issued a similar order, which includes removing Hindu-religious adornments from offices and desks, and underscored that police should refrain from overt religious practices inside state government property.
The move is aimed at quelling concerns by non-Hindu Indians, particularly Muslims, that the authorities are advocating Hinduism perhaps even discriminating against non-Hindus who seek help from the authorities. Police spokesmen have said in the past that they are unbiased in their treatment of citizens, but since the most recent order there have been no active protests by police. It is unclear, however, if the recent order will be ignored as Roy’s had been three years earlier. The latest order explicitly states that police are free to practice their religion inside their workplaces provided they do it in an understated manner and out of view of the general public.
A few police stations and posts visited by an Arab News correspondent confirmed that religious idols and pictures had indeed been removed at these places.
