Najma, 30, sits in a long and dusty veranda of an open-air mosque called Idgah where prayers are held during Eid. It is Sunday, September 15. Located in the bustling town of Kandhla in Shamli district, Uttar Pradesh, Idgah is now a refuge for thousands of Muslims who escaped the recent communal violence in the surrounding areas. A bundle of quilts and her two children, Najma says, were all that she could run away with after Hindus from the Jat community attacked her village Lisad, in Shamli district, on September 8. “They killed my other two children in front of my eyes,” she said. “There was nothing I could do.” She is silent for a few moments. Wiping away tears, she continues, “They hacked my two little boys into three or four pieces and burned them to ashes.” The Muslims of Lisad, mostly labourers, were fewer than the numbers of Jats in the village. Other women sitting next to Najma chimed in about young girls in the village being raped and killed. “I saw a woman being raped, stripped naked and burned,” said an old woman in the crowd. A day before the attack, these women say, the Jats had a gathering in which the massacre was planned. “There has never been any fighting before. I don’t know why this happened,” said Najma. While agonizing over the death of her sons, Najma is also petrified about the future. “My husband is also missing. I don’t know what to do next,” she said. That same Sunday, Suresh, 55, cradled the photo of her 26-year-old son in her lap while sitting in the backyard of her house in Kakda village of Muzaffarnagar district. Muslim men, she said, had killed her boy when he was returning home on the evening of September 7. “I have nothing to live for now,” she cried, surrounded by the womenfolk of the house. “Only his corpse came back to the house. I will look at his photo and grieve my whole life.” Suresh did not see the attack on her son but her husband, Jawaharlal, who received a head injury during the same attack, had seen it unfold. “We were coming home in tractors,” he remembered. “The Muslims were all up on the roof. First, they fired guns and then threw rocks. My son was shot and hit by rocks.” The dead boy’s father had white gauze covering the injury on his head. He sat with other Jat men from the village, who were also bandaged up. After they described the attack, a hush descended over the courtyard for several moments. The quiet was broken when Jawaharlal said, “My son’s death is so pointless. What can I say? My tears are all dried out.” While the communal riot is rapidly descending into a political wrangle, grief and fury are choking the communities of Hindu-Jats and Muslims of Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts. During his visit to the area on Monday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said it was a “big tragedy” and called for the guilty to be punished. The official death toll stands at 48 and an estimated 40,000 people have been displaced. But locals say many more have been killed in the September violence. While some of the displaced have moved to the homes of relatives, the majority is living in relief camps with nowhere to go. Locals point out that deadly communal riots have broken out several times in Uttar Pradesh – but the violence has never spread to the countryside. The last time, they suppose, was during India’s partition in 1947 that claimed more than a million Hindu and Muslim lives. Observers on the ground say that containing a riot in the vast expanse of rural areas is far more difficult than in cities or towns. This new riot, which caused tragedies on both sides, has reinforced existing caste and religious divides in this rural community. It is feared that the violence, spanning over 70 kilometres in the hinterlands, will further polarize and alter the political fundamentals of their society. How long does it take to ruin your peace and make you afraid, sometimes forever? Not very long. Riyasat Ali, 49, of Bavdi village in Shamli district recalls chillingly that the rampage on the morning of September 8 lasted for over an hour, but no help arrived. Ali says that he escaped by crawling into a shelf that was out of sight, while other survivors hid themselves in water tanks. “I saw my brother being shot and his hands and arms being mutilated. How can I forget?” he asks. His brother is now in hospital. “A mother and her small girl were shot before my eyes,” he continues. “These wounds won’t heal. This has changed things forever.” * * * A massive wall of the Idgah camp in Shamli district is lined with colourful clothes that have poured in from the local community, which is also providing food supplies of rice, lentils, wheat and potatoes. Camp supervisors say that the government rations are inadequate and of poor quality. Folks from Kandhla town are also volunteering their time to help inside the camp. A large number of the 20,000 inhabitants here are camping out in the open under a large makeshift marquee. Others have found space in the few buildings of the mosque. Another camp for Muslims has been set up in Muzaffarnagar district as well. Like Najma, most of the displaced people left their possessions behind when they ran. The few items that they could grab, like quilts and sheets, are balled up into small bundles close to them. The entire camp population is using 40 lavatories – 20 each for the men and women, located on opposite sides of the camp. Supervisors claim these are being cleaned regularly. On Sunday, though, a heavy stench hung over the clogged toilets. Those daring to use the facilities bound up their noses with cloth. During the day, the din of conversation rises to a pitch as angry tales of attacks and heart-breaking stories of losing loved ones are told and retold. The prevailing mood here is marked by anxiety over a reigniting of the violence and nervousness about what’s next. Till the weekend, army men were deployed around these relief camps and in several villages of Shamli and Muzaffarnagar districts, which were also under curfew. This week, the curfew has been lifted and the army is also moving out. For many people, though, the images of killing and burning are too vivid to permit them to think of going home yet. Meena, 40, a camp resident, is resolute that she will never go back to her village even if that means losing her house and three cows. “The whole village attacked us. I only want to live with Muslims now. I won’t live with Hindus again,” she says. Recalling the attack on her village on the morning of September 8, she continues, “We are still shaking with fear. Going back is out of the question -- especially because I have a young daughter. The government needs to help us.” The displaced Muslims, mostly labourers, are far more than the Jats. The Hindu Jats, mostly affluent sugarcane farmers, say they were too proud to beg the government for help and have chosen to take refuge with relatives instead. The Jats spitefully attribute the higher number of Muslim refugees on them having more children, accusing them of coming to the camp only for meals and of burning their own houses to get compensation. The Muslims say that their fight is not with Hindus in general but only with members of the Jat community, who have always viewed them as socially and economically inferior and treated them with disdain. A smaller camp, set up in Kamalpur village in Muzaffarnagar district, is hosting 380 Hindus who fled from a neighbouring Muslim-majority village. Locals point out that Kamalpur, despite being surrounded by Muslims, was not attacked because its residents are not Jats but Dalits. So it was considered a relatively safe refuge for fleeing Hindus. Kareena, 24, living in this Hindu camp, was a day away from delivering her baby when she had to flee with her husband and daughter on the night of September 7. “It was all very sudden. The Muslims came out suddenly with guns. We could hear firing,” she recalls. “She was pregnant but I had no choice but to move her,” says Bishan Singh, her 26-year-old husband, who made bricks for a living. “There was a real chance of us being killed.” Other camp inhabitants say that despite the dark, several of them had fled into the surrounding jungles and spent the night in the wilderness. Singh says he is worried about having no work for several more days, if not a couple of weeks. “We’re too scared to return. And who know if things go bad again,” she says. Kareena gave birth to a boy two days after she fled. “It’s been very hard doing this in a strange place with no facilities. But I can’t complain too much,” she says, gently rocking her crying baby. * * * Distrust between the Muslims and Jats is rife. Muslims believe that local politicians of the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had a hand in fuelling the violence. Jats, on the other hand, accuse Muslims of planning the riots. Otherwise, they ask, how were Muslims equipped with automatic assault rifles? Locals say that the trigger to the violence came when two Jat boys, Sachin and Gaurav from Malikpura village, went to confront Shahnawaz, a Muslim boy from Kawal village, who had been harassing their sister. The story goes that Shahnawaz was killed in the altercation, and then a Muslim mob killed the two Jat boys. A fake video of the killings of the two Jat boys was allegedly circulated by a local leader of the BJP to whip up anger. In the following week, Muslims say, Jats held village meetings in which they brandished guns and knives while vowing to retailiate. Jats claim that the meetings were only to oppose the wrongful inclusion of other family members, besides Sachin and Gaurav, in the police complaint for the killing of Shahnawaz. They also claim another meeting was only called to protest against the growing harassment of Hindu girls by Muslim boys in the area. The Uttar Pradesh state government remains under fire for letting tensions escalate in the first week of September, allowing large congregations to assemble, and later, its failure to contain the violence. Villagers on both sides say that the local police did not respond to their desperate phone calls for help, and army almost always arrived after the killings were done. Both communities blame the authorities for deliberately letting the other side act with impunity. Jats blame Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav for appeasing Muslims. Yadav, whose Samajwadi Party is said to bank on Muslims votes, wore a skullcap last week at a function in Lucknow to show his solidarity. Jats complain that Yadav had only visited Muslim-dominated villages and camps during his visit on Sunday. They also protest that the majority of arrests have been from their community. “If the government keeps taking a biased position in favour of Muslims, then this violence will not go away,” warns Shyam Bir Singh, a Jat villager. Singh, 65, sits with other Jats in Purbaliyan village in Muzaffarnagar; his friends echo his sentiment. “If Hindus are put down and insulted then there will be more trouble,” another elderly farmer, dressed in white, speaks out. The attack, in which Jawaharlal’s 26-year-old son from Kakda village was killed, happened on the road leading to Purbaliyan village where these Jats now sit. The latter believe that the riots were triggered when Muslims attacked near the Jolly canal in Muzaffarnagar on September 7, killing at least 40 of their men, burning their tractors and dumping dead bodies into the lake. Singh says furiously, “We asked the authorities to drain the canal because there are more bodies in it. But nobody cares to do it.” Muslims also speak of losing faith with the Samajwadi Party and its 40-year-old leader. “The Samajwadi Party is made by Muslim backing. It’s often called a Muslim party, but this time the opposite has happened,” says Mohammed Sadiq, a camp supervisor at Idgah. “Muslims won’t vote for Akhilesh anymore.” “Muslims are no longer safe under the Samajwadi Party,” agrees Riyasat Ali, the villager from Bavdi who hid in a shelf during an attack. Locals add that if the Hindu-Muslims rifts deepen in the coming months, the Muslims could back the Congress party since they perceive it as having the best chance of the defeating the BJP in the 2014 elections. Several Jats, who declare that the Hindu community is under threat, talk of extending their loyalties for the 2014 parliamentary elections to the BJP and its new prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, who was the chief minister when violence against Muslims in Gujarat went unchecked in 2002. “If we continue to be attacked then I will want a party in power that protects Hindu interests. I will support Modi,” says Dhan Seth, 44, from Purbaliyan village, sitting in the circle along with Singh. “Let me put it this way,” adds Singh. “I will vote for someone who takes care of Hindus for a change.” Meanwhile, the BJP bashed the PM and Congress leader Sonia Gandhi’s visits as ‘secular tourism’ with a view to garnering votes. Jats again expressed anger that the two leaders mostly visited Muslim-dominated areas, a notion that was rejected by the government on Monday evening. * * * In the midst of discord and political plotting, some tales of harmony are also playing out. At the camp in Kandhla town, where the local community is supplying most of the clothes and food, Muslims said that Hindus have also contributed generously. “They started helping a lot from the beginning. They are moving shoulder to shoulder,” says Jamaal Hussain, a 45-year-old local resident from Kandhla who is helping in the camp. “Some Jat brothers have [also] helped Muslims escape and left them here [in the camp].” Hussain, who runs a cosmetics store in Kandhla, thinks that it isn’t the people but the politicians who are stirring up trouble. “The Hindus don’t want to fight. Even the Jats don’t want to fight,” he says. “It means bad business for everyone. My shop has been closed for a month.” His shop, he adds, faces the Lakshmi Narayan temple. “I have lived with Hindus all my life,” he says. Rafeeq Ali, 80, the eldest member of the sole Muslim family remaining in Kandhla village, where two Jats were killed, did not flee. “What danger? These are my brothers. I have known them all my life,” says Ali, a scrawny man with a scraggly white beard, relaxing with a hookah in his courtyard. Ali has worked as a labourer for most of his life on fields owned by Jats. His family also rents a plot of land on a Jat-owned field to grow vegetables, which they sell in the village. “I was born in this village and I will die in this village. I am not going anywhere,” he says, puffing out a cloud of smoke.
Posted on: Wed, 18 Sep 2013 15:18:34 +0000