National

A Question Of Belonging

The hopes of a Muslim middle class that had put Partition's traumas behind it has been dealt a body blow.<br><a href=submain1.asp?mode=25&refer=6766 target=_blank>FreeSpeech: Riot After Riot</a>

Advertisement

A Question Of Belonging
info_icon

The communal madness that gripped Gujarat in the wake of the torching of four bogies of the Sabarmati Express outside Godhra has died down; apart from a few stray incidents the violence has not spread to other parts of the country. It is time, therefore, to count the cost of the madness to the people of Gujarat and to the Indian nation, to pick up the pieces and to ask ourselves how to prevent communal violence from flaring up once more.

Over 500 human beings, who lived, worked, loved, hated, worried, planned, laughed and cried, have had their lives snatched away. Their families have been introduced to a pain that will scar them forever. But for every person killed, scores more have had their future, peace of mind, trust in their neighbours and belief in the essential goodness of man destroyed forever. What they feel is summed up in an e-mail I received from a victim, a moderately affluent Muslim who till the other day had lived secure in the belief that he was an Indian and a valued member of society.

"Zulfiqar's apartment is in the Muslim enclave of Paldi in Ahmedabad and Mustafa has been living there for the past year. The compound of the two blocks of flats faces a main street and on a small street to the rear, there is a high fence around the compound and two gates, front and back, which the residents had locked and barred because of reports of rioting.

"As a result of his teaching schedule, Mustafa was there along with only about four other males and 11 women when the mob came. Several hundred people ranging from obviously poor Hindu labourers to rich onlookers who came in cars attacked each gate. Fortunately, two of our Muslim youths had gotten hold of pistols; for over two hours they and the men and women who were able to throw rocks held the mobs at bay. Finally, however, the mob brought in weaponry and shot the young Muslim at the rear gate and broke in.

"Our group fled to the highest apartment in the front block of flats and barred themselves in, awaiting the worst. Fortunately the crowd was more interested in destruction than death and, after looting and throwing incendiary bombs, left. Mustafa returned briefly to our apartment to find it devastated, then went to find the rest of the family. Several times during this period, a police van ambled by, paused, and went on. The police, of course, are all Hindus.

"Across the main road a similar drama had taken place. A small lane lined with Muslim houses, including that of my sister-in-law Zainab and her husband, Niaz, is similarly gated. There another mob was held off by a small group of Muslims without any weapons except stones. Fortunately, they weren't able to get in but their stoning did kill an old man and Niaz was badly wounded when he was hit in the head. He is in VHS Hospital with a bad cut and a 'swollen brain'. For a long time Zainab didn't have access to money and they wouldn't give him any drugs but she finally managed to get funds. He has regained consciousness and though he still has memory lapses, we hope he will recover.

"The family is now in another, larger Muslim enclave outside the city and feels safe but there has been great destruction. Mustafa says the VHP targeted Muslim enterprises and that the bloodshed has been fairly low because the riots were primarily aimed at destroying the Mulsims' economic base. Muslim shops and businesses have been singled out throughout the city. My nephew Naim's little store is completely gone. Chacha's office, Asif's office, and Nahida's English language school have been ransacked and destroyed. The Sureshwala's stock brokerage with its 20 computers is completely looted. These are the specifics I know."

Today there must be tens of thousands of middle-class Muslim families, all over India, asking themselves if they will ever be allowed to belong in a 'Hindu' India.This soul-searching, more than half a century after the riots that scarred the birth of India and Pakistan, is qualitatively different from the one that Muslims who stayed in India after Partition went through in the '50s and '60s. At that time the aftershock of Partition had still to subside fully. Most of the old Muslim middle class had migrated to Pakistan and a new middle class was struggling to be born under the benevolent dispensation of the Congress. The average young Muslim with a modern education could look forward with hope to a better future, one in which he would merge once more into the mainstream of a secular India.

That hope was dealt a body blow by the communal violence sparked by the Ram Janmabhoomi movement between 1988 and 1992. Not surprisingly, the anger, disillusionment and despair spawned a new kind of Muslim terrorist—middle-class professionals with no previous criminal records, motivated solely by the desire to extract revenge for what had happened to their co-religionists. The Bombay blasts of 1993 were a direct result. Today, this second blow to the new Muslim middle class will almost certainly spawn more such terrorists, as terrorism is born when hope dies.

It is against this grim background that one must assess the dark role Gujarat CM Narendra Modi has played. While there can be two views about whether the police were alerted in time and given a free hand in dealing with the riots on February 27, and on whether the army was deployed in time, there can be no doubt about Modi's palpable lack of sympathy for the Muslims who were being chased and butchered under his nose in Ahmedabad. What else is one to make of his remark that former MP Ehsan Jaffrey and his family lost their lives because they fired at the mob that was trying to kill them or ransack their homes? This blatant partisanship by the State, also reflected in the lack of action against the VHP leaders who called the bloody bandh, is the last thing India needed. Unfortunately, if Pakistan was not already behind the Godhra massacre, it's now been handed a sure-fire recipe for destroying the Indian nation.

Advertisement

Tags

    Advertisement

    Advertisement

    Advertisement

    Advertisement

    Advertisement

    Advertisement