Life in the camps following the 2013 riots in Muzaffarnagar. “Bahut bura hua, a lot of wrongs were committed,” the auto driver told me as he drove me around Delhi.
He’d overheard my phone conversation with a friend on my impending visit to his home district in Muzaffarnagar. As soon as I hung up, he adjusted the rear-view mirror and changed his sitting position and started chatting with me. What he told me during that 45-minute ride set the tone for my Muzaffarnagar trip in early March this year.
“Bahut log mare, Madamji. Hindus aur Musalmaan dono. Musalmaan zyada. Us ek hafte mein log aise mare gaye, jaise mooli-gajar kate ho. Many people were killed, Madamji. Hindus and Muslims, both. More Muslims than Hindus. In that one week, people were killed like carrots and radishes are chopped.”
The auto driver, a Hindu Jat, said he had gone home on one of the days when the Jat-Muslim riots had peaked but had returned the next day, unable to bear the sight of his peaceful village in flames. “I could not take it. The way they were on a killing spree. That image of a girl crying out for her father, ‘Abbu, Abbu’, still haunts me. Bahut bura hua, Madamji.”
September slaughter
It is a sunny day in March, but some shawls and sweaters are still visible in the bustling town of Muzaffarnagar, known for its jaggery trade and illegal arms supply. Some distance away from the city limits, sugarcane crops stand ready to be harvested and loaded in trucks, trekkers or bullock-carts, all conspiring to slow down the road traffic. The general elections of India has just been announced, adding more urgency to the politically charged air, when a journalist friend of mine and I decide to tour the riot-ravaged district.
It is a sunny day in March, but some shawls and sweaters are still visible in the bustling town of Muzaffarnagar, known for its jaggery trade and illegal arms supply. Some distance away from the city limits, sugarcane crops stand ready to be harvested and loaded in trucks, trekkers or bullock-carts, all conspiring to slow down the road traffic. The general elections of India has just been announced, adding more urgency to the politically charged air, when a journalist friend of mine and I decide to tour the riot-ravaged district.
In September last year, riots between the Muslims and Hindu Jats left over 60 dead and 50,000 displaced (mostly Muslims) in the districts of Muzaffarnagar and Shamli in western Uttar Pradesh. There is little clarity on what exactly sparked off the bloodbath. One of the more widely reported versions is that it all started when a Jat girl was ‘eve-teased’ by a Muslim boy. Two relatives of the girl killed the Muslim boy and then consequently the two of them, both brothers, were killed in retaliation by the Muslims. Revenge followed revenge and, aided by rumours and hate speeches from both sides, it led to the worst violence the state had seen in recent history. The Samajwadi Party (SP)-led state government came under criticism for inept handling of the situation, while other parties were accused of trying to add fuel to the fire.
It was not strangers from a faraway land but neighbours from the same village who burnt down homes. Women were raped by boys known to them and who lived in the same neighbourhood. Murders were committed sometimes in the presence of, or allegedly aided by, village leaders.
Droves of people fled their homes, babies in arms. They fled from not only the riot-hit villages, but even the less affected ones, fearing that violence could erupt anytime. A harsh winter inflicted more deaths, especially on the children in the camps. What initially seemed like a temporary flight turned out to be a permanent displacement for many who were forced to build new lives all over again. While some braved their way back, thousands still languish in the camps caught between the fear of fresh attacks and hopes of compensation.
Salim and Najma
Najma (name changed to protect the identity of a minor) is too shy to speak in front of her father-in-law, Mohammad Imran. She pulls the end of her pink-and-cream dupatta over her face and keeps to herself. But she was not shy when it mattered. She insists it was she who proposed marriage to Salim (name changed because he’s also a minor). “I had an entire life ahead of me. I could not just waste it like that,” says the 16-year-old, speaking freely after the father-in-law had left the room.
Najma (name changed to protect the identity of a minor) is too shy to speak in front of her father-in-law, Mohammad Imran. She pulls the end of her pink-and-cream dupatta over her face and keeps to herself. But she was not shy when it mattered. She insists it was she who proposed marriage to Salim (name changed because he’s also a minor). “I had an entire life ahead of me. I could not just waste it like that,” says the 16-year-old, speaking freely after the father-in-law had left the room.
A tongue-tied Salim simply nods, muttering in barely audible words, “Iski izzat bachane ke liye maine isse shaadi ki, I married her to protect her honour.”
Do you love her? I ask.
Silence. The room consists of two charpoys at right angles, a steel almirah with a cloth cover, and Salim and Najma seated on two plastic chairs dragged in hastily from outside.
Najma giggles.
The teenagers – Salim claims he is 16-years-old but looks much younger – have been married since 25 January. He is a school dropout. Najma never went to school. He is a carpenter and makes ‘okay but irregular’ money. She has got a government job at the public works department and earns INR 11,000 a month. Najma is beautiful and rich. The job and a ‘huge sum of money’ – the Uttar Pradesh government announced INR 10 lakhs each and a job to the next of kin of the dead – she received as part of the compensation package for losing her first husband, Ershad, in the riots, sums up her wealth.
Najma was married for 15 days before the riots broke out. She had gone to visit her parents at their place and Ershad was supposed to collect her before Bakr Eid. “They told me he had met with an accident and had to be hospitalised. When I returned to Muzaffarnagar I was told how he was killed along with five other members of the family.”
Ershad, his father and uncle, and some other members of his extended family from Kutba were killed on 8 September. She and her in-laws spent two months at the Palda refugee camp before they received compensation and temporarily moved into the house of Mohammad Taufiq, a family friend in Shahpur, 23 kilometres from Muzaffarnagar town. In January, she married her dead husband’s nephew, Salim.
(Copied from Himal Southasian)