|
By Shiv Kumar Mercantile relationships between Hindus and Muslims in Gujarat are gradually being restored by exigencies of trade. But it's a tenuous relationship. Cheliya Muslims, who saw 147 of their restaurants burnt in the post-Godhra riots, are taking in Hindu partners in order to stay afloat
The feel-good factor on the high streets of Ahmedabad and Vadodara is unmistakable. For a state still coming to terms with the Godhra carnage and the horrific riots that followed it, three years ago, the bull-run on the bourses is paying for stiff doses of retail therapy.
Multiplexes, malls and food courts have sprung up even in the old city of Ahmedabad that was, until recently, out of bounds for the corporate sector, for reasons of security. And, for a change, the McDonald’s outlet on Ahmedabad’s Ashram Road is finding buyers for its chicken burgers among Gujarati Hindus.
Mercantile relationships between Hindus and Muslims are gradually being restored by exigencies of trade, in a state where commerce is the prevailing creed. Businesses owned by the minority community, which were destroyed by rampaging mobs led by Hindutva fanatics, too have made a comeback. Not surprisingly, the creeping sense of complacency has begun to claim even sections of the intelligentsia that were, so far, shrill in their opposition to Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
However, this veneer of normalcy cannot hide the badly rent social fabric of Gujarat. The communal polarisation of Hindus and Muslims, which began in Ahmedabad after the riots of 1966, has now spread to the entire state, post-Godhra. The toxins produced by Hindutva’s laboratory have cleansed entire neighbourhoods of Muslims. In villages across Gujarat, where Hindus and Muslims lived together for years, members of the minority community are still barred from returning, three years after the riots. After Modi ruthlessly shut down the refugee camps housing Muslims displaced during the riots, most of them moved to shanties in ghettos across the state.
Dalits who turned against Muslims in the post-Godhra riots, despite their age-old ties, continue to look at members of the minority community with suspicion. Thanks to continued oppression from panchayat officials linked to the Sangh Parivar, more than 15,000 Muslim families from across Gujarat are still unable to return to their old homes. In the villages around Ahmedabad, where real estate prices are spiralling after they were brought under the mega-city project, Muslims are being compelled to sell land at throwaway prices to their former neighbours just so they have enough to get by.
Not a murmur is heard about the scores of restaurants owned by the Cheliya Muslims that have been forced to take in Hindu partners only so that the establishments are not targeted in the next bout of violence. With rioters targeting restaurants owned by the Cheliyas, despite them bearing Hindu names and serving vegetarian fare, the Cheliyas have begun to play safe, giving away shares to key employees and acquaintances from among the Hindus. In all, 147 restaurants owned by the Cheliya Muslims were burnt down in the post-Godhra riots.
Traders from the Dawoodi Bohra community in Gujarat’s tribal areas, who faced the brunt of attacks by adivasis egged on by local Vishwa Hindu Parishad activists, have been forced to withdraw complaints against their attackers in order to return. Reports of Bohris being forced to buy out their former assailants who simply moved into their shops have also been brushed under the carpet.
While the Hindutva brigade’s call for an economic boycott against Gujarat’s Muslims in the wake of the post-Godhra riots quickly fizzled out, it is clear that the trading communities from among them have been forced to exist as second-class citizens in the state.
The saffron forces’ attempts to erase symbols and practices shared by Hindus and Muslims have been more systematic. No efforts have been made to restore the more than 500 dargahs that were destroyed three years ago. As riots raged across the state, these shrines, which embodied the syncretic traditions of both communities, were systematically destroyed. Most of them have been transformed into small temples over the past three years. In Ahmedabad itself, little has been done to restore the tomb of Gujarat’s well-known poet Shah Wali on which a road was hurriedly built during the post-Godhra riots.
What is most shocking is the continued denial of decent education to Muslim children in parts of the state, despite Modi’s claims of restoring normalcy in Gujarat. For instance in Ahmedabad’s Juhapura Colony, Muslim children who were pulled out of the Christian-run Don Bosco School haven’t returned although the institution is just across the road in a Hindu-dominated area. The students are now enrolled in an English-medium school run by the community, where the quality of faculty and education imparted is markedly inferior.
Forced into ghettos, the Muslims of Gujarat are falling prey to depression and despair. Especially in the old city of Ahmedabad, which has a history of communal riots dating back to 1966, violent clashes between groups of people are common. Altercations over petty incidents result in minor riots, forcing the police to use force to disperse violent mobs. Small wonder police pickets are a permanent fixture in areas like Shahpur, Kalupur, Gomtipur, Daryapur and other places in Ahmedabad. Here, clusters of Hindu and Muslim houses existing cheek-by-jowl are clearly marked by defining boundaries, with police personnel posted to prevent outbreaks of violence. Attempts to set up mohalla committees along the lines of those set up in Mumbai in the wake of the 1992-93 riots there, haven’t really taken off in Ahmedabad. Police officials say 25 of the 31 police station areas in the city continue to be labelled ‘sensitive’.
Eager to present a picture of normalcy, the Gujarat government actively downplays incidents of violence. The police attributed at least three minor incidents of rioting in parts of Ahmedabad recently to the hot summer!
Social activists admit that both Hindus and Muslims in Ahmedabad’s old city have a stockpile of crude weapons ready to be deployed in case of a major riot. More alarming is the growing appeal of fundamentalism in the Muslim ghettos. This, coupled with growing incidents of domestic violence in these areas, indicates that Gujarat’s Muslims are turning their anger inwards, on themselves.
(This article was part of the series ‘Communal Polarisation and Threat to Shared Traditions in India’, supported by the National Foundation for India. It first appeared in the Tribune) InfoChange News & Features, May 2006
|
