Humra  Quraishi recalls important conversations, she has had over the years with various people, twenty-one years after the Gujarat pogrom of 2002

The month of February invariably brings back memories of the 2002 Gujarat pogrom. There’s been no closure, still. They were clearly not riots, then, but a pogrom by which hundreds were targeted, killed and brought to ruin. Even Father Cedric Prakash had said, “I have witnessed several riots in the country and abroad - the 1968 Mumbai riots, the 1969 riots in Gujarat, the 1973-74 riots in Northern Ireland, but I’ve never seen anything like this… what I saw during the 2002 Gujarat pogrom was so brutal and horrifying.”

If you recall, after Gujarat 2002, Father Cedric Prakash had even travelled to America, to testify before the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom in Washington. He had then said to me, “I was invited by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, to testify on the Gujarat carnage. I gave a three page written testimony to that commission. Why I decided to go to the US is because the only language that the Sangh Parivar understands is international pressure. Yes, it was essential for me to travel all that way and testify, because the mentality is so attuned to the United States, that anything coming from there is taken very seriously.”

Television shots and news reports of the Gujarat pogrom of 2002 impacted thousands here. Though I was personally residing miles away from Gujarat, the killings and hounding of the most helpless among people had left me feeling shattered. Those directly, or even indirectly, affected by the pogrom, were finding it difficult to deal with the assaults that were made upon them. And there seemed no respite for a long time. Many of the survivors were too terrified to return to their ancestral homes. Several spoke of the nothingness around them - they had lost their homes, friends, family, their livelihoods.

There were those ‘patrikas’ (pamphlets) being distributed all across Gujarat, which called for the economic boycotts of the Muslims. Economic boycott hit not just the Muslim shopkeepers, businessmen and the restaurant owners, but even the rickshaw-pullers, labourers and daily-wage earners. Reports indicated that in many rural places, Muslims were finding it difficult to even register for ‘central welfare schemes’ because sarpanchas, and concerned officials, had prevented them from doing so. In fact, social and economic ostracization was apparent, with Muslims denied work under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act Scheme (NREGA), which, ensured by  law, guarantees 100 days of employment per year to anyone in need of work. Also, villagers who had fled to the nearest taluqa after the communal violence, to find safety in numbers, found themselves to be taken off the rolls.

On the legal front, the figures were enough to rattle - of the 240 cases of POTA registered by the State, 239 were against the Muslims. Activists working on ground informed that almost half the cases were registered after the pogrom, and evidence was being wiped off. “State machinery is treating its own citizens as enemies,” they had said. “Muslims who survived the pogrom now sit shattered and shocked!”

There were women who told me that as the 2002 pogrom peaked they tried to reach out for help from the police, but the response they got from them was, “Go to Pakistan! Get lost!” Also, families were finding it hard to get medical treatment at government hospitals, or to get ration cards and bank loans. Several people wanted to talk about what they had gone through but decided to keep their mouths shut - just about some murmurs were doing the rounds, e.g., “our sons have been booked under POTA, if we speak out, it will ‘worsen’ their case. We have to be silent!”

I'm reminded  of what  a leading Ahmedabad based artist-activist wrote in a national daily, in the backdrop of the situation in Gujarat, “In Gujarat people are so terrified that they are silent. They are to be made voiceless. How does it matter how rich you are if you are voiceless!"

Bakery Barbarism, as it’s called, was one of the most gruesome incidents of the burning of human beings, alive, at that once-upon-a-time bakery in Gujarat, which for reasons best known to the proprietors was called ‘Best’. And, in the summer of 2003, when the national news reported the acquittal of the accused in the carnage, the restlessness I felt, made me write this piece I reproduce below (published in The Indian Express – July 9, 2003):

“It’s not always for the best. First the burning of live human beings at that once-upon-a-time bakery tucked away in Gujarat, which for reasons best known to the proprietors was called “Best”. And now the acquittal of the culprits - all those who actually charred to death not one but several human beings, a majority of them with Muslim names. Though I am not from Gujarat, the incident and the verdict have left yet another scar on my psyche. I am a middle-aged Indian Muslim and the communal frenzy, the divide and rule (misrule?), the policy of the establishment has begun to strike a nerve as never before. It is not anger that I feel, but acute helplessness and insecurity. There’s a bakery where I often stop by to pick up a fresh loaf of bread. Just yesterday as I walked past their huge oven, I couldn’t suppress a shudder. What if?... I know, and perhaps we all know, that there are biases at play. The divide and rule policy is bringing about divisions not just in psyches but in people’s attitudes. Even textbooks are rewritten to this end, dulling the senses and desensitizing us to hideous crimes. Human carnage and the side-lining of the minorities, it seems, do not matter. In fact, last fortnight I interviewed Ahmedabad’s mayor, Aneesa Mirza. When I asked her about the effect of the Gujarat riots on her, she simply closed her eyes and said: ‘Please don’t mention those riots... most gruesome where human beings were burnt alive... Though I’d witnessed several riots, nothing was as gruesome as these riots of Gujarat.’ What’s scary is that as a people we are not reacting. As though the Muslim’s or Christian’s flesh and blood is different, as though they can’t feel pain, torture and discrimination. And again, what upsets me more are the dual policies and double-speak of all the politicians. It’s not just a matter of the Best Bakery verdict but the overwhelming sense of insecurity and humiliation that the average man and woman from any of the minority groups has begun to feel. As though he or she has to give an explanation for every act, as though he or she has to sound apologetic or go about proving himself or herself.”

Why weren’t political parties in opposition to the ruling government, then, able to expose the over hyped propaganda surrounding development in Gujarat? Activists point out that although Gujarat has been projected as the number one state in governance, the State has failed to reduce poverty, or curb rampant corruption. And it has also not been able to provide the poor and disadvantaged sections quality education, housing and better wages.

Gujarat’s development theory has another dark side. Many Muslim families of Ahmedabad have been forced, compelled to reside in a ghetto Juhapura. Ask why and the answer one gets is this: “Because the well ‘developed’ areas in Ahmedabad are not safe for us Muslim citizens. Hindutva goons attack if we reside in any of the Hindu residential colonies situated in those developed areas! Police is with them. Where’s the choice we have but to live in Juhapura… it’s a slum or call it a ghetto!”

Today I am leaving you with Shruti Sareen’s  verse from Amity Peace Poems (Hawakal Publishers): Cocooned/You lie enclosed in your cocoon/And I sleep oblivious in mine./Neighbours,/We live as strangers./Only the whispering wind brushes/Us together, and we touch, at times./Stray insects that crawl over you/Crawl over me too./When the cocoons burst, we will/Recognize, we will realise/That we are sisters born/Of the same butterfly?