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Muslims negotiate cost of peace in Gujarat
Four years after Gujarat riots, Muslims have to barter their way of life for peace, writes Neelesh Misra. Speak up
In a few months, it will be five years since Shakil Bhai last heard the call of the muezzin from the mosque by his village pond.
In a few months, it will be five years since the life of the gentle grocer and his community changed.
On March 1, 2002, as religious fury raged through Gujarat and hundreds fell to daggers and bullets, his family fled, barefoot, from their home in Sunderna, 75 km southeast of Ahmedabad.
Rioters vandalised his grocery shop and home, and burnt down his lucrative kerosene depot. The four minarets of the village mosque were smashed and the dargah, or mausoleum, of a locally revered priest was severely damaged. The dargaah has since been repaired with donations, but the mosque remains without a head.
"Yes, there were massacres and there was looting, but one has to move on,” said Shakil Bhai, 26. Seated on a bag of flour in his renovated shop, he added, “We have returned. But the village elders said ‘if you don’t compromise, you cannot stay here’. Now there is no azaan,” he said.
The grocer’s tale resounds with thousands of Gujarati Muslim families, especially in many of the 16 districts worst-hit by the 2002 riots.
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Business-like Gujarat knows its deal-making and give-and-take. For thousands, the business of India’s deadliest religious riots in six decades has been settled. Muslims who returned to many Hindu-majority villages after the 2002 riots are rebuilding their lives. But they must learn to live often on harsh terms.
Muslims in many villages have given up azaan, or the call to prayers from mosques. In others, they cannot openly sell meat, and must observe festivals with a low profile. Most significantly, a large number of Muslims have had to withdraw criminal cases they had brought against fellow villagers, a necessary condition for their return.
Across Sunderna, where bare-chested children play with cackling roosters, the sharp edges of the divide are somewhat rounded off. “They mind their business, we mind ours. No fighting. But we don't often go towards their houses. It is not like the old times,” said Manibhai Patel, 45, as he drove past the village's damaged mosque.
