The price of protest
▶ India’s capital reels from deadly clashes between Hindus and Muslims, writes Taniya Dutta in New Delhi
At the government hospital-run morgue in New Delhi, Farheen sits in shock after losing her brother in an attack by rioters on their home. Her family lives in an impoverished part of the capital, where 38 people have died in days of violence between Hindus and Muslims.
Farheen, 25, says a Hindu mob broke into her home on Monday evening, after clashes broke out in Delhi’s north-east district over the country’s contentious new citizenship law.
Muslims fear the ruling, which was passed in December, will be used to undermine their rights under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindunationalist government.
As fears of an attack grew stronger, Farheen locked her home from the inside and clasped her three-month-old daughter to her chest, hiding her son, 4, inside a trunk along with her three nieces and nephews.
Her mother, 60, two sisters and sister-in-law were with her as her brother Musharaf and husband Qasim hid in another room.
Around 7.30pm, Farheen heard a commotion outside as an armed mob of at least 40 men broke into their building, which has a small factory on the ground floor.
For the next two hours the mob chanted slogans, shouting “Jai Shri Ram” (Hail Lord Ram) – which has become a popular cry for Hindu hardliners – and stormed through the four-storey building.
“They barged into the house after breaking the main door and rampaged through every room destroying everything. They broke the door of the room where my brother and husband were hiding,” Farheen said.
“They beat them with sticks and rods. My husband had collapsed and my brother was pleading and crying but they were hitting them hard … we couldn’t do anything as we were hiding in another room.
We were pleading for their lives from inside the room,” she said.
The family’s Hindu neighbours came to their aid and told them the attackers dumped her brother’s body near an open sewer.
“Our Hindu neighbours evacuated us after the attackers left,” she said, adding they “escorted us out of the area and hid my unconscious husband in their home for the night”.
The latest round of violence began on Sunday night after hundreds of Muslim women staged a sit-in near the main highway to protest against the new law, which has triggered months of mostly peaceful street protests. However, some have turned violent and at least 30 people have died in the demonstrations since December.
Mr Modi’s government has defended the law, saying it provides citizenship to “persecuted” non-Muslims from the neighbouring Muslimmajority countries of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
He has accused his political opponents of fomenting the street violence and his party colleagues have called protesters “anti-nationals” and “jihadists”, and in some cases called for violence to be used against them by right-wing Hindu supporters.
The trigger for the violence this week, which has involved the worst sectarian clashes in the country in almost four decades, came on the back of a threat by Mr Modi’s party member Kapil Mishra, who called on “Hindu brothers” to clear the women protesters from the road.
Mobs armed with iron rods, sticks and guns set fire to thousands of vehicles, homes and vandalised mosques in an area that is divided into Hindu and Muslim neighbourhoods that lived in harmony for decades.
Veer Bhan, 53, was returning home on his motorcycle on Monday afternoon when a mob opened fire and a bullet pierced his skull, killing him.
His son, Rohit Kumar, who was riding with him, waited outside the hospital for his father’s body to be released.
“I managed to run while the mob tried to come closer,” Mr Kumar told The National.
His father was taken to hospital but was declared dead on arrival.
“I don’t understand why he was killed. What did he do?” Mr Kumar asked.
The neighbourhoods in the city’s north-east now looks like a war zone, with mangled vehicles, bricks scattered across the roads and buildings blackened by fire.
Shops and factories have been looted and goods strewn on the street.
Thousands of residents have left the area after losing their homes or fled fearing further violence.
Delhi’s fire department said it received more than 200 calls about large-scale arson since Monday.
Outside the morgue, grieving Hindu and Muslim families are huddled in groups, discussing the aftermath of the violence. There is tension in the air but grief has united everyone, despite the clear religious and political divide.
Mohammad Quresha wailed as soon as he saw his 32-yearold son Mohammad Irfan’s body brought to the mortuary for an autopsy.
Irfan had been attacked by a mob metres from his home on Wednesday evening when he went out to buy milk for his two young children.
His family found him collapsed in the street and brought him to the hospital late in the evening, but he died of cardiac arrest and internal injuries on Thursday.
“If his killers feel at peace after murdering him, let it be. Just give me his body. I want to bury him,” his grieving mother cried as both Hindus and Muslims consoled her.