HOME AWAY FROM HOME
The victims of the Muzaffarnagar riots are slowly reclaiming their lives, settling into their new homes, with a helping hand from organisations that have filled a policy breach
The dainty fairy lights look out of place in the otherwise dark colony on Malakpur Road in Kandhla town. Their gaiety is not in keeping with the stories the residents narrate about the horror of the violence done to them three years ago. They look out of place because this settlement, in Shamli district, Uttar Pradesh, has no electricity, and the lights, powered by a hastily procured generator, are a rare treat. For the past three years, these Muslim families have been working to rebuild their lives, to recover from the trauma of losing their homes in the September 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots that left more than 60 dead and an estimated 100,000 Muslims displaced.
Among them is Mohammed Sajid, who’s around 30. His voice still breaks as he speaks of his anguish. But he is hopeful now; after months and years of living in tents, he has a house of his own again. These are residents of the newly inaugurated Apna Ghar colony, the culmination of nearly two years of effort by activists, civil society organisations and the victims of the riots themselves to rehabilitate shattered lives. Through a project called ‘Yeh Mera Ghar’. The individual memories of their loss are mirrored in the distinctive designs of their new homes, in the colours of walls and ceilings, so that no two houses look alike.
In the two years after the riots, some of the victims returned to their villages. Many others refused, fearing repercussions. The state had declared 10 villages the worst affected, offering compensation of Rs 5 lakh to families that had lost their homes. In return, the families signed affidavits promising not to return. Many of those who refused to go back to their villages had stayed put during the riots, keeping the mobs at bay by flinging bricks, until paramilitary forces arrived. Then they left, and never returned.
“In one hour, love changed to hate,” Sajid says. “The kids had no shoes when we left...we had no idea where we would go.” He ends his account
with an unironic ‘Jai Bharat’. One of the most violent riots in recent history, Muzaffarnagar also re-emphasised the lack of a comprehensive national policy for Internally Displaced People (IDP). Newspapers were full of stories of displaced people living in terrible conditions in camps, a few even dying in the brutal winter chill that hits Shamli district. After the state ordered victims who’d got compensation to vacate the camps in three days, 230 families banded together and bought plots of land with the money they had got. Under the ‘Yeh Mera Ghar’ project, these IDP families were helped with funds for housing in three sites—129 families in the two primary sites, Malakpur in Kandhla and Aryapuri in Kairana, were assisted with design and construction. Besides these two sites, 90 families in Basikalan were supported with additional construction.
Activist Farah Naqvi, involved in the process alongside organisations like the Hunarshala Foundation, Sadbhavana Trust and Vanangana, said the project was a “response to the reality that India has no IDP laws”. She added that while it was necessary to provide alternative housing, “no resettlement project could give victims back their graveyards, their memories. How do you return them to their history? They will forever carry a sense of displacement.”
On a makeshift stage, Askari Naqvi, a human rights activist and a lawyer, reads out from Asghar Wajahat’s short story The Spirits of Shah Alam Camp. At this otherwise celebratory inauguration of a new community—complete with hennaed women in bright salwars and pots of biryani—the reading served as a reminder of the context.
“A child’s spirit comes to Shah Alam Camp in the wee hours, like a firefly burning brightly in a dark night...‘I am the Evidence’.” “Evidence? Evidence of what?” “I am the Evidence of Bravery.” “Whose bravery are you the evidence of?”
“Of those who ripped open my mother’s womb, tore me out and hacked me in two.”
A woman talks about seeing men struck with machetes during the riots, their blood spurting onto the streets. Now, 40 km away, in this new colony, they are starting again. Still, they cling to reminders of their old way of life. They paint the walls green and blue, arrange the utensils and plastic flowers as they did in their old villages.
Sajid’s mother Akhlaq, 50, smokes a bidi outside her home as she introduces her daughter-in-law Sahar, 22, from Jola, the village they had pitched their tents in after fleeing. Sahar’s dowry of a bed, almirah and refrigerator remained with her parents till
—AKHLAQ, 50 [RETURN IS NOT AN OPTION.] THEY WILL SHOUT ‘PAKISTAN JAO YA KABRISTAN JAO’...THEY WERE OUR PEOPLE
her in-laws moved from the camp. “Now, I have a home,” she says.
For Akhlaq, the new settings are disorienting, but she knows return is not an option: “They will shout ‘Pakistan jao ya kabristan jao’ and they were our people. We worked together, went to their festivals. They came to our homes.”
In one of the newly built houses in Kandhla, Rihana, in her late 20s, from a village called Soop, cradles her 17-month-old son, who is suffering from ‘water on the brain’. They moved into their house about four months ago, though the formal inauguration happened only on August 12. Her husband is a daily wage labourer. They don’t belong to any of the 10 villages the government deems most affected by the riots, so they haven’t received any compensation. But they were too scared to stay in their village, choosing instead to pay Rs 1,000 per month to rent a house in the new colony. They sold their own house in the village for Rs 1.75 lakh and spent the money on their ailing son. “We have five children,” Rihana says, “and we earn Rs 8,000 a month. It’s not enough.”
Many children in the new settlement, particularly girls, attend the local madrasa; the nearest government school is at least 1.5 km away and not safe, they say. “There was wilderness before we came here,” says Noornisa, 48, a resident of the colony.” N.P. Singh, the former district magistrate (DM) of Shamli—posted there a few months after the riots—says it was a challenge to rebuild people’s faith in the administration. “The government for the first time had announced compensation to the displaced,” he says, “and I helped by connecting them to social security schemes. We had the support of NGOs. We helped victims enrol their children in schools and slowly put their lives back together.”
Displaced villagers returned to about 19 villages in Shamli. But rehabilitating those who chose to stay away was a big logistical challenge. “Our concept,” Singh says, “was to create an integrated village. A riot is a psychologically painful experience and this was a good model.” Sandeep Virmani, vice chairperson of the Hunarshala Foundation, calls it community-driven reconstruction. “It’s a process where the planning and rebuilding is led by the community, enabled technically and socially. The rebuilding of the lost home becomes a symbol of empowerment, an expression of their identities,” he says.
Raeesa Sheikh, 62, says she does not believe in nostalgia. Her village no longer exists for her, she says. But the walls and ceiling suggest otherwise. The ceiling is painted red and white. The walls are green, as they were in her village in Kairana.
“Our prophet wore a green turban,” her son Kallu explains. “Back in our village, we had mud floors that looked red and white ceilings. Now we have a pucca floor, so we put the red on the ceiling.” Raeesa’s husband was killed during the riots in Kutba. “What’s the point in burdening yourself with memories,” she asks. “If we return, they will cut us again. I am happy here now.”
There is a feast on at her house to celebrate the inauguration of this colony of the displaced. Kallu, her eldest son, lives across the narrow street. He saw his father getting killed and the village pradhan urging the Jats to kill more, he says. A Jat widow saved his cousin, Mehdi Hasan. Hasan says that when they went back to collect what had been left behind, the widow cried when she saw them. The memories hurt, but these houses, they say, have helped them reclaim some lost dignity. “We didn’t have a kitchen in our old house,” Hasan says. “The women also could help with the design. The gate stays the same. It’s an ode to MeccaMedina, which we hold sacred.”
In the same settlement, Rubeena, 28, says she is happy she has a kitchen and a toilet. She wanted two rooms and a small yard. She is grateful that the government compensation, a concession on the land and financial help from the NGOs were sufficient to help her achieve this. “We put in our labour and money. We have built this with our sweat and blood. But it will be years before this becomes a village like the ones we had to leave,” she says. “Displacement and the loss of the home,” points out Madhavi Kuckreja of the Sadbhavana Trust, “affects women in very particular ways, because it is women who control the traditional domain of home and hearth. This is why you need to involve women in shelter construction.”
It has been a long journey to buying land and building houses. But perhaps for the displaced, to begin thinking of this as their new home, they will have to make their peace with what happened, and the fact that justice continues to be elusive.
—RAEESA SHEIKH, 62 WHY BURDEN YOURSELF WITH MEMORIES? IF WE RETURN, THEY WILL CUT US AGAIN. I AM HAPPY HERE NOW