Religious riots: Muzaffarnagar’s pain
Caste, creed and conflict distort India’s politics, as evident in Muzaffarnagar, where the trauma of communal violence lingers.
SIX years ago, Irshad Ali’s family was forced to flee their home in Muzaffarnagar, in northern Uttar Pradesh (UP). They were among 50,000 Muslims who were displaced after the riots that killed 62 and injured scores of others. Muzaffarnagar has a population of over 500,000, of which more than 40% are Muslims.
Irshad recalls his quiet childhood growing up in Phugana, a little village some 100 kilometres from New Delhi. In the days leading up to the riots, Irshad remembers the hushed whispers and the sinister looks. Others were much less subtle.
“They said wanted to wash their hands with our blood, they wanted to get rid of us ‘filthy Muslims’. They said we would all be dead in a few days.”
The riots began three days later on August 27, 2013. The cause is still disputed: it could have been a traffic accident.
Whatever the case, Hindus in Muzaffarnagar began systematically killing Muslims. Families were slaughtered by their next-door neighbours. Most Muslims fled immediately, but Irshad’s mother refused to leave her family home.
“My mother refused to leave the village. Our family had lived there for so long. She told us to not leave, no matter the circumstances. Then we heard that two of our neighbours had been murdered. They burnt down our mosque.”
The family managed to escape in the night, seeking refuge in a neighbouring Muslim village.
Irshad, only 13-years-old then, had to patrol the village day and night, fearing a second Hindu attack.
Muslims account for 14.2% of India’s 1.3 billion population. It is home to the world’s second-largest Muslim population, after Indonesia.
Sadly, Irshad’s experience is far from unique.
Caste and faith are India’s biggest dividers and ironically, consolidators.
Each political party draws its central support from a few select caste and/or religious groups.
The Samajwadi Party, for instance, has since the 1990s been influential with the Yadavs, a landed intermediary Other Backward Caste (OBC) and in states with significant Muslim populations. This has pushed them to power three times in the UP in the past 26 years.
The BSP, on the other hand, represents the vast Dalit (or ex-untouchable) population who – via party leader Mayawati – still managed to win the UP Chief Ministership on four occasions.
The BJP primarily relies on the trading and upper castes such as the Banias and the Brahmins.
The combination of caste and religious communalism often makes daily life – to say nothing of politics – combustible affairs in India.
Other major pre-election riots – besides Muzaffarnagar’s 2013 violence – include the 1987 Meerut riots, the 1989 Orissa riots and the 2002 Godhra (Gujarat) riots.
The effect of such incidents often has a strange effect on the political calculations of the various castes and faiths.
In UP, the Jats, a major agricultural caste in the region, traditionally voted for the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), a local party.
Following the 2013 carnage, they overwhelmingly swung to the BJP in the 2014 General Election. The Jat vote share stands at 4.4 million in UP and at roughly 28 million in India.
What does the future bring on this front?
Unfortunately, more turmoil seems to be on the horizon.
India’s current shift towards religious polarisation and Hindu nationalism arguably began with the December 1992 destruction of the Babri Masjid (Mosque) in the UP’s Ayodhya.
A major electoral promise of the BJP in the 2014 election was that they would build a grand Hindu
temple on the disputed land.
In late 2018, far right-wing Hindu political outfits converged on Ayodhya to force the building of a Ram Temple on the site, disregarding the fact that the dispute is still before the courts.
Also, the recent Pulwama militant attack – when an Indian paramilitary convoy was struck by Kashmiri separatists on 14 February, leading to 40 deaths – has inspired a string of revenge attacks against Kashmiris and Muslims across India.
It seems as if India will not be free of the scourge of communal violence anytime soon.
Irshad quietly shares that he wanted to study Mathematics six years ago.
“The riots broke my education. I tried going back to school 5 months after the riot. My classmates beat me within an inch of my life. I never returned after that.”
It took him two years to recover and for his family to scrape together his school fees.
His new school is no different. His teacher, an alleged “Islamophobe”, fails every Muslim student in the class and awards high grades to even the worst Hindu student.
Irshad ruefully tells me, “I’ve nearly given up. I don’t go to school anymore. I sit at home and study for my exams.
“My Hindu classmates insult me every day. If they fail me this time again just for who I am, then I’ll have no choice but to work at brick kiln. I know of Muslim students much brighter than me who have no choice but to work there.”