THE devil is in the detail, and the details lurk in the context. This comes through clearly when we study how Muslims in Mumbai and Ahmedabad coped in the aftermath of the violence that was directed against them in 1993 and 2002 respectively. In both these cases the Muslims were in a minority, most of them poor, and though many had lived in Mumbai or Ahmedabad from their birth, they easily traced their origins to North India. Predictably, the Muslims of Ahmedabad and Mumbai remain more comfortable in Hindustani than in either Gujarati or Marathi.

Yet, several years later one can see a clear divergence in the way Muslims in these two metropolises responded to the ethnic carnages of which they were the victims. In the initial period after the violence the reactions tended to be similar. Security was their major concern, followed by those regarding housing, livelihood and education for their children. There was also an enlivening of identity which, however, soon dribbled away.

This is the time when volunteers, NGOs, citizen groups, enquiry commissions, and so on, play an important role. Activities of this sort not only demand a lot of courage, alongside dedication and specialization, but the effect of their actions is often larger than what they ostensibly set out to do. While an NGO might specialize in education or health or help in getting compensation for victims, its very presence also cushions the aftershocks of violence, reduces the possibility of random bloodshed, puts greater pressure on the state by shaming it in the media, and most of all, helps the members of the frightened minority community to take the first steps outside their refugee camps and interact with the broader society.¹

 

Our examination of ethnic carnages usually stops here. The moment bloodshed ceases we tend to lose interest. For this reason a long-term perspective on how to handle the consequences of community driven attacks are incompletely understood. Over time, as a ‘new’ normalcy settles in, the impetus to examine the long-term effects of ethnic violence gradually diminishes. This new normal, like the earlier one, is collectively negotiated by community, political and state actors. A fresh set of issues now begin to mark off distances between communities and, in some cases, these indicators may be a more emphatic restatement of the old.

It is not as if the conditions of normalcy in the past were without ambiguity and tension. But these features were known by both sides and generally observed, sometimes perhaps unconsciously. They may have been ‘taken for granted’ factors, but there was awareness that should these terms of normalcy be transgressed, there would be trouble in store. In other words, just because a situation was normal did not mean that there wasn’t an undercurrent of tension between communities. Clearly, what was acceptable behaviour between social actors, groups and communities was built into one’s daily negotiation of everyday life.

It would be incorrect then to presume that a lifeworld of amity has now been overtaken by the cruel forces of politics and or money.² That earlier lifeworld too was an outcome of previous rounds of conflict and control and not easy conviviality. Now a new round has to get going so that over time another negotiated lifeworld may emerge, whose boundary lines will be generally mapped in popular consciousness. There is little point in trying to recreate the old ‘normal’. That is lost. The question then is, how quickly we can accomplish a ‘new’ normal so that everyday life becomes less uncertain. More importantly, how can victims of ethnic hatred and violence be made to feel that they are equal citizens again?

 

Indeed, like a moving picture book, the greater the number of pages we rapidly riffle through, the more detailed and nuanced our images become. In the period immediately following ethnic attacks, protecting one’s life is most important and all the resources of victims go into attaining that end. Fear from bodily harm overwhelms other considerations. In the next stage, trauma management, political participation, education, employment and property concerns come to the top for most. But these matters too are slowly replaced by other considerations, though most of us do not stay on long enough to understand them. This often leads us to downplay the importance of the role of justice and citizenship and to overplay issues such as psychological counselling, jobs and property.

While the above may be a rough sequencing of what happens following an ethnic riot, the minutae of experiences is not quite the same in different settings. The history of the place, which includes the social and political context within which blood has been spilt, has a lot to do with how victims react. In this paper we shall concentrate, as mentioned earlier, on how Muslims in Mumbai and Ahmedabad responded to ethnic carnages.

 

In Mumbai, the first round of unrest began when Muslims took to the streets in December 1992 immediately after the demolition of the Babri Masjid. In the main, state property was destroyed, though some Hindu homes too were damaged. The violence was, however, quickly brought under control. A month later, Hindu groups, led by the Shiv Sena, went on a rampage in retaliation against Muslims, and this time the toll was much heavier. About 900 people lost their lives and nearly 600 were Muslims.³ Though the Muslims were worse off, the conflict was not as heavily one-sided as it was to be later in Ahmedabad. Details of the Mumbai riots can be found in the Srikrishna Report which also highlighted the negligent, often provocative, role of the police in several parts of the city.

In the March 2002 attacks against Muslims in Ahmedabad, the killings were many more and the violence lasted for nearly four months. At least 1000 Muslims died during this period in Gujarat. The pretext in this case once again was that the Muslims had instigated Hindu reaction and the finger pointed to the Godhra train massacre.⁴ The complicity of the Gujarat state was clearly visible at every stage of the killings, from start to finish. The report of the Concerned Citizens’ Tribunal on the Gujarat carnage⁵ gives a detailed account of how Muslims in Ahmedabad were helplessly exposed to Hindu mobs as the state not only did not protect them, but many important state actors actually supported and encouraged the killers.

 

Therefore, while there are certain similarities, differences exist as well. The state did not cover itself with glory in either of the two instances, but in Ahmedabad its role was clearly provocative. In Mumbai, while state functionaries could have been more efficient and its rogue elements curbed more effectively, the government machinery was not as openly in alignment with the Hindu sectarians as was the case in Gujarat.

Second, Mumbai has a history of trade unionism and an old left, socialist and secular tradition. It is also a cosmopolitan city whose intellectual depth goes back several generations. It is still the industrial capital of India and the home of Hindi cinema. Even though the Shiv Sena has gained eminence in Mumbai’s politics, it is not as if it is unchallenged on the streets. What needs to be taken into account as well is that Mumbai has a stable Muslim elite which plays an important role in politics. There is also the city’s underworld where Muslims have a significant presence. The Mumbai blast of 1993 gave evidence of that.

In Ahmedabad, the Muslims were completely unprotected during those long months when they were under attack. This city lacked Mumbai’s cosmopolitan gravitas and its secular forces. What little Ahmedabad had in terms of such resources was completely outnumbered and outmanoeuvred. Gandhi had destroyed the trade union movement here in the 1930s, and what remained of it collapsed with the closing down of textile mills from the 1980s onwards.⁶ The Muslim elite of Ahmedabad⁷ are not of the same stature as their counterparts in Mumbai, and their impact on Gujarat and the city’s politics is marginal, or at best, supportive. A few can be found in the Congress or in the Nationalist Congress Party, but they are minor players. In fact, Ehsan Jaffrey, a former Congress MP, was killed in the Ahmedabad riots and his property burnt. The BJP has a much stronger political presence in Gujarat than it can ever hope to attain in Maharashtra. Therefore, what happens in Mumbai or Ahmedabad is also contextualized by the politics of their respective states of which they are the capital cities.

 

Otherwise, whether it is the literacy rate among Muslims, or the distribution of Muslims in different occupational categories, or even in terms of their proportionate numerical presence, the two cities do not differ from each other.⁸ Indeed, there is nothing that is remarkable regarding the status and size of Muslims in these two metropolises that should make them stand apart from other cities in India. The blame for the ferocity of attacks against Muslims in Mumbai and Ahmedabad cannot be conveniently explained away by positioning them as a business or a numerical threat, or that they were a job threat to the white collar aspirant Hindus in these two cities. There was just no excuse! In fact, the government under Narendra Modi wanted to capitalize on the imagined Muslim threat in order to consolidate BJP power in the state. If election results are any indication, he certainly succeeded in his endeavour.⁹

Eventually then, if the Muslims of Mumbai and Ahmedabad have reacted differently to Hindu sectarian attacks against them, the answer does not lie in morphological census figures, or in occupational profiles, as they do with the history of the place and the social and political context within which the carnages took place. It is here that issues of trade union history, political participation, intellectual climate and the culture of cosmopolitanism play a significant role.

We shall now move on to detailing how the Muslim reaction to violence against them differed in these two cities.

 

Soon after the riots began in January 1993 in Mumbai, Muslim notables of the city, such as Khorakiwala and Dudhwala, became active in several citizen committees to bring about peace between the communities and also provide assistance to the victims. A number of senior civil servants, both serving and retired, also participated in these activities as well as did dozens of municipal corporators of different religious backgrounds. But all of them acknowledge the important contribution of Muslim notables, without whose presence their efforts would have lost much of their symbolic significance.

 

In Gujarat, the situation was different. Rich Muslims cowered into their shelter as gusts of bloody onslaughts against their community swept through Ahmedabad. Though the majority of the dead lived in the poorer quarters of the city, the better off Muslims did not have the courage and confidence to step out. Unlike Mumbai, there were no Muslim leaders who could offer succour to their less fortunate co-religionists when Hindu sectarians were baying for their blood on the streets. Naturally, no citizen action could rise from among them as it did in Mumbai. In Ahmedabad, the rich Muslims also kept their head down and hoped that they would not be noticed.

This leads us to a related point. Quite in contrast to Mumbai there are just a few places, such as Relief Road in Ahmedabad, where Muslim entrepreneurs are in significant numbers. In Mumbai, on the other hand, there are extensive neighbourhoods such as Khoja Chawl in Byculla, or Mohammadali Road, or Chor Bazaar where it would be hard to find a Hindu shop or commercial establishment. Mumbai Muslims who fled their homes during the attacks found easy refuge in these areas, and many managed to get jobs there too. But more importantly, these neighbourhoods meant security, and that was much more precious.

In Ahmedabad, on the contrary, the only refuge Muslims could find was in the hastily set up camps by different Faith Based Organizations (FBOs). The largest camp was in the precincts of the Shah Alam Mosque. In Mumbai, FBOs played a minor role because they were not called upon to render anything that only they could perform. The Jamaat-i-Islami did help in providing utensils to those who had fled from their homes, but was not engaged in providing housing and educational support as the FBOs did in Ahmedabad. In some places like Tulsiwadi, the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) rendered assistance towards repairing homes, but it was minimal. According to a senior Jamaat-Islami official, their relief work was hampered in Mumbai as they were at that point declared a banned organization, along with many other religious organizations.

 

In Mumbai, the killings stopped after a few days, not many were displaced, the civic authorities and law enforcement agencies got back to their tasks, citizens’ committees helped in reconciliation and relief work, and the city was soon functioning again. There were bitter memories and anger too for lives lost, properties damaged and the inability of victims to get their legitimate compensation. That being said, it did not take much time for most Muslims of Mumbai to come out of their homes and start living again. They went back to their jobs, and their children went back to the same schools. The disruption of the ‘normal’ was not that extensive.

In Ahmedabad, only the FBOs came forward to offer shelter. I have heard many poor Muslims say that the better off in the community ran for cover themselves and did not have the resources to act like patrons and protectors. Some FBOs from other states contributed to the relief work during the prolonged troubled period in Ahmedabad, but the kind of civic role that Muslim notables and others played in Mumbai, or the way the state machinery returned to its task of maintaining law and order, just did not happen in Ahmedabad. This is what forced the FBOs to come forward and fill the void.

There were few instances in my knowledge when Muslim religious leaders counted for much when it came to providing rescue and relief services in Mumbai. A number of my respondents recalled a Maulana Bukhari who helped many Muslims marooned in Pratiksha Nagar, near Antop Hill, to escape. He came around several times in an army truck to take the stranded and terrified Muslims to a safe place. Interestingly, this Maulana was well served by an Army vehicle and by military personnel. In Ahmedabad, when Muslims ran from their near death trap in Naroda Patiya to the adjoining State Reserve Police camp, the gates were firmly shut on them. They stood there helplessly cornered while the Hindu mobs slaughtered them just across the wall behind which there were so many men in uniform. They were so close to the church, but so far from God. Not a single member of the State Reserve Police offered to help.

 

In Ahmedabad, the FBOs were involved in extending both relief as well as in rehabilitation services, the latter in a very concerted, protracted and organized fashion. The Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) and the Jamaat-i-Ulema-i-Hind (JU) provided shelter for Muslims in newly constructed refugee colonies and also repaired the homes of many. It is not clear whether the victims paid for these services in full with the compensation they received from the Gujarat government, but it cannot be doubted that but for these FBOs many Muslims would have had no roof over their heads, and many others a very dilapidated structure, and often a burnt out shell, for a dwelling.

Unlike Mumbai where Muslims, with some exceptions, generally went back to their earlier homes, in Ahmedabad the situation was different. It is estimated by JI and JU office bearers that roughly a quarter of those who ran away seeking shelter in the various refugee camps were too scared to go back to where they lived earlier. This is why when the FBOs offered to build alternative residences for them, there were many takers. Interestingly, these allotments have not been formally handed over to the residents. They can live in them for as long as they want, but they do not possess ownership papers. Muslims in such refugees settlements such as Citizen Nagar or Yes Colony, for example, are very unhappy about this. The FBO officials say that they do not hand over ownership rights for fear that the rooms might be sublet or sold.

 

In Ahmedabad the ghettoization of Muslims began before 2002 and so did this same process start in Mumbai well before 1993. However, the recent riots in both cities only deepened this process. Some of the Muslim dominated areas in Ahmedabad have become magnets for frightened Muslims looking for a secure home. This is also true for Mumbai, but not to the same extent. What is more interesting however is that there has been a steady investment of real estate capital by Muslims in areas outside Mumbai proper. These new neighbourhoods are almost entirely Muslim and in contrast to Mumbai city, the number of women wearing veils in these localities is quite high. The largest settlement of this kind is in Mumbra, which is about an hour and a half by suburban train from Mumbai Central. FBOs have had no role to play in the remaking of Mumbra, though several mosques have been constructed here. Mumbra is a township on its own. It has upper middle class homes as well as rows of slums and everything else in between.

 

Most Muslims, whether in Mumbai or Ahmedabad, are poor artisans and labourers. They work largely in the informal sector. In contrast to the general population, a larger percentage is involved in crafts, ‘own enterprises’ and petty business. Whether it is auto workshops or selling bangles, there are proportionately more Muslims than Hindus. The Sachar Committee Report, which draws heavily on the National Sample Survey, provides many illustrations of this order.¹⁰

Finding a job is always difficult, especially after a riot. It is much harder for those Muslims who had to change their residence because their place of work is now much farther away from what used to be the case earlier. This has hurt the earning capacity of poor Ahmedabad Muslims for so many of them now live at a distance from the city in refugee settlements built by JI and JU. This compels them to spend long hours on the road to get to work, or even to search for one. In Mumbai the situation is not that grave, primarily because Muslims in that city did not experience large scale displacement after 1993. When people chose to go to Mumbra or Oshiwada, they did so of their own volition and at their own pace. Before moving they found a suitable occupation and made sure that other civic amenities such as health and schools were also available to them. Things were very much more under their control.

Given the poverty levels of Muslims, as also that a large number of them work either as daily labourers, or on piecemeal contract terms, or as owners of micro-enterprises as small as vending out of push carts, it is not hard to get a job after a few months of displacement. They move from poverty to poverty. Of course, there are other displacement costs in Ahmedabad, but in most cases they have a job which is roughly comparable to the one they had in the past. Finding a job is not a major issue; the big thing is fighting poverty. This fight gets tougher if one lives in constant fear that ethnic attacks could engulf them again any time.

There is one area where the difference between Muslims of Ahmedabad and those in Mumbai is striking, and that is in the field of education. In Mumbai, Muslims generally refuse to learn Marathi and prefer to go to Urdu medium schools instead. There are many private and government run Urdu medium schools and Muslim children prefer them to the Marathi medium ones.

 

In Gujarat the story is very different. In Ahmedabad, for example, the JI and the JU also encourage the setting up of Gujarati medium schools. The Muslims I met in Ahmedabad said that they wanted their children in non-Urdu schools because they must be as well equipped as the Hindus are when they grow up. Some also mentioned that if they went to a regular Gujarati school, then Urdu words and expressions would not escape their lips. This would make their livelihood prospects brighter. I even saw several Anjuman Trust schools in Ahmedabad where the teaching was almost entirely in Gujarati. Please recall that the majority of poor Muslims in Ahmedabad and Mumbai are migrants, and a significant proportion of them are from North India. Yet there is such a difference between Muslims of Mumbai and Ahmedabad when it comes to choosing the medium of instruction for their school going children.

Finally, as Mumbai Muslims have not really gained from, or interacted with FBOs, they have a distant view of them. They see the JI and JU as purely religious bodies, primarily devoted to preaching and propagating Islam. In this connection one must recall the Tablighi Jamat (TJ) as well. In Ahmedabad, the relationship with FBOs is different. It is more intimate, and it has also changed over time. Soon after the killings started in Gujarat and in its immediate aftermath, the FBOs were looked up to as saviours by the terrified Muslims. They even built homes for them and provided other social services. But as time went on this relationship between them and the FBOs began to sour.

 

For example, in many of the FBO constructed refugee colonies of Ahmedabad, such as Citizen Nagar or the one in Ramola, Muslim residents had a poor opinion of the JI and the JU respectively. They accused these organizations of making money, providing inadequate services (Citizen Nagar is built 500 yards away from Ahmedabad’s biggest rubbish dump/landfill), and locking up rooms to distribute later as favours to others. We heard accusations of the last variety often and loudly in Ramola. In Modassa, outside Ahmedabad, the relationship between Muslims and the TJ which contributed significantly to refugee rehabilitation, is much worse. Most Muslims in this colony even refuse to go to the TJ mosque and would rather pray in a makeshift, tarpaulin topped, structure adjacent to it. As one poor Muslim said: ‘The maulvis know what is happening above the ground and below the ground, but not on what is taking place on the ground.’ Familiarity, clearly, breeds contempt.

 

Looking at the position of Muslim victims in Mumbai and Ahmedabad several years after the tragedies has yielded a few important points. First, even though the displaced and harassed Muslims found jobs for themselves, a school for their children and roof over their heads, there is one fear that has stayed with them. This drives nearly all of them to ghettoization, and to a hostile political relation with the state and the governmental apparatus. In the case of Ahmedabad, Muslims live under the added burden of constant fear from the state government of Gujarat.¹¹

In my interactions with the Muslims of these two cities the one point that came out clearly was that they would feel secure only if the people who brutalized and killed them were punished according to the law of the land. When some Muslim residents of Citizen Nagar refugee colony were told that a dreaded Hindu killer of Naroda Patiya in Ahmedabad had died in a road accident, one of them said: ‘I wish he had died in jail instead.’

This stark reaction speaks a lot for the Muslim’s quest for justice. Compensations can be wrung out of the administration, jobs can be found, schools too, and houses can be rebuilt, but who will quell the fear that rises in them when a cracker goes off unexpectedly, or a truck backfires on the streets? How can they send their children to a school which is in a Hindu neighbourhood without worrying about their welfare? How can they find a job in another city and leave their helpless family behind?

If one were to ask Muslim victims today what they really want, their answer might seem puzzling. Yes, they will mention jobs, schools, housing, or whatever, but more than anything else they want to be full and substantive citizens of India. And the only way they can see this happen is if the state were to prosecute the guilty and punish those who attacked, raped and looted them for their crimes. The Gujarat Harmony Project is fetchingly named and has a host of credible sponsors, most significantly, CARE, an international NGO. But it does not recognize this fact and downplays the need for justice.¹² In fact, Oomen goes all the way to argue that any attempt at seeking justice by the Gujarati Muslim survivors would be retributional in character and not serve any purpose.¹³ Instead, he advocates forgiveness, an approach that almost all Muslims of Gujarat treat with scorn.

 

What do the Muslims want most of all, both in Mumbai and Ahmedabad? Above all they want to feel comfortable and confident as citizens, otherwise their economic and educational prospects would always be on hold. True, some may have turned to religion, perhaps many did soon after the riots, but most have little time for fundamentalism or even for institutions like the JI, JU and TJ. This is why a long-term study of how riot victims cope would be useful. The strategies of survival that are opted for in the early stages are not necessarily the most enduring ones.

Interestingly, one of the earliest Muslim refugee resettlement colony in Ahmedabad is called ‘Citizen Nagar’. This is symbolism at its evocative best!

 

Footnotes:

1. Gauhar Raza and Surjit Singh, The Wretched: Report on the Socioeconomic Conditions of the Economically Displaced in Gujarat, ANHAD and AVHRS, New Delhi, 2008.

2. Jurgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action (2 vols.), Beacon Press, Boston, 1987.

3. Satish Tripathi, Relief and Rehabilitation: Measures for Persons Affected by the Bombay Riots of 1992-1993, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Monograph Series I, Mumbai, 1997; S. Hussain Zaidi, Black Friday: The True Story of the Bombay Blast, Penguin Books, New Delhi, 2002.

4. Siddharth Vardarajan (ed.), Gujarat: The Making of a Tragedy, Penguin Books, New Delhi, 2002.

5. Concerned Citizens Tribunal, An Enquiry into the Carnage in Gujarat (3 vols.), Citizens for Justice and Peace, Mumbai, 2002; Communalism Combat 2002, Nos. 77-78, Mumbai.

6. Jan Breman, ‘Ghettoization and Communal Politics: The Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion in the Hindutva Landscape’, in Ramachandra Guha and Jonathan Parry (eds.), Institutions and Inequalities: Essays in Honour of Andre Beteille, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1999; Sujata Patel, ‘Corporatist Patronage in Ahmedabad Textile Industry’, in Ghanshyam Shah, M. Rutten and Hein Streefkerk (eds.), Development and Deprivation in Gujarat (Essays in Honour of Jan Breman), Sage, New Delhi, 2002.

7. Asghar Ali Engineer, Muslim Communities of Gujarat: An Exploratory Study of Bohras, Khojas and Memons, Ajanta Press, Delhi, 1989.

8. Statistical Abstract of Gujarat State, Commissioner of Census Department, Gandhinagar, 2007.

9. Harsh Mander, Cry! My Beloved Country, Rainbow Publications, Noida, 2004; Siddharth Vardarajan, 2002, op cit.

10. Rajinder Sachar, Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India, Prime Minister’s High Level Committee, Cabinet Secratariat, Government of India, New Delhi, 2006.

11. Human Rights Watch, Compounding Injustice: The Government’s Failure to Redress Massacres in Gujarat, 2003.

12. Sara Ahmad, ‘Sustaining Peace, Rebuilding Livelihoods: The Gujarat Harmony Project’, Gender and Development, vol. 12, 2004, pp. 94-102.

13. T.K. Oomen, Reconciliation in Post-Godhra Gujarat: The Role of Civil Society, Pearson Longman, New Delhi, 2008.