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Godhra, a town located in Gujarat’s Panchmahal district, a two hours’ journey from Ahmedabad, has a roughly equal Hindu and Muslim population. This obscure town shot into the limelight when, in 2002, a coach of a train caught fire near the town’s railway station, triggering off a massacre of Muslims throughout Gujarat on an unprecedented scale. Today, Godhra, like many other towns in Gujarat, is geographically completely polarized. A narrow river divides the town into two clearly Hindu and Muslim areas as I discovered during a recent trip to the State.
‘Modi Sahib has wrought a revolution in Gujarat’ announced the glum-looking corpulent businessman sitting on the berth next to mine on the train to Ahmedabad recently. He proudly introduced himself as a Nagar Brahmin, even though I did not ask him his caste. ‘We now have regular electricity for our industries, new superhighways and massive shopping malls’, he went on excitedly. ‘Modi ji is the saviour of the Hindus of Gujarat. He taught the bloody Muslims a lesson in 2002 and now they dare not raise their heads’, he belligerently asserted as I squirmed in my seat.
A young Sindhi man sharing our compartment, also a businessman based in Ahmedabad, winced and hurriedly changed the topic. A while later, when the Nagar Brahmin was not within hearing range, he whispered, ‘Not all Gujarati Hindus think like this man, although many do. I, for one, don’t, but we can’t openly counter such views. Such is the climate of fear in Gujarat ‘.
The man was right, I discovered during a recent short trip to the state. Public opposition to Modi and to the Hindutva lobby is muted, not just because of fear but also because the claims of the Hindutva forces have become perceived truths for many Gujarati Hindus, thanks to years of carefully-planned indoctrination. The BJP and allied Hindutva fronts have made deep inroads among sections of communities such as Dalits and Adivasis, who form a large chunk of Gujarat’s ‘Hindu’ population, and who were traditionally opposed to the ‘upper-caste-controlled’ Hindutva groups and were once earlier strong Congress vote-banks.
‘The Congress is totally ineffective as an opposition force in Gujarat ‘, says Raju Solanki, a well-known Dalit activist, who works with the Centre for Social Justice in Ahmedabad. ‘In the last six decades, the Congress did precious little for the Dalits and Adivasis besides taking their votes and so the BJP has taken over. There’s no difference, as far as Dalits and Adivasis are concerned, between the two they both represent broadly the same dominant caste-class groups. Hinduvta fronts are desperately trying to Hinduise the Dalits and Adivasis, to use them as foot-soldiers against the Muslims, setting them against each other so that ‘upper’ caste rule remains unchallenged’, he argues. Unity between Dalits, Backward Castes, Adivasis and Muslims, who together form the overwhelming majority of Gujarat’s population, is the only way to challenge the BJP and the Congress, Solanki says.
Godhra, a town located in Gujarat’s Panchmahals district, a two hours’ journey from Ahmedabad, has a roughly equal Hindu and Muslim population. This obscure town shot into the limelight when, in 2002, a coach of a train caught fire near the town’s railway station, triggering off a massacre of Muslims throughout Gujarat on an unprecedented scale. Today, Godhra, like many other towns in Gujarat, is geographically completely polarized. A narrow river divides the town into two clearly Hindu and Muslim areas.
A semblance of ‘normality’ prevails in the town, although, its residents are quick to point out that the massacres of 2002, which, curiously, left Godhra itself largely untouched, have severely impacted on inter-communal relations. Almost all the NGOs that appeared in Godhra in the wake of the genocide to extend relief to Muslim victims in scores of villages nearby have now departed. Only a couple or so remain, with much trimmed budgets and staff. ‘As a result’, says Ilyas Bhagat, a local social activist, ‘the victims of the massacre, including families of over 80 men arrested under the deadly POTA law, have been left to fend for themselves’.
Bismillah Behen works with an NGO in Godhra and outlying villages. Her house in Himmatnagar was burnt down by Hindu mobs in 2002. Her husband has taken a second wife, and so she now lives by herself. Her own trauma, as a victim of both the anti-Muslim pogram and of an insensitive husband, she says, has made her even more committed to working for communal harmony and women’s rights. ‘Women are the worst sufferers in riots’, she explains. She tells me of the efforts she and some of her colleagues, including Adivasis and Dalits, have made to bring women of different marginalized communities in Godhra to fight for their rights. She sees this as important not only in itself but also as one way of countering communalism. ‘We face opposition from patriarchal conservative forces in all our communities. Some Adivasi and Dalit men tell our non-Muslim sisters who are with us that they should not associate with us because we helped Muslim victims of the massacres. Likewise, some maulvis oppose the Muslim sisters in our group because they refuse to cover themselves in burkhas. They are angry with us because they insist that women must not come out of their homes’. ‘But’, she emphatically adds, ‘we women have undergone so much suffering during the riots. We have to come out and speak out’.
Bismillah Behen has not read any arcane feminist texts. What she speaks, reflects her own personal and collective struggle, along with that of other women like her, who have experienced what it means to live through a genocide. ‘We have to join hands with sisters from other marginalized communities to fight for women’s rights and also against communalism’, she insists. ‘We have to explain to our sisters in other communities that communalism poses a major threat to women’s rights and to our freedom. The issue of women of all socially marginalized communities must be made a central part of the anti-communal struggle’.
Lakshmi Parmar, 26, is Bismillah’s colleague. She is the only female graduate in her village. Hailing from a poor Dalit family of the Vankar or weaver caste, she faces considerable opposition from her villagers, including some fellow Dalits, for working with Muslim women and for communal harmony. She tells me about how, in many villages around Godhra, Dalits were literally forced by the ‘upper’ castes to join them in attacking and killing Muslims in 2002. ‘They searched Dalit houses to see if any Muslims were hidden there. They threatened to boycott them if they helped the Muslims flee. Many Dalits yielded to this pressure as, being mostly landless labourers, they are dependent on the ‘upper castes’ for work, she says.
Lakshmi speaks of how in these villages Dalits continue to suffer humiliation at the hands of the ‘upper’ castes, who consider them as fellow ‘Hindus’ only at the time of anti-Muslim violence, when they are generally used to attack Muslims. ‘In my own village’, she says, “Dalits cannot enter the local temple. A Dalit bridegroom cannot sit on a horse like ‘upper’ castes do. Last year my brother, who was getting married, tried to do that but we were forcibly stopped”.
‘Those days were really harrowing for all of us’, Lakshmi recounts of the brutal events of 2002. ‘I had to stay in a village, where Muslims had been driven out from. We started meetings to bring the different communities together, to facilitate the return of the Muslims to their homes, to rebuild their houses. But, eventually, due to the opposition of a local BJP politician, I had to flee’, she says. ‘However, we carried on working. We tried to bring together Dalits, Muslims and Adivasis through cultural activities, such as observing the anniversary of Babasaheb Ambedkar, Women’s Day and so on’.
‘We need to bring the Dalits and other marginalized communities, besides the Muslims, back into Gujarat’s political discourse’, Solanki reiterates. ‘We need to shift the discourse from the secularism versus communalism debate to bring to the centre issues of caste-class domination and subjugation’, Solanki concludes. ‘Only then can Hindutva be effectively challenged, not just in Gujarat, but in the rest of the country as well’.
(The writer can be reached at ysikand@gmail.com)
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