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An survivor from Nellie massacre, Riazuddin Ahmed is today a marketing professional. Nigar Ataulla profiles the man who now lives in Bangalore and tries to contribute to the society while living down the nightmare
On the night of February 18, 1983, over 1,800 people were hacked to death in the obscure village of Nellie in Assam’s Morigaon district. Their bodies were left lying among the dry paddy fields. The victims of the massacre were Bengali-speaking Muslims.
The notorious Nellie incident took place during the AASU-led anti-‘foreigners’ agitation from 1979 to 1985. The massacre was sequel to the Central government’s decision to hold the Assembly elections ignoring the All Assam Students Union’s boycott call. The run-up to the elections was blood splattered. Nellie massacre marked the climax.
Nellie victims’ relatives still carry those tragic memories. Few were able to live down the horrors of the massacre. Riazuddin Ahmed is one such survivor from Nellie who has battled against all odds in a heart-wrenching struggle. Born in Nellie in 1980, Riazuddin’s father was a cultivator who owned a small patch of land. His was a very happy family, he recalls, with three brothers and two sisters and a loving mother who doted on the kids.
“I was only three years old then. My family was not Bangladeshi, we only spoke Bengali and that is why, we too were targeted. I remember it was a Friday, and suddenly a mob descended on the scene, burned all the houses and killed people. My parents and younger sister were killed in this incident. Being only three years old then, I remembered nothing, but I can still recall the smell of the rotten bodies,” says Riazuddin.
Riazuddin and his younger brother were shifted to a nearby temporary relief camp and were later adopted by the SOS Children’s Village at Hajoi town in Assam. SOS Children’s Villages of India is a non-profit, non-government, voluntary organization, committed to the care of children in need. The objective of SOS-India is to provide long term family based care to orphaned children and to strengthen disadvantaged families as a preventive measure against abandonment and social neglect of children.
At the SOS Village, Riazuddin was taken care of, along with 12 other children, by a Hindu widow, Makan Saikia, who became his ‘mother’. Altogether, there were 20 houses in the Village, and inmates were mostly Muslim orphans from Nellie.
“I lived in the SOS House in Hajoi for 15 years, completed my pre-university in the Hajoi College, all paid by the SOS Children’s Village. In 2005, I completed the B. Pharma course from Al-Ameen College, Bangalore, and then worked for a year with a printing firm,” says Riazuddin, who now works for the well-known pharmaceutical company Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories.
Tragedies turn people bitter. But not Riazuddin. He withstood the trials with courage. Today, Riazuddin has not only turned a professional in his field, but also is the founder of Contributions of Muslims Towards India Research Foundation Trust (COMTI).
What prompted him to set up COMTI?
“I was a student at the Al-Ameen College around 2002. I had heard about the Aligarh Muslim University and was very eager to know more about its founder. That is how I got interested in collecting biographies of Muslim personalities who had contributed to society. I started doing a chart on the Muslim freedom fighters. I had some money with me and printed a chart with it describing some Muslim heroes, which I distributed to my friends and others”, Riazuddin explains.
“I visited many book shops. I loved reading but could not afford to buy the books”, he goes on. “I encouraged my classmates to read. I collected some biographies of noted Indian Muslim personalities form the Book Trust of India. I held an exhibition of these and other similar books in Al-Ameen College. I wondered why Muslims, who have contributed so much to India and the world, are forgotten, and younger generation of them is not aware of their works. That is why I took up writing their biographies as a source of inspiration for the young”, he says.
Riazuddin has so far complied and published five tiny life sketches i.e., Dr. Mumtaz Ahmed Khan, the founder of the Al-Ameen Education Society, Dewan of Mysore State Mirza Ismail, Yusuf Ali, and Marmaduke Pickthall, the two noted translators of the Holy Quran in English and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. A sixth booklet from him is about Bangalore’s famed Lal Bagh Botanical Garden laid by Hyder Ali. “My next book will be on Tara Ali Baig, the first president of SOS Children’s Village Society in India,” he says.
Zooming around Bangalore on his bike, one could easily miss Riazuddin’s diminutive frame. But with a mind full of ideas and a heart filled with courage, he exudes immense zeal. Childhood nightmares are not easy to forget for him. But Riazuddin brims with energy to live a life that contributes to the weal of the community and the country at large. His backpack contains pharmaceutical supplies that cure the sick…this is his bread and butter. But for his soul, he wants to sacrifice his time, money and intellect to script glorious biographies of Muslim men and women who did their best for society.
Riazuddin can be reached at riazuddinster@gmail.com, comticrft@yahoo.com. Ph: 9886115647
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