In March 2018, after a reportedly armed group took out a Ram Navami march through West Bengal’s Asansol, the town erupted in communal frenzy. One of the victims was Sibtulla Rashidi, the 16-year-old son of Asansol Imam Imdadulla Rashidi. The brutal murder had the town on edge. At its tipping point, Rashidi addressed thousands of agitated community members, urging them to keep the peace. “My son was alive till the day Allah wished him to stay alive,” said Imdadulla. “Those who killed him will be punished by God at the right place, not here. But, none of you has the right to take revenge. Nobody would be attacked for my son’s murder... If you consider me as your own, then all of you have to maintain peace as instructed by Islam. If you cannot do that, I will take it that I am not your own. I will leave Asansol forever, and will never come back.” Bloodshed was averted.
In New Delhi, in February 2018, 23-year-old photographer Ankit Saxena was murdered, his throat slit, by the family of a Muslim woman that he was in a relationship with. A largescale communalisation of the incident was averted, thanks to the timely intervention of Ankit’s father Yashpal Saxena, who said, as quoted by IndiaTimes, "I don't want any inflammatory statements. I feel very saddened by what happened, but I don't want anyone to create a hostile environment against Muslims. I have nothing against any religion.” As a sign of harmony, he would later host an Iftar feast for members of the Muslim community.
According to a database maintained by the portal IndiaSpend, 279 hate crimes incidents were reported since 2009. About 123 bovine violence-related incidents were reported from 2012, claiming 295 victims. More than 50 per cent victims hailed from the minority Muslim community. It was as an antidote to this polarised atmosphere that human rights activist and author Harsh Mander, along with writer Natasha Badhwar, activist John Dayal and others, embarked on Karwan-e-Mohabbat (Caravan of Love), visiting the families of the victims and perpetrators alike. From September 2017 to November 2017, they covered eight states and offered legal aid to the families of the victims. “India has never been as divided as it is today,” says Mander, the co-author of Reconciliation: Karwan-e-Mohabbat’s Journey of Solidarity through a Wounded India, on the sidelines of Kerala Literature Festival, organised by DC Books.
Excerpts from the interview:
In your words, what is Karwan-e-Mohabbat all about?
There is a sense of fear, isolation and aloneness among the Muslims. The idea was that we wanted a socio-political mass intervention founded on the ideas of love and solidarity. I made a promise to myself to travel to every part of the country where there has been hate violence, and meet the people who have been stricken by it. We will seek forgiveness for the violence that the country has not been able to prevent, and get to know the struggles of their lives, and what we could do to help them get justice. The journey is not just that we visit, jot down their stories and forget about them. That would be morally and ethically wrong.
Take the case of 55-year-old Pehlu Khan’s lynching in Alwar. Is state power being subverted?
The states, even in non-BJP ruled ones like Karnataka, West Bengal or Assam (before BJP came to power), a climate of brazen terror had crept in. The accused feel they have committed an action of heroism or nationalism, and that is why they videotape the lynching. In some videos, you can even find the police standing by, not intervening. In an incident in Manipur, you find the police poking the man with a gun to see if the man was still alive. In Hapur, we saw pictures of a man, still alive, being dragged with ropes like an animal.
The victims are being made the criminals. Families like those of Pehlu Khan are running around trying to protect themselves from the violence. There is a sense of intimidation. In Pehlu Khan’s case, the home minister said they were cow smugglers. They were charged with that, and his son, nephew, are running around, protecting themselves against those charges. I was shocked to find Bengal was no different. Three young men were lynched and the police had done nothing to secure justice for the victims.
When Bengali labourer Afrazul was murdered by Shambhulal Regar, immediately a WhatsApp group was constituted with the local MP and minister as its members. They raised lakhs of rupees in days.
There are stories of hope too. While the stories of Imam Rashidi and Yashpal Saxena hit national headlines, there are stories like that of Abdul Basheer, who was murdered in retaliation for Deepak Rao, in the communally sensitive Dakshin Kannada. His family, to avoid conflagration of the situation, opted to bury him in a local mosque and not take out a funeral procession through the city.
There is a very well-known story of Mahatma Gandhi during his fast in Kolkata. It was when India had got its independence, and he fasted so that the violence would end. The story is told of a Hindu man who threw a roti at his face, and asked him about how he could overcome his anger and anguish over his little boy being killed by Muslim mobs. Gandhiji answered: Find a little boy whose parents have been killed by Hindu mobs, raise him as your own, and in his Muslim faith.
We don’t have leaders who tell us this now. What we have are ordinary humans in the moments of great crisis rise much above themselves. Take the case of Basheer. Karnataka and parts of Kerala are areas in the country where we see hotheads of both communities involved in such incidents. In Basheer case, the Bajrang Dal member [Rao] was killed, allegedly by the Popular Front of India. The area would have burned, but Basheer’s family made a moving appeal on television to not indulge in violence. They did not allow the body to be paraded. Same with the case of the Imam Rashidi and Yashpal Saxena. In them, we see echoes of Gandhi.
Most of south India is considered peaceful and largely shielded from such incidents. But when you hear how a very peaceful town like Bhadrak in Odisha burnt just because of some viral WhatsApp forwards, in 2017, the spectre seems not too far away.
In my book Partitions of Hate, I dub these incidents ‘command-hate crimes’, because it happens in an ecosystem of encouragement and valorisation. You have created an environment that enables this hate. It has damaged our society for a long period of time. But, we are not even acknowledging the gravity of the crisis.
Economic factors undeniably play a part. In Rajsamand, you said you spoke to Shambhulal Regar’s family members, whose business had gone under after demonetisation, and he was spending days listening to hate speeches on his phone.
This shift to the far right, and the demonisation of ethnic and religious minorities is a global trend now. There are leaders who thrive on divided societies. I believe in the end it is a failure of this economic model, neo-liberalism. We are seeing a jobless growth. Every second Indian today is below the age of 25. These youngsters legitimately aspire to what is promised to them. But nothing is coming their way. They have nothing to look forward to. There is a sense of deep frustration and low self-esteem. It has been 25 years since Babri Masjid was demolished, and brought forward this idea of Hindu nation. These youngsters have never lived in an India of different imagination. I think both these factors have contributed to what we are seeing now.
For the minorities, do you think more political representation with identity-based parties like IUML and AIMIM will help?
There was a beautiful film on the dilemma of Muslims before partition called Garm Hawa. It is the story of this Muslim patriarch who is determined to stay in India after partition. Various factors push him. He despairs, and in the last scene, he leaves for a train to Pakistan. On the way, he sees a red flag procession and he joins it. It is very important that it is a red flag procession and not a green flag procession. What the film tries to say is that the Muslim has every right in this country, in solidarity with other oppressed groups. I feel it is the responsibility of the so-called secular parties to fight for these issues. But they are failing there. I also feel that the Muslim community needs to fail anguish and anger at what they are suffering and what other oppressed groups are suffering. Dalits have suffered for centuries, women, working class farmers too. They all need to come together for a better, more humane country.
