Sign up to have posts delivered directly in your email inbox. Much of the content will be free, and there will also be weekly posts for paying subscribers only. I will be reporting from India and the neighbouring countries on stories the world needs to hear. I will interview journalists, writers and public intellectuals known globally for their profound expressions of discontent. There will also be ongoing discussions and debates with experts, policy makers, leaders and creative professionals, on current affairs, crises and humanitarian concerns. India’s wave of devastating violence jolts Muslims in Uttrakhand“Our only answer will be their house getting bulldozed.”
Not a day goes by when we in India do not wake up to news of another hate crime against Muslims. In the last two weeks, Muslim houses have been demolished in defiance of a court order. Agitators give speeches asking Hindus to take up arms against Muslims in the national capital, New Delhi, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi welcomes British Prime Minister Boris Johnson a few miles away. In this continuing series of ground reports, another brave young Indian journalist, reports at great personal risk: Samriddhi Sakunia brings today’s report of horror unleashed on the Muslims of one small town. A heavy deployment of police has taken over Jalalpur, a small village in Roorkee, in the Haridwar district. With it has come an uneasy peace and pin-drop silence. The quiet of the winding lanes that lead to Jalalpur make public violence seem impossible here, in a village that has hardly any connection with state or national politics. But these silent lanes were the site of one-sided violence and an exodus of Muslim families from the area less than a week ago. In Jalalpur on April 16th, Navneet Singh, the head of Bajrang Dal (the youth wing of the Hindu nationalist movement) in Jaipur, organized a rally for the Hindu festival of Hanuman Jayanti; it quickly turned violent, vandalizing and burning Muslim houses, shops, and properties being. Uttarakhand is now the ninth of India’s 28 states where violence has broken out during the celebration of a Hindu festival. On April 16, as people from four nearby villages gathered to celebrate and take part in the rally, local Muslims saw more than two thousand people wearing saffron shawls around their necks. They began to worry. The rally progressed peacefully for a few hours, but soon the village was full of smoke from burned vehicles and stones were raining down on Muslim homes and businesses—so many that they filled the streets after the injured and their assailants had left. “The rally we were recording [on video] happily, we didn't know the same rally would become the cause of our sufferings”, said Reshma. Rioters beat her brother-in-law, vandalized their house, and burnt their vehicles to ashes. “They had pistols, swords, and sticks in their hands. They entered our house and thrashed my brother-in-law so much that he has been hospitalized, they kept on shouting ‘bring out your daughters, we will “treat” them.’” About half of Jalapur’s 1,200 Muslim families have left the village; few plan to return. Before the riots, the town was nearly evenly split between Muslim and Hindu residents—now it is firmly majority Hindu. A few Muslims who haven't yet left the area showed us homes near the mosque, where rioters had broken windows and doors, and shops with Muslim names that had been vandalized as well. Some Muslim locals in Jalapur said that their Hindu neighbors had gathered in the village of Dada Patti village and announced that they planned to search the houses of all the Muslims in the village.
Violence pre-planned, claim localsAkhtari, a local 60-year-old Muslim woman who lives close to the mosque where the violence broke out, spoke to me about how the violence might have been pre-planned, despite happening in front of a police battallion. “There was a mob of 2,000 to 3,000 people in that rally. They had stone piled up in their sacks and poured all of it in the trolley while DJ played derogatory songs—anti-Muslim songs”, she said. “Secondly, they all stood right on the lane adjacent to the Masjid, also a Muslim-dominated area, and played anti-Muslim songs with [offensive] lyrics—‘Mullo Jao Pakistan and Jo Ram Ko Laye Hai, Hum Unko laye hai’—they stood there for more than 45 minutes and in no time, started stone-pelting on us.” Akhari went on to describe the brutal police treatment of Muslim families, and said that a bulldozer has been stationed outside their area. “Police [are] all on their side,” she said. “The police—on 17th April, next day after the violence broke out—the police patrolled in the Muslim area announcing that they want 40 Muslims at any cost and if they don’t get them, the house of Muslims will be bulldozed.” One of the rocks hit Akhtari’s granddaughter, a 3-month-old infant. She is in the hospital now with a deep bruise on her face. According to the latest reports, 11 people have been arrested so far. Akhtari recalled locking herself and her daughters in one room when a man from the rally barged into her house and threatened to kill her.
Muslims claim bias in the investigation“The police are fully on their side and now investigating with bias, Akhtari said. “If they see a Muslim anywhere, they arrest them. But they are not arresting people from the other side even though they started the violence.” Parveen, a 55-year-old woman who lives with her son, saw their electronics shop emptied and their wares destroyed when they heard the mob chanting Jai Shree Ram (“Glory to Ram,” a god the Hindu far-right often praise) right outside her house. As she went down to assess the situation, she saw the shop had been completely ransacked; her entire stock lay broken outside its doors. “Within no time, when we returned back upstairs seeing the heated atmosphere, they started stone-pelting at our house,” she said. “Our house is the only Mulsim one surrounded by the majority population of Other Backward Classes (OBC, a caste separation term) community Saini. [I look] around, leaving my house and shop, all the other houses are fine.” Parveen said that all the vandalization has been done by the neighbors, and noted that she is a heart patient. “They broke into my house and slapped my daughters and every family member, the mob stone-pelted on us and kicked us, but nobody came to our rescue” Farhan Ali is a middle-aged man in Jalapur who (until last week) owned an E-rickshaw, a Wagonr and two Motorcycles. All of these were burnt to ashes. Ali said that the riot was not a simple street fight, but a pre-planned attack on the whole community, with special attention paid to Muslim women. "From the stairs that go to the terrace, the goons climbed up and entered my house with knives and pistols,” he said. “They broke the mirrors, ruined the bed, and beat up my brother until he chanted ‘Jai Shree Ram’. They shouted and asked for women of the house. We were all terrified and were hiding in different spots of the house. This is our house, see the bloodstains? This is how much they beat up my brother, who is now in the hospital. And now we can't live here anymore, fearing [for] our lives. We work all day in the fields, [and we have] had to sleep there, too, for two nights.” Farhan and the rest of the families who lived with him have left the house, and not because they cannot bear the memory of their recent trauma. On April 17, a video of Hindu Leader Yatiranand went viral after he threatened the police with another likely violent assembly—a Dharm Sansad—if Mulism houses are not bulldozed in two days. I asked Subdivisional Magistrate (SDM) Brijesh Tiwari about the parked bulldozers outside the Muslim area. He said, “I have no clue as to who took the bulldozer. It was present in the village for a long time. Maybe for some other work.” Chandan Singh, the President of militant Hindu nationalist group Bajrang Dal, in Bhagwanpur, claimed that bulldozer politics are quite necessary. “The DGP and other authorities are all aware of the fact, in fact, the bulldozer was brought to the village in their presence and on their orders. And this is the correct treatment for these [Muslims].”
Roorkee’s history of hatredThe broader state of Roorkee is no different when it comes to communal tension between Hindu residents and other religious groups, be they Muslims or Christians. The Hindutva mob has thrashed them all. Last year in October, the Uttrakhand police arrested more than 200 people allegedly from Hindu right-wing groups in connection with the vandalization of a Christian prayer house in Roorkee during Sunday services. Again in Roorkee, more than 500 extremists broke into a church service for between 15 and 19 Christians who had gathered on March 10. The mob vandalized the church and its premises, injuring several men and women. Muslim families, I interviewed claim that Hindus and Muslims usually live in harmony and that the riot was unprecedented and surprising. When I interviewed Hindu families and asked them about this general sense of goodwill in the village, they expressed a deep hatred for those same neighbors. Once he learned that I am Hindu, Om Pal, a Hindu resident of the village, was more willing to speak openly. “Dekho ji, yaha ke Musalmaan waise to inki Pakistaani soch hai, [See, madam, the muslims who stay here have a Pakistani mentality],” he said. “Whenever there is a match where India plays against Pakistan, these Muslims always cheer for Pakistan,” said “These people eat free rations given by Modi and later abuse Modi only. They also have free Rs.500 given by Modi but still plan against India.” Other Hindu villagers felt the same way, though none wanted to be quoted by name. “Our only answer will be their house getting bulldozed,” one said.
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