Some events leave a permanent mark on the history of a people. For many in my generation, one such moment of iconic suffering was the felling by a frenzied mob of a medieval mosque on December 6, 1992.
In these troubled times, the world’s two largest democracies – India and the US – are increasingly becoming hostile, threatening places for people with Muslim names.
The year India leaves behind was a grim one in so many ways: a year in which travelling with Eid gifts or singing carols became fraught with dangers; when hate attacks on innocents became routine; a year that saw toxic political discourse, a stuttering economy and no jobs for young people.
The Karwan-e-Mohabbat – a caravan of love – set out from Nagaon in Assam on September 4, 2017, and concluded its travels on October 2, 2017, in Porbandar, a small coastal town in Gujarat where 148 years ago Mohandas Gandhi was born.
In the summer of 2016, many students sat on a hunger strike in the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. They were protesting the punishment meted out to them by the university authorities for having demonstrated against the hanging of Afzal Guru.
On a bumpy bus journey from Giridih to Ramgarh in Jharkhand, trying to type my short update for today. My heart very weighed down in a day with many reminders of why this Karwan was important to attempt.