Karwan e Mohabbat is a tiny lamp lit in a tempest of hate. A small but audacious effort to offer a garland of empathy across many parts of our troubled land. Individuals, organisations and social movements are collaborating in this journey of atonement, solidarity, healing, conscience and justice with people living with hate violence.
From Assam, the Karwan e Mohabbat proceeded to Jharkhand, an impoverished forested region with a large tribal population bitterly divided along communal lines. The state has witnessed a rash of lynching attacks in recent years.
A darkness is rising in India. Mobs are violently acting out visceral hatred, targeting people because of their faith and caste. These assaults are characterised by bystanders who actively support the killing, or do nothing to stop it.
Karwan e Mohabbat began its journey of solidarity, atonement and conscience from Assam on September 4. There, we met four families, each still weighed down by the heaviest of burdens any parent can be called upon to carry – that of the bodies of their children.
For millions of Indians, freedom still remains just a word. Link: https://scroll.in/article/847268/as-india-turns-70-a-somber-reminder-of-stolen-freedoms This article was first published by Scroll on 15th August, 2017 Even as millions of Indians rally to celebrate – with pride and gratitude – 70 years of India’s freedom, worrying reminders surfaced for the country’s religious minorities and oppressed castes and classes…
The journey of the Karwan e Mohabbat into Rajasthan on September 15 was overcast by the violent opposition to our resolve to place flowers on the dusty kerb of the highway in Behror where dairy farmer Pehlu Khan was lynched by a vigilante mob in April. I have already recounted this story earlier, and will not repeat it.
An impoverished dairy farmer, white-bearded, visibly Muslim, only a few years younger than me, was lynched on a national highway by a mob of young men with stones and sticks who claimed that he was a cattle smuggler.
Twenty-five years ago, three domes of a medieval mosque in a UP town came crashing down. Throughout the 20th century, Hindu supremacists had fought a long battle to change the character of the nation.
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.
A politics of hate, however powerful, can never triumph if people defy attempts to divide them with bigotry and fear.