Farzan Biwi, 22, who lost her husband during communal violence 2 months ago and since living in a relief camp, kisses her 15 days old baby in Ahmedabad, 16 May 2002. Farzan’s baby is among the 45 babies born in this camp since its opening following the sectarial violence in which nearly 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, have died.
It is impossible to comprehend the policy of New Delhi to Kashmir without recognising that for people on both sides of the ideological divide in India, Kashmir has a supreme symbolic importance well beyond just the land and its people.
In what is paraded as nationalism – indeed, the only true nationalism – in the bitterly divided times we inhabit, one trademark, one essential badge of patriotism is reverence for the soldier.
A broken slab of marble, soiled surgical gloves cast off by police investigators, and sniffing dogs mark the spot in Rajgarh, in Rajsamund district of Rajasthan, where Shambhulal Regar hacked, attempted to decapitate and then set fire to Afrazul Khan, a resident of Malda district in West Bengal, on December 6.
India, as we know it, is being unmade with every passing day. In this bewilderingly changing land, hatred and bigotry are fast becoming the new normal. Hate-mongering is led powerfully and charismatically from the top – a kind of “command bigotry” – and Muslims are fast being reduced to second class citizens.
Within the span of one month, in two commuter trains in two opposite corners of the planet, men acted out their hate against young teenaged children. In both compartments, knives flashed, blood flowed, and people died, only because of the fury of prejudice.
The harrowing journey of our caravan of love laid bare a country both divided and devoid of compassion. People are compelled to live with fear and hate, and a hostile state, as normalised elements of everyday living.
I worry that, if allowed to go unchecked, lynching could become a national epidemic. More and more people feel emboldened to join or incite mobs. There is an enabling climate for hate speech and violence that is fostered by a majoritarian social climate.
On September 11, Karwan e Mohabbat regrouped in Tilak Vihar, Delhi, where widows of the 1984 Sikh massacre were settled more than three decades ago, and set off to its next destination. We reached Kandla in Uttar Pradesh’s Shamli district past midnight.
I did not know him when he lived. But in his death, in the way he died, I mourn him like a son.
His dreams were unfamiliar to my agnostic world.