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.
I took Usman Ansari’s one good hand in mine and said that I had come with the message of sharing his pain. I sought his forgiveness, on behalf of all of us.
In India, we have accustomed ourselves to erasing from public memory horrendous injustices and moving on. Moving on without healing, without remorse, without even elementary justice. Moving on as though nothing happened.
On the 10th day of the Karwan-e-Mohabbat, as we met bereaved and grieving families – Muslim families that had lost their loved ones to cow vigilantism or police aggression – in five villages of the Nuh district of Mewat, we got news of anger and hostility to the advance of our peace caravan to Behror in Alwar district.
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.
Jharkhand chief minister Raghubar Das. Jharkhand will not be the first government to pass an anti-conversion law if this is voted for by the state assembly. Anti-conversion laws were passed in Orissa in 1967, in Madhya Pradesh in 1968, in Gujarat in 2003 and Chhattisgarh in 2006.
The investigations by senior police officers Satish Varma and Rajnish Rai led ultimately to the charge-sheeting and arrest of the then Home Minister of Gujarat and several senior police officers involved in the ‘purported encounter’ killing of 19-year-old Ishrat Jahan
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.
An 11-year-old child Santoshi dies in a remote village in Jharkhand. Her mother testifies to reporters that no one in her household had eaten a meal for a full eight days before her daughter died. There was not a grain in their mud house.
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.