Free to strike

The administration stood by while minority community homes went up in flames in Sarada in Rajasthan. Reparation has been slow.

in Udaipur

THE Muslim community is a traumatised lot in Sarada tehsil in Rajasthan's Udaipur district, where some 70 families lost homes, shops, and all their belongings in a planned attack in July as the administration stood by. Reparation was inadequate and slow to follow. The families were spread over Sarada town and village and five other villages Chaavand, Kejad, Veerpura, Sallada and Soneria.

What did I do to deserve this? asks an anguished Mushtaq Mohammad, tearful and unable to look at his vandalised dwelling located in the heart of a tribal hamlet. His home and those of his brothers were razed in the attack of July 26. The roofs were blasted with some explosive material and their belongings looted. At least five dozen Muslim homes were raided, burnt and looted that night. By all indications, the police and the administration had enough reason to have anticipated the attack. Yet nothing was done to prevent it. The affected families were spared of physical harm because the police had moved them to Udaipur hours before the looting an indication that they knew what was coming.

It all began with the murder of a tribal youth, Mohan Meena, who owned a liquor shop in Sarada town, on July 2. The three men accused of the murder were all Muslims. Both the victim and the accused are said to be shady characters in the town, though Shahzaad, the main offender, had a reputation of being a local Robin Hood. The next day some shops belonging to Muslims were attacked. This happened again on July 5.

Soon after, a campaign started blaming the entire Muslim community for the murder. On July 14, it was decided at a meeting of representatives of both communities that the three accused men would be socially boycotted. The minority community was asked to make public declarations, through statements in local newspapers, that it had nothing to do with the murder. The Sub-Divisional Officer of Sarada and the Superintendent of Police of Salumber district were present at the meeting, which was held at a government hostel for tribal youth in Sarada town.

The minority community did as it was told. Yet, on July 18, at a meeting held in the same place under the leadership of Amritlal Meena, a local Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader; Kalulal Meena, sarpanch of Chaavand village; and Bhagat Ram Meena, a zilla parishad member, an announcement was made that the Muslim community would be made accountable. Meghraj Tawad, district secretary of the Communist Party of India, said: I was there at the meeting. Many provocative speeches were made in the presence of the administration [district officials present at the meeting]. There were many sarpanches present, and there were former BJP Minister Chunnilal Garasia, former MLA Arjun Meena and BJP functionary Durga Prasad. Being a tribal person myself, I tried telling them that murder had no caste or religion.

Anonymous pamphlets whipping up communal fears and urging punishment for people with international terror links were distributed at the meeting. A 24-hour deadline was announced for the arrest of the accused. The tribal people were exhorted to bring their arms to a larger gathering on July 25. All this clearly points to a planned course of action rather than any spontaneous outpouring of injured tribal sentiments. A day earlier, members of the minority community, had informed the police and the administration of the developments and warned that something untoward might happen.

The looting began on the evening of July 25. After that day's meeting was concluded, Shaukat Ali's shop in Sarada town was attacked. Then the mob moved towards the home of a retired school principal, Ahmed Hussain, adjoining the community health centre of Sarada, on the main road connecting Sarada to Udaipur. Hussain's 95-year-old mother, Allalrakhi, his daughters, and his four-month-old granddaughter were at home. Hussain, who possessed a licensed firearm, fired in the air to frighten off the attackers. He was temporarily able to ward off damage and move out the women, though that did not eventually save his house from being looted when mobs fell upon Muslim homes the next day.

On the morning of July 26, a tribal crowd began gathering with the beating of dhols (drums). Mushtaq's brother, Sattar Mohammad, said: They gathered all round on these low hills. I could see them it was terrifying.

The S.P., Sanjiv Nirjhari, now took the initiative of bundling all the Muslim families whose houses were attacked later that day into government vehicles and moving them to a community centre in Udaipur, where they were looked after by members of their community. However, he did nothing to protect their property. Some 70 homes were looted and burnt in the rampage that began late in the evening and lasted for two to three hours.

A curfew was announced after the attack was over. Not a single policeman or rioter was injured in the episode, giving rise to questions about whether there was a tacit understanding that no confrontation was to take place between the mob and the police.

Sattar, who had stayed back to watch over his family's property, hid on a neem tree through the night. He watched the homes being burnt. His provision store, which was burnt once before in a similarly orchestrated orgy of violence in 2004, went up in flames again. His house and the family's livestock were burnt, too, and a cow was killed. His brother Mushtaq said, We have lived here for more than 70 years now. For us, this is home. Where do we go from here? Another brother, Razzaq, said the whole thing was planned by local leaders while the administration stood by.

Local residents recall three other incidents of communally motivated violence in recent times. The attack of 2004 and the one in July were the most violent. There are several parallels between the violence of 2004 (A communal plot, Frontline, September 24, 2004) and the recent flare-up, from the modus operandi to the immediate cause. However, only shops were targeted in 2004, while homes were also attacked this time.

By all appearances, the violence was planned. If the intention was to divide communities, the objective has been achieved: the tribal people and Muslims of the area now distrust each other, turning the clock back on an entire century of peaceful coexistence. They destroyed our dhanda [source of income]. They burnt our fishnets, a television, scooter, water cooler and items that my family had collected for my marriage. I am wearing clothes given by others. There is no home to go to now, said 19-year-old Nazneen, her eyes brimming with tears.

Bashir Ahmed broke down as he spoke of what had happened and of the indifference of the administration. Is it because we do not count as a significant vote bank that the government is turning a blind eye to all that has happened? he asked. Huddled along with 300 others, including women and children, in a madrassa in Sarada, he said he felt like a refugee in his own town.

Ahmed Hussain, whose house was among the first to be attacked, alleged that the S.P., the Collector and the Inspector General of Police had played a dubious role in the entire episode. After he fired in the air he was taken into police custody, along with a few other men, allegedly on frivolous charges, under various Sections of the Indian Penal Code. While our homes were being razed and looted, we were in the lock-up and our families in a community centre in Udaipur. Why wasn't our property safeguarded? he asked. He added that the police confiscated all the licensed weapons possessed by members of the minority community that they could lay their hands on, two hours before the attack began.

The administration did not concede the community's demand for the deployment of the Rajasthan Armed Constabulary (RAC), deploying instead the Mewar Bhil Corps, an entirely tribal contingent. We kept the IGP, the S.P. and the Collector informed of the developments, and yet they did nothing. Do they want to replicate Gujarat here? asked Hussain.

Tawad, who is a former MLA, said anyone familiar with the sequence of events of 2004 would not have allowed matters to escalate. The tribal people are simple souls. They were incited to attack the Muslims. Non-tribal and non-Muslim trading communities will benefit if the Muslims are out of their way, he said.

A senior official, requesting anonymity, said that the episode was the consequence of a total intelligence failure.

B.L. Singhvi, district secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), has worked among the tribal people of Udaipur for nearly three decades. In his experience, the tribal people and the Muslims lived side by side peacefully until caste Hindu traders arrived in the area. The caste Hindus treated the tribal people shabbily, as they treated Dalits. This feudal legacy was challenged from time to time, beginning with the resistance in 1921 by the legendary Motilal Tejawat, who united all tribal people under his Eki movement, protesting against excessive taxation imposed by both the colonial rulers and the Thakur feudal lords. There has been a sort of interdependence between the tribal people and the Muslims, Singhvi said.

Campaigns to bring the tribal people into the Hindu fold and to project Muslims as undesirable outsiders have had the desired effect of alienating the two communities from each other, with the result that the smallest of flare-ups had the potential of escalating into something very significant. Singhvi said that he was baffled by the fact that even after the minority community of Sarada had declared that it had nothing to do with the miscreants and had published statements to the effect in newspapers, the campaign blaming it for the murder continued.

The administration had enough time to control the situation, he said, recalling that soon after the July 18 deadline, one of the accused was arrested from Mehsana in Gujarat. We [the CPI(M)] have demanded a judicial inquiry into the role of the police and the administration, he told Frontline.

The administration, which did nothing to prevent the attack, displayed apathy in its response to the incident, too. None of those named by the victims as instigators and leaders of the attack was included in the first information reports. Some three dozen persons were arrested and then let off on bail. The State government has announced a compensation package of Rs.11 lakh for all the 70 affected families together. Most of the victims have refused it, saying it is too little and alleging that the administration never made a proper assessment of the actual losses.

The Member of Parliament from Salumber constituency is Raghuveer Meena of the Congress. He did not see it fit to visit the affected families. Nor did Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, though he reportedly visited Udaipur soon after the attack to felicitate his party colleague and Union Minister C.P. Joshi on his birthday.

The Congress made good gains in the tribal belts of Rajasthan in the last Assembly elections. Raghuveer Meena's wife was elected MLA from Sarada. She is yet to visit the victims, too. State Home Minister Shanti Dhariwal made a fleeting visit to the families while they were housed in Udaipur. But no other State leader has bothered to visit Sarada. The BJP knows we do not vote for them. We don't expect them to be sympathetic. But what about the Congress? We've always stood by them and yet we do not matter to them anymore. Gehlot is afraid he'll lose the support of the tribal people, who comprise 70 per cent of the population and the majority of the votes, said a senior citizen from the minority community.

Following repeated representations from various sections, including Muslim intellectuals, civil liberty organisations and the Left parties in Rajasthan, regarding the tardy investigation and paltry compensation, the government has finally handed over the inquiry to Divisional Commissioner Aparna Arora. She has begun the process of hearing the petitions from the aggrieved. The Commissioner's mandate is a comprehensive one and her inquiry report was due for submission by September 8.

I am going to look into all aspects of the incident. I will submit the report to the Home Department. The government needs to know what exactly happened. The Chief Minister is monitoring the developments, she told Frontline. She indicated that the government was trying to mobilise resources from other sources to enhance the compensation amount. Initially, 45 homes were listed for compensation; 13 more were later added and 14 homes of the first 45 on the list were given enhanced compensation. The assessment of the damage, she said, was complete. We have told them to start rebuilding their homes, she said, adding that the demand for posting the RAC was also acceded to.

The inquiry report of the 2004 attack went into cold storage. Bashir Ahmed said, We are always the victims. In the 1950s, when there was a conflict between the Patels and the tribals, we sheltered the Patels, gave them water and food. Today, it is their children who attack us and say that Hindus and tribal people are one. We hold the government responsible for this and we want the government to rebuild our homes.

The Muslims of Sarada fear that their lives are in danger and do not believe that the July attack was the last one on them. The perpetrators of the attack are at large and seem to have little to fear from a diffident State government.