Four months ago, as a member of a women’s fact-finding team, I visited several camps in rural and urban Gujarat. I spoke to scores of women survivors and recorded their testimonies. The violence, the destruction, the despair, the horror slapped you in the face. You could not escape it.
Last week, I returned to Panchmahals district to visit Halol, Kalol and Godhra talukas. This time too I could not escape the horror of situation but for different reasons.
The camps don’t exist, so you do not see the hundreds of dispossessed people huddled under makeshift shamianas or the open sky. There are no serpentine queues outside the community kitchens. No groups of traumatized women narrating how they watched their family members being killed. No one tells you in a voice choked by betrayal that the mobs were full of familiar faces, people with whom ‘hum saath uthte baithte the’ or ‘bachpan se hum jaante the’.
Things have certainly changed in Panchmahals. Forced to leave the camps, people are now scattered in rented houses around the taluka headquarters where the camps once were, or living in camp-like situations. They visit their homes in the daytime, and, too scared to stay there at night, go to stay with relatives or acquaintances. Some have been forbidden to return, some are too terrified to try, others are simply without the means. A few have returned to their villages but live ostracized and constantly fearful. They don’t talk of justice, because they know it is not to be had. They just want to survive. They want to be allowed to make a living.
So what slaps you in the face now is not the brutality of the riot, but the normalization of daily life under threat of violence. It is cynical and sinister and — if your standards of humanity are low enough — entirely normal.
We were sitting in what continues to be the Halol camp office, although the camp has long been closed. A slight woman with an intense face walked in and introduced herself as Kulsum Abdul Ismail. Her sister-in-law, nephew and parents-in-law were killed in the massacre. She lived in Delol, and what remains of her family now stays in a rented room in Halol.
She told us, "I did not think that things could get worse. But they have. Since the camp closed down on June 30 we have had no income, no house, no food. The rations we got after the camp closed lasted about 15 days. I do not cook more than one meal a day". Kulsum cannot think of going back because "they will not let us".
I meet Rashida, a young widow with three children in what used to be the Kalol camp. Like Kulsum, she is homeless. She cannot go back to her home in Talav, on the edge of Kalol town.
With her two-year-old on her hip and the five-year-old hanging on to her kurta, she told me about her situation and that of 17 other Muslim families who lived in homes built on a reclaimed pond. After they fled from their attackers on March 1 their neighbours moved in, fenced the area and now deny them entry. They have no papers for the land. Rashida worked as a rag picker.
Believe it or not, she has lost her source of livelihood. Why? The other rag pickers are Hindu; they do not want her back. The garbage dumps are in Hindu localities and she is scared to go there. With the camp shut she does not know how to feed her family. She does not have a relief ration card and often does not eat herself.
Her situation is not unique. Of the 88 Muslim families of Talav, 50 don’t have relief ration cards. So yes, you could say Rashida’s situation too is "normal’.
To see what life is like for people who have returned, I visited the pilgrim town of Pavagarh. Nearly half of Pavagarh’s 40 Muslim families have returned ˜ with heavy police security and after long drawn-out negotiations between the administration and members of both communities.
The "recent settlers’ i.e. non-landowning Muslims who settled in Pavagarh in the last 10-15 years would not be allowed back. The lucky few will now have to find new vocations. Their stalls have been seized, they are not allowed to take out hand- carts or to drive the jeep taxis that ferry pilgrims to the religious shrines on the hill. I talked to Imtiaz who remembers the days before "normalcy" — six months ago Imtiaz ran a cold drinks stall. "We had a fridge, colour TV, sofa. Now we don’t have soap to bathe. Rs 5 ka sabun nahin kharid sakte".
We met Mahendra, the prosperous deputy sarpanch of Pavagarh in the godown of his large provision shop. Several Muslims told us that he is a relatively reasonable man. He is certainly candid: "We told them not to return but the police and the government have forced them back on us. Now it is up to them to normalize things. If the Muslims are not being allowed to run their businesses they should tell the authorities ˜ it’s not our concern".
Back in Delhi, I hear Arun Jaitley call the situation in Gujarat "normal". And I’m afraid I know just what he means.
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I wonder at those who seek His temple in this world: why do not they seek contemplation of Him in their hearts?
The temple they sometimes attain and sometimes miss, but contemplation they might enjoy always. — Khalid