Back to Abnormal

It's a long road back home when there's no home to go back to. With the monsoon approaching, people may be stranded in relief camps for longer than they imagined.

DIONNE BUNSHA
in Ahmedabad, Panchmahal and Vadodara

The violence may have died down. But peace is yet to return to Gujarat.

Waheeda Sheikh is desperate to leave the camp. She wants to reconstruct her home in Gomtipur, Ahmedabad and get back to her normal life. But trying to rebuild her life would also mean risking it. Soon after her house was looted and burned by the mobs on February 28th, the site was cleared and painted to make way for two temples, which have been constructed at the place where she once lived. “Whenever we go back to the neighbourhood, the local bootlegger streaks in front of us. The local hoods abuse us and threaten to harm us if we return,” says Waheeda. The police haven’t helped protect the Sheikh family either. The first time the Sheikhs went to file a first information report (FIR), the police refused to include the fact that temples had been constructed where their house once stood. “Whenever we ask the local police to help us return to our home, they plead helplessness saying that the local Hindus will be upset if the temples are touched. What about us? Aren’t we upset? Our life has been totally destroyed,” says Waheeda. Adding insult to injury, the Sheikhs haven’t received any compensation from the government for the destruction of their house.

Across Gujarat, housing compensation doled out by the state has been so meagre that even refugees who are willing to risk returning to their villages or neighbourhoods cannot do so because they don’t have the money to rebuild their homes before the monsoon. “We left with nothing but the clothes on our backs. Our houses were burned and looted. They took everything. The government hasn’t yet given me any compensation. Yet, officials still want us to the leave the camp and go back. Where are we supposed to go?” asks Kamrunissa Rahim Khan, who lives in the graveyard at the Hazrat Pir Shah Hammad Roja relief camp in Ahmedabad. Around 75 to 80 per cent of refugees haven’t even received compensation cheques as yet, even though the government has surveyed their property, say relief camp organisers. The few who have received cheques got paltry amounts (as low as Rs. 250 in one instance, while most get between Rs. 2,000 to 5,000) compared to the losses they have suffered. Many like Fatimaben Ghachi from Mora village in Panchmahal district, have returned the compensation cheques, humiliated by the pathetic amounts doled out.

The situation in the relief camps is likely to get worse when the monsoon hits Gujarat. Most camps don’t have adequate shelter for the rains. Only cloth shelters have been put up. Food is prepared on wood fires in the open. When the monsoon begins, camp organisers are not sure how they will arrange for the food to be cooked. With inadequate toilet and hygiene facilities, the risk of water-borne diseases spreading in the camp is also high. In many rural camps, people sleep outside the houses of relatives and friends. They don’t know where to go once the monsoon hits Gujarat. During a pre-monsoon shower in Ahmedabad, refugees from the Madhav Mill compound relief camp rushed to the nearby Kalupur station. But they were even chased away from there. “Initially, the railway police pushed them out. We had to plead with the police to let them sleep there for just one night until the rain stopped,” says a camp organiser.

In its attempts to show that Gujarat is ‘back to normal’, the government is trying to reduce the number of refugees and close down the camps, without providing them any proper rehabilitation. It is even cutting down on supplies to camps. “We have 750 refugees here, but the government has registered only 300. Officials have tried to close down the camp. But we have to keep it running. People here have nowhere else to go,” says an organiser of the Hazrat Pir Shah Hammad Roja relief camp in Ahmedabad. In Vadodara, the government has shut down all the camps, except one. This camp is so overcrowded that a local builder has allowed refugees to live in one of his construction sites for the next six months.

The few who have mustered the courage to leave the camps and return to their villages or neighbourhoods are living like refugees in their own home. Hasra Anees Ghachi and her family have been living under a tree ever since they went back to their village Mora in Panchmahal district on April 12th. “Our house has been completely destroyed. We have no money to reconstruct it. The government hasn’t given us any compensation. Who knows what we will do when the rains start? We will have to stay with someone,” she says. Others in the village are staying in their houses without any water, electricity or a roof over their heads. Only around 50 of the 115 families who had to flee from Mora returned to the village. Many have not been able to resume their jobs either. “I used to drive a taxi. When I went back to my employer, he said he could not employ me because he would not get any patrons,” says Ilyas Ghachi from Mora. The economic boycott of Muslims called by the VHP seems to have taken effect. Several skilled workers like tailors, drivers, masons have not been re-employed by their Hindu employers. The government is not even providing compensation for the loss of belongings. Many people have lost their source of livelihood like sewing machines, rickshaws or machines. Now, their broken homes are being seen as an easy land grab by local mafias.

Although peace meetings have been organised by the local administration over the past six weeks, in several neighbourhoods, local Hindu leaders have been hostile. “We can’t go back. Our lives are still in danger. They have told us that there is no place for Muslims in the basti anymore,” says Rahimbhai Malik from Kisanwadi in Vadodara. Describing one of the peace meetings, he adds, “There were 80 of the local Hindu leaders and 12 of us. The police just sat quietly while they threatened that they would not let us back in the basti until we withdraw the cases against them.”

Some local BJP and VHP workers have been arrested and chargesheeted after the arrival of K.P.S. Gill as security advisor to the Gujarat government. Chargesheets filed in connection with some of the most heinous crimes of rape, murder and arson at Naroda Patiya and Gulmarg Society, Chamanpura in Ahmedabad have indicted local BJP leaders among the 53 arrested. But the big fish remain untouched. Two big leaders, VHP secretary Jaideep Patel and MLA Mayaben Kodnani, who were named in the FIR filed by victims, have not been mentioned in the chargesheet. The police insist that their names do not figure in the FIRs. In other neighbourhoods and villages, the small troublemakers too are still roaming the streets, preventing the return of their Muslim neighbours. “How can we go back home when those who attacked us are still walking freely on the streets? We named around 100 people in the police case, but not a single one has been arrested,” says Nasir Sheikh, a refugee in Ahmedabad’s Dariya Khan Ghummat relief camp. In Vadodara, the police refused to register an FIR written by a witness to the burning alive of three people in Makarpura.

Although the government is trying hard to prove that Gujarat is now peaceful, stray incidents of violence continue. On June 9th, two persons were killed and 24 injured in Ahmedabad’s predominantly Muslim area, Juhapura. In Godhara, one person was stabbed and killed. The violence continued the next day in Juhapura where two people were killed. Police officials say that these clashes occurred when they went in to arrest local troublemakers. Local Hindu hoods used the opportunity to spark more violence.

The two days that refugees in Ahmedabad now live in fear of are: the day the rains arrive and July 12th when the Jagannath Rath Yatra is celebrated. Most refugees say they will only leave the relief camps after the Rath Yatra, an annual festival held in Ahmedabad’s walled city, which has led to several communal riots in the past. “Every year, there are some clashes on this day. This year, it will be worse. The Bajrang Dal and VHP have the upper hand. They are looking for trouble,” said a refugee whose family was killed in the Gulmarg society massacre.

The witnesses of the Naroda Patiya and Gulmarg massacres, in which 136 and 70 people were hacked and burned respectively, refuse to return to their old homes. They say they would only feel secure living in a predominantly Muslim area. But chief minister Narendra Modi turned down their appeal for land to resettle somewhere else. After the violence, not only these victims, but other Muslims, including judges, police officers and professionals have moved to Juhapura, a downmarket but predominantly Muslim area. The ‘borders’ within an already ghettoised city have been fortified.

With the divide firmly in place, more than one lakh refugees still cannot go back to their homes and jobs. Many who try to return are threatened by local mafia, some of whom are Bajrang Dal-Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) activists. As the monsoon approaches, people are still trapped in relief camps, which are not fully equipped to provide shelter during the monsoon. More than three months after they were attacked, going back home still seems like a distant dream. The government’s housing compensation is not enough to rebuild their homes and perpetrators of heinous crimes are still roaming freely on the streets, preventing their return to the neighbourhood.

The silver lining for refugees has been a sudden spurt in mass marriages inside Ahmedabad’s relief camps. Sponsored by camp organisers, most of these marriages had been planned before the violence occurred. Reflective of the insecurity within the community, most people feel that their single daughters are more vulnerable, especially since they are now homeless. But, it also shows their determination to get back to normal life despite the odds against them.

It may be a long road home for Gujarat’s refugees, but they are eager to start the journey. If only the government were more willing to help them on their way.

Frontline, June 22 - July 5, 2002 Also available here