They arrived in two vehicles on the 1st of March, the
day after violence had erupted in the area, and fired upon people gathered on
the roofs of their one-storey houses - one woman died, and several people
were injured. Three of the injured - all young women - were arrested in June,
the day after we left. Circulars issued by the government of Gujarat are
impressive in their clarity: no-one injured in police firing can claim
compensation, because of course, if the police fired on them they must have
been terrorists. It's a neat circle. Majority killed in communal violence in
post-independence India? Muslims. Majority arrested and convicted? Right. No
surprises there. We know this stuff, after all, we are a bunch of academics -
students and teachers, the second team of volunteers from Aman Ekta Manch in
Delhi. We also know all there is to know about Gujarat - it's an information
overload, for god's sake. Statistics, details of loot and plunder, of gory
massacres, of mass rapes and public sexual humiliation of women, of
devastated localities, state and police complicity, it's all there.
(But here's a lesser known little snippet of information - from yet another
government circular on compensation for deaths, it emerges that Rupees 1 lakh
is the price of a dead person, but the family does not get it all in cash.
You get 40 thousand in cash, and the rest in Sardar Sarovar dam bonds. It's a
simple equation - the more deaths in communal violence, the better for the
dam. Not so coincidental is it, the physical attack on Medha Patkar at the
peace meeting organized by Mallika Sarabhai in Ahmedabad?)
The VHP may call it Gujarat Pradesh of Hindu Rashtra, on saffron billboards
all over the state, but it is still, nominally at least, part of this land
mass we call India. And Indians are landing up in Gujarat in thousands from
all over the country - to "do something," to document, to mourn, to see for
themselves. "Riot tourism", it has come to be called. There is an element of
that, but it is this large-scale documentation at all levels - individual
video-clips, journal entries, anguished first-hand accounts, detailed
fact-finding reports, news coverage, all circulating on the web, in
newspapers, on television - that has produced the composite picture that
turns our stomach: Gujarat 2002.
Having arrived after three months, what we encounter in the camps is dull
resignation and a simmering resentment, not the raw pain and uncontrollable
grief there must have been. It's easier for us to take. But in fact, nothing
you have ever read or seen or heard prepares you for the utter horror of
Gujarat. Nothing prepares you for the survivors of the Chaman Pura mass rapes
relating the nightmarish details of the rounding up of the women, the taunts
that were hurled of "akha" (whole) Hindu penises, so much better than "kate"
(circumcised), of recognizing rakhi brothers and those who had shared Id
feasts amongst the attackers, of one young boy, shamed by his friend's
startled and partly amused query, "Arre, tu mujhe marega?", retreating to the
door, but sent back by another to finish the job.
Nothing prepares you for nine year-old Nagma, during a quiet moment inside
the dargah of Qutb-e-Alam - now, like many dargahs in Gujarat, a camp for the
detritus left by the sweep of the saffron sword - saying in that endearing
sing-song Hyderabadi way they speak Hindi there, "jab hum ghar vapas gaye na
didi, do-teen din bad, tab vahan kuchh nahin tha, bilkul khetaan jaise tha"
(When we went back home after a couple of days, there was nothing there, it
was flat like a field) - gesturing with her little hands ironing out the air.
Even though you have been to the ravaged bastis, seen the destruction for
yourself, utterly thorough and high-tech, crunched underfoot the pulverized
remains of homes and dreams, seen the gloating slogans on the ruins of walls
- khandahar gali (Ruins Street), ajanta-ellora ni gufa (Ajanta-Ellora Caves)
- watched the partially burnt Quran being pulled out and impassively taken
away by a survivor (why is it not in ashes? Was it meant to be recognized, to
hammer home the humiliation?) - still nothing prepares you for those little
hands gesturing. Khetaan jaise.
Nothing prepares you for the policemen swaggering into the dargah with their
shoes on. Has any Indian, of any religion or none whatever, ever entered
temple, dargah or mosque except on naked feet? It's a daily, ritual,
humiliation in small things and big. It's a hostage population.
And the story of the middle-class Muslim, a friend of many of us, at the
railway reservation counter in Ahmedabad as late as the end of May? Seeing
his name on the form, someone behind him set up a shout, he was mobbed by
others present, kicked and beaten, and he escaped with his life by managing
to run to his scooter parked nearby. The crowd followed him for quite a
while, he tells you. We know that the carnage was state-sponsored, that mob
violence was meticulously planned and executed, but ordinary people at a
railway station on the morning of a working-day? Did they not have offices to
go to? Children to take to school? They just happened to be there that
morning, after all. But then, if every mob numbered thousands, then the
chances are high that every third or fourth person you see on the roads - man
or woman - was part of a violent, rampaging mob. Nothing prepares you for
that thought. Nothing prepares you for the blood-lust over the city.

It is also a city that is expecting at any moment, that dreaded thing - "the
Muslim backlash." Every Hindu knows full well that what was perpetrated there
is beyond human endurance. They have looked into the void - will there not
come a moment when the void will look back? One morning an auto rickshaw
driver taking some of us to Vatwa in a sort of convoy with two other autos,
lost sight of the others. As we drove deeper into the clearly Muslim locality
he grew more and more panicky. Trembling with fear, he said again and again
that he had only agreed to come because of the others. He tried to make us
get off - don't pay me, he said, just let me go. They take two totally
different routes to the Vatwa dargah, you know, Hindu and Muslim auto
drivers. Hindus invariably take a longer route through the Gujarat Industrial
Development Corporation area, from the outside of the city centre. Muslims
drive straight through the city, through teeming localities, many of them
evidently Muslim.
Then there was the government official from the Collector's office, on a
head-counting trip to the camp. The government has been trying to wash its
hands of the camps ever since they were set up, to withdraw the pitiful
amounts of rations it provides, and it is the task of the official
head-counters to pounce on camps in "surprise" raids to prove that the camp
organizers are in fact building fat fortunes on sarkari daal-chaval. That
there are not as many people in the camps as the organizers claim, that they
have all gone back to their homes. We asked the official who came to Vatwa
dargah whether he had in fact seen the village, less than a kilometer from
the dargah, where he was expecting the people to go back to when the camps
were closed. He had not, not once in the four months since the camps were
opened. We insisted he come with us to see Navapura, to see the devastation,
to decide for himself whether anyone could go back to live there. He agreed
reluctantly, and off we went in the vehicle emblazoned with the words I can
no longer encounter without a hollow feeling of dread - "Government of
Gujarat." We arrived, and started taking him around, the destruction more
complete than any earthquake could have managed. People were around, working
on their homes, trying to repair, to rebuild (that's where they are when the
head-counters swoop down - in the wrecks of their homes, with pitiful amounts
of cement and building material; or they are roaming the city in search of
work, because they are not being taken back into the jobs they were in before
the dhamaal. Or they are out in places where they can escape from the
merciless sun). We began to walk around, the official impassively looking and
listening, but pretty soon word had spread, and a young man suddenly accosted
him, challenging him on the paltry compensation, the lack of it for most,
demanding to know why he or others hadn't been seen there in four months.
Others joined in the shouting, and more and more joined the little procession
of about ten people following us. The official's footsteps hastened, no
longer was he the powerful sarkari afsar but merely a Hindu in a Muslim
locality - his shoe slipped off as he practically ran to the car, which in
the meanwhile had been started and was waiting, engine running - we made a
clean, panic-stricken getaway. He off-loaded us back at the camp without a
word.
We related the story at the camp, and were rather taken aback by the
amusement it generated, the way it was told and retold amidst building lau
ghter. The image of the frightened government officer, his shoe slipping off
- it became a moment of recaptured dignity. We can still frighten them, the
laughter said. We are not entirely reduced to that heart-wrenching,
humiliating picture of the young man pleading with folded hands for help.
By the time we arrived, in early June, the manufacture of "the Muslim
backlash" was in full swing. Every day the police would raid Juhapura, the
Muslim ghetto, try to round up "suspects", they would be resisted by the
residents, there would be police firing, and the papers were full of
front-page photographs of "Muslim mob marching towards Juhapura police
station." The photograph clearly showed an unarmed, peacefully marching
demonstration - but more than two Muslims is, of course, "a mob". Narendra
Modi's goons? Oh, that's the "Government of Gujarat."
We went one day to the Hindu village adjoining Navapura. No-one from the
camp would come with us, we were pointed in the right direction by our
friends in the dargah. Vaghrivas is as devastated as Navapura, in an
identical fashion. We have come to recognize the way these villages look -
the black streaks of soot on broken walls, the evidence of explosives inside
electricity meters, the systematic looting, right down to ripped off floor
tiles. We identify ourselves as Aman Ekta Manch volunteers from Delhi, people
gather, a young man is located, clearly the spokesperson. He and the others
show us around, the same heart-breaking remains of little, ordinary lives.
They have returned from the camp where they were located because the
organizer was swallowing up all the food and money that was coming in, and
they were close to starving. "First the Bajrangis burnt down Navapura", the
young man tells us, and the next day, a mob arrived at their village. They
show us the route by which they ran for their lives, tripping and falling,
children caught underfoot. They headed for the other Hindu village across a
stagnant pond - they pointed it out to us. Undamaged. But that village was
far from welcoming - they were thakurs, these low-caste chunars. "They
wouldn't let us enter, they said they would be killed too."
I think of the feminist friend from Pune, after having met the survivors
of the Chaman Pura mass rapes, crying out in bewilderment and anguish - "What
makes us Hindus so tolerant of violence? Even the women participated in the
rapes, you know. It was the local dhoban (washerwoman) who helped tear off
clothes. Is it the perpetual, endemic caste violence in our society that
trains us to take this so lightly, even to enjoy it - the public humiliation
and slaughter of human beings?"
But the Vaghrivasis did force their way in to safety. The mob did not
follow. Did they recognize anyone in the mob? There is disagreement on this,
and a confused discussion breaks out. Didn't the police help? No, the police
told them to run for their lives, would not fire on the mob. The Gujarat
police did not take the opportunity to fire on a Muslim mob? And the
identical pattern of destruction? And the confusion on whether they
recognized people from the neighbouring village? Is it so simply a
retaliatory raid, after all? We look across at the Bajrang Dal flag
fluttering across the field, think about the way they were referred to as
"Bajrangis" - not as "Hindu". What's going on here?
They point us in the direction of the dargah, where we say we are headed, but
they too, will not accompany us beyond a point. As we turn to leave, the
young man mutters, naming the camp organizer - "Akbarbhai ko hamara salaam
kehna." When we pass on the greeting back at the dargah, Akbarbhai smiles
politely.

By June in Gujarat, there have been several hundreds of volunteers from all
over the country, some like us co-ordinating with Nagrik Pahel in Ahmedabad,
others with other civil society initiatives in the state, and still others
just landing up and trying to be of use. (Every day one or the other of us
would break down, and Bina, our friend, philosopher and guide in Ahmedabad,
would calm us. When do the secular activists in Gujarat sleep or eat? When
do they have the luxury of crying?) The volunteers have come from Mumbai and
Pune, from Hyderabad and Vellore, from Delhi and Almora and Lucknow. They are
doctors and those with training in psychiatry and counselling, others with
experience in community work, government employees and private sector
employees on their annual leave, film-makers, theatre people, teachers and
students. Some are independently wealthy, others are desperate to go, but
cannot even afford second class train fare - other people sponsor them. Some
are so young that their parents seek reassurance that it will "be safe",
others are close to retirement. Another thing. They are overwhelmingly Hindu.
A Kashmiri Pandit writes in an email message - "I as a Kashmiri was a victim
yesterday.
Today if it happens to be a poor Gujarati Muslim, tomorrow it may be the turn
of anybody - a poor Hindu, Muslim, secularist or a pseudo-secularist. I and
a friend of mine have found something definite that can be done. Something on
a small scale…In the heart of Amdavad, in Beharampura, there is a small
Muslim basti… Some residents are now gradually and very reluctantly wending
their way back from the relief camp to their burnt and looted houses… We
would like to help them rebuild their lives, to get them back on their feet
again, bring them to a safe home...in a city where they were born, which they
must not stop loving. We want to live with the people in this chali, we want
to be with them when they are scared - there is still a very palpable fear in
Ahmedabad about the rath yatra which is to take place on 12 July. We want to
keep watch every night with them in case the mobs come again. We want to be
with these people with our hearts and minds and we want to participate with
them in the rebuilding of their lives."
Shame - it crops up again and again - "We are ashamed of what has happened.
We want to show we are sorry." At one orientation in Ahmedabad for a team
that had just arrived, a young woman says seriously - "I'll do anything
required of me. Anything. If the toilets in the camps are filthy, I'll clean
them." We all recognize the feeling. It's a form of prayaschit, of atonement.
The horror has been perpetrated in our name - in the name of Hindus. We are
responsible. For many of us who never considered ourselves to be "Hindu" it
is a difficult process of coming to terms with this identity. We argue about
it among ourselves, if people in the camps ask what our religion is, what
should be our reply? Some feel we should respond - what does it matter, we
are all humans. But others say that it would be grossly insensitive to those
in the camps to deny that it is as Muslims they have experienced humiliation,
torture and slaughter. The taunts about circumcision, the desecration of
Qurans and mosques, the demolition of dargahs, the forced shouting of Jai
Shri Ram before being cut into pieces. (Do you remember a time when that cry
came from the heart in praise and thanksgiving?) And now the conditions being
laid down if they want to return to their homes where they have lived for
centuries - no meat except on Id, no aazan, no beards. It is their Muslim
identity that is to be obliterated. Humiliatingly obliterated.
And if this is so, how can we deny our Hindu identity - it shouts itself from
our names, from our bodies, from our practices, from the way we speak Hindi
and Malayalam. It strikes us that this was ever so - we were always Hindu,
even when we claimed to be non-believers. For we were always legally Hindu
and Muslim and Christian, governed by Hindu and Muslim and Christian personal
laws. This is not an identity we can choose to take on or deny - this is an
identity that we bear, for better or for worse, and all the more so if we are
believing and practicing Hindus. It calls itself the Vishwa Hindu Parishad,
it claims that Hindus want the temple at Ayodhya. We must reclaim that space.
We are Hindus too, those who want a democratic India in which all can live in
dignity and peace.
Suddenly, towards the end of our stay in Vatwa, the children who have become
very close to us, hear a rumour. In the impromptu school we have begun with
the help of local young educated women, Safia comes up to ask, "Didi, aap
Hindu ho?" (Are you Hindu?) At our reply, she claps her hand over her mouth
in shock and dismay - "Haww..", she gasps. The class breaks up, the children
cluster around - "Amanbhai bhi? Aradhyadidi bhi?" they name us one by one.
Seven-year old Sultan swaggers up - "Kaun kehta hai ki aap Hindu hain?" (Who
says you are Hindu?) he shouts, eager to protect our honour. In a few moments
however, it is part of their common sense, they have absorbed the knowledge.
We go back to multiplication tables. The next day Safia is teaching me a
rhyme to go with the game all little girls seem to play, clapping hands
together rhythmically. It's mostly nonsense, as these rhymes are. I catch the
odd phrase - "garam masala" she goes, "paani puri", both of us clapping away.
Suddenly - "Laam Lachhman". I stop, surprised. What did you say, I ask. Safia
is irritated with this break in the rhythm. She says impatiently, "Aap
Hinduon mein nahin hota, Laam Lachhman?" (You know, what you Hindus have,
Ram-Lakshman.) Oh that. We carry on.
At the camp at Aman Chowk, where three of our team, young people with
experience in theatre, conducted theatre games with the children over the
week, they had a similar experience. There the team brought up the question
themselves - "Do you know who we are?" they asked towards the end of their
stay. The children guessed, "Bhai-behen? Mian-biwi?" No, no, do you know what
our religion is? They guessed again - Sikh ho? Isai ho? One of them was
Christian, so that was partially correct. The two of us are Hindu, Bhrigu
explained. Ho hi nahin sakta, (it's not possible), the children were
confident. "Hindu" was a word they associated with terror, with fire, with
frightening shouts of Jai Shri Ram, with fleeing in the night. These children
were playing games of Hindu toli versus Muslim toli in the camp - of course
it was inconceivable to them that any Hindu would have spent this time
playing with them and making them laugh.

Zubeida had a bangle business, destroyed now, of course. In the shade of the
neem protecting the dargah, she chats to me about Delhi, where she has
relatives. But she is not from Gujarat originally. "Bindravan gayi ho?" she
asks. Have you been to Brindavan. No, I reply. "Tirath karne nahin gayi? Hum
wahin se hain. Wahi hamara vatan hai." (You have never been there on
pilgrimage? We are from there. That is our land.)

Hamara vatan. Zubeida's and mine. We have no other.