Living down the trauma

More than five years after the Mumbai riots of December 1992-January 1993, the wounds fester in what was called Radhabai Chawl - and elsewhere.

PRAVEEN SWAMI

GANDHI CHAWL echoes with the rhythmic thud of fists and feet impacting on cold stone, punctuated by piercing shouts. An evening karate class for young women is in progress. Sadbhavana Bhavan, located in space created by knocking down the walls between three rooms in the chawl, is home to the karate class, a small gymnasium, some community organisations and a domestic workers' union. Located in the sprawling Premnagar slum of Jogeshwari, a Mumbai suburb, the chawl is better known to the outside world by the name Radhabai Chawl. After midnight on January 7, 1993, homes of Hindu families which lived in what is now Sadbhavana Bhavan were set on fire. One man and five women lost their lives. The killings became Hindutva's pretext to begin a Mumbai version of Kristallnacht (the 'Night of Crystal', the night of violence against Jewish persons and property carried out by the Nazis on November 9-10, 1938 - so called in irony from the litter of broken glass left in its aftermath). Over the next 12 days, Shiv Sena workers, armed not only with swords and knives but lists of voters and shop owners' names, and with the collusion of many members of Mumbai's police force, executed a programme of terrible communal violence.

Five years on, festering wounds are still evident around Radhabai Chawl. Aziz Sheikh used to live a few hundred metres down the crowded, narrow lanes leading from Gandhi Chawl. Sheikh was one of Mehboobi's two sons, and his father had died several years earlier. His income from flattening dented metal from damaged cars was his family's sole source of subsistence. On the morning of January 7, the second round of communal violence began in Jogeshwari. Groups of people ran from the Hindu-dominated Megwadi slum to escape the violence. Sheikh, like other young people, made his way towards the road dividing his part of Jogeshwari from Megwadi to see what was going on. The Mumbai Police would perhaps insist that he went there to participate in the rioting, but his family and the local people believe otherwise. Whatever the truth, the 19-year-old was shot through the head.

VIVEK BENDRE
Inside Gandhi Chawl, formerly Radhabai Chawl, where the killing of six persons on January 7, 1993 was seized by the Shiv Sena to launch violence. Today, it is the base of community organisations that run a number of services and are organising both Hindus and Muslims to combat communalism and their common enemies: hunger, disease and illiteracy.

Sheikh's death crippled the family. Mehboobi still lives in Premnagar, along with her surviving son Shafi, known to neighbours as 'Baba'. Baba is drunk most of the time, and barely able to stand up or even speak. His neighbours say he was always "somewhat slow" but became near-deranged after the death of his brother. What he earns from odd jobs does not even pay for his liquor. The family has had to sell off whatever possessions it had to make ends meet. His sister, Munni, who is married and lives in suburban Borivili, contributes what she can. Her mother visits her regularly, driven as much by hunger as by affection. Neighbours offer her gifts of food on festival days and special occasions. The mention of her lost son pushes Mehboobi to tears. "I do not understand why this happened," she says, "I do not know why God took my son instead of me... If he had to take one of my sons, why did he take away the one who provided for my family?"

KAUSHALYA SAMSHERPASI asks similar questions. Her brother, Khushal, was killed in police firing on Masjid Road, as Aziz Sheikh was. Neither family knows each other, but their stories are similar. "After the riots began," recalls Samsherpasi, "Khushal and others in our area had volunteered to protect our basti (hutment cluster) from outsiders. When they heard the trouble around the masjid, all of them ran up to see what was going on." A police bullet hit 20-year-old Khushal in the chest. "The police were firing without even looking at where their bullets were going," his sister says. Curfew was imposed, and Kaushalya and her mother were forced to stay indoors. It was three days before they learned that Khushal was fighting for his life in Cooper Hospital. After 22 days on life support, he died.

Today, Kaushalya and her mother live in a two-room tenement, sharing their living space with three goats, two dogs and a cat. The goats are fed and watered in a corner of the home, which like most chawl houses has no access to running water or any form of sanitation. Kaushalya has two elder brothers, but neither is willing to take responsibility for the family. "Both are married and have wives and children," she explains. "They cannot afford to support us and look after their families as well." Khushal, the youngest, was single and had kept the home running by selling vegetables in the market near Jogeshwari railway station. Kaushalya now meets some of the family's cash needs by working as a domestic help. But the income is minimal, and both women depend almost entirely on neighbourhood largesse for food. The community is as supportive as possible, but both women are aware just how fragile their existence is. "It is better to be dead than to live like this," Kaushalya laments.

IF the riots destroyed the living in some homes, elsewhere they destroyed futures. Jameela and her husband Abdul Qadir migrated to Mumbai from Dharwar, in Karnataka, some 16 years ago. Their eldest son Abdul Aziz was born shortly afterwards. Along with Aziz Sheikh and Khushal Samsherpasi, Aziz died in the police firing at Jogeshwari. "Women came running down from Megwadi when the riot began," recalls Jameela. "Some said that their homes were on fire, others said that they had been raped. Aziz ran up to help." Then 18, he had left school to work at a small paan-and-cigarette store. What he earned not only fed and clothed his family, but helped put his brother Rafiq through school. After his death, the family struggled for survival, pawning belongings to pay their bills. Rafiq had to leave school, and he started work repairing automobiles. "Sometimes I think we should leave Mumbai and go back to Dharwar," says Jameela, "but what do we have to go back to?"

VIVEK BENDRE
A karate class.

In the very different world of downtown Mumbai, Sheikh Mohammad Ibrahim had just finished a lifetime of service in the Indian Railways when the riots of 1993 began. The 59-year-old had retired as a Chief Booking Clerk and had brought home forms to apply for himself and his wife to go for the Haj. The couple had no children, but both looked forward to a quiet retirement in their home in Undria Street, near Shaukat Ali Road. Then, the Babri Masjid was demolished. Angry young Muslims in the Shaukat Ali Road area attacked the Suleiman Chowki police post, stabbing one constable to death. Similar violence took place throughout the area. Ibrahim did what he could to bring an end to the killings. "He insisted that I, along with my friends, go to Suleiman Chowki," says his nephew Shakeel Ahmad. "We had good relations with the Inspectors there, Gaekwad, Satpute and Patil. Although the constable had been killed, we helped the others escape the mob."

The first phase of rioting died down, giving way to the second. By January 10, however, things had improved enough along Undria Street for one of the family's children to make his way out, chasing a rumour that milk and meat were available in a nearby shop. Ibrahim went out on to his second-storey balcony to make sure that the child returned safely. Suddenly, a State Reserve Police constable sitting on the crossroads in front of Suleiman Chowki cocked his rifle, and opened fire. Ibrahim was shot through the head, and died instantly. Across the road, 22-year-old Naseem Bano, married for just two months, was also killed. From the angle of fire, it was evident to those who cared that both deaths were cases of gratuitous killing. "When we took my uncle's body to hospital," recalls Ahmad, "some other young people from the area followed in a second police jeep. We discovered later that they had been taken to the police station instead, and had been framed for possessing weapons and rioting."

Bitterness continues to dwell in the minds of others whose lives the riots touched. Ishqatullah, a journalist working for Urdu Times and a schoolteacher, was one of those arrested for the Radhabai chawl killings. "There was a knock on the door late at night," he says, "and the next thing I knew was that a group of policemen were beating me. I was dragged through the mohalla (neighbourhood) like a criminal and humiliated in front of my entire community." During his subsequent interrogation, Ishqatullah says, officers refused to believe his protestations of innocence. "At one point I spoke in English," he recalls. "That provoked a real beating. 'You're getting cheeky now, are you...?"'

Ishqatullah sees the Srikrishna Commission Report as the sole real hope of securing justice. "All I can think is that if the six people whom the police charged with the Radhabai chawl killings had to spend five years in jail before they were acquitted, Bal Thackeray should suffer as well. Why should he be afraid to go to jail - and if he is innocent, to be acquitted?"

THE acquittals of all the accused in the Radhabai chawl case are replete with tragic ironies. Of the 17 brought to trial by the Mumbai Police, six were convicted by the Sessions Court. The appeals of those six were recently upheld by the Supreme Court, which pointed to serious flaws in the evidence and the credibility of the state witnesses. Jogeshwari is rife with rumours that the chawl murders were not communal, and were instead engineered by a building mafia which wished to drive slum residents off their living space.

"Things are misinterpreted by people and misrepresented by the press," says local Muslim Youth Association leader Sheikh Sajid Ali. "On the night of January 7, a girl called Neeta was stabbed in Shankarwadi. Everyone said Muslims had done it. This was used to justify reprisals. But why would Muslim killers go all the way to a Hindu basti to murder somebody when they could do it in their own neighbourhood? What happened was not a Hindu-Muslim riot," he asserts, "it was an attack by the Shiv Sena and the police on Muslims."

Some of Mumbai's urban poor are less certain. Marzina, a 42-year-old domestic worker, used to live in Jogheswari's Indira Nagar colony, a Hindu-dominated area. During the riots, her neighbours guided Shiv Sena-led mobs away from her home. Two Muslim women passing through the area were burned to death. "After the attack," Marzina says, "my neighbours helped me escape, by putting a bindi on my forehead, and escorted me to a safe place along with my husband, Qasim Ali." When she returned home, Marzina discovered that her chawl room had been occupied by a Hindu family. "I managed to get them out after a great deal of difficulty, but when I did so, I sold the room and moved to a Muslim colony," she says. "People protected me once, but I can't help thinking what if they had not? What if they do not help me the next time?"

VIVEK BENDRE
A women's meeting at Sadbhavana Bhavan. Cross-communal festival celebrations are common today, and among Jogeshwari's residents there is a common resolve not to allow lives to be destroyed by violence again.

"This kind of polarisation has definitely taken place," says Jogeshwari youth activist Pramod Adivarekar, "and it is the most tragic outcome of the 1993 riots."

THAT the lanes between colonies are called borders are signs of the fragile peace in Jogeshwari. "The first sign that there would be a riot," recalls Sajid Ali, "was the building of a brick wall across Lane 5, dividing Hindu homes and Muslim homes, and the blocking of the passage from one area to the other." Organisations like those at Sadbhavana Bhavan have done a great deal to fight the processes of communalism and organise both Hindus and Muslims to combat their common enemies: hunger, disease and illiteracy.

Arifa Khan, the energetic spirit behind Sadbhavana Bhavan, points with pride to cross-communal festival celebrations in Jogeshwari, and the evident common resolve not to allow lives to be destroyed by violence again. It will take sustained social and political action to ensure that the effort by the Shiv Sena to reap another communal harvest is repulsed.

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