Guest Post by PREETI CHAUHAN on the recent communal tension in Noor e Illahi area of Delhi.

It was around 9 pm on Tuesday, November 11^th, I was heading to my parents’ home to go with my sister for an interview the next morning, when my cellphone rang, my sister was asking me frantically where I was. I replied a bit anxiously but with irritation, ‘Kya hai? Pahunch jaaungi thodi der mein’. She said don’t come, turn back. I asked why, ‘yahan dange hone waale hain, saari dukaanein band ho rahin hain’, my sister replied. In those two-three seconds my heart skipped many beats, a strange fear about the safety of my family gripped me. I could for the first time feel what it is to live in fear of communal riots. I called up my close relatives who were out of home to ask where they are. There was such an uncertainty as to how will my sister go for the interview tomorrow? Would I be able to reach home tomorrow morning? Would my vehicle be attacked if I decide to go home now?

In those three- four minutes the world seemed to have taken a terrifying turn for me. Mundane, everyday things, everyday routes suddenly turned hostile and suspicious. I could feel the agony and fear so very close. Then there was a sudden burst of anger that I felt against the communal forces that are so hell bent on creating communal trouble everywhere in Delhi. I had not read the newspaper the whole day yesterday and hadn’t watched TV but just before I was leaving home my spouse told me that my native place is in the news and it was then that I had read about the communal tension and curfew in Noore-illahi. It’s the area, the vicinity of my childhood, adolescence and my adulthood too. It’s the area of the weekly bazaar for us, the Eid bazaar as well from which we had returned at 1 am at times. Noor Chicken is where Noor Jahan furniture once stood if I remember correctly; it belonged to the family of one of my classmates in school. I hear today that Noor Chicken’s owner and his son was badly beaten and the son is rumored to have succumbed to injuries. I shudder to think if he is my primary school classmate Shahnawaaz…

One can easily see that the reason for the whole tension is a very deliberate act to disturb communal harmony, to say the least. The rumour on Tuesday night was not untrue but only partially true, for it came to light the next day that a mob of around 1000 people (rumored to be from the majority community) were marching towards Noor-e-Illahi and because the police stopped them, they moved in three directions, one of which was towards Yamuna Vihar (which is where I was going Tuesday night) apart from Durgapuri,(an adjacent area to Babarpur). There are rumours that Durgapuri might be the next target. How would have I felt if I was from a minority community? When an attack is one sided and planned by one particular community, can it be called a riot? What is a minority community supposed to do in such a situation? What value do the constitutional rights of freedom of movement, freedom of religion hold for them? Why have many cases of communal tensions have come up with the change in guard at the national level? This strategy of fostering communal hatred and forced riots was used in Uttar Pradesh and now being replicated in other states which go to polls, for polarization of people and votes. This polarization can only give rise to majoritarian structures which can only be conducive to a masculine, communal and unreasonable state undercutting the very roots of constitutional democracy in this country.

Once again there is hatred in the air, a hatred forced upon people by a handful of people having faith in the idea of a divided India. All this is happening  just as thirty years have passed since the worst genocide perpetrated on hapless Sikhs on the streets of Delhi, just when a leading newspaper is running a heartrending series on the brutality and bestiality of those days, just when the victims of 1984 yet again demanded justice which has evaded them for past 30 years in our democracy. The 1992-93 ‘riots’ happened when I was in class V, having faint memories of ‘riots’ taking place in Welcome, Jaffarabaad, of seeing them as distant, dangerous places and of fear of ‘riots’ in my own mohalla but also of Hindu-Muslim unity as men from the two communities stood guard at night so that no outsider be allowed in.

Now my nephew is in class V, and we stand facing the similar circumstances of suspicion, hatred and ‘riots’. Hope he and so many of our children don’t grow up registering a memory of riots, of dangerous people and dangerous places! Hope this calculated strategy and politics of suppressing the minorities will be successfully challenged. And that each one of us will take the responsibility for this in our localities.

 Preeti Chauhan is Assistant Professor, Political Science in Lakshmibai College,Delhi University