Tying the knot in the time of India riots

The setting was unusual for marital bliss, but it was no deterrent for the dozen-odd couples who tied the knot last week in a mass wedding at a relief camp for riot victims in Muzaffarnagar.

Having fled communal violence that recently swept parts of the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and left scores dead and thousands homeless, the newly married couples of Malakpur relief camp held hands together and vowed to make a fresh beginning.

Mass weddings are not uncommon in India, where community and religious leaders sometimes host them for poorer communities to help ease their financial burden.

 

But a spurt of mass weddings at relief camps sheltering thousands displaced by the riots is evoking contrasting emotions. Some hail them as efforts to rebuild lives. Local authorities, however, see them as unnecessary distractions.

For the time being though, the riot-hit areas of Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts in Uttar Pradesh are awash with mass weddings.

Mass marriages

According to media reports, 27 couples got married in a camp in Shahpur village on September 25. Seventy-two more tied the knot in Jolla village on October 4. On October 7, 155 more marriages took place in Shahpur, while another 32 couples took marriage vows in a village called Budhana.

Altogether, more than 300 marriages have now taken place since rioting between Hindus and Muslims in India's most populous state subsided little more than a month ago.

"People don't have money, especially now, so we want to help   them," said Dr Nadeem Chaudary, 30, a medical professional   and member of the Malakpur leadership committee, as he waited for the latest mass wedding to start.

"It's very tense here."

Driven to destitution by the riots and living in fear of fresh violence, residents of the relief camps agree with him.

The weddings perhaps give them a semblance of normalcy in abnormal times.

Weeks after the riots - Uttar Pradesh's worst since Hindu activists destroyed a mosque in the city of Ayodhya in 1992 -tensions between communities run high with erstwhile neighbours eyeing each other with suspicion. 

It also gave the family of Raeshma, 16, an opportunity to hope again.

Despite her young age, her parents had arranged for her to marry another boy living in the relief camp. Both families had lost everything in the riots and the mass wedding organised at the relief camp gave them a window of opportunity to make a fresh start.

Azgari, Raeshma's mother, claimed the marriage would help the family considerably.

"We are so poor that we can't afford to have so many people in the family. Had we been at home, I would have got her married after two years."

It is not known whether Raeshma had any say in the family decision. But the likes of Azgari say they are not left with many choices in the harsh reality of the relief camps.

The 100-member-strong leadership committee of the Malakpur camp also did not seem perturbed by her young age.

Though Indian law prohibits child marriages, Muslim Personal Law does not impose any age restrictions for marriages for the community.

'Good for them'

At the mass wedding ceremony last week, prominent banners proclaiming "Group Marriages for Western UP Victims" were also put up. The sponsor of the ceremony was the Jamait Ulema-i-Hind.

The committee therefore raised Rs 15,000 ($244) for each couple, and bought new clothes and jewelry for the girls and dozens of cookware sets.

So at the wedding ceremony, each couple would get a bag containing the mehr, or groom's gift tothe bride, and another bag containing the jahayz, or household items for the new couple - as well as a cheque to help them settle in a new home, outside the camp.

Maulana Mahmood Mandni, the general secretary of the Jamait Ulema-i-Hind, flagged off the ceremony.

"We feel that if we organise this [weddings], it will be a gift for them, and good for them," he said. "They can get a homely feeling".

Authorities in Uttar Pradesh, however, viewed the weddings as a distraction from its three-month target of clearing up the camps.

"We never supported these marriages and told them they should encourage them only after they returned to their village," Raj Sharma, the district magistrate of Muzaffarnagar, told Al Jazeera.

But mass marriages continue nevertheless.

According to Madhu Kishwar, a prominent women activist and senior fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi, the motives behind the mass weddings are still unclear.

"In this case [of Muzaffarnagar], one would have to look at the specific ties of the case - how much of it was done for media, or how much of it was to make a point, or how much of it was to respond [to the communities]," she said.

"But it also shows that the state government has failed miserably, both at the law-and-order level and at the level of aiding the victims."

The state government has announced a rehabilitation package for Rs 500,000 ($8146) for victim's families. It also plans to send them back to their respective villages soon, though activists say it would take much longer than planned.

In the meantime, 68-year-old Shah Shamsad of the Shahpur relief camp is planning to marry off his 18-year-old daughter Naima when the next mass wedding take place and send her away.

"Because of the violence that happened, what if it happens again, to her?" he asks.

Nuptials, it seems, is increasingly being seen by riot victims in relief camps as a road to redemption.

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The brave Muslim women of Gujarat

Thirty-eight-year-old Noorjehan Abdul Hamid Dewan is an unlikely rebel.

She grew up in a large family surrounded by the hum of prayers and "religious men with long beards". She got married at the age of 17 to a man who recorded the number of dead at a local hospital before he lost the job, and ended up on the streets driving an auto rickshaw for a living.

After they were married, Noorjehan and her husband, Abdul, went to live in Juhapura, the bustling Muslim ghetto of Gujarat's main city of Ahmedabad, a place derisively called "mini-Pakistan" by many. It is a dystopian township dotted with cramped homes and narrow streets and where residents struggle to secure drinking water, cooking gas connections and small loans.

Noorjehan covered herself up in a burqa, stayed at home, looked after her husband and children like a good wife. Until the 2002 riots changed her life.
'Haunting'
A refugee camp sprang up in her neighbourhood days after the violence and Noorjehan decided to step out to see what was going on. That was possibly the defining moment of her life.

"I was shocked when I saw the survivors. I saw a girl and a boy, siblings, who had been set on fire by the mob, die in front of my eyes. There were about 5,000 people in the camp. I didn't know what to do, and I felt helpless," she says.
When she returned home and told Abdul after what she had seen, her husband forbade her to go to the camp again and work there. "He told me I could not work with other men. I told him both Hindu and Muslim were working together to help the survivors. He wasn't convinced. But I decided to go back and help. The camp haunted me," says Noorjehan.

Noorjehan, sometimes carrying her six-month-old daughter, walked to the camp every day to help the survivors with food and water. She even joined a local NGO. When her husband heard that, she says, he beat her up.
For the next six months, the relief camp became Noorjehan's life. At home, her husband stopped talking to her and threatened her with divorce. She left her children with relatives and continued to work in the camps, giving out medicines, helping victims file police complaints, carrying out surveys and nursing the injured.
"I also quit the burqa. I put on the burqa when I married in 1991. I quit in 2002," she says.

The burqa, Noorjehan says, was part of the problem when she went to work in the relief camp. "People would pass snide remarks, the police would shoo us away. The burqa became an existential problem. I had to stop wearing it in order to do my job well," she says.
Ten years later, things have changed radically. Abdul is now a fawning admirer of his wife's work and accompanies her, sometimes with their school-going children in tow. "He helps me, supports me, understands me. I now live to get help, get justice," says Noorjehan.

Women like Noorjehan are leading a veritable revolution in the beleaguered Muslim community in Gujarat, which comprises less than 10% of the state's population. They have defied their husbands and parents at home and clerics outside to come out and work with riot victims and travel to dingy and often hostile courtrooms around the state to fight their cases.
'Social change'

Many of them are victims themselves, but they are waging a war against inequality in their homes and marginalisation and brutalization outside. Once sequestered and voiceless, they are making their presence felt at home and the world and challenging the stereotype of Muslim women in India. "A social change is happening in the community," agrees leading activist Shabnam Hashmi. "It took a tragedy to trigger this change."
It can sometimes look like an uphill task. After the 2002 riots, social cleavages have sharpened, ghettoisation has become endemic, lots of Muslim men have lost their jobs, and school-going boys like one of Noorjehan's sons have had to take up low paying jobs in call centres to support their families.
But they soldier on bravely.

In Juhapura, I went to see Niaz Apa, one of these women. She is 58, and lives with her husband in a 100 sq ft, two-room apartment built by a community NGO for displaced riot victims. It's an ugly two-storey building with an unending row of rooms flanked by a winding veranda. Her husband, Banu Mia, a quiet man with a hennaed beard, is a retired factory worker.

Ten years ago, Niaz jests, she was the "richest woman" in the relief camp, where she stayed for eight months. "I had land, I had a home. But my house got burnt down during the riots, and I sold my land in a distress sale and moved into this hovel, which is now my home," she says with no hint of obvious rancour.
That was not all. Even justice denied was denied to her. When Niaz identified the men who had torched her house in the court - "there were 12 of them, they had grown up in front of my eyes" - the judge asked her to compromise with the men. "He said just go ahead and compromise. Nothing is going to happen. And nothing did happen."
To forget her woes, Niaz says, she now works with the community and riot survivors, going to police stations, courts and cheap food shops. "It's all about securing justice by raising my voice. When the owners of the cheap food shops cheat us, I take up the cudgels. If the police station refuses to register a case, I raise my voice," she says.

'Braving the wrath'
"My life is now just about raising my voice and getting justice for the helpless."
In Godhra, I met Latifabano Mohammad Yusuf Getali, 49, who has made a stormy transition from a cloistered homemaker to a leading relief and peace activist, so much so that she was picked up as one of the 1,000 PeaceWomen for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. She has worked with riot victims, opened schools and picked up training to run schools and a NGO.
"I was in the burqa when the riots happened. I had no idea of the world outside."
"From the uneventful life of a Muslim housewife to a relief and peace activist, she has walked a long mile", says the citation by the organisation.
"Braving the wrath of her conservative community, Latifabano has helped hundreds of Muslim women in the state gain access to relief and legal assistance... Latifabano's organisation was the first Muslim women's organisation in Godhra, so she faced the considerable wrath of the conservative Muslim community. But she continued undeterred..."

But there is one thing all of them miss. Life since the riots has become boring, says Niaz Apa, because of ghettoisation - the only English word she knows.
"Earlier many of us would live in joint neighbourhoods. We had so much joy living with Hindu neighbours, participating in each other's festivals. Now we have only Muslims for company. Which is a bit boring, isn't it?"

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31 Indians Convicted in Violence That Killed Muslims in 2002- Not so swift justice....

An Indian court found 31 people guilty on Wednesday of killing 33 Muslims in Gujarat State in 2002 during sectarian riots that left more than 1,000 dead. Convicted of murder, arson, rioting and criminal conspiracy, they were sentenced to life in prison and fined. Forty-two other defendants were acquitted.

The verdicts were a milepost in a case whose savagery stunned many Indians. The riots broke out after a train carrying mostly Hindus was set on fire at the station in Godhra, a predominantly Muslim area, killing 59 people. Blaming Muslims, mobs of Hindus rampaged, raping, looting and killing in a spasm of violence that raged for days and persisted for weeks.

Gujarat’s Hindu nationalist government and its police were widely condemned for ineffectiveness in halting the rioting or prosecuting anyone promptly, and the National Human Rights Commission filed a petition with the Supreme Court to press for justice. Five years later, in 2008, the court ordered special investigations into the train fire along with a number of attacks on Muslims.

The case that ended with Wednesday’s verdicts was a particularly gruesome one.

On that evening, March 1, 2002, two days after the train burning, a mob of Hindu rioters surrounded houses belonging to Muslims in Sardarpura village in the district of Mehsana and set them on fire. Dozens of people inside were burned alive.

Killings, arson and looting continued throughout the night, aimed at Muslims. Most of the village’s Muslim families moved away after the episode.

Ghulam Ali, 31, a house painter, lost 13 extended family members, including a brother, a sister-in-law, an uncle and an aunt. He survived by sheltering with others in a half-burned house, and now lives 20 miles away.

“Allah saved us on that day,” Mr. Ali said after the verdict. “Now there is a ray of hope in Gujarat. It gives us confidence that justice will prevail in other cases as well.”

He said he and other relatives of victims were considering whether to appeal the acquittals, a step that Indian law allows.

The special investigation into the train attack led to the trial of 94 people; 31 were convicted. Twenty were given life sentences, and 11 were sentenced to death.

A handful of other group trials have focused on rioters, yielding a few dozen convictions and, in one case, 11 life sentences.

Left unresolved by the trial was the widespread belief in Gujarat that the violence against Muslims in Sardarpura and other villages was deliberately orchestrated.

“The special investigation team did not go into the issue of wider conspiracy of riots,” Teesta Setalvad, an activist who represents riot victims and their families, said after Wednesday’s judgment. “Some of the witnesses testified and hinted about the wider conspiracy, but that was overlooked.”

Ms. Setalvad said the victims were pleased with the life sentences in the case. “We are not in favor of death sentence,” she said.

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Birmingham funeral held for UK martyrs

Muslims tackle looters and bigots

There is a lively debate taking place in the UK media between left and right wing commentators as to the causes of the English riots, in which hundreds of shops and businesses have been looted. However, both sides agree that the looting has been inexcusable. I hope both sides will also agree with me that Muslims have played an important role in helping to tackle the looting and preserve public safety. This would be an especially important acknowledgment if it came from those Islamophobic commentators who consistently denigrate Muslims.

"When accused of terrorism we are Muslims, when killed by looters, we become Asian", a Muslim student explained to me. He was commenting on the media reportingof the death of three young Muslims in Birmingham on Tuesday night. Like many other Muslims, they were bravely defending shops and communities as rioters went on a violent rampage of looting.

In recent days Muslim Londoners, Muslims from Birmingham, and Muslims in towns and cities around England have been at the forefront of protecting small businesses and vulnerable communities from looting. Having worked closely with Muslim Londoners, first as a police officer and more recently as a researcher, for the last ten years this commendable bravery comes as no surprise to me. But their example of outstanding civic duty in support of neighbours is worth highlighting - especially when sections of the UK media are so quick to print negative headlines about Muslims on the flimsiest of pretexts.

Pro-active response

On Monday evening when London suffered its worst looting in living memory I watched as a well marshaled team of volunteers wearing green fluorescent security vests marked 'East London Mosque' took to the streets of Tower Hamlets to help protect shops and communities from gangs of looters. This was the most visible manifestation of their pro-active response to fast moving and well co-ordinated teams of looters. Less visible was the superb work of Muslim youth workers from Islamic Forum Europewho used the same communication tools as the looters to outwit and pre-empt them on the streets.

While senior Westminster politicians started to pack and rush back to London from foreign holidays I watched Lutfur Rahman, the Muslim mayor of Tower Hamlets, offering calm leadership and support in the street as gangs of looters were intercepted and prevented from stealing goods in his presence.

Most important to emphasise is the extent to which everyone in Tower Hamlets was a beneficiary of streetwise, smart Muslims acting swiftly to protect shops, businesses and communities against looters. It is often wrongly alleged that Muslims lack any sense of civic duty towards non-Muslims and especially towards the LGBTcommunity. I wish peddlers of that negative anti-Muslim message had been present to see how all citizens in Tower Hamlets were beneficiaries of Muslim civic spirit and bravery on Monday night.

I am not sure if the Telegraph's Andrew Gilligan was robbed of his bike by looters in Tower Hamlets or in another part of London as he cycled home from Hackney to Greenwich on Monday night, but even his incessant negative reporting of Muslims associated with the East London Mosque would not have excluded him from their neighbourly support had they been in the immediate vicinity to help him.

Gilligan reports that police were unable to offer him any advice other than to go home when he finally received an answer to his 999 call as a victim of a violent street robbery. London policing on Monday night was stretched as never before and Gilligan was one amongst hundreds of victims who had to fend for themselves as looters ran amok around the capital city. In these unique circumstances the street skills of Muslim youth workers, who are routinely helping police to tackle violent gang crime and anti-social behaviour in Tower Hamlets, Walthamstow, Brixton and in other deprived neighbourhoods, were a key ingredient in filling the vacuum created by insufficient police numbers.

I first saw East London Mosque and Islamic Forum Europe street skills in action in 2005 when they robustly dispatched extremists from Al Muhajiroun who were in Whitechapel attempting to recruit youngsters into their hate filled group. I saw the same skills in action in the same year when volunteers from the Muslim Association of Britain and Muslim Welfare House ousted violent supporters of Abu Hamza from the Finsbury Park Mosque. More recently, Muslim bravery has been seen in Brixton when extremists spouting the latest manifestation of Al Muhajroun hatred were sent packing out of town. In all these instances, and so many more, the brave Muslims involved have received no praise for their outstanding bravery and good citizenship, and instead faced a never ending barrage of denigration from journalists such as Gilligan, Melanie Phillips, Martin Bright.... sorry I won't go on, it's a long list!

Sadly, many of the brave Muslims helping to keep their cities safe have not only grown used to denigration from media pundits but also faced cuts in government funding for their youth outreach work with violent gangs. This is not as a result of widespread economic cuts caused by the recession, but because the government adopts the media view that they are 'extremist'. Street in Brixton is a case in point. Yesterday Dr Abdul Haqq Baker director of Street was forced to close a Street youth centre in Brixton as his reduced team of youth of workers struggled to keep pace with the task of tackling gang violence and its role in rioting and looting.

Confronting extremism

Significantly, the same potent mixture of Muslim street skills and bravery was evident last summer when the Islamophobic English Defence League (EDL) began to prepare for a violent demonstration in Whitechapel. On that occasion police commended the skills of Muslim youth workers who helped reduce tension and manage anger towards the EDL.

Two weeks ago, under the banner United East End neighbours of all faiths and none gathered at the London Muslim Centre in Whitechapel to express solidarity with their Muslim neighbours who are the target of another provocative English Defence League demonstration planned for 3 September. It is no co-incidence that Anders Breivik found common cause with the EDL.

The EDL regards the East London Mosque as the hub of the Muslim extremism it purports to oppose. Regrettably, EDL's hate-filled analysis of Muslims is based on the work of mainstream media commentators who should now reflect on the unintended if not unforeseeable consequences of their Islamophobic discourse.

It is also worthy of comment that Muslim bravery during this outbreak of looting has taken place during Ramadan when Muslims are fasting – without food or water – from sunrise to sunset. This is a hard enough regime when relaxing, but when taking part in dangerous operations against looters, it is worthy of special reward – no doubt something their religion caters for.

Today, as Muslims in Tower Hamlets and around the country continue to work with their neighbours to repair damaged shops and to restore public safety, it is important I conclude this article by paying special tribute to Haroon Jahan, Shahzad Ali and Abdul Musavir, the three typically brave Birmingham Muslims who were killed while defending their neighbourhood on Tuesday night. I pray their legacy will be a wider appreciation of good Muslim citizenship, a reduction of media anti-Muslim denigration, and the elimination of EDL anti-Muslim intimidation and violence.

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