The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, Dec 9, 2007
MEENA MENON
Each time there is a riot or blast, Mumbai springs back or so it seems. Only those broken by the past know what it takes to live here.
In this country, those who shoot deer get punished, not those who kill human beings. Insaan se jyada hiran ko keemat hai (Deer have more value than human beings),” says Tahir Wagle.
As you enter Wagle’s pink-walled house, a photograph of his son, Shahnawaz, stares at you from the corner of a framed calendar. He was a 11th standard student of Elphinstone College when he was shot dead, at Pathan Chawl behind Ehle-e-Hadees Masjid in Mazagaon, South Mumbai.
Wagle has spent the last 14 years trying to file a case against the policemen who killed his son. On January 10, 1993, a huge posse of policemen entered Pathan Chawl and rounded up 70-odd men. Shahnawaz was pulled out of his house. His sister Yasmin, then 18, ran to the balcony only to see the police putting a bullet into him.
No action
Despite several efforts, the Byculla police refused to lodge a complaint. “They always fobbed me off saying my son was a rioter,” Wagle recalls. Now, with the revival of the 1992-93 riot cases, his statement was finally recorded in August. “I know all the policemen who were there. They have all been promoted.”
The Srikrishna Commission’s report on the Mumbai riots described this incident as “cold-blooded murder by the police”. Despite recommending an investigation by an impartial agency and strict action against the guilty, nothing was done all these years. Nine hundred people died in the December 1992 and January 1993 riots and over 2000 people were injured. In addition, property worth crores was lost and livelihoods extinguished. Few were convicted.
Tears flow freely from Rafique Ahmed Khan’s eyes. “When I heard the factory was attacked, the first thing I asked was ‘where are my sons’?” Rafique and his brother Izhar owned Star Metal Works, a small factory in Worli in Central Mumbai. It was Sunday; his children and other relatives had gone to visit the factory. They never returned. “When my children did not come for lunch, I was worried. I sent someone to look for them but he was not allowed to go near the factory. Only next morning could we go inside the factory, which was completely wrecked,” he said.
On January 10, a mob attacked the factory and burnt it down. Nine people, including Rafique’s two children, Abdul and Shah Alam aged 12 and 14, died. Five others who died were related to the family. Now there is no sign of the factory. Rafique and Izhar have moved to Bharati Kamala Nagar, a slum in Antop Hill where they run a telephone booth and sell iron scrap. Rafique used to live in Adarsh Nagar near the factory. “I decided to move closer to where my brother lived. If we have to die, let it be together. It took four days for us to meet at that time,” he remarks.
Though a complaint was filed at Worli police station and nine people were arrested under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, they were acquitted four years later, says Izhar. “I was in court the day it happened. We had collected the evidence so painstakingly. I even managed to get an eye witness — one of the workers who managed to escape. I got him to come all the way from Uttar Pradesh and made sure he was protected. He even identified the culprits. But the police messed it up,” he says bitterly.
No compensation
The factory was worth Rs. 10-12,00,000; they sold it for a pittance. The money from the sale did not cover their losses or their debts. “We got Rs. 4,000 for our burnt factory from the government,” says Izhar with a cynical grin. He sits in a small telephone booth, which was his house once. The memories of those days are fresh. “When the culprits went free, it broke my heart,” said Izhar. “Things changed overnight after the riots. It was if we had no friends. No one was willing to support us or give evidence.”
The Mumbai riots tore apart the city’s secular fabric, caused widespread displacement and deep-seated feelings of alienation and injustice. “Things are back to normal now,” says Izhar, but there is one major difference. “People want to live with their own community. There is a kind of partition and this is going to create more problems.” He is not very optimistic about the government’s claims that it will implement the Srikrishna Commission report. “We have little hope of justice now,” he says morosely.
Mohammed Abdus Sattar, the owner of Suleiman Bakery, almost left the city after the riots. On January 9, 1993, nine people were shot dead after police, led by then joint commissioner R.D. Tyagi, stormed into the bakery to flush out suspected terrorists.
Here again the Commission said the police’s story does not “inspire credence”. “My workers were killed in the firing but many were also among the 78 arrested,” he says. “It took two years to bring the business back. I lost my workers in the firing and yet the blame is on us,” says Sattar.
Many have moved out of mixed localities and prefer to stay with their own communities, though there are exceptions. New ghettos were formed in Mumbra and Naya Nagar, as insecurities forced people to change homes.
New ghettos
Leena Shinde, whose husband went missing, now prefers to live in a “safe area”. On January 3, Leena’s husband Narendra went to attend a function at her sister’s place in Kandivali and never returned. “I had just delivered and my baby was 14-days-old,” says Shinde who now works in a private firm. Narendra, then 26, was last seen getting into an auto rickshaw by her brother-in-law. She had been married for just over a year.
She got compensation 10 years after her husband went missing and that too after much running around and help from voluntary groups. She has struggled to educate her son, now in 10th standard.
“He looks like my husband,” she smiles. “It would be nice to live with other communities but I want to stay in a safe place where there is no tension.”
Women like Suraiya fled from Kandivali to Behrampada in Bandra, never to return. Now an assistant project officer with Women’s Research and Action Group (WRAG), Suraiya was 19 and newly married when the riots happened. “We had a large flat in Kandivali (a north western suburb). My husband was working in Saudi Arabia at that time. One day a mob of 1500 came to attack us. One man, Narayan, the chairman of the building committee, helped us. He took us to a house and locked it from outside. We sat in the dark while the mob destroyed everything around. I was two months pregnant and very scared. The mob kept asking Narayan to open the house but said ‘it’s locked from outside why would anyone be inside’. He did not open the door,” she recalls.
Some changes
Suraiya talks of her brother, Jabbar, with a lot of pain. He is in a mental hospital after the riots. Her sister, Firoza, died of shock. “I was standing next to my sister when she died. I think the constant fear that people would come and do something to us killed her,” she said.
Through WRAG, Suraiya has attended courses which focus on communal harmony. She feels some changes for the better have taken place. But she wonders if there is something that keeps the two communities at bay. “Yeh dil kaise saaf ho sakta hai (How can the mind be cleansed)?” she asks.
The riots changed the city in some ways forever. Each time there is a riot or a bomb blast, Mumbai springs back or so it seems. After all, it is touted as ‘the unbreakable city’. Only those who are broken by the past know what it takes to live here.
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