Magazine Section / The Hindu, May 17, 2009
A sea divided
by Harsh Mander
The story of how a community of fisher folk was split on the lines of religious identity and the State’s dubious role in the affair…
Today…they are only Hindus and Muslims, divided — some fear terminally — by identity...
File Photo: S. Ramesh Kurup
Strangers in their own land: A rehabilitated Muslim family in Marad.
Marad, a small coastal hamlet of impoverished fisher folk in Kerela, is ruptured and inflamed today by hate, suspicion and violence. For the greater part of the past decade, this tiny fishing village on the Arabian Sea, near the historic town of Kozh ikode, witnessed successive bouts of blood-letting, and the exodus, incarceration, severe jail sentences and boycott of minority populations.
It was a minor dispute between two young men of different religious persuasions regarding the alleged molestation of a minor Muslim girl at a New Year celebration in the fishing village, in 2002, which grew into a full blown communal clash. This culminated in the murder of two Hindu and two Muslim men. Bitterness grew further between the two communities, after a village elder, Aboobacker, was hacked when, alone in the tense atmosphere of the village, he went out to dig graves at the local mosque of the two Muslim youth who were killed. The properties of the Muslim residents of the village also were extensively destroyed at that time.
Escalating violence
The state administration dragged its feet in filing charge-sheets in courts to commence the trial of the accused, and in sanctioning permission to prosecute the guilty in this communal clash. Meanwhile, the relatives and friends of Muslim men who were killed, allegedly planned vengeance killings as retribution. These included the son and brother of Aboobacker, who returned from their employment in the Gulf to take revenge. Had the State government sanctioned and commenced prosecution on time, the men killed in this retributive attack may have been alive today, as they would have been in jail instead of free in their village. The gruesome revenge killings left dead nine men, eight Hindus and one Muslim, and 20 injured. The blood that drenched the beaches of Marad, engendered mass fury in the village against the Muslim inhabitants. Residents of the entire Muslim enclave of the fishing village were driven out, and more than 500 Muslim families were exiled to live in relief camps for around six months.
During the months that they spent in the relief camp, their homes were looted and destroyed by their neighbours, allegedly in the presence of the police. The village was barricaded and the entry of outsiders was seriously restricted. But the incendiary Bajrang Dal leader Praveen Tagodia was permitted to enter the village and freely address its Hindu fisher folk residents. He threatened darkly to unleash “Marad III” or a third round of retaliatory violence if the Muslim residents were allowed to return and be rehabilitated in the village. From the 1970s, residents of Marad testify that RSS shakhas, complete with drills in khaki shorts, had commenced in their village, and this contributed to ultimately rupture bonds so profoundly between the communities.
The chasm between villagers of different religious persuasions grew further because the Hindu villagers made it clear that they did not want their neighbours to return, in effect holding the entire Muslim community responsible for the killings executed by a few. Gujarat is the model the majority Hindu fisher folk emulate for reducing their Muslim neighbours to second class citizenship. I recall first visiting Marad just months after the exodus of the residents, and found activists of the Hindu community unforgiving of the Muslim villagers who were still in camps. Their leader declared, “Only if we repeat Gujarat here will ‘they’ learn their lesson”. I was stunned by how deep the divide had become.
Feeling let down
Not surprisingly, residents of the camps were angry and dismayed. One woman resident of the camp declared to a fact-finding team constituted by an organisation, Insaf, “It is better that the government evict the entire village, convert it into a large public toilet, and rehabilitate all villagers elsewhere. There is no point going back … (‘they’) have tasted victory and will not rest till all of us are exterminated.” In the end, many of the residents migrated permanently. Others returned, but they live segregated, boycotted and in submission.
Most worrying is the openly different standards that the State administration — under both political formations — as well as the criminal justice system, have adopted in the two successive episodes of communal violence in Marad. In the first, there was no compensation paid to the survivors, whereas in the second, they were paid at higher rates than probably in any communal riot in the country: 10 lakh rupees for every person who died and five lakhs for the severely injured. In the first, courts freely granted bail, and the accused — many of them leaders and activists of communal organisations which continue to foment hatred against the entire Muslim community and to threaten them with violence — still walk free many years later, even up to the time of writing. By contrast, 137 men were arrested for the second round of killings, and most were not granted bail for over four years. A special court was constituted to hear day to day the second case, whereas in the first, proceedings did not even begin until seven years after the crime. It is only after the sentencing of the accused in the second crime that the case has finally come up for hearing in recent months. It appears clear that even though the Constitution of India guarantees equal protection to all citizens regardless of their faith or caste, in practice entirely different rules apply when minorities are victims and when they are accused of crimes.
In his recent judgement, the judge of the special court sentenced a spectacular 62 persons to life imprisonment, all charged directly with the murder of eight men. It is very unusual for such a large number of persons to be charged directly with murder in a single crime. Public opinion was greatly incensed against minorities after the second phase of Marad killings all across Kerela, and people were convinced that this was more than a retaliatory killing: it was believed to be the outcome of efforts of extremist Muslim groups supported by Gulf remittances. But the court could not find evidence of the larger conspiracy that was so widely alleged.
Ruined lives
Another 76 men were acquitted, and I met some of the beaten men who were declared innocent after four years without bail in prison. They said their families had been reduced in these years to penury, since there were no men who could go out to fish, and they lived with the humiliation of charity. The Hindus in the village had broken all social connections with them. Boycotted, their homes and boats destroyed, their bodies weakened by years of incarceration and police beatings, they felt broken and hopeless, and did not know how to pick up the strings of their lives once again. Some had sons who were sentenced to life terms in jail.
There was a time when the people of Marad saw themselves only as a community of fisher folk. They were governed by multi-religious sea courts, which arbitrated their access to sea, parking of boats, auction rates and wages of labour. Today, they are still indigent fisher folk, their livelihoods threatened and risky, and their earnings meagre. But now they do not any longer stand shoulder to shoulder as a dispossessed fishing community; instead they are only Hindus and Muslims, divided — some fear terminally — by identity: sullen, suspicious and fearful. They dread today not the rigours of life and work in the sea; above all, they live with the trepidation of when the flame of hate will next be lit, scorching further their community, their livelihoods, their families, their trust and hope.
|
