India: Report on Muzaffarnagar riots and resulting demographic transformation

From: Frontline, 18 September 2013

Muzaffarnagar: The riot route

The riots in Muzaffarnagar following the killing of two Jats and a Muslim sharpen the communal polarisation in western Uttar Pradesh. By AJOY ASHIRWAD MAHAPRASHASTA in Muzaffarnagar

KAWAL, one of the largest villages in Muzaffarnagar district, was a quintessential village, divided into two distinct halves, in western Uttar Pradesh. The land-holding Jats in the north are separated from the affluent Muslim households in the south by a cluster of houses belonging to Dalit and Muslim agricultural workers. Despite the segregation, the communities have always remained economically dependent on each other. The poor Muslims and Dalits worked mostly in the sugarcane farms of the Jats while some Muslims and a small section of Sainis controlled the commercial enterprises. Kawal gradually began to earn the reputation of being a harmonious and business-friendly village, an extraordinary feat at a time when communal tension was at its peak in the State after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992.

In the first week of September, however, high tension following the murder of a Muslim boy in the village snowballed into a major communal riot, claiming 36 lives and injuring many. Many Muslims have fled the village. The village, which was populated by Muslims and Hindus in equal numbers, was now a Hindu-majority village. The Muslims who have stayed back refuse to work in fields owned by the Jats and have decided to send their children to Chennai, an attractive work destination for the region’s Muslim folk, who mostly trade in cloth. The Jats and the Sainis, on the other hand, have become insecure and communalised despite being in a majority, a sentiment usually exploited by the Bharatiya Janta Party and the larger Sangh Parivar.

In fact, Kawal is not the only village in Muzaffarnagar to have witnessed such communal polarisation and a resulting demographic transformation. In most of the riot-affected villages Frontline visited, these two facets of the riots that continued for two days are visible. In all the villages where the Hindus were predominant, the Muslims have left their homes. And the reverse has happened in Muslim-majority villages though such villages are comparatively fewer in number. This has unsettled the socio-economic framework of Muzaffarnagar and the adjoining districts where the Muslim population is somewhere close to 40 per cent, according to the 2011 Census. Such massive changes happened within a week after an altercation in Kawal on August 27, which claimed three lives. [. . .]
FULL TEXT AT: http://www.frontline.in/the-nation/the-riot-route/article5134119.ece?homepage=true