India: Two Relief Camps in Uttar Pradesh Settle Into Permanency | Betwa Sharma

From India Ink / The New York Times, JANUARY 27, 2014

Two Relief Camps in Uttar Pradesh Settle Into Permanency
By BETWA SHARMA

Betwa Sharma
A house being constructed in Bhura camp in Shamli district of Uttar Pradesh, on Thursday.


BHURA CAMP, Uttar Pradesh — The Bhura relief camp set up for Muslims who were fleeing violent clashes with Hindu-Jats in western Uttar Pradesh over four months ago is starting to look more like permanent settlements, despite the local authorities’ efforts to force residents to move out. Residents here say this is the first camp to become a colony.

Last week, at the Bhura camp, which holds 60 families, men worked energetically to build houses to keep out the winter chill and rain. Feverish construction this month has transformed shelters of plastic sheets and tarps into houses of red bricks and tin doors.

Mohammed Islam, 48, divided the day between nursing his sick goat and shoveling mud out of the plot for his new house. Mr. Islam’s three sons and a few other residents of the camp were heaving and placing bricks. “We are all helping each other in building houses. It saves costs, but there is also a feeling of camaraderie since we have been here for so long together,” he said.

Residents have named their new colony Mujahidnagar, which means “a place for those who have struggled.”

More than 50,000 people were displaced and 61 lives were lost in the religious violence that spread across the sugarcane districts of Muzaffarnagar and Shamli, where camps were later set up in Muslim-majority areas.

Media coverage over the cold conditions at the camps as the winter set in and the outrage over the deaths of children who were living in tents pushed local administration to close all camps in the Muzaffarnagar district by early January.

Residents were moved or told to find vacant buildings to keep warm or to return to their home villages. Recipients of 500,000 rupees ($8,000) in state compensation, who were barred from returning to their villages as a condition for aid, were told to construct their own houses.

The authorities have contended that many residents who refused to leave the camps were actually from villages that had been unaffected by the violence, accusing the Muslims of trying to squat on government land. In December, the district administration said that the Malakpur camp, about eight kilometers (five miles) from the Bhura camp, was no longer recognized as a relief operation.

Yet construction has continued at the larger camp, which now has about 30 brick houses and 700 families. The extra construction hasn’t helped protect children from the cold, however.

On Thursday, men gathered to offer a last prayer for Shabnam, a 7-month-old girl, who they said had died that morning from pneumonia, the 29th death of a child at the camp since November.


Betwa Sharma
Saira Bano, mother of Shabnam, being consoled by her relative in Malakpur camp in Uttar Pradesh, on Thursday.
As the call for a mourning prayer rose from a makeshift mosque of plastic sheets and wood, her mother, Saira Bano, 35, sobbed into a neighbor’s chest. “She died on the last note of the morning prayer,” she said.

Sympathetic onlookers explained that Shabnam’s parents had spent 2,500 rupees, or $40, for a private doctor, but they could not protect her against the cold. Shabnam’s parents had built a small brick house for their seven children, but Ms. Bano said that rain had still seeped through the plastic roof this week.

Residents of Bhura and Malakpur camps said donations and Muslim charities are financing each of their houses for 15,000 rupees, which is just enough to buy poor quality bricks for the walls but not enough for a proper roof.

Haji Dilshad, manager of the Malakpur camp, said that more families were joining the 700 families from last year, including a few from those camps that were forcibly closed by the government since December.

The residents of Bhura and Malakpur said that they fended off the authorities by refusing outright to move and drawing steadfast support from the Muslim villages around them.

After seven vehicles of police personnel arrived on Jan. 1 to order residents of the Bhura camp to leave, and the residents of Malakpur camps felt similar pressure on Jan. 2, a delegation of camp supervisors met with Akhilesh Singh Yadav, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh.

“We told him that these people are tired, scared and worried, so please don’t hassle them anymore,” said Hafiz Mohammed Kausar, a former resident of Bhura village, who manages the camp. “The police have not visited then so let’s hope for the best.”

Still, residents of the fledgling colony are wary since they have received legal notices from the local district officials about fines of 8,800 to 14,000 rupees for trespassing on protected forestlands. But Bhura camp residents say their colony is being built on land belonging to the village of Bhura.

On Thursday, the constable Hamid Chauhan visited the bustling construction site to deliver summons for eight people to answer charges of hurting the official who had been handing out the notices of the fines. But Mr. Chauhan left after an hour without finding anyone. “They are all hiding,” he said.

While watching him leave, Mr. Kausar said, “These are all pressure tactics, but nobody here is going to fall for it.”

Even if the houses that go up are of shoddy quality, they are giving hope to residents about building a future.

Mr. Islam, who was a laborer in the village of Lakh Bawdi, said he had lost his will to live shortly after moving to the Bhura camp with his wife, six children and a goat, especially after his application for compensation was denied because of bureaucratic hurdles and botched paperwork.

He had left his village work on Sept. 8 before phoning his nephew in the afternoon, only to hear him gasp his last breath after being shot. Neighbors later told Mr. Islam that his father’s brother and his aunt had been bludgeoned to death.

He and his family left their belongings, except for the goat, and moved into a Muslim house in Bhura village, the camp’s namesake, then into a cramped tent at the camp.

With the fear of eviction slowly dissipating, and a new house for his family soon to be ready, Mr. Islam spoke of feeling revived, which also motivated him to get back to work. He spends his days nursing his sick goat and shoveling mud out of the plot for his new house.

“I feel like this is home now,” he said. “People want to name it Mujahidnagar, but we’re another part of Bhura village so that’s what I want to call it.”

Betwa Sharma is a freelance journalist based in New Delhi.