LOI, India - Mohammed Akhtar’s former neighbors keep stopping by to tell him that it is time for him to come home, that there is really nothing to be afraid of.
They remind him that Hindu and Muslim families lived together in his village for generations before September, when a two-day spasm of religious violence engulfed the area, resulting in about 50,000 people fleeing their homes.
Four months later, an estimated 15,000 Muslims remain in sprawling makeshift tent cities in northern Uttar Pradesh state, refusing to believe it is safe to return. In deepening cold, family members sleep clinging to one another for warmth while icy water drips through the tarps overhead. By mid-December, the government said, 35 children in the camps had died.
Stung by negative publicity, local officials have started a new push to clear the camps. Last week, Akhtar stood in the middle of a field of empty foundations in the village of Loi, where shreds of brightly colored fabric hinted at the 1,800 people who had been evicted.
But like thousands of his neighbors, he said he would still refuse to return home, and he is pressing for compensation so he can start a new life elsewhere.
“Look, they come to us and say, ‘Please come back, it’s our responsibility to make sure you’re safe,’” said Akhtar, 40, whose sockless feet, in rubber slippers, were chalky and cracked. “We don’t believe them. Where was their responsibility when we were being attacked? We were trying to call people for help, but the police had their phone switched off.”
There is nothing new about religious violence in India. Historically, riots here halt quickly with the arrival of security forces, but by that time they have altered the social fabric, injecting suspicion and paranoia where religious groups once mixed freely. In western Gujarat state, more than20,000 Muslims who fled during the riots of 2002 were still living in relief camps 10 years later, according to Amnesty International.
The divisions are made worse by the miserable conditions that often await those who flee. Over the years, India has managed to provide adequate relief for survivors of natural disasters, but not for riot victims - at different points Muslims, Hindu Pandits and Sikhs - in part because it is politically risky to take sides, critics say. But this winter, a crucial election season, the squalid camps came to bear their own risks, said Farah Naqvi, a writer and activist. So they, too, are disappearing.
TEMPORARY HOMES
“Once they have scattered to the wind, the story stops,” she said. “The job for those of us trying to give any kind of relief becomes nearly impossible, though we are trying to track clusters of survivors. It is an attempt to obliterate any evidence of the camps.”
The Loi camp was the last of 41 in the district of Muzaffarnagar to be cleared, and the neighboring district will follow suit, because the cold, which dips near freezing at night, has made it unsafe to live there, said Kaushal Raj Sharma, a top official in Muzaffarnagar.
About 9,000 people have received compensation, he said. The rest are expected to return to their villages, where the police have been deployed to keep the peace. For now, many have scattered to new temporary places, like Akhtar, who has moved his family’s two tents to a patch of unused land in Loi.
The story of Akhtar, who left behind a handsome house in the village of Kharad, about two miles from the tent camp in Uttar Pradesh, demonstrates how difficult it will be to knit together what was torn apart in two days.
Kharad, a labyrinth of neat brick buildings, is home to 12,000 people, about a quarter Muslims, who have traditionally worked as farm hands, builders, washerwomen and weavers. Their employers are Jats, prosperous Hindu landowners. On an afternoon last week, Akhtar’s Jat neighbors said they would happily welcome him back. Vikrant Malik, 20, said he had telephoned Akhtar repeatedly to urge him to come home, in part because Akhtar, a builder, had begun working on the Malik family’s house before he fled.
“I like him,” Malik said, “and I will continue to like him.” But he dismissed, with a chuckle, the idea that Akhtar might feel insecure returning. Nor does he have sympathy for the deaths of Muslim children in the camps, calling it “the fault of the mom and dad.” Then he looked exasperated, noting that five of his acquaintances in the village were in jail, accused of taking part in the violence. “These Muslims, they don’t love any people but themselves,” he said. “They just want to get us young Jat boys into trouble.” ONGOING TENSIONS
The Jats do not dispute what occurred in September. Several thousand farmers attended a gathering where they discussed an episode in which a Muslim man was said to have harassed a Jat woman. The next morning, 100 to 300 Jats coursed through the streets, setting fire to a mosque and four Muslim houses. An older Muslim man was found beaten to death with a stick.
Nearly all of the village’s 3,500 Muslims fled their homes that day, village officials said. By the time the cloud of violence cleared,61 people in the area were dead. The state did not identify Kharad as one of the nine villages that faced serious violence, so residents who fled will not receive compensation. Jats in Kharad are increasingly contemptuous of those who remain in the camps, saying they are greedy freeloaders.
“They are just creating a huge drama. There’s nothing to be scared of,” said Raj Singh, 78, noting that the Muslims’ flight had inconvenienced him since he could not find workers to bring in his harvest. He added, “I’ll tell you the real situation: They are going and sabotaging their own houses so they can get compensation.”
Akhtar was unmoved by these arguments. On the day of the violence, he said, he watched the mob attack the mosque, then split up into small groups and fan out.He was so frightened that he scooped up his children and ran without waiting to turn off the kettle boiling on the stove. On his return visits to Kharad, he said, he felt that something had changed permanently between himself and his neighbors.
“They laugh and smile at us mockingly,” he said. “They say, ‘Look, they dare to come back to the village.’ They say, ‘We threw these guys out, but they have no pride, they are still coming back.’”
Akhtar is adamant: He will build a new house as soon as the government provides him with compensation. He does not care where, as long as he does not see his old neighbors. “Security comes from being with Muslims,” he said. “There is no security for us there.”
Religion, Pages 12 on 01/11/2014