Ten years after the Godhra carnage, the wounds inflicted by the bloody riots are fresh in the minds of families that moved to Hyderabad who yearn for their hometowns but can never go back
Hyderabad: In the distant suburb of Rajendranagar, overlooking a flyover that connects people to the plush international airport, is a modest township that would have passed off as any other residential area if not for its starcrossed residents who speak in Gujarati but their Hindi bears an unmistakable hint of d a k h a n i.
These residents are bonded by their collective history of displacement following the 2002 riots in Gujarat, and, as they say, have seen it all __ being asked by friends of a lifetime to leave since they wouldn’t be able to protect them, watching their houses and shops burn, wearing the mangalsutra and sindoor to escape a mob out to kill.
And a decade after the carnage (it will be 10 years to Godhra on February 27) they may have found their feet in the distant alien land of Hyderabad, a roof over their heads and a livelihood, but the circumstances in which they fled their hometowns still haunts them.
On a bright February morning, Gulshan Dider Ali Minjani appears busy at the flour mill located in this township, feeding wheat into the machine. It’s been a decade since she moved to Hyderabad in April 2002, but the memory of her life and her grocery store in Bhavnagar is as fresh as the fine warm flour she collects in a tin vessel.
“We heard in the afternoon that day that they were planning to torch our shop. We had in any case been living in fear for the last few days and it was then we realized that if we could save our lives, we would still be able to set up a business,” she says, fighting back tears as she says how that night their grocery store was indeed torched. Gulshan, a mother of three, says life is going on in Hyderabad. Her husband is an auto driver and they keep going back to Gujarat to meet their relatives or to attend family functions. “But I never went back to see my burnt shop,” she says.
Like Gulshan, there are many other families who lived in the Bharatnagar area of Bhavnagar and now live here. Ask Feroze Bahadur Ali and he recollects the growing feeling of fear those days. “We didn’t feel it was safe to live there any longer. I came here and drove an auto for four to five years. Later I opened this small grocery store,” Bahadur Ali says. IPS officer Rahul Sharma, who was then district superintendent of police of Bhavnagar and had tried preventing the riots, was transferred soon after and charge-sheeted last year for passing on records of calls, made during the 2002 riots in the state, to the Nanavati Commission without any official clearance.
There are nine buildings in this complex named after the expression of happiness, at Rajendranagar with over 900 families staying here, of which an estimated 150-200 are from Gujarat. Some say they were displaced following the earthquake, others note it were the bloody riots that forced them out of their hometowns. There are many small-time traders, owners of small factory units and many women from the community who put together Gujarati tiffins for the working people living here. All the families are Ismaili Khojas, known for their dedication towards their work.
“We had no choice but to take up some job or the other when we moved here. Nobody could afford to sit idle,” says Ayesha (name changed), another resident who has a schoolgoing son. Her house is done up nicely and looks a tad more prosperous than that of her neighbours. “We have managed to build our lives. My husband works in a factory and today we also have a car,” she says, but with no hint of pride or achievement. It’s almost like she knew that once the family moved to Hyderabad, life would be fine, safe.
Unlike Gulshan, she says she has no remorse. Yes, her sister-in-law wore a red teeka and mangalsutra to flee the “sensitive” area she lived in, and the building Ayesha stayed in Bhavnagar had mostly Hindu families, ones she had known forever. “They can still lay down their lives for us if need be,” she maintains, even as she recollects how they had asked her family to leave the Hindu dominated area as their lives were not safe. “I can’t blame them,” she says, but does mention the “j a a t k a d a r” that has set in her heart and mind that is difficult to shrug off.
Life could be fine in Hyderabad but it’s not as comfortable as it was in Gujarat. Sitting in a factory unit full of ready-to-eat snacks, Shamsuddin Jiwani fondly recalls how his local soft drinks manufacturing unit in Rajkot could be run smoothly despite his poor literacy level. “You don’t need to be educated to do business in Gujarat. “Wa h a n b a a t p a r k a a m c h a l t a h a i,” he says. But those were the good days. “I lived there for 35 years and there was never any riot despite Hindus, Khojas and Muslims staying in the area for years together,” says Jiwani recalling his life in Deopura, Rajkot.
And then came the riots, when for the first time he saw stone pelting on a ‘janaza’. And then shops were set afire. “We called the police repeatedly but there was no response,” he says, his eyes brimming with tears of the memory of the days when he saw rioters loot shops before torching them. After three hours of mayhem, it was not the police but the fire brigade that reached the spot to douse the flames. “But it was all over by then,” Jiwani says.
To say that these families are settled in Hyderabad is not entirely true. For some, like Bahadur Ali, Hyderabad is a stop-gap arrangement until his children settle down in life. “When I go back to Bhavnagar, people call me s e t h. I still belong there,” he says, adding that the Narendra Modi government cannot take the risk of another riot. “This time, they will go behind bars,” he says.
But this confidence is rare to find in this colony of Gujarati migrants. Ask Ayesha and she says she sees no future in Gujarat. “The fear of community,” she reminds you. Some have their extended families in Gujarat, a strange kind of “family planning” that seems normal here, where one adult member has moved to Hyderabad with his family while another continues to be in Gujarat. “It’s to ensure that if there is a problem again and they have to flee Gujarat, we are settled here to give them shelter,” says Jiwani, who thinks that the talk of development in Gujarat has shrouded the monstrosity of the riot. “Modi is a hero now. We are forgotten. There is no point in going back now,” he says.
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