‘Our silence should not be taken for weakness’

By
Radhika Ramaseshan


#MEERUT The labyrinth of lanes threading unevenly through Gulzar-e-Ibrahim and Sadique Nagar houses at least two dozen mosques, jammed between homes, shops and workshops because a majority of the working population of Muslims is self-employed in small trade and business. This area is so completely built up that it’s hard to size up its actual spread, which is large. It was here that two of the five young men succumbed to alleged police firing (to date the cops claim that they died in an unexplained “cross-fire”) last Friday after they offered the jumma mamaz and then protested the CAANRC, wearing black armbands and silently, on the advice of Meerut’s clerics.

As the “namazis” trickle into Masjid Bagh Walli (no garden can be sighted in its vicinity though), Rajendra Prasad Garg waits for his business colleague, Aslam, to complete prayers. Garg and Aslam, long-time business partners, are here to meet a fabric wholesaler whose outlet stands cheek by jowl to the mosque. It’s the first outing from their home in nearby Modinagar to Meerut and to Garg, a “hard-core” RSS-BJP supporter from childhood, an early sign that the path to normalcy after a week of unrelenting police crackdowns in Uttar Pradesh, and particularly the western region, might come through commerce. “We have to be in business together, we cannot stay apart for long or else both Aslam and I will lose money,” admitted Garg. But re-establishing a social relationship? There was never one. “We don’t visit each other’s homes, not even on festivals. I applaud whatever action [chief minister] Yogi Adityanath is taking against the protestors. It was an anti-national, anti-social demonstration but I never discuss these things with Aslam,” he said.

At a police picket on the head of a lane leading to the mosque, Kamlesh Goel, the additional city magistrate, dresses up the reality a tad romantically and uses the “gajak” – a dry confectionery made of jaggery and sesame seeds in these parts in winter like “chikki” – as a metaphor. “The process of gajak-making involves Hindus and Muslims. Take away one community and there’s no gajak,” said Goel, whose brief it is to sweet talk Muslim boys and keep them away from protests and violence.

But Abad Mansoori, who owns a mobile phone shop in Sadique Nagar, has no illusions of what the future has in store for the Muslims. “We have no choice but to keep peace, but that doesn’t mean we will not continue opposing CAA-NRC,” said Mansoori, who was enlisted by the Meerut administration to ensure calm prevailed.

On Thursday, the district magistrate and senior police officials summoned the local Muslim politicians, opinion-moulders and the clerics for a“peace” meet. On February 20, a senior official confessed that the administration was caught off-guard. “We heard there were protests building up in the Muslim-majority and even the mixed areas 10 minutes before the crowds spilled out on the streets. We began patrolling but it didn’t help. The police were forced to self-defend themselves after our jawans got wounded,” he said, refusing to confirm or deny if the forces fired on the young demonstrators. “They used country-made ‘katta’ pistols, what could our jawans do?” he maintained.

At yesterday’s interaction, Dr Meerajuddin Ahmed, the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) general secretary, asked the officials why they shot the boys at their skull and chest instead of the leg. He also demanded explanations for why there was no warning by way of an announcement or the use of rubber bullets, water cannon and tear gas and why there was no mention of compensating the victims’ families. While officials evaded answers when I sought clarifications, Rajendra Agrawal, Meerut’s BJP MP, was unapologetic on each point. “Why did the Muslims come weaponised? There are sleeper cells operating in the areas you visited. When the Muslims retaliate in violent ways do they deserve compensation? It’s our police jawans who should get compensations,” said Agrawal.

While Muslim elders maintained that as of now their strategy will be to besiege the Centre and the president of India with memorandums to rescind CAA and put the NPR and NRC on hold, Saleem Siddiqui, a young man who used to edit a newspaper called Awam-e-Hind, explained why patience has run out among his peers and juniors. “They [the RSSBJP] thought we were silent and, therefore, vulnerable. Our silence should not be taken for weakness. There’s a limit. When the bill ending triple talaq was enacted as law, we didn’t speak up. When Article 370 was abrogated, we didn’t react. When the court ruled against us in the Babri Masjid case, we accepted it in our stride. But at some point, the volcano will erupt,” said Siddiqui.

For him, the most disheartening aspect of the violence was the apathy of the non-BJP parties. The area’s Samajwadi Party MLA, Rafiq Ansari, never called on the victims’ families nor did Haji Yaqoob Qureshi, the local BSP leader. On Thursday, the RLD leader Jayant Chaudhary gave a slip to the cops and met Meerut’s Muslims while Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi were not allowed to enter the city.

As these entities remained indifferent, the BJP will flag a “public awakening campaign” on CAANRC from Saturday in UP’s districts. Agrawal said the Meerut programme will focus almost entirely on the post-Partition Hindu refugees and “make them understand why it was important to bring in the Hindus who live in terror in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan”. As for reaching out to the Muslims, his answer was, “We shall see.”