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Journalism of Courage
SANJELI (Dist Dahod), Aug 19: It still hurts. Despite the intervening few days, the pain is yet to dissipate from the lives Kulsumbano and Ayesha. The pain of a trust being betrayed, of relations being snapped, of lives being ruined. The pain is real, as real as the flames that leaped from their houses while they were being razed in the communal clashes last week. As real as the smell of ash and roasted rice and wheat that fills the nostrils.
And as real as the fear that is writ large on the faces of Mohammad German, Mohammad Shaikh, Kalu Gadala, Subrabano and Mallah Bhilal, whose houses were attacked during the rioting.
Emotions still run high in Sanjeli, four days after the violence on, ironically enough, Independence Day. The terror spread by police firing that day — four dozen rounds fired fater five hours of mob rampage — has not yet died down.
“As the VHP `operation’ continued, our children and women remained shut in the houses; we stood on the terraces and saw them on the ground all around us”, said a Muslim village elder. “What would have happened if they had firearms or simple petrol-bombs”, he asked, his voice breaking into a sob.
Shashikant Mahida, a local social worker, is ashamed. “Now everything is under control, but I believe it was not the action of one community alone. Anyway, violence is no solution.” Another elderly Hindu, who did not want to be named, agreed with him, saying rioting would only complicate matters. The State machinery must intervene now, they say, before it is too late.
That faith and trust have been given a raw deal is most evident at the home of Fr Joe Vas. This Catholic priest has been living here for the past 10-odd years, tilling a small plot of land given to him by the farners and sharing the harvest with them.
His residence-cum-prayer-home is in ruins following the violence — in which a religious idol was also broken — which, Fr Joe says, was an assault on his mightiest and dearest conviction: his faith in humanity. “I will sit right at this spot on a hunger strike and starve myself to death”, he says, tears welling in his eyes. “Why have they done this to me? I am essentially a human being first and not a Catholic preacher. I am Maharaj Vyas here, ask him, ask her. I participate in their pujas. I perform and speak on yoga, meditation or any other religious path. They do their pujas in my prayer room too.” Though under police protection now, he says he will die as a tribal. “Even if they kill me, burn me alive, I will not leave Sanjeli… I can’t…”
The officials don’t seem to have any answers to his questions, or, indeed, to others posed by anyone who has suffered here. They can’t explain how and why the riots the first in this town broke out. They can’t explain how a senior police official left his post the night before the violence. They can’t explain how or why police personnel were called awy to Independence Day duty at Dahod when there was a large Janmashtami fair on at Sanjeli.
Perhaps it would be unfair to single out District Collector E I Kalashva or District Superintendent of Police K L N Rao. Consider the following: The whole district, with a population of more than 15 lakhs, has less than a dozen police stations, 11 four-wheelers and a strength of less than 400 personnel equipped with partially functional firearms. Luckily, there were no casualties in the violence at Sanjeli. Except the faith and trust of its 5,000-odd villagers.
