Muzaffarnagar’s communal divide

In Nakul Sawhney’s documentary, “Muzaffarnagar, Eventually ...”, two kinds of places emerge. One is the eponymous district battered by riots, the city and its villages ravaged and divided by suspicion. The other is a place that exists only in memories, in stories recounted by different characters from both Hindu and Muslim communities — a landscape defined by mutual dependence and economic coexistence.

This particular version of Muzaffarnagar appears most clearly in the loneliness of some of Sawhney’s characters — for instance, Shandar Ghufran, a Muslim educationist and social activist. Standing on the balcony of his home in Muzaffarnagar city, he recalls how his family made several kilograms of sweets during Eid in the past.

“Now, we make just a couple of kilograms for ourselves. That is our Eid now,” he says.

This reference points to the relationships — Hindu neighbours and childhood friends — Ghufran has lost. They still live nearby, but are now apart. Pravin Baliyan, a young Hindu man who drives Sawhney around the Muslim area of his village, echoes the sentiment.

He points out the homes of his friends, the family whose lands abutted his own fields. “My sister and I would come to this mosque every Thursday evening to donate some money,” he says, driving through deserted streets. Now he is uncertain about the community ever being able to return. Sawhney’s film is a document to this process of change that unfolded in the region, beginning with events in 2013.

Located in western Uttar Pradesh, Muzaffarnagar and its neighbouring Shamli district are part of the sugar cane belt. The cash crop is the fabric of economic ties and dependence binding the communities of Hindu Jats, Muslims and Dalits.

With around 40 per cent of the population being Muslim, Muzaffarnagar had managed to maintain relative calm under difficult circumstances in the past, including after the demolition of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya. The build-up to the polarisation between the communities was gradual but it escalated dramatically and suddenly.

The root of the recent riots is usually traced back to August 2013, when a clash over an alleged incident of “eve teasing” led to the deaths of two Hindu and one Muslim youth. Yet, while this is considered the flashpoint, community members told reporters and fact-finding teams that tensions had been brewing for weeks over small, seemingly localised incidents.

These were heightened by later events. Eventually, riots broke out in the area in early September the same year.

The violence was the worst in the state in recent memory, with the administration calling in the army to restore order. Even in Uttar Pradesh, known for its tinder-box communal equations, the ferocity of Muzaffarnagar’s conflict came as a shock.

According to unofficial estimates, the violence left around 100 dead and at least 50,000 to 80,000 people displaced in refugee camps across the districts. Most of these were Muslims, barring a small number of Dalits from Muslim majority areas who fled to avoid retaliatory violence.

This is a fact addressed by Sawhney in his film through the voices of survivors and the displaced. “After spending time in the area, I realised that the media narrative was wrong. What happened in Muzaffarnagar was not a Hindu-Muslim riot. It was a massacre.”

Sawhney came to the area soon after the initial violence, and was drawn to return, acting on an instinct that he was on to a larger story. “It was clear this was not a spontaneous riot but part of a well-thought-out strategy to create polarisation for votes,” he says.

His film follows the build-up to the national elections in April 2014, contrasting the bluster and colour of the campaign trail with the emptiness of the abandoned villages and the threadbare lives of the relief camp residents.

In one sequence, the camera captures Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah addressing a meeting of Jats, referring to this election as one “... of honour, an election to avenge the injustices committed against us ...”. At another campaign meeting, the crew is hustled out of the venue by the local BJP representative, Sangeet Som, one of the riot accused.

With the Jats demanding protection for “our boys” accused of rioting, the film captures the hard communal divides that the state fell into in the aftermath of the riots, feeding the electoral needs of different parties.

While the film is critical of the BJP, it is equally scathing in its portrayal of the ruling Samajwadi Party (SP).

Frustrated by criticism of the situation in the relief camps, for instance, the administration responded by bulldozing the huts of displaced families in Loi village. Sawhney captures the anger and helplessness of Muslim voters after the cynical calculations by major players in the state made their ballot inconsequential. And that included the pro-Dalit Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

“It is clear that the BJP benefited the most from divisions in the state,” says Sawhney, “but we also need to ask: how did these riots occur in a state ruled by a so-called ‘secular’ party? And in a state with a powerful Dalit-led political formation? Why didn’t any of the other parties offer a firm alternative to the game of division that was being played out? And why is secularism in India discussed as the mere absence of riots? These are larger questions that the film tries to raise.”

Sawhney had first visited Muzaffarnagar in 2011 to research for “Immoral Daughters”, a documentary on “khap panchayats” (caste-based village councils) in Haryana.

“In a way, ‘Muzaffarnagar ...’ has turned out to be a sequel to that film,” he says.

Sequences in the latter make an important connection between communal agendas and their use of “women’s honour” to act as triggers for violence. In Muzaffarnagar, this came in the guise of the notorious “Love Jihad”, the alleged tactic where good-looking Muslim youth lure Hindu women to marry them under false pretences.

“They have vague names such as Neetu, Tinu, Moti ...” says a local Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader in an interview. “By the time the girls realise they have been tricked it is too late.” It is no coincidence that the slogan raised to counter this “campaign” by Jat groups was “beti bachao, bahu banao (save your daughters, make theirs (Muslims’) your daughters-in-law”). All the women Sawhney interviews note that, in all this, the real losers are the women of each community.

The film was shot under the constant threat of official interference, as the state government moved to control the damage done to its image. But while the crew took pains to maintain a low profile, Sawhney says, security was not the greatest of his worries. “My big concern was finding a way to preserve the dignity of the survivors who had lost everything,” he said. “I wanted to show them as more than just victims, as real people.”

Their voices come through in testimonies filmed at different refugee camps. Some of these conversations were shot in the bitter cold of the northern Indian winter, as families stood by makeshift huts, the roofs covered with straw to provide them with some warmth. Many of them talk of a sense of betrayal, of the loss of bonds of trust that had been forged over generations. Families spoke of how they were too scared to return to their villages, wary of what to expect from neighbours.

There are moments of anger, such as a hunger strike outside the district headquarters in Shamli. “Some of our children, out of fear, could not fill the forms [for exams]. And now their teachers have refused to let them appear for their exams ... Was there a shortage of beggars in this country that our future generations are being deprived of education, livelihoods and shelter?” says a speaker addressing the meeting.

While the relief camps had no shortage of high-profile visitors, for the most part, Sawhney says, “there has been little in the way of redress from the administration, even to acknowledge the tremendous hurt and sense of loss these people have been through.”

Apart from the emotional cost, the events in Muzaffarnagar hit at the links that marked the sugar cane belt and its economy. The area, Sawhney says, was the location for the influential Bharatiya Kisan Union (Indian Farmers Union). One of the cornerstones for its success was unity between farmers.

In one sequence, a Muslim farmer speaks of the difficulty in getting timely payments for his crops. “We were able to negotiate with the owners because the Jats joined us ...” he says. “Earlier, all of us farmers unite to pressure the government. After the riots, Hindus and Muslims have split.”

His words are echoed by a Hindu Jat farmer, who was also waiting for payments over the past several months. “What happened was very wrong”, he says. “We were always so united. Now there is so much fear on both sides.” Farmers say the collapse of the peasants’ unions has only benefited mill owners.

According to Sawhney, the events in Muzaffarnagar mirror processes unfolding across India. If so, the film offers a bleak picture of the future. But it also captures the efforts at healing and at resisting this division. For Sawhney himself, cause for hope comes from the people he encounters at screenings of the film, who “look to civil society and their own resources to find ways to fight against forces that divide”.

Besides large metros, including Kolkata and Delhi, he has chosen to screen the documentary in small towns across northern India, often in collaboration with local groups and activists’ networks. The discussions that follow, he says, serve as reminders of the past and road maps of resistance for the future. Most of the people affected by the riot have faded from public consciousness, looking to relatives for help or by moving to different cities, or into homes built by charities or Islamic relief organisations. “Each time I speak to friends in Muzaffarnagar, I can sense the issue fading away, though justice has not been done,” he says. Recently, he returned to the site of one of the largest relief camps. The space was empty. “That is the scariest thing”, says Sawhney. “How the events and the victims of this violence are being made invisible, as though it had never been.”

Taran N. Khan is a writer based in Mumbai.