Mohammad Zubair was on his way home from a local mosque in northeast New Delhi when he came across a large crowd. He turned towards an underpass to avoid the commotion; it proved to be a grave mistake. Within seconds, he was cowering on the ground surrounded by more than a dozen young men, who began beating him with wooden sticks and metal rods. Blood flowed from his head, spattering his clothes. The blows intensified. He thought he would die.
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Zubair provided his version of events at a relative's home in another part of the capital, his head wrapped in bandages. The mid-afternoon attack on Monday, captured in a dramatic Reuters photograph, came against a backdrop of tension and violence. Near the area of the Indian capital where it occurred, Muslim and Hindu protesters had been fighting pitched battles for hours across a concrete and metal barrier that divided the main thoroughfare, throwing rocks and primitive petrol bombs. But the sight of a mob screaming pro-Hindu slogans suddenly turning on an unarmed individual, apparently because he was a Muslim, was a sign that growing tensions between members of India's two dominant religions may be hard to contain.
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"They saw I was alone, they saw my cap, beard, shalwar kameez (clothes) and saw me as a Muslim," Zubair told Reuters. "They just started attacking, shouting slogans. What kind of humanity is this?" However, BJP spokesman Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga said his party did not support any kind of violence, including the attack on Zubair. He blamed rival parties for stoking the chaos during U.S. President Donald Trump's visit in order to damage India's image. "This was 100 percent pre-planned," he said of the violence, adding that his party or its policies had nothing to do with the chaos. Reuters has no independent evidence that the protests were planned in advance.
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Delhi police were not immediately available for comment on the attack on Zubair. Since cruising back to power in May, Modi has pursued a Hindu-first agenda that has emboldened his followers and left India's 180 million Muslims reeling. Hindus account for about 80 per cent of the population. Now opponents and supporters of the law, largely divided between Muslims and Hindus, are facing off against each other. Some say the polarization evokes a dark chapter in India's past. "The violence is now happening in tiny pockets of Delhi and reminds you of the beginning of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots," said Yogendra Yadav, a political scientist who leads a small political party opposed to the BJP.
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Modi appealed for calm on Wednesday after at least 24 people were killed and hundreds more wounded in some of the worst sectarian violence in New Delhi in decades. The citizenship law behind the unrest is one of several steps taken by Modi's government since its re-election that have appealed to the Hindu majority. In August, it stripped Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state, of its special status, a move which Modi defended as a way of integrating the region with the rest of the country.
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Before this week's clashes in New Delhi, 25 people had been killed in running battles between protesters and police across the country. That number has now nearly doubled after two days of arson, lootings, beatings and shootings in parts of northeastern New Delhi that police forces have struggled to contain. Delhi police said in a statement late on Tuesday that they were making every effort to contain the clashes and urged people to maintain the peace. Witnesses said police and paramilitary forces were patrolling the streets in far greater numbers on Wednesday. Parts of the riot-hit areas were deserted.
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An unconscious Zubair was eventually dragged to safety by fellow Muslims who came to his aid after throwing stones to disperse his attackers. The 37-year-old, who makes a living doing odd jobs, was rushed to hospital where he was treated for wounds to his head and released late on Monday. "I was thinking 'I'm not going to survive this'," he recalled. "I was remembering my Allah."
Image Credit: Reuters
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