[Reader-list] One Week in Aman Chowk (Part 1)

[bhrigu at sarai.net]

A few weeks ago i visited Ahmedabad as a volunteer, along with a group of 9 
other people to help Citizen's Initiative, a group of Gujrat-based NGO's, with 
their efforts in various relief camps. Here is a piece i wrote a few days 
after my return.     



One week in Aman Chowk (Part 1) 


How do you make sense of a tragedy? How do you tell other people about it? It 
is possible that you could try and evoke the first-hand horror of it by 
concentrating on a definite period or a set of acts of violence as singular 
events of terror. But how do you possibly convey the everydayness of it, the 
continuity of terror, as it is renewed in smaller ways, as it spills into the 
present and the future and becomes mundane in public consciousness. I fear 
that the former is easier because it grabs our attention. Since returning to 
Delhi from Ahmedabad, I must have narrated 'my experiences of Gujrat' on 
numerous different occasions to people with vastly varying degrees of 
political engagement and beliefs. What has remained the same is that each time 
I have felt a burden akin to that of Sheherazade - what if my listeners are 
not shocked, horrified and fascinated by what I have to say? What if they 
don't understand the spectacular nature of the tragedy? Another thing - the 
people who organised themselves as perpetrators of the acts and events that 
occurred in recent months in Gujrat, at some level, also intended it to act as 
a medieval (and increasingly modern) reactionary form of punishment as public 
spectacle. 

The brutality of recent events in Gujrat are now a part of public memory and 
will circulate as narratives locally, and otherwise, in various forms whether 
or not we write, act or do anything at all. Unfortunately, if the bloody past 
of South Asia is anything to go by, it is very possible that the spectacular 
element of these narratives will re-surface with frightening regularity in the 
future with all kinds of consequences. Is there any way to write against such 
terror? There is the danger that if our images and words are shocking enough, 
they might provoke an equally horrifying reaction. A different but equally 
frightening possibility - it might gradually further what has been called a 
"dismay of images". Potential consumers of such images will then increasingly 
require ever more detail in words and images of hurt and suffering to 
authenticate reality. It is best then to proceed with some degree of caution. 
As easy as it is to produce an eminently readable account full of killings, 
beheadings, arson, and rape, it is that much more difficult to narrate a 
riveting account of the difficulties encountered in running a camp, in 
designing an adequately broad compensation form or say, the processes by which 
people are resettled (or prevented from leading a stable life) over a longer 
period of time. Thus, in what follows I will try and spend some energy on the 
mundane, as I do on the grotesque, in the hope that we can try and convey the 
horror, not just of a specified 'official' period of violence but of all that 
which continues in the lives of the people that we met. 
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A few weeks back, in mid-June I was sitting with Taufiqkhan Pathan, the main 
camp organiser of the Aman Chowk relief camp in Bapunagar, Ahmedabad. 
Taufiqkhan is an elected municipal official, the Chairman of the Hospital 
Committee of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation. In early March, the Aman 
Chowk camp had about 6000 people. By the time we visited it in June, there 
were about 2500 people still there. Most people at the Aman Chowk camp came 
from directly adjacent or neighbouring areas - Chunnilal Devshankar Chawl, 
Manilal Chawl, Shantiniketan, Sone ki Chawl, Akbar Nagar, Arban Nagar, and 
from jhuggi clusters surrounding the nearby telephone exchange. Others came 
from further off - Haldervas in Khera district about 35km away, Kuha village 
in the rural district just off Ahmedabad city, Chamanpura, Naroda Patiya and 
Meghaninagar. In calm and measured tones Taufiqkhan described to me the 
logistics of setting up a camp, a process he had previously undertaken in 1985 
and 1992 at exactly the same spot in Aman Chowk, following outbreaks of what 
he described as toofan. It was a long, disjointed interview in the course of 
which we discussed, among other things, how people were brought to Aman Chowk, 
the surrounding Bapunagar area, the difference between previous instances of 
violence and the present one, and changes in the character of the city of 
Ahmedabad. Ahmedabad, once known as the 'Manchester of the East' had a total 
of 73 large-scale mills. Of these only 13 or so now remain. Bapunagar is a 
mill district, well known for its fragility and tendency towards communal 
clashes, over the last many decades. However, Taufiqkhan spoke with nostalgia 
of the time before the closure of various textile-mills across the city, when 
large diaspora of migrant labour helped Ahmedabad become one of the most 
prosperous cities in the country. He describes that period as one of 
tolerance, at a time when the area was known as 'mini-India' because of the 
diversity of its inhabitants. 
Once the mills began to shut down in the 1980s, many people moved out of 
Bapunagar. In the 1970s, Bapunagar was a Muslim majority area but gradually as 
migrant Muslim mill-workers moved out, the area changed in character and 
became segregated into distinct Muslim and Hindu neighbourhoods. As far back 
as most people can remember the road separating the Hindu from the Muslim 
residential areas has been called the 'border'. Most present residents are 
ex-millworkers, who shifted to smaller scale factories and cottage industries 
or opened small businesses and shops to make a living. February 28th and the 
weeks that followed, quite drastically altered the look of most businesses, 
shops, restaurants and homes on the Muslim side of the border. The pattern is 
similar across long rows of shops, or the remains of what used to be houses. 
The closer you are to the border, the greater the annihilation. Doors blasted 
open with bottles of kerosene and petrol bombs, black, singed walls, piles of 
rubble in various corners, the occasional small household-based karkhana with 
broken, blackened machines. The Hindu side of the border looks quite pleasant, 
houses of various different hues and colours, Ganesha or an occasional Durga 
adorning the front door. If you have a suitably wide-angle lens, there is even 
a spot near the border from where you can take a photograph - an endless row 
of colour-coordinated black on one side and an equally long row of neat, 
unharmed, multi-coloured, houses on the other.

Throughout the interview Taufiqkhan's tone was energetic and businesslike and 
his words were guarded. When he spoke of the riot-affected, they were people 
very different from him, bechare jhuggi-jhopri dwellers. Only once in the 
entire conversation, did his voice drop - "I have lived here in Bapunagar for 
the past 41 years. During this time there have been many ups and downs but I 
have never seen anything like this." Before the interview I had planned to ask 
him about the circulation of a set of stories about municipal hospitals in 
Ahmedabad, some of them possibly under his direct jurisdiction, where it was 
rumoured that in early March, during the worst period of violence, Muslim 
patients arriving for treatment were poisoned, or otherwise brutalized by 
Hindu hospital workers, nurses and doctors. I had planned to ask him other 
things too - How did he react to the murder of Ehsan Jafri, an ex-M.P. and a 
fellow Congress party member of even bigger political stature than him? It is 
said that while a screaming mob stood outside Ehsan Jafri's house, he made 
frantic telephone calls to the Director General of police, the Police 
Commissioner, the Chief Secretary, the Additional chief Secretary (Home) and 
others. There was no response. A group of people walked into Ehsan Jafri's 
house and burnt him alive. I wanted to ask him, Taufiqbhai - do you trust your 
colleagues in the Municipal Corporation? Whom all do you meet at work every 
morning? What is the chain of command above you? Are you being able to do your 
work these days? Sitting barely 10 meters away from the camp, in an interview 
conducted with a number of people from the camp and nearby areas sitting 
around us, many of whom had presumably voted for him, I couldn't bring myself 
to ask him any of this. 

Shortly after I returned to Delhi, two news items on www.ahmedabad.com, a 
local website I have been following quite closely since early March caught my 
eye:  

- Indicating that early polls are likely in Gujarat, the BJP intends to 
organise a gaurav yatra (pride march) to propagate the "achievements" of the 
Modi government. Pushing forward its Hindutva plank in the state, the Vishwa 
Hindu Parishad also plans to hold a "rath yatra" in its full grandeur on July 
12….Though the elections are slated for February next year, strategists in the 
Modi government are in favour of an early poll. They feel that Chief Minister 
Narendra Modi has become the "most popular leader among the Hindu community in 
the state and no time should be lost to take advantage of his popularity."    
  
							(26th June, 2002)
 
- Having feared opposition from their neighbours earlier, riot victims staying 
in camps across the city are now refusing to return to the homes, apprehending 
violence during the Rathyatra on July 12, which also happens to be a Friday. 
The victims, especially in Behrampura, Naroda and Chamanpura fear that 
violence might erupt again and are refusing to even start rebuilding their 
shops and houses, organiser of Aman Chowk relief camp in Bapunagar, Taufiqkhan 
Pathan said.
"We have closed down our camp but people from these areas refuse to go. We 
have about 400 persons who are still staying with us," he said. About 20 
families from Naroda Patiya and 60 families from Meghaninagar, Roshanbhai 
Chawl, Chiloda and Chamanpura do not wish to go back till the Rathyatra is 
over, Mr. Pathan said…"We do not get anything from the collector's office and 
as per the records, the camp is closed. However, since people continue to stay 
here we have to continue the camp unofficially," he said.
								              
                                                            (24th June, 2002) 

400 persons who are still staying with us, some of whom were still in the 
process of recovering from the earthquake in Gujrat the year before, others 
who had told us about their fear of the Rath Yatra even while we were there, 
and a handful of whom I have kept in touch with since returning to Delhi. As I 
write this in end June, it has started raining in Ahmedabad. Aman Chowk has 
flooded, so the remaining people have collected in a smaller part of what used 
to be the camp. A few days back there was a massive short circuit so the bulbs 
that used to light up the camp and the surrounding area at night aren't 
working anymore, and of course, the government has stopped ration and water 
supplies because the camp is now 'shut'. 

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