[Reader-list] One week in Aman Chowk (Part 2)

[bhrigu at sarai.net]

One week in Aman Chowk (Part 2) 

Our daily routine at the camp. The first part of the day with the children, 
playing games, singing, painting etc. The second part of the day would be 
spent in and around the camp, talking to people, sitting in the camp office, 
trying to figure out other ways in which help from outsiders could be given, 
such that it would not be in conflict with the (largely local) networks of 
people already at work. On our second day there, we met Mushtaqbhai during his 
shift in the camp office. He took the three of us under his wing from then on. 
Surrounding Aman Chowk on three sides are houses of various sizes, and bylanes 
which lead out onto the main road. These houses have a wholly Muslim 
population, which makes Aman Chowk a natural place of refuge at the time of a 
dhamaal (the word most often used to describe a period of violence). 
Mushtaqbhai lives in one of the houses situated in a bylane on the edge of an 
opening that leads to Rakhiyal road. He is in his early 30s and works in a 
factory that produces plastic folders. He worked in a tea shop through his 
years in school and at the time of the dhamaal, apart from working in the 
factory, he was beginning an M.A in Urdu. He has not been able to go back to 
the factory. "I have been working there for the last 15 years and many of us 
who work there have been together since we were in our late teens. I went back 
to work a couple of weeks ago after two months. If you go back somewhere after 
a long time, especially when you have gone through a period of difficulty, you 
expect some sort of welcome. Instead many people I've known for years taunted 
me. Kahaan tha itne din? Phat rahi thi teri? Some of the others looked quite 
threatening. I haven't been back since." Instead, he has committed himself 
full-time to the camp office. 

He explained the division of labour at the camp office to us. That bearded man 
there, sitting behind the table is Mujibbhai. He is in the dargah committee 
and is in-charge of compensation and the day-to-day finances of the camp. 
Aslambhai is also in the dargah committee. He is very knowledgeable about the 
people who live around here. When the local police have to arrest someone from 
the area, they first come to Aslambhai. The portly man with the moustache is 
Rasoolbhai. He takes care of sanitation and the other administrative tasks. If 
you ever want to make an announcement on the camp loudspeaker, he is the man 
you need to ask. Mushtaqbhai is a bit wary of the elders and spends most of 
his time these days with Maksood, also in his early 30s, a second cousin of 
his, whom he has become close to in the days following the dhamaal. 
Maksoodbhai and his father are well-known members of the Ahmedabad 
Auto-Rickshaw Driver's Union. Both Mushtaq and Maksood have been travelling 
through various places in the vicinity, conducting their own informal surveys, 
estimating the extent of damages and locating smaller camps, where help hasn't 
reached from other quarters. One evening in the camp we asked them if they 
would come with us for dinner. In fact, wouldn't it be great if they came to 
St.Xavier's College, where we were staying and attended our evening meeting. 
They could then meet other volunteers like us from various parts of the 
country and tell them what kind of help was needed in their own area and other 
places they had visited. We could go out for dinner after that. The three of 
us left in an auto-rickshaw. Mushtaq said that they would wind up their work 
at the office and follow an hour or so later on Maksood's motorbike. 

The ride back from the camp to Xavier's always fascinated me. You would get 
out of the walled city, cross either Ellis or Nehru Bridge and enter a new 
country (The Gujrat Pradesh of the Hindu Rashtra, as the VHP board informed 
you). The Walled City of Ahmedabad is 'chaotic', 'violence-prone', 
'riot-affected'. New Ahmedabad on the other hand is prosperous, well planned 
and modern. Yet, it is here that you get a sense of the pathology of planned 
and efficiently executed violence. This is where you can smell the neurosis of 
the people, the city and the state. What happened across the bridge, on the 
'other' side, cannot be explained away with reductively rational economic 
logic - unemployed, illiterate, backward people at each other's throats. And 
this time it isn't the 'cultural' explanation either - communities with long 
histories of conflict colliding on the occasion of a festival or a procession, 
over the sacrifice of a cow or over the use of some common space for a 
mutually incommensurable religious practice. Nor was it - and this is 
important to state again and again no matter how many people have said it 
before - a 'spontaneous' reaction to Godhra. A 'reaction' it may well have 
been but there was nothing 'spontaneous' about it in the least. Despite 
decades of violence, South Asia is still relatively unfamiliar with the nature 
and scope of recent events in Gujrat. This was carefully planned genocide 
requiring the expertise of politicians at various levels, municipal officials, 
administrative officers, both high and low ranking police officers and 
constables in large numbers, accountants, managers, people with an in-depth 
knowledge of chemicals and explosives, people with legal expertise, capital 
from upper-class businessmen and manpower numbering in thousands. All of this 
was planned here, on this, the happy, shiny, rich side of the city. It 
happened here first in its minute bloodthirsty detail in the imagination of 
the planners and their people. It happened with the collaboration of the 
prosperous Hindu middle class that lives on this side of the city, who carry 
on with their lives, business as usual; who through their actions or 
conversely, their inaction, endorsed and even celebrated the events of the 
past few months. The wide streets, the big buildings, the baroque temples, the 
fancy cars booming with loud music, the posh marketplaces teeming with people 
are all bathed in blood, and anyone can see it pouring out of the cracks.   

Mushtaq and Maksood crossed Ellis Bridge, entered the new city and came to 
Xavier's. They attended our meeting and met other members of our group, 
stationed in different camps across the city. Maksood's mobile phone rang. It 
was Mushtaq's mother. There had been police firing that evening at Juhapura 
and she wanted to know how long they would take to get home. We went for 
dinner to a nearby restaurant. There was a group of men sitting on the table 
behind us and a couple on the table to our left. There was Ganesha just above 
us on the wall and a photograph of Durga with a trishul above the entrance. 
Jokingly we told them how a strictly subzi diet had been imposed on us because 
this side of the city had only vegetarian restaurants. Mushtaq promised us 
lunch at his house the next day. There was another group of younger men, 
laughing loudly, just outside the restaurant at the STD booth who watched us 
while we ate paan after dinner. We walked back to Xavier's. After the first 
turning we saw a group of people, mostly men. Probably taking a late evening 
walk. We crossed the road. At Xavier's Maksood started his bike. I wanted to 
ask Mushtaq if I could call him in an hour to check if he had reached but I 
didn't, because I knew he wouldn't like it. I'd been in this city for a week. 
He'd lived here all his life.