[Reader-list] Space and Violence in Vatva, Ahmedabad- Introduction

[Aarti]

Dear Swara and Moyuk,

Thank you for your post. As someone who also went to work in the camps 
post the riots in Gujarat, I am especially interested in the 
possibilites your proposal opens up. I did not work in Navapura, though 
my brother Aman did. He wrote a short paper drawing on his experiences, 
as did a colleague of mine from our work in the Aman Chowk camp. I could 
send you both if you like. If you'd like to get in touch with them here 
are their email addresses:

amsethi at rediffmail.com and bhrigupati at hotmail.com

I will respond conceptually to your paper once I spend some time 
thinking about the kinds of questions you raise.

looking forward to more posts
best
Aarti






Swara Bhaskar wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> This is an introduction to our study of Communal violence in Ahmedabad 
> undertaken as part of the Independent Research Fellowship Programme of 
> Sarai.
>
> Statutory Warning - Its a bit long.
>
> Of Riots and Ruins- Space and Violence in Vatva, Ahmedabad.
>
> Moyukh Chatterjee – M.A (Previous) Dept. of Sociology, Delhi School of 
> Economics.
>
> __
>
> Swara Bhaskar - Programme and Administrative Assistant, Peaceful 
> Coexistence Project, The AMAN Public Charitable Trust, New Delhi
>
> _
>
> _
>
> During the communal pogrom in Gujarat in 2002 we were in Delhi as the 
> media reports started trickling in about the enormity of the tragedy. 
> Both of us, separately, were following these events, when by 
> coincidence and some planning we decided to volunteer through the Aman 
> Ekta Manch to help in the relief activities in Ahmedabad. This was 
> some months after the period of explicit violence – though violence of 
> a different kind continued for much longer by way of government 
> apathy, sub-human conditions of camp life, extreme poverty to name a 
> few – and the focus was on running ‘/relief camps’ /for the survivors 
> and the displaced. We settled down to working everyday at the relief 
> camp in Vatva (inside the Qutb-e-Alam Dargah) on the outskirts of 
> Ahmedabad. Starting with basic survey work, we graduated to being 
> supervisors at a makeshift school for the children at the camp. We 
> also went to a Dalit colony (almost completely destroyed) neighbouring 
> the dargah/camp, and this single event led us to ask ourselves many 
> questions, that till then had seemed irrelevant. The Dalits alleged 
> that they had been victims of the frustration of the Muslims, who 
> powerless in the face of the more wealthy/powerful Hindus decided to 
> punish them for the crimes of the ‘other’ Hindus. These ‘other’ Hindus 
> surround the Muslim colonies and are the principal accused in the 
> riots in Vatva. Many narratives we had heard till then became 
> problematic and we had difficulties in understanding the relationships 
> between communities and the exact course of events that had led to 
> violence and counter-violence in this part of Vatva. Of course, these 
> questions had not seemed half as important as they are now to us, as 
> then we had no inclination of ever embarking upon a project like this 
> and our priorities were contingent upon ‘everyday’ problems of camp life.
>
> Vatva- an industrial area on the outskirts of Ahmedabad had three 
> official camps for riot victims. One of these was the *Qutb-e- Alam 
> Dargah* Camp.* *Behind the Dargah lies *Saiyadvada - *a Muslim Colony 
> whose residents are a mixed population of self employed small 
> shopkeepers, daily wage labourers and those attached to the Dargah. 
> Adjacent to it lies* Vaghrivas* and *Chunaravas,* two Dalit colonies 
> inhabited by the Chunars and Vaaghris who are daily wage labourers and 
> also sell hooch (country liquor) for a living. To an outsider 
> Vaghrivas seemed to flow into *Navapura* a relatively more affluent 
> and larger Muslim colony. Navapura shares a "border" with 
> *Aasopaalav*, which we were informed was a middle class Hindu 
> neighbourhood.
>
> Both Navapura and Chunaravas lie between Hindu/Dalit (We appreciate 
> the differences between these two identities, but use this term to 
> indicate the fact that it appears that the two communities were on the 
> same side - against the Muslims) and Muslim localities respectively 
> and were subject to looting and destruction of property and built 
> structures. The topography of Saiyadvada and Aasopaalav remained 
> unchanged; there were no signs or stories of any kind of a violent 
> change in the physical appearance of either of the localities. 
> However, we inferred from the numerous and often contradictory 
> accounts that we heard, that the residents of both were actively 
> involved in destroying their neighbours.
>
> We have decided to go back to Vatva because we had developed a 
> relationship with the place- its people, children and the surrounding 
> spaces, having been accepted as friendly outsiders and also because in 
> the last two years it had been /remembered/ a lot by us. And thus as 
> we wrote our proposal in ‘absentia’ (not having been back since 2002); 
> our memory was the chief resource which aided us in this endeavour to 
> imagine a project in Vatva.
>
> An essential question that we have posed to ourselves in relation to 
> our proposed work is: How much of our subjectivities are questioned 
> and involved in this analysis and in what ways. We encountered Vatva 
> as outsiders, part of the team of volunteers working in the 
> rehabilitation process. Our own memory of Vatva in the June of 2002 
> reflects how we as outsiders comprehended the disruption in what 
> seemed to us a ‘shared space’- one whose boundaries and limits were 
> not immediately visible to us.
>
> We have decided to focus our research on the transformation in a 
> shared space (or what we had conceived of as a shared space) by 
> examining how the memory of violence is recorded in the changed 
> physical landscape of the area that experienced violence. We 
> remembered what to us were symbols of a shared space being ruptured.
>
> We saw, for example, the path that ran from Navapura to the 
> Qutb-e-Alam Dargah through Vaghrivas that was used by residents of all 
> the three colonies before the riots. We often had to be guided around 
> the area while we carried out surveys and interviews. The unease in 
> using the path was evident as Muslim locals refused to enter Vaghrivas 
> unless in a large group. On more than one occasion groups of boys in 
> Vaghrivas would taunt the Muslims who came with us (often children of 
> the school we were running), in Gujrati.
>
> We were shown an open field where the boys of Navapura and Aasopalav 
> played cricket on the evening of 27^th February 2002. The next 
> morning, the team from Aasopalav, we were told, came to burn houses in 
> Navapura. We saw in the middle of Navapura an open ground allegedly 
> owned by the Bajrang Dal where the unfinished structure of a Hanuman 
> temple lay. Residents of Navapura informed us that there had been 
> tension in the area over the parades and assemblies of the Bajrang Dal 
> held in the grounds. We also saw at a little distance from Navapura, a 
> Jain Ashram. Its role during the riot is contested. The members of the 
> ashram and some residents of the Saiyidvada and Navapura claimed that 
> Muslims found safe refuge in it. (We were even shown rooms where the 
> fleeing Muslim families were apparently kept). Some denied any such 
> role, and in fact claimed that the Ashram had refused them sanctuary 
> in the hour of need. We also saw what was described as the "border" 
> between Navapura and Aasopaalav, which the Hindu mob crossed on the 
> morning of 28^th February 2002.
>
> We propose to focus in this project on the notion of ‘shared space’. 
> We will return to Vatva after two and a half years, a period in which 
> apparently ‘normalcy’ has been restored to this once ravaged 
> landscape. Keeping topography and the landscape at the centre of our 
> project we will look at how physical spaces tell their own stories.
>
> We hope to be able to trace the history of the two colonies by what we 
> ‘see’.
>
> / /
>
> /Memory /will play a central role in our research as we bring back to 
> Vatva, our own memory (influenced by our position within the 
> rehabilitation efforts) of what it was./ What are the relationships 
> between memory and violence as it is represented in physical/psychical 
> space?/ We also hope to examine how the residents’ memory of violence 
> has shaped the space that emerged once ‘rehabilitation’ brought about 
> ‘normalcy’. We will include in our study the theme of boundaries and 
> borders and how violence both creates boundaries and makes unseen 
> boundaries seen.
>
> The relationship between public and private spaces – the transition 
> these spaces underwent during the violence and its impact is also part 
> of our study. What happens when a Dargah also becomes a camp- does it 
> go back to being only a Dargah? What about spaces that seemed 
> ‘neutral’- the vegetable market, where people of the colonies shared 
> the anxiety of rising prices as the price of 'Tamaatar' went from RS 6 
> to Rs 10? We also want to look at space within the social structure. 
> Whether the violence of 2002 and the rehabilitation has changed the 
> positions the communities occupied in terms of caste and religion – 
> for example, the space occupied by the Dalits as a minority in a 
> majority minority area (Muslims a minority in Ahmedabad, are have a 
> significant presence if not the majority in Vatva); as also the 
> unstable position different communities have occupied in terms of 
> social power before, during and after the riots.
>
> //
>
> As part of our project we hope to look at the idea of planned and 
> unplanned spaces: the difference between a cartographer's city and a 
> ghetto. What is the significance of a space being unplanned at a time 
> of violence? What is the relationship between civil society and such 
> spaces after violence?
>
> Our methods will involve both an engagement with archival material and 
> field work. Our engagement with archives will involve the use of both 
> personal and official data. We will refer to surveys carried out in 
> Vatva both by NGOs (like Lawyers collective and Aman Samudaya) as well 
> as official surveys of the government. We will also use photographs- 
> both those taken by the volunteers during rehabilitation work as well 
> as photographic evidence of the violence. We also plan to use personal 
> photos of the residents of the period before the riots. We hope to use 
> maps and sketches during the course of our study of the affect 
> violence had on space in Vatva. We will also refer to the numerous 
> fact finding reports that have been published on the Gujarat riots of 
> 2002.
>
> Our field work will centre around the act of 'seeing'; as we record 
> both how the residents see their past reflected in their present space 
> and how we outsiders 'see' the changes in landscape.
>
> Our methods will also include extensive interviews and conversations 
> with locals, ex-volunteers and government officials.
>
> We hope to-
>
> -make contact with our fellow volunteers to be able to incorporate 
> their perspective as well.
>
> -establish contact with displaced locals or those who have migrated 
> from the colonies to other areas after the violence and incorporate 
> the change in demography in our work.
>
> -engage with the officials (state-level), city planners, 
> administration responsible for rehabilitation planning, architects of 
> the new housing complexes (if any).
>
> -collect an archive of similar work on Ahmedabad (if any) and 
> incorporate it in our study.
>
> We will make a series of trips to Ahmedabad and also plan to learn 
> some basic Gujarati!
>
> /
>
> Hope at least some people have got thru this somewhat lengthy 
> introduction- Looking forward to lots of advise and suggestions etc.
>
> Cheers
>
> Moyukh and Swara
>
> /
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Post your CV on Naukri.com. Get your dream job. 
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>
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