Areesh
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Wakilludin Siddiqui, in his early 70s, remembers the day well. How can he forget September 8, 2013? That's the day he finally understood what might have happened in 1947 during the Partition.
That day, Fugana village in Muzaffarnagar district resembled a battle ground, when, neighbour turned on neighbour and battles were fought with guns, talwars and bricks. The day ended only after 16 from his community lay dead and two girls aged five and two went missing, never to be found, dead or alive.
Over four months later, Siddiqui lives in a ramshackle room with his wife, five sons and three daughters. The room has been given to him by a family in the nearby village of Jogia Kheda. In fact, all the 1000-odd Muslim families who fled from Fugana are now living in Kheda's homes where residents have set aside a room each for a vast population that lies scattered.
Muzaffarnagar's victims, who spent cold nights in tents until the state sent bulldozers to dislodge them, have now been labelled by government files as 'internally displaced people.'
Siddiqui's home in Fugana is only a few kilometers from Kheda. Literally only ten minutes away by car.
'When does he plan to go back?' I ask.
'Never,' he answers firmly.
'Will you accompany us?'
The unambiguous answer is a firm unhesitant 'No' that encourages no further conversation on the subject.
'Why?' I persist, and this time the answer is not a monosyllable.
'They killed my chacha (uncle). They burnt our homes. Our women were raped. How can we even think of going back? My pregnant daughter-in-law had to hide in the sugarcane fields. The killers haven't been arrested. They still roam free in the village. I told you, for us this was Partition.'
Fugana, a village with about 4,000 homes, once boasted of 1000 Muslim houses. We drive there from Kheda and find that only one family has returned. Ironsmith Sakur Ahmed and his son Gulsher have returned minus the women of the family. Both father and son are now held up as examples of communal harmony.
"We want our Muslim brothers to come back. The village is incomplete without them," says Rakesh Malik, a Jat neighbor. Many Jats say they miss their brothers.
Have they made an effort to bring them back? The answers to the question are complex and reveal still-simmering tensions. Five months have passed since August 2013 when tempers ran high, when fake videos circulated and rumour mills churned at high speed. Both sides had clashed over reports that a Muslim boy had teased a Jat girl.
Both sides had extracted revenge: the Jats killed Muslims and angered Muslims, in turn, killed two Jats. Both sides held maha panchayats that further fuelled the tension, leading to riots that left 62 dead and 51,000 homeless.
For Muzaffarnagar Muslims, 'it feels like Partition' - Hindustan Times
