By Rajeev Khanna
Godhra(IANS) : Five years after the burning of 59 train passengers here triggered Gujarat’s worst communal bloodbath, Godhra town remains as divided as ever between Hindus and Muslims. But residents say things are changing – albeit slowly.
Even as minor incidents of communal strife keep erupting in parts of Gujarat, Godhra has surprisingly become an oasis of peace. But the small town, 140 km from Ahmedabad, is divided neatly into a Hindu world and a Muslim world.
And the Hindu parts certainly look richer.
Even as elections draw near, there is not much political activity here. No senior politician has visited the area. But like anywhere else, Godhra’s people talk about issues related to water, power and other civic amenities.
There appears to be no interaction between the Hindu and Muslim areas. Most Muslim areas portray a picture of neglect. Muslims alleged that the administration has deliberately ignored their welfare.
“Over the last five years even the local legislator has not visited Muslim areas, forget the ministers and chief minister,” says a despairing Idrisbhai, a contractor.
Saeed Umerji, a businessman, told IANS: “When the administration claims that it has widened the roads of Godhra, it does not say that the kiosks, maybe illegal, removed were chiefly those of Muslims that were their only source of income. Why doesn’t it try removing kiosks in Hindu areas?”
While Hindu areas have a variety of shops doing business, the shops that dominate the market in the Muslim neighbourhoods are mostly small time eateries with purely Muslim clientele.
Said Umerji: “We also want our shops to be overflowing with customers but neither do Muslims have the resources to fill them with a variety of goods nor do they have the confidence that Hindus will make purchases from them.”
Godhra was a largely unknown place to the rest of India until a Muslim mob set fire to two train cars on Feb 27, 2002, killing 59 Hindu passengers. Many of the victims were Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) activists.
The resultant communal violence that engulfed Gujarat claimed some 1,000 lives, mostly of Muslims.
Godhra is one place where religious assertion is most visible. Nowhere in Gujarat does one find so many ‘Islamic caps’. At the same time there are a whole lot of Hindu shops named after Hindu gods and goddesses.
In the middle of the main market is an ‘Ayodhya Hindu Hotel’.
Notably, Godhra has remained calm the past five years.
Explained Manish Gadhvi, a small trader: “They (Hindus and Muslims) mind their own business in their respective areas and keep to themselves, so there is hardly any chance of a clash.”
But in the last five years social activists have made small but significant efforts to bring the communities together.
“We have been organising henna application competitions in which girls from both the communities have been taking part,” says Latifa, a woman activist here.
Then there are people like Mukhtar who have been instrumental in organising cricket matches for youths of both the communities. “The rule is that both the teams have equal numbers of Hindus and Muslims.”
A Muslim man disclosed that following a fracas between Hindus and Muslims in Shehra village, a few kilometres away, the police got them to furnish bail bonds for each other.
“I wonder whether it is a change of heart or whether there are instructions coming from the top to take such steps,” he said while requesting that he should not be identified by name.
Muslims also claim that since the change of government in New Delhi in 2004, the number of police raids on Muslim areas has come down.
(Rajeev Khanna can be contacted at [email protected])