By Sadiq Zafar,
Traversing through the agrarian frontiers, joining nodes through a well-connected transport network, footprints of Atali village can be traced from the national capital travelling a distance of around 60 kms, an hour’s drive. Atali, a village in Ballabhgarh of Haryana, can be found on Wikipedia for no good reasons, riot, arson, loot and burglary. With the first step into the village through Adani owned gas pipeline, olfactory receptors start giving strong signals to the brain and this is not the phantosmia.
Devastation in this village has its own signature, just next to the police barricades, torched house of a merchant stands as a witness to what all had happened on that ill-fated day inside the village as law and order, government, police and pleading meant nothing to those who had monstrous ideas crawling in their minds, moreover, everything was happening under the nose of the government. Those who were targeted were feeling the heat of the majoritarian democracy as from higher to lower authorities, no one intercepted until Muslims were chased away and forced to flee from their homes.
Traces of incineration even today are substantiating the damage done during the riot, much evident to speak on their own, as the Human Rights team visits the village. After taking account of the burnt down dwelling units, team visits the mosque, a religious structure which is seen as the pivot of all the conflict. Claims and counter claims from both the sides, Muslims claim that their documentary evidences show that the land belongs to them and had a mosque over it, moreover, they claim that the issue had been settled with the Panchayat and the Police. The only reason cited for the conflict by the other party was the renovation and expansion of the mosque, taking a ground floor temporary structure to the vertical heights of multiple storeys.
Under heavy police presence in the village, a call for Friday prayer was made as Friday is one the most auspicious days for Muslims and some fifty people of the village, who have taken refuge in nearby areas, came in a public transport to pray. Just as the prayer ended, Police officers asked them to leave and they were rushed away from the village in the presence of the Human Rights team. Some of them were seen collecting their belongings and things of daily need from their left out homes, with all these, the definition of sovereign socialist secular democratic republic was a bit hazy for those who were forced to leave their own habitat. By every tear that rolled down from the eyes of my mother, we want justice, said a youth while collecting his memoirs from the burning coal of hatred.
Time is evident and as the history of human settlement suggests, a minute mistake of today has, at times, devastated effects on tomorrow. In Atali the whole social fabric of the rural setup has been hampered by this incidence, resulting in the polarization of masses at the grass-root level of the village. An aged man’s complaining eyes were asking, who has gained what, at the cost of insecurity and fear at a place where every individual was a cultural identity that contributed to the social structure of the village. In such an environment seeking refuge for safer locations appear better option than facing humiliation and risking lives.
(Sadiq Zafar is a young Delhi based urban planner, studied from the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA) Delhi. He visited Atali, with a human rights team on Friday.