Harsh Mander: Will Sambhal become the new Ayodhya?

The Muslim-majority town of West Uttar Pradesh, Sambhal, is shrouded in fear. In a vague but still overpowering dread. In unspoken anticipation of an impending calamity that could ravage the lives of the residents.

Over a month has passed since November 24, when five men were killed after a crowd protested with stone-throwing a court-ordered survey of Shahi Jama Masjid mosque. The purpose of the survey was to ascertain if the mosque erected during the reign of the first Mughal emperor Babar was built after demolishing a temple.

A visiting team of the Karwan e Mohabbat finds the families of the men killed still distraught and inconsolable. The Muslim citizens are confused, frightened and angry. The state officials are doing nothing to assuage their fears. Instead, the state administration is unleashing a battery of measures that are nakedly hostile to its Muslim citizens. The saffron-robed chief minister Adityanath further stokes the embers with a series of coarse and openly communal declarations.

One thing is immediately evident. This combat that tore into the medieval town of Sambhal is not between its Muslim and Hindu residents. There was not a single act of communal violence between Muslims and Hindus in this Muslim-majority town. Hindus, by and large, had stood with their Muslim neighbours in their time of trial. The conflict instead is indisputably between the state administration and the Muslims of Sambhal.

But to what end?

I am convinced that the goal of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the belligerent Uttar Pradesh chief minister is to rapidly elevate this mostly forgotten mosque into another Babri Masjid. Go back to the winter of 1949. On the watch of the district magistrate of Faizabad KKK Nayar, Hindu idols “mysteriously” appeared in the Babri Masjid. The district magistrate defied orders of his superiors and reportedly even prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru when he refused to remove the idols. Through his refusal, he prised open the flood-gates for the Babri Masjid-Ayodhya dispute that went on to tear apart the social fabric, claim thousands of lives, pave the pathway for the triumphal rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party, and alter for a generation and longer the course of the Indian republic. It is perceptible that history may prove this to become a similar moment in Sambhal. We are witnessing attempts to fast-track the manufacture of what until recently was the barely remembered Sambhal Shahi Jama Masjid into the country’s next Babri Masjid.

In Ayodhya the claim was that Rama was born under the central dome of the Babri Masjid. In Sambhal the myth is even more audacious and extravagant: A temple stood at the site of the Shahi Jama Masjid in Sambhal dedicated to Kalki, the 10th incarnation of Vishnu. Kalki will return to earth at Sambhal to end Kalyug, the dark contemporary age of conflict and sin, and bring back Satyug, the luminous ancient age of humanity, truth and goodness.

Not many observers read the early signs: we were not alert to what lay ahead when Adityanath, an array of local religious leaders and politicians and Sangh publications began speaking of Sambhal as a site of immense religious significance to Hindus. Nine months before the court-ordered survey of the mosque, Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid in Sambhal the foundation stone of a temple dedicated to Kalki, performing a puja with Adityanath by his side. Modi said that the temple would emerge as a major centre of the Hindu faith.

But matters moved at breakneck speed since November 19 last winter. We spoke to a lawyer who was present in the court that day. “It was apparent that everything was pre-planned that day,” he said. When a clutch of petitioners filed for permission in the local court to survey the Shahi Jama Masjid in Sambhal, in the normal course the court would have first issued notice to all the parties to the dispute. But mysteriously, all the officials were already in the court on the morning of November 19. Absent was only the management committee of the mosque, because they had not been informed or called to the court. The suit was filed just after noon. At 1 pm, the magistrate heard the matter. The secretary of the Archaeological Survey of India, the district magistrate and the sub-divisional magistrate were present in court. The court gave short shrift to the legal requirement of hearing the mosque management, and passed orders the same afternoon at 3 pm for the survey of the mosque. Obtaining a certified copy of the court’s order took another hour. The survey began at 6 pm that same evening. The two most senior civil servants in the district, the district magistrate and superintendent of police joined the team that peremptorily entered the mosque for the survey.

For a matter that was potentially so incendiary, the correct course for the district magistrate and superintendent of police would have been to first take the leaders of the local Muslim community and mosque management committee into confidence, to allay their fears that the structure of the mosque would be damaged. But they did nothing of this kind. Instead, they returned early one morning a few days later, on November 24, to continue the survey. This time crowds accompanied the survey committee raising lusty slogans of Jai Shri Ram.

Rumours flew thick and fast that the officers may begin to excavate under the mosque. The rumours were fuelled further when the tank was emptied in which water is stored for the ritual wazu or washing of specific body parts before prayer, and water flowed down the slope of the small mound on which the mosque is built. This seemed to confirm to the residents that excavation inside the mosque was imminent. An anxious and agitated crowd swelled around the mosque. Instead of making any attempt to reassure the crowd, a lathi charge ensued. People from the crowd, meanwhile, had begun to throw stones at the police contingent.

What happened next is radically disputed. The police stoutly denied firing on the crowd, but then videos surfaced of the police actually firing at the mobs. Their claims changed from time to time. They had only fired in the air. They had only resorted to rubber bullets. And, oddly, that they had only deployed pellet guns (because pellet guns are banned). Then where did the bullets that took five lives come from?

The police version is that political factions from within the Muslim community fired at each other, resulting in the deaths. It requires a great deal of credulity to believe this official version that factions chose to use what was a spontaneous gathering of people in which thousands of men pressed against each other to fire at one another, endangering many lives.

We met the family of Mohd Kaif, a 23-year-old vendor who sold plastic items in the market. His brother who worked as a daily wage labourer recalled that an uncle first called them to say that the boy was missing. Another call came that evening confirming that he had been killed during the protest. Bilal, a 22-year-old, was another victim. His house was filled with bundles of unstitched jeans scattered throughout the premises; many in the family or the entire family worked on stitching jeans. Bilal was still alive when his brother met him at the hospital. Bilal told his brother that the police had fired into the crowd, which was throwing stones.

Romaan was an itinerant vendor who sold clothes and was present at the site for work. His eldest son received a call around noon saying that his father had died. The police brought the body to their home and he was buried the same evening. It was evident that Romaan had died due to bullet injuries, but he was buried without a postmortem investigation.

Idrees, the mother of 34-year-old Naeem Ghazi, was devastated. Their home is just 50 metres from the site of protests and firing, exactly behind the mosque. Her son had stepped out to purchase an oil canister for the shop from a nearby shop. Before leaving, he gave Rs 300 to his wife and said he would be back shortly. His bullet-ridden body came home instead. Ghazi left behind four children: two daughters and two sons. The eldest daughter is 10 years old. None of the children currently are in school. “He was as small as these children when his father died. I brought him up with so much hardship,” Idrees said, weeping. “It was his turn to take care of me. Now he has left his small children in my care. His death has added more years to my life, as I must now live on to fulfil his responsibilities.”

Most victim families reported to us that the police handed over the bodies of their loved ones only on the condition that they sign blank papers, and supported the version that it was the mob that threw stones and fired at each other, and that the police were not to blame. It was only Salman, Bilal’s brother, who had the courage to challenge the official version. In his original statement to the magistrate, Salman testified that it was the police that fired into the crowd, while the crowd was throwing stones at the police. His brother, he insisted, had died from police bullets. But he told us that the police immediately coerced him to sign blank documents as well as a statement claiming that the police did not fire at the crowd. However, he persisted and recorded a statement before the local magistrate that it was the police who indeed fired at the mob. He described this in detail to a reporter of the Observer Post. Bilal was still alive when his brother Salman reached the hospital. “When I got there, my brother could barely speak. He whispered to me that the police shot him during the chaos. He said the police were shooting at anyone in sight, and one of those bullets hit him.”.

Zafar Ali, the chairperson of the mosque committee, told reporters at a press conference that he personally saw the police firing at the agitating crowd. “It happened right in front of me. There was no bullet fired from the public in my presence.” He added, “Why would (the protestors) kill each other? If they had to fire, they would have fired at the police and not the public.”

But even if the police chose to fire at the protestors, it was clearly excessive use of force. It is alleged that when the agitated crowd gathered around the mosque, instead of placating people and explaining the official action to them, the police were abusive. Videos circulating of the police officer Anuj Chaudhari show him abusing Muslims as “jaahil”. In another video, he can be seen walking the streets in uniform with Hanuman’s gadha on his shoulder. Police firing should be ordered only as a last resort, after every other attempt to disperse the crowd fails. And firing should aim not to kill but to disperse the crowd, by aiming not at people’s chests but at their feet.

There can be little doubt that the street confrontation between Muslim residents of Sambhal and the police that resulted in the death of five men was entirely manufactured by the police, the courts and the state administration. It was the outcome of unusually hurried court orders and executive actions of surveying the mosque, without attempting to take the community leaders into confidence, without allaying their fears and instead taking recourse to excessive force against the protestors.

It did not end there. Even at this stage, it was possible for the senior officials of the district to retrieve the situation. They needed to assuage the local Muslims, reassure them that the mosque was safe and express sympathies with the families of the men who were killed in the protest. They did none of this.

The Supreme Court stayed further actions to survey the mosque. But the district administration instead resorted to many public campaigns that openly targeted the local Muslims. It abruptly began campaigns to counter electricity theft and encroachments in Muslim-majority settlements. It stirred a sense of grievance among Hindus by suddenly “discovering” Hindu temples in Muslim areas, with the suggestion that Muslims tried to erase sites of Hindu worship. The chief minister stirred memories of a riot 46 years earlier, grossly exaggerating the death count. A high fine of Rs 2 lakh was slapped for a loudspeaker atop a mosque. Since then, no calls of the azaan have been made over loudspeakers in any mosque in Sambhal. Just outside the entrance of the Shahi Jama Masjid, a large police outpost was built with amazing speed in just a matter of weeks.

Ahmed is one of the residents charged with electricity theft. “They just came and cut the wires and took away the meters,” he told reporters. “I have been paying the electricity bill. If there was something unlawful about my connection they could have told me.” All residents are fearful about their electricity connections being cut off. Some have placed posters outside their homes claiming that they use solar energy, and it is this and not theft that explains their low bills. The tube-lights in wedding processions charged by generators have become the source of street lighting in some areas.

In this sudden drive to detect electricity theft, officials fined the Sambhal Member of Parliament, Zia Ur Rehman Barq, Rs 1.9 crore for allegedly stealing electricity and the power supply to his residence was disconnected. Authorities demolished the steps leading to his house as part of an anti-encroachment drive, citing that the stairs were illegally constructed over a public drain. The police filed a first information report Barq him for allegedly being the ringleader of electricity-thieves. A senior official told reporters that the administration had discovered widespread electricity theft during surprise inspections at several local mosques, madrassas and residential areas. “We conducted a check on loudspeakers at religious sites on Saturday and uncovered illegal electricity connections in around 250 to 300 houses, mosques and madrasas.” Particularly around the mosque, encroachments were demolished.

Early during the drives against electricity theft and encroachment, the sub-divisional magistrate claimed to have “discovered” a temple. The temple was cleaned up and quickly opened for worship. The district magistrate and superintendent of police worshipped at the temple, spurring a string of Hindu worshippers to visit the temple to the sound of conch bells. The administration made the claim that the temple had deliberately been pushed into disrepair after Hindu families had migrated out of the area after riots in 1978 by the Muslim residents. A priest who commenced prayers at the temple, Shashikant Shukla, told reporters that the situation of Hindus in the Sambhal of 1978 was worse than in Bangladesh today. He said the temple was dedicated to the deity Kartikeya and that the water in its well had healing properties. He claimed further that when the district magistrate and circle officer cleaned the temple, the idol “bore a very different smile, which disappeared a few moments later”. He said that people from across the state had begun coming to the temple because it appeared in their dreams.

The local Muslims denied vociferously that they had wilfully allowed this or any other temples in the town to fall into disrepair. Salman Khan, a local resident vigorously contested the official narrative. “In 46 years, buildings fall apart and are in utter disrepair,” he told reporters. “The mandir has been maintained. Would it have been in this state if it had been abandoned?”

Then began the “discovery” of a deluge of other temples, all in Muslim-majority neighbourhoods. In Sambhal itself, barely four weeks after the firing, a four-member team of the Archaeological Survey of India surveyed as many as 24 Hindu sites and even announced carbon-dating to determine the age of the temples. Claims are now being made that 56 Hindu temples and 19 sacred wells in and around Sambhal have been rendered inaccessible to Hindus. “They are digging up new temples every day,” a local lawyer told reporters. “We are worried that, one day, they will come to our home and dig one up here as well.”

Adityanath lost no opportunity to further stoke the communal fires. He declared that the Hindu slogans of Jai Shri Ram could not be called communal or provocative; after all, they were only raised in praise of Ram. He claimed after the drive against electricity theft that Muslim places of worship were being used as “mini power stations”. He declared after the “discovery” of the temple in the vicinity of Shahi Jama Masjid in Sambhal that it was the criminal failure of earlier governments that the devils who slaughtered people in the riots of 1978 remained unpunished. He was even more belligerent in the state assembly. He spoke of 168 unpunished deaths in the communal riots of 1978. It is hard to ascertain how he arrived at this figure, which is more than ten times higher than the official toll.

He called upon Muslims to quietly abandon any mosque if the claim is made that it was raised at the site of a temple. He argued, puzzlingly, that Muslims are free to pray anywhere, so they do not need mosques. It is only the Sanathani Hindu who needs to pray in temples. So Muslims should remit to them all mosques which they claim were built by demolishing temples.

He said every temple that was demolished to build a mosque was a wound on the Hindu psyche.

Meanwhile, Sambhal continues to smoulder dangerously.

I am grateful for research assistance from Syed Rubeel Haider Zaidi.

Harsh Mander, justice and peace worker and writer, leads Karwan e Mohabbat, a people’s campaign to counter hate violence with love and solidarity. He teaches at FAU University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, and Heidelberg University, Germany; Vrije University, Amsterdam; and IIM, Ahmedabad.

Also see:

‘Fear, fear and only fear’: Muslims in Sambhal are on edge as government turns against them

Video: Fear grips Muslims in Sambhal as local administration turns against them