Unlike in South Africa, Peru and Guatemala, there has been no Truth Commission for the Partition of the Indian subcontinent, the anti-Sikh violence of 1984 or for Gujarat 2002. Can narrative be a path to mourning in lieu of a Truth Commission? Paul Ricoeur's Memory, history, forgetting (2004) raises the question of forgiveness and relates it to justice—hence the importance of juridical institutions—and to loss and reconciliation. Testimony and truth telling are particularly important in regions where there have been no Truth Commissions.
Saroop Dhruv's Ummeed hogi koi (Rajkamal, 2009) is one of the many books that have come out in the aftermath of the pogrom in Gujarat. Itforegrounds powerfully the twin themes of friendship and forgiveness. The text is a Hindu woman's journey, her telling of diverse stories in an authorial assumption of responsibility. Sudhir Chandra points out in the Preface to the book that Gandhi had made a similar statement: “Bihar main hamne auraton ke saath kya nahin kiya. Hinduon ne kiya yane maine kiya..." (“What did we not do to women in Bihar. Hindus did it, which means I did it”). Sarup Dhruv feels the suffering of Majidbhai, as he shows her a photograph of a laughing Suphiya bano, his 17-18 year old daughter dressed in a pink salwar-kameez who had been raped and burnt before his very eyes. There is the stark "reality" of the death of eleven members of his family that recurs in his dreams, a characteristic sign of trauma.
The book is based on Saroop Dhruv's visit to some 40-45 sites in villages, qasbas and cities in the state-sites of violence and rehabilitation, homes and camps. Muslims begin to express their anger, fears, pain to her... What emerges repeatedly is the planning and organization behind the outbreak of violence that is simultaneous in so many areas that it decries any notion of the spontaneous origin of violence as a reaction to Godhra—the idea that Muslims conspired to set fire to a rail bogey carrying a train of kar sevaks from Ayodhya.
There are many stories of friendship. In the Panchmahals, there is Hathibhai who helped Muslims hide in his wheat fields for some three days, defying pressures including from within his family, as his own Sarpanch brother was involved in the violence. He describes the complete breakdown of trust within the village—Muslims did not want to return to their lands. Hathibhai, however, went to Lunawara and made repeated efforts to persuade Muslims to return to their villages and market their crops. By now he also had the support of an NGO. Eventually some twenty five Muslim families returned under police protection.
The story, “Dosti” is about Sabarkantha's Khumapur, a village of Patels, adivasis and Muslims. The three Muslim families were relatively well-to-do and owned land, grocery shops, a wheat mill and a ricksha. One of them was the family of Yunus, the only Muslim in the village cricket team. The mob consisted of people from within the village, recognizable faces, people with whom Yunus had played cricket....For eight days Yunus' family was given refuge by Shakra, his childhood friend. His wife devotedly looked after Yunus' sick child. Yunus and Shakra had been inseparable in school and at play—a friendship that continued through their marriages. In the market Shakra saw drunken youths, pockets bulging, bearing arms and wearing the same headbands and tilaks... He learnt of Godhra, but when he recounted this at home, his wife responded, How are the people here responsible for what happened at Godhra?
Eventually Yunus and his family moved to the refugee camp, lodged FIRs (First Information Reports), got some compensation and yearned to return to their village... Yunus and his aunt wondered why Shakra did not come to see them. Was he hurt? Yunus went to the village. Shakra had been under pressure from his own village and suggested to Yunus that he take back the cases, give up his lands and start a brick-manufacturing unit next to his own. Later the Patels of the village also came to him willing to give him a large sum provided he revokes the cases....He refused, he wanted justice not money....Yunus now lives in Nusrat Nagar of Gambhirpura village in Sabarkantha and waits for Shakra to visit him...he has faith in his friendship....
One of the most poignant stories in this book is that of young Nilufer (name changed). Here was a girl who had always asked many questions of the world. After the attack on her father, who sustained a head injury, she got involved with an NGO that traveled all over India over two years performing street plays. Nilufer became friendly with a young dalit boy, Amrit, who eventually proposed marriage to her. To begin with Nilufer resisted the idea but was gradually drawn to him and consented. But not only were their families opposed, the Gujarat bureaucracy solidly opposed what it called a “ha-ma” (Hindu-Muslim) union. Nilufer was taunted by her own family for marrying a kafir. It was only when her injured brother received a blood transfusion from her husband that things changed. In this rarest of cases the friendship had become love in the face of opposition of the political elite, despite the existence of the Special Marriages Act.
The book is about the potential of friendship, but also its many dark shadows and ambivalences. As my colleague, D.L. Sheth, who hails from the region, put it, the book belongs to a saturated field of studies of the violence of 2002, but it is the first work that has given him some sense of hope for a dark, polarized Gujarat.
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