That day in 1993 when a few Mumbaikars said no to Hindu versus Muslim
As Mumbai reeled under the onslaught of the communal rioting and bomb blasts of 1993, many stories also emerged that revealed that the city had not lost its soul. Hundreds of thousands of Hindus, Christians, Muslims, Sikhs and others got together to help their fellow citizens in distress.
I still remember visiting relief camps where food, clothes and blankets were distributed to those in need. I still remember the long lines of human chains formed by ordinary people and the long lines of people who gathered outside hospitals to donate blood to the seriously injured in the rioting and bomb blasts.
It was extraordinary.
But there is one tale that stands out in my memory. It was in the Cheeta Camp beyond the suburb of Chembur that I visited after the communal carnage had subsided. Cheeta Camp is basically a sprawling slum that houses a lakh or more people. The population is almost evenly divided between poor Muslims and Hindus. Most of the Hindus are either backward castes or scheduled castes. A very small percentage of poor Christians make up the rest. Most of the men are plumbers, electricians, auto and cab drivers, carpenters, mechanics and small shopkeepers, while the women-folk serve as maids and cooks in middle- and upper-middle-class neighbourhoods nearby. This sprawling slum had its own narrative to tell when the communal rioters reached its doorstep.
The rioters were stopped in their tracks. The citizens of the camp had formed their own protection ring comprising volunteers of just a few hundred people belonging to all communities. They were lightly armed with clubs, staffs and steel rods. When the rioters arrived with their chilling communal war cries, the volunteers moved forward to confront them and suddenly a strange thing happened. The rioters turned tail and ran away.
This happened a couple of times, and the number of volunteers kept increasing. Each time the rioters withdrew, they cursed the Hindus of the slum for taking the side of the “enemy”.
“Enemy?” muttered Naresh Yadav, a then twenty-year-old mechanic who was learning his profession under the tutelage of Mohammad Sheikh, an ageing master.
“Who the hell is an enemy? All of us live in this hell-hole of a city because we have no choice. Would we really want to be here if we could find jobs where we were born? These bastards who come here trying to create trouble between us are cowards. Their courage comes from the fact that they know they will not be picked up by the cops and given the treatment that we face when we get caught for even minor things. If they go through one f*cking day in the lock-up with the cops belting them, they will sh*t their hate out.”
The large crowd, standing around Naresh at Cheeta Camp, smiled. I smiled too.
(Excerpted with permission from Westland Context.)