A local resident of Muzaffarnagar telling about the situation
Showing posts with label Muzaffarnagar riots. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Muzaffarnagar riots. Show all posts
Thursday, 12 September 2013
Muzaffarnagar riots: a meeting after Friday prayers
Muzaffarnagar: The
prelude to the riots that have ripped through Muzaffarnagar in western
Uttar Pradesh killing 38 people unfolded in the village of Kawal, where
in the last week of August, two Jat brothers killed a Muslim boy who was
stalking their sister. Less than an hour later, they were lynched to
death.
To check the tide of communal tension, local officials banned public meetings. But just three days later, on a Friday, politicians extinguished any chance of a return to normal. After Friday prayers, a meeting was called by religious leaders and politicians in Muzaffarnagar, around 125 kilometres north east of Delhi.
With an audience of about 2,000 people, most of them Muslims, local leaders from the Congress and Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party or BSP took the stage.
When asked why they didn't intervene to have the meeting cancelled, local officials claimed they had been misled.
Kaushal Raj, the District Magistrate of Muzaffarnagar, said that religious leaders had said the meeting would focus on collecting a petition demanding justice in the Kawal case, but that the gathering was then hijacked by the politicians - Qader Rana and Jameel Ahmed of the BSP, and Saeed-uz-zaman of the Congress.
All three feature now in an FIR or police case on charges that include inciting communal tension. While Mr Rana, who represents Muzaffarnagar in Parliament was not available for comment, his colleague said that the rally had been sanctioned by local officials. Saeed-uz-zaman's son said the politicians had done no wrong, legally or morally.
The opposition BJP, accused of instigating violence this weekend at a gathering of thousands of Hindu farmers, says that at the Friday session, the District Magistrate was on stage. Kaushal Raj told NDTV, he was blackmailed by the politicians who said that if he did not attend the meeting, they would march to a communally sensitive part of the city.
The BJP also says that two leaders from the ruling Samajwadi Party were present at the gathering, but have not been featured in police cases.
On Saturday evening, at a mahapanchayat, BJP leaders from the area addressed thousands of farmers with allegedly incendiary speeches, charges they have denied. On their way home, farmers were attacked and killed. Since then, 36 people have died.
http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/muzaffarnagar-riots-a-meeting-after-friday-prayers-exploited-by-politicians-416915
To check the tide of communal tension, local officials banned public meetings. But just three days later, on a Friday, politicians extinguished any chance of a return to normal. After Friday prayers, a meeting was called by religious leaders and politicians in Muzaffarnagar, around 125 kilometres north east of Delhi.
With an audience of about 2,000 people, most of them Muslims, local leaders from the Congress and Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party or BSP took the stage.
Kaushal Raj, the District Magistrate of Muzaffarnagar, said that religious leaders had said the meeting would focus on collecting a petition demanding justice in the Kawal case, but that the gathering was then hijacked by the politicians - Qader Rana and Jameel Ahmed of the BSP, and Saeed-uz-zaman of the Congress.
All three feature now in an FIR or police case on charges that include inciting communal tension. While Mr Rana, who represents Muzaffarnagar in Parliament was not available for comment, his colleague said that the rally had been sanctioned by local officials. Saeed-uz-zaman's son said the politicians had done no wrong, legally or morally.
The opposition BJP, accused of instigating violence this weekend at a gathering of thousands of Hindu farmers, says that at the Friday session, the District Magistrate was on stage. Kaushal Raj told NDTV, he was blackmailed by the politicians who said that if he did not attend the meeting, they would march to a communally sensitive part of the city.
The BJP also says that two leaders from the ruling Samajwadi Party were present at the gathering, but have not been featured in police cases.
On Saturday evening, at a mahapanchayat, BJP leaders from the area addressed thousands of farmers with allegedly incendiary speeches, charges they have denied. On their way home, farmers were attacked and killed. Since then, 36 people have died.
http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/muzaffarnagar-riots-a-meeting-after-friday-prayers-exploited-by-politicians-416915
Tuesday, 10 September 2013
Muzaffarnagar – Where Riots Turned into Pathology From Anatomy
A dozen daily wage farm workers and simple village folk were travelling in a tractor as usual from Mod Khurd village to Munjhera in the hope that they could get a better deal for their labor next day. At the entrance to Munjhera is a mosque on the roadside which everyone has to pass through to enter the village. Hiding within the mosque were some 50-60 heavily armed men waiting in darkness to pounce upon any ‘Kafirs‘ who were unlucky enough to pass through on that fateful Friday evening.
At the outskirts of the village, the driver and the leader of the farm workers realized that there was something really horrifying about the eerie silence in this minority dominated village, but he was too late. As the tractor ambled across the mosque road, it was met with scores of flying stones, which took them by surprise. This stone pelting continued for some time, even as the men tried to find cover in the trolley. Some industrious folk managed to jump ship and escape into the wilderness, but others weren’t so lucky.
The mob from the mosque then surrounded the tractor and pulled down some 6 men and threw them on the roadside. What happened over the next 30 minutes is too graphic to print – “it was the worst nightmare one could ever have” as per one of the survivors who is grievously injured and may not live long. The farm workers were first beaten up mercilessly and were then attacked with sharp weapons by a gang of 50 odd “mushtandey“. Finally, they were shot at pointblank range, so that they had no chance of surviving.
Meanwhile, those who had escaped the stone pelting reached the local police station and complained about the attack, but to their utter frustration, the police refused to budge from their seats. For more than an hour the police refused to visit the mosque to rescue the victims and when they finally did reach the spot, they found three bodies lying in a pool of blood. Two of the dead were simply identified as that of Pappu and Joginder, while one other victim was still breathing. Three other farm workers are still missing, 3 days after the incident, and are presumed dead for all practical purposes. The Mosque Mob? By the time police reached the spot, all of them had returned back to their homes after their evening hunting expedition and were probably sleeping peacefully.
This is not a one-off incident, this is what is happening across Muzaffarnagar district. These villages have been turned into killing fields even as rumors fly thick in the air. Nobody knows for certain how many people have died in the violence. Till late Monday night, the official tally still stood at around 31, but nobody believes that tally; not the ordinary folks, not local newspaper men, not political netas and not even the cops themselves. Everybody talks in whispers, some suggest “it’s more than a hundred“, while others presume “at least 250 dead in 10 days“. When official arithmetic marries political convenience, it begets rumor – an illegitimate child of conscience. It is indeed ironic that more than 65 years after independence we cannot even count our dead. (For instance, we are none the wiser about the actual death toll in the neighbouring Uttarakhand even after 3 months).
Muzaffarnagar district in particular and Western Uttar Pradesh in general has been a communal tinderbox for ages, yet these riots are unprecedented for one major reason. Riots in India are largely an urban phenomenon, for in the cities anonymous men fight and kill other anonymous men and women – or at least that is what was always postulated by ‘great’ secular social scientists till now. In our villages there was supposed to be just ‘communal tension’ not ‘communal rioting’, for everyone knows everyone else. This idyllic narrative of our villages where ‘communal tension’ is sorted out by community elders and village panchayats has been turned upside down.
At the height of Babri Masjid conflict of 91-92-93, 90% of all rioting was centred around the cities. Even in India’s worst communal conflagration of the 1947 partition, violence was largely an urban phenomenon and the villages were mostly untouched – both in Punjab and Bengal. What has changed in 2013? Is this just a logical corollary of the neo-rurbanization phenomenon? Are there any external catalysts to this process of riot-flow from urban to rural?
Yes our villages are no longer isolated from the world and news spreads at lightening speeds here too. News is no longer a two-dimensional phenomenon, for it has acquired an audio-visual element to it. What is more, news is now an interactive medium in the world of mobile telephony, internet and social media. Thus villages can react with violence as a legitimate tool. But there are other catalysts too. For instance, visit any village in Muzaffarnagar and you are likely to find new settlements of outsiders – a euphemism for “Bangladeshis” – who have now become part of the village political-economy. Add to this, the growing reach of the global Ummah philosophy combined with the fanaticism angle of “Islam Katre mein hai” and you have a potent mixture for disaster. In this concoction, when you add a large haul of “sophisticated arms, like hand grenades and AK 47s” smuggled from the Nepal border, you get a deadly syrup of violent riots.
Over the last few months there have been numerous reports of deadly weapons being circulated in UP, but the government has taken absolutely no action till date. There have been rumours that a powerful minister of the region belonging to the minority community is hand-in-glove with this whole exercise of arming a community to the teeth. In fact, quite a few vehicles have been raided by the police with large quantities of illegal weapons, but the state administration has adopted a “blind eye” policy towards this whole phenomenon. Finally, on Sunday, when the army conducted flag marches in various villages, some of the villagers actually fired back at the army, which eventually led to army ceasing a large haul of illegal arms.
When the riots began, the Jats of western UP did not know what hit them. Usually the farming community of western UP is highly organized and has a strongly militant outlook to any sort of perceived injustice, but they were totally underprepared to face this systematic attack. Jats and Muslims have had a longstanding alliance in this region, so it came as a big surprise to many of them that the idea of anti-Kafirism had entered into Western UP with such violence. The first few days were a complete surprise for the Jats as they faced these relentless attacks by organized mobs with unheard of weapons.
Four days after the riots began, on the 31st of August, the Jats first called a Panchayat at Jaansaath Tehsil, but even after trying to organize themselves, they were hopelessly outmaneuvered. It was only after Narendra Tikait and Rakesh Tikait – both sons of the legendary farmer leader, Mahendra Singh Tikait – entered the scene that the fight back began in earnest. This is where the politics of UP underwent a radical shift in the span of just a fortnight.
First, BSP MP Kadir Rana, Congress leader Saiduzzaman and Samajwadi Party leader Rashid Siddiqui made a highly charged communal speech at Khaalapur on the 30th of August, which was attended by more than 15 thousand people, despite of prohibitory orders under section 144. Then the Mahapanchayat of 7th September was attended by Hukum Singh, Sangeet Som and Suresh Rana of BJP, former Congress MP Harinder Malik and the Tikait brothers of the BKU. This is the familiar pattern of the early 90′s when Muslim and Hindu leaders cutting across political parties joined forces to fight their battles. Thus Uttar Pradesh now stands polarized in totality, right from the villages up to the netas.
It is in this polarized state that the vultures landed 10 days after the riots started. It is natural for the vultures to feed on the dead and thus began a process of selective feeding based on their favored ideological positioning. The same Dilli News Media which was almost totally absent for 10 days when the violence was one-sided, went to Muzaffarnagar to create tales of minority victimhood. On Monday, suddenly our television screens were filled with skullcaps. Then Dilli media’s favorite whipping boy was brought out into open. Thus Muzaffarnagar riots found salvation in Amit Shah’s visit to Ayodhya and Narendra Modi’s ability to “polarize” the voters.
This is the underlying pathology of the Muzaffarnagar riots, wherein reality is twisted by the media vultures to suit their own ideological convenience. Instead of blaming the real culprit, Samajwadi Party government of Uttar Pradesh, MSM blames every known adversary of Dilli-news media – Social Media, Modi, BJP, Amit Shah etc. In the real world, communal fire is spreading from the cities to villages, but media is busy peddling victimhood.
http://centreright.in/2013/09/muzaffarnagar-where-riots-turned-into-pathology-from-anatomy/
At the outskirts of the village, the driver and the leader of the farm workers realized that there was something really horrifying about the eerie silence in this minority dominated village, but he was too late. As the tractor ambled across the mosque road, it was met with scores of flying stones, which took them by surprise. This stone pelting continued for some time, even as the men tried to find cover in the trolley. Some industrious folk managed to jump ship and escape into the wilderness, but others weren’t so lucky.
The mob from the mosque then surrounded the tractor and pulled down some 6 men and threw them on the roadside. What happened over the next 30 minutes is too graphic to print – “it was the worst nightmare one could ever have” as per one of the survivors who is grievously injured and may not live long. The farm workers were first beaten up mercilessly and were then attacked with sharp weapons by a gang of 50 odd “mushtandey“. Finally, they were shot at pointblank range, so that they had no chance of surviving.
Meanwhile, those who had escaped the stone pelting reached the local police station and complained about the attack, but to their utter frustration, the police refused to budge from their seats. For more than an hour the police refused to visit the mosque to rescue the victims and when they finally did reach the spot, they found three bodies lying in a pool of blood. Two of the dead were simply identified as that of Pappu and Joginder, while one other victim was still breathing. Three other farm workers are still missing, 3 days after the incident, and are presumed dead for all practical purposes. The Mosque Mob? By the time police reached the spot, all of them had returned back to their homes after their evening hunting expedition and were probably sleeping peacefully.
This is not a one-off incident, this is what is happening across Muzaffarnagar district. These villages have been turned into killing fields even as rumors fly thick in the air. Nobody knows for certain how many people have died in the violence. Till late Monday night, the official tally still stood at around 31, but nobody believes that tally; not the ordinary folks, not local newspaper men, not political netas and not even the cops themselves. Everybody talks in whispers, some suggest “it’s more than a hundred“, while others presume “at least 250 dead in 10 days“. When official arithmetic marries political convenience, it begets rumor – an illegitimate child of conscience. It is indeed ironic that more than 65 years after independence we cannot even count our dead. (For instance, we are none the wiser about the actual death toll in the neighbouring Uttarakhand even after 3 months).
Muzaffarnagar district in particular and Western Uttar Pradesh in general has been a communal tinderbox for ages, yet these riots are unprecedented for one major reason. Riots in India are largely an urban phenomenon, for in the cities anonymous men fight and kill other anonymous men and women – or at least that is what was always postulated by ‘great’ secular social scientists till now. In our villages there was supposed to be just ‘communal tension’ not ‘communal rioting’, for everyone knows everyone else. This idyllic narrative of our villages where ‘communal tension’ is sorted out by community elders and village panchayats has been turned upside down.
At the height of Babri Masjid conflict of 91-92-93, 90% of all rioting was centred around the cities. Even in India’s worst communal conflagration of the 1947 partition, violence was largely an urban phenomenon and the villages were mostly untouched – both in Punjab and Bengal. What has changed in 2013? Is this just a logical corollary of the neo-rurbanization phenomenon? Are there any external catalysts to this process of riot-flow from urban to rural?
Yes our villages are no longer isolated from the world and news spreads at lightening speeds here too. News is no longer a two-dimensional phenomenon, for it has acquired an audio-visual element to it. What is more, news is now an interactive medium in the world of mobile telephony, internet and social media. Thus villages can react with violence as a legitimate tool. But there are other catalysts too. For instance, visit any village in Muzaffarnagar and you are likely to find new settlements of outsiders – a euphemism for “Bangladeshis” – who have now become part of the village political-economy. Add to this, the growing reach of the global Ummah philosophy combined with the fanaticism angle of “Islam Katre mein hai” and you have a potent mixture for disaster. In this concoction, when you add a large haul of “sophisticated arms, like hand grenades and AK 47s” smuggled from the Nepal border, you get a deadly syrup of violent riots.
Over the last few months there have been numerous reports of deadly weapons being circulated in UP, but the government has taken absolutely no action till date. There have been rumours that a powerful minister of the region belonging to the minority community is hand-in-glove with this whole exercise of arming a community to the teeth. In fact, quite a few vehicles have been raided by the police with large quantities of illegal weapons, but the state administration has adopted a “blind eye” policy towards this whole phenomenon. Finally, on Sunday, when the army conducted flag marches in various villages, some of the villagers actually fired back at the army, which eventually led to army ceasing a large haul of illegal arms.
When the riots began, the Jats of western UP did not know what hit them. Usually the farming community of western UP is highly organized and has a strongly militant outlook to any sort of perceived injustice, but they were totally underprepared to face this systematic attack. Jats and Muslims have had a longstanding alliance in this region, so it came as a big surprise to many of them that the idea of anti-Kafirism had entered into Western UP with such violence. The first few days were a complete surprise for the Jats as they faced these relentless attacks by organized mobs with unheard of weapons.
Four days after the riots began, on the 31st of August, the Jats first called a Panchayat at Jaansaath Tehsil, but even after trying to organize themselves, they were hopelessly outmaneuvered. It was only after Narendra Tikait and Rakesh Tikait – both sons of the legendary farmer leader, Mahendra Singh Tikait – entered the scene that the fight back began in earnest. This is where the politics of UP underwent a radical shift in the span of just a fortnight.
First, BSP MP Kadir Rana, Congress leader Saiduzzaman and Samajwadi Party leader Rashid Siddiqui made a highly charged communal speech at Khaalapur on the 30th of August, which was attended by more than 15 thousand people, despite of prohibitory orders under section 144. Then the Mahapanchayat of 7th September was attended by Hukum Singh, Sangeet Som and Suresh Rana of BJP, former Congress MP Harinder Malik and the Tikait brothers of the BKU. This is the familiar pattern of the early 90′s when Muslim and Hindu leaders cutting across political parties joined forces to fight their battles. Thus Uttar Pradesh now stands polarized in totality, right from the villages up to the netas.
It is in this polarized state that the vultures landed 10 days after the riots started. It is natural for the vultures to feed on the dead and thus began a process of selective feeding based on their favored ideological positioning. The same Dilli News Media which was almost totally absent for 10 days when the violence was one-sided, went to Muzaffarnagar to create tales of minority victimhood. On Monday, suddenly our television screens were filled with skullcaps. Then Dilli media’s favorite whipping boy was brought out into open. Thus Muzaffarnagar riots found salvation in Amit Shah’s visit to Ayodhya and Narendra Modi’s ability to “polarize” the voters.
This is the underlying pathology of the Muzaffarnagar riots, wherein reality is twisted by the media vultures to suit their own ideological convenience. Instead of blaming the real culprit, Samajwadi Party government of Uttar Pradesh, MSM blames every known adversary of Dilli-news media – Social Media, Modi, BJP, Amit Shah etc. In the real world, communal fire is spreading from the cities to villages, but media is busy peddling victimhood.
http://centreright.in/2013/09/muzaffarnagar-where-riots-turned-into-pathology-from-anatomy/
Muzaffarnagar riots began with a girl's harassment
A Hindu girl was being harassed by a Muslim boy in the village of Kawal, just
10 km from Muzaffarnagar. Lazy Indian police refused to file a complaint and Two Jat boys reacted to it taking the matter into their own hands and in a fight that Muslim boy got killed (It is not clear whether that boy was killed. Some say he was killed and the others say he was seriously injured). When those two Jatt boys were trying to run away from the scene they
were caught by a Muslim mob and thrashed to death.
According to the local police superintendent, a resident of Malakpura village was told by his sister that a boy was harrasing her. Enraged at this, he, along with a friend, attacked the alleged with a knife and later shot him. As the two tried to flee the crime scene, they were overpowered by the villagers and were beaten to death
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Muzaffarnagar_riots
Now the thing is that two men of a particular community kill a sex offender. And in turn they are lynched by a mob of the other community, who think defending a woman is worthy of being killed by a mob.
A Muslim Youth molested a Hindu girl. The police refused to register the girl's complaint. The girl's brothers then punished the molester Muslim youth who was responsible, themselves. A mob of Muslims then killed the two brothers who had acted to save their sister's honour.
This was not the first time a girl was harassed by Muslims in the past many incidents of rapes by Muslims have been recorded in those areas making the matter worse.
Class IX student raped in Shamli; minor gang raped in Sambhal
http://www.indianinfidels.com/2013/09/class-ix-student-raped-in-shamli-minor.html
Muslim cleric arrested for abducting 11-year-old girl
http://www.indianinfidels.com/2013/09/muslim-cleric-arrested-for-abducting-11.html
Woman gang-raped by four men, filmed in Muzaffarnagar
http://www.indianinfidels.com/2013/09/women-gang-raped-by-4-muslim-men.html
Schoolgirl gangraped by 5 youths in Muzaffarnagar
http://www.indianinfidels.com/2013/09/schoolgirl-gangraped-by-5-youths-in.html
MLA Shahnawaz Rana accused of rape
http://www.indianinfidels.com/2013/09/muslim-mla-shahnawaz-rana-accused-of.html
Girl, school teacher sexually assaulted by Muslims in UP
http://www.indianinfidels.com/2013/09/girl-school-teacher-sexually-assaulted.html
Jat community organised a panchayat seeking justice for death of their two youth. They also demanded the removal of Superintendent of Police of Shamli district. They were unhappy with the police as they did not file the complaint of the girl's harassment which forced the boys to take the matter into their own hands.
Now this is where it all exaggerated.
After the Panchayat when the Hindu farmers were returning home they were attacked by Muslim mob triggering an angry backlash. Clashes then broke out in neighbouring villages on Sunday (as reported by ndtv).
According to the local police superintendent, a resident of Malakpura village was told by his sister that a boy was harrasing her. Enraged at this, he, along with a friend, attacked the alleged with a knife and later shot him. As the two tried to flee the crime scene, they were overpowered by the villagers and were beaten to death
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Muzaffarnagar_riots
Now the thing is that two men of a particular community kill a sex offender. And in turn they are lynched by a mob of the other community, who think defending a woman is worthy of being killed by a mob.
A Muslim Youth molested a Hindu girl. The police refused to register the girl's complaint. The girl's brothers then punished the molester Muslim youth who was responsible, themselves. A mob of Muslims then killed the two brothers who had acted to save their sister's honour.
This was not the first time a girl was harassed by Muslims in the past many incidents of rapes by Muslims have been recorded in those areas making the matter worse.
Class IX student raped in Shamli; minor gang raped in Sambhal
http://www.indianinfidels.com/2013/09/class-ix-student-raped-in-shamli-minor.html
Muslim cleric arrested for abducting 11-year-old girl
http://www.indianinfidels.com/2013/09/muslim-cleric-arrested-for-abducting-11.html
Woman gang-raped by four men, filmed in Muzaffarnagar
http://www.indianinfidels.com/2013/09/women-gang-raped-by-4-muslim-men.html
Schoolgirl gangraped by 5 youths in Muzaffarnagar
http://www.indianinfidels.com/2013/09/schoolgirl-gangraped-by-5-youths-in.html
MLA Shahnawaz Rana accused of rape
http://www.indianinfidels.com/2013/09/muslim-mla-shahnawaz-rana-accused-of.html
Girl, school teacher sexually assaulted by Muslims in UP
http://www.indianinfidels.com/2013/09/girl-school-teacher-sexually-assaulted.html
Jat community organised a panchayat seeking justice for death of their two youth. They also demanded the removal of Superintendent of Police of Shamli district. They were unhappy with the police as they did not file the complaint of the girl's harassment which forced the boys to take the matter into their own hands.
Now this is where it all exaggerated.
After the Panchayat when the Hindu farmers were returning home they were attacked by Muslim mob triggering an angry backlash. Clashes then broke out in neighbouring villages on Sunday (as reported by ndtv).
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