India sees worst violence in decades as mob attacks Muslim protesters
Mohammad Dilshad in Al-Hind hospital. Photo by Avinash Giri.
NEW DELHI — Last week President Donald Trump had arrived in India’s western state of Gujarat on his first state visit. He praised India's religious tolerance and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's effective governance. Around the time of his speech, India’s national capital witnessed its worst violent riots since 1984, when organized mobs massacred thousands of Sikhs.
Mohammad Dilshad, a 28-year-old man, was returning home in northeast Delhi from work in an auto-rickshaw with his four friends on Feb. 24. While he was only a few kilometers from his home, a mob of hundreds of people carrying sticks and shouting Hindu religious slogans stopped the auto-rickshaw, dragged them out, and thrashed them brutally.
“After they got hold of us, they started beating us mercilessly,” said Dilshad, who is admitted in Al-Hind hospital near his house. “We escaped somehow to save our lives.”
His right hand was broken with several injuries on his body. As the riots escalated, his family moved to a relative’s place in the neighboring area, which was safer. Later, they discovered their house was burnt down by the rioters.
Nearly 42 people were killed, including a Delhi cop, and more than 200 injured, most of them Muslims. The violence began when Hindu mobs clashed with Muslims in northeast Delhi protesting a new citizenship law that fast-tracks citizenship for religious minorities of all major faiths coming from some neighboring countries, except Islam. Many of the Delhi police, who report to Modi’s government, stood by and watched or escorted the mobs.
Indians nationwide have been protesting against the law since it was passed in December, feeling Modi’s Hindu nationalist government will couple the law with a proposed citizenship register to strip Muslims’ citizenship if they fail to provide required documentation, a common problem in India.
Since the violence began on Feb. 23, dozens of shops, homes and vehicles have been set aflame, as gangs of Hindus and Muslims have clashed with homemade guns and thrown petrol bombs and stones on each other.
The rioters set aflame dozens of vehicles. Photo by Avinash Giri.
An Intelligence Bureau officer, Ankit Sharma, living in Chandbagh, one of the riot-affected areas, was stabbed and dumped in the drain during the violence. His autopsy report suggested more than 200 injuries, including deep stab wounds, according to media reports.
Muslims residents in some parts of northeast Delhi, many of them women, were protesting against the citizenship law. On Saturday night, they tried to block a major road. On the next day, Kapil Mishra, a local leader of Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), reached the place and threatened to clear out the protesters by mobilizing his supporters. He warned the police that if they failed to clear the roads, his supporters would do it themselves after Trump leaves India.
After his remarks, the violence started as the evening approached. Gangs of Hindus and Muslims started throwing stones on each other. People from both the communities living in the area suffered damages. In a video that went viral on social media, a mosque is seen burning while a Hindu mob marches around it and hoists a flag to the Hindu god Hanuman.
Muslim residents in the area accuse the Delhi police of siding with Hindu mobs during the riots. Many allege that police were beating Muslim protesters but didn’t act against Hindu mobs.
Rubina Bano, a victim of the riots, in Al-Hind Hospital. Photo by Avinash Giri.
Rubina Bano, who is undergoing treatment in Al-Hind hospital, alleged that she was brutally beaten up by a paramilitary man as the forces cracked down on the protesters. She was among the protesters, she said, when the Hindu mobs started pelting stones at the crowd. Instead of acting against the mob, they started thrashing protesters. She is three months into pregnancy.
“I told them I’m pregnant,” said Bano, "but they didn't listen and kept beating me until I fell unconscious."
“She was severely injured when she came here,” said Dr. Meraj Ekram of Al-Hind Hospital, who is monitoring Bano’s case. “She needed 30 stitches to mend her wound. She has blood clots on different parts of her body.”
Al-Hind is a small private hospital in Brijpuri in northeast Delhi, the closest hospital to the riot-affected area. People with severe injuries are normally taken to nearby government hospitals, which are better equipped.
“Ours is a small hospital,” said Ekram, the owner of Al-Hind who also worked to treat the riot victims without charging them. “When Bano came, we didn’t have any woman in the staff to examine her wounds properly, and she told us that she was pregnant. It was a difficult situation for us.”
After the riots broke out, many injured victims started coming to the hospital.
“We started running out of our capacity,” said Ekram. "I kept calling for an ambulance to transfer patients to other hospitals, which are better, but didn't receive any help. We were left on our own."
“At such a time, we are our only hopes,” said Ekram. “We have to stand by each other.”
Avinash Giri is a Poynter-Koch fellow reporting for Religion Unplugged based in Delhi. He is a founding member of Stories Asia and a graduate of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication.