An interesting article related to this with the personal touch that people tend to crave:
Mohammad Munazir arrived in Delhi decades ago, escaping poverty in his native state of Bihar where his landless father worked on other people's farms for a pittance.
In the beginning, like millions of poor migrants, he lived in a tarped hovel on the fringes of the sprawling Indian capital. He worked in a book binding shop and moved to Khajuri Khas, a gritty neighbourhood in north-east Delhi, which has a literacy rate lower than the national average.
When the book binding shop folded, Mr Munazir decided to start something on his own. He bought a cart and rice and chicken and began selling home-cooked biryani. His business thrived - "I was a hero, everybody here loved my food" - cooking 15kg of biryani and making up to 900 rupees ($12.26; £9.60) a day. Things were finally looking up.
Barely three years ago, Mr Munazir and his brother, a local driver, pooled 2.4m rupees from their savings and bought a house - an unremarkable two-storey building in a narrow lane. Each floor had two small, windowless rooms and a tiny kitchen and bathroom. It was cramped for two families but it was home. They even installed an air-conditioner to keep the families comfortable in Delhi's sultry summers.
"It was a nest I finally built for my wife and six children after a lifetime of struggle," says Mr Munazir. "It was the only thing I wanted in life, it was my only dream come true."
The dream ended in flames on a bright, sunny Tuesday morning last week.
Mr Munazir's house was looted and torched by a mob of masked and helmeted young men, who swept into the mixed neighbourhood. They were armed with staves, hockey sticks, stones and bottles filled with petrol, and were chanting "Jai Shri Ram", or "Victory to Lord Ram", a greeting which has been turned into a murder cry by Hindu lynch mobs in recent years.
Khajuri Khas was one of the ragged neighbourhoods engulfed by Delhi's deadliest religious riots in decades, sparked by clashes over a controversial citizenship law. There were no killings here. But three days of fire and fury in north-east Delhi would eventually consume more than 40 lives, leave hundreds wounded and many missing. Millions of dollars worth of property was destroyed. And there's mounting evidence that Muslims were targeted in a planned manner, with numerous well-documented examples showing some police aiding the rioters, or simply looking the other way.
I wonder if Lord Ram was satisfied and considered it a victory?
There are some 200 homes and shops in riot-hit lanes of Khajuri Khas, a fifth of them owned by Muslims. However, it is virtually impossible to tell exactly which of the slim, serried structures that dot the untidy skyline are owned by Muslims, and which by their Hindu neighbours. The buildings even share common walls and continuous rooflines.
The riot is incredibly inaccurate, eh?
Overnight, deep distrust has set in between the two communities. Opposite Mr Munazir's now-burnt home is a two-storey building owned by a Hindu neighbour who trades in betel leaves and lives with two sons, who work for a public transport company. For years, Mr Munazir says, the neighbours have coexisted peacefully. "I have even lived as a tenant in his house. He could have come out and tried to reason with the mob," Mr Munazir says. "Maybe my house would have been saved."
This is interesting to me... I feel like his idea of having the man come out and reason with the mob is not a particularly compelling one. This would be the sort of thing that only a hero would do. Can you really expect your neighbor to also be your hero?
But it appears some Hindus had their hearts in the right place:
On the fateful morning when the mob began spilling into the neighbourhood, Mr Munazir felt a stab of sudden fear. He called the police and fire service. A local Hindu school teacher was trying to placate the armed men and turn them away. "Don't worry, nothing will happen. You go home," he told the anxious Muslims. A young Hindu man was trying to stop a mob from entering another lane. But the rioters refused to listen to their entreaties, and soon surged into the lane. It was then Mr Munazir ran back into his house and bolted the front door.
There were also police doing their job:
The mob tried to break open his door, and then turned their attention to a mosque a few doors away, throwing petrol bombs into the building. The police, says Mr Munazir, arrived six hours later, and led the Muslim residents to safety even as the rioters looked on, sometimes slapping and stoning the evacuees. As the newest refugees of religious rioting in India left the lane with the police, the mob entered their homes, burning and looting at will. "You are lucky to be alive," a policeman told Mr Munazir. "We will take you where you want."
BBCIt's interesting to think about it in the sense that... maybe there will actually be a lot of HIndus who want nothing to do with living in Muslim neighborhoods or having Muslim neighbors because of these riots. Practical concerns will actually drive a wedge between populations.
One might even say that it is this that has already driven a wedge between black and white people in many Western nations. Many whites are idealistic and do want to crush racism, but they are honestly concerned for the safety of their neighborhood and real estate value. This might seem like a trivial concern in the face of some national struggle, but are you willing to lose $40,000+ when you sell your home and have an abysmal retirement so that you can tell people in your low-income elder care that you did the right thing in between naps and cheap soup?
The success of European civilization is due to a complex mix of geography, history, culture, and population genetics.
- By paeng
- By wat0n