Outlook English - Print Subscribers Copy Outlook English, 16 April 2018 | Page 34

STENCH & SMOKE
At The Fire
Ceremonies
PTI
Worshipping the ballot box, the BJP aims for a Hindu
awakening in Bengal; the TMC plays along, then hits out
by Dola Mitra in Raniganj
and Asansol
F
ROM the charred remains of
homes in the Hill Bosti slums of
Raniganj, it is hard to distinguish
between a Muslim hut and a H
­ indu
one. Except perhaps for spaces of
worship in individual shanties
that the flames somehow mis­sed. Those
fires were lit by mobs that cha­
rged
through the neighbourhood after com-
munal clashes broke out during Ram
Navami celebrations on March 26-27.
Take the house of 50-year-old widow
China Badyanath, that was in the way of
the rioting arsonists. She sits howling,
hand on her head in a gesture of extreme
hopelessness, atop the rubble—a tangled
mass of burnt logs, pieces of soot-covered
tin, its sharp, blackened edges jagging out.
Nearby lie pieces of a trunk, its lid blown
off, and which contained her life’s posses-
sions—a few faded saris and some cash, a
few thousand rupees, which she had
saved up from her job as a domestic help.
A rickety plywood cupboard for groc­
ery—a sack of rice and some dal—is now a
heap of cinders; the grain which had spilt
34 OUTLOOK 16 April 2018
out had got cooked in the intense heat; a
splatter of dried lentil soup stains the
floor. Incredibly, one corner of the tiny
room, China’s pujor ghor, or prayer corner,
remains intact. As framed pictures of
Durga, Laxmi, Sara­
swati and Radha- outburst of violent hat­red. They can only
Krishna stare benignly back, it even point to the incident which triggered it.
A procession on the occasion of Ram
seems possible that they were intention-
Navami was passing through Raniganj
ally spared by the attackers.
“Hindus and Muslims of this locality when, according to eyewitnesses, “out
lived like brothers and sisters for...for- of nowhere, stones and bricks started
ever,” says “a Hindu housewife”, as she being pelted on the marchers”. Others
identifies herself. While religious beliefs recount having heard “provocative
were dif­­f­­erent, she says, no one inter- slogans” hurled at the minority com-
fered in other’s opinions. She cannot say munity. Says one Muslim youth, “What
what broke such perfect amity, but will they were saying is too insulting to
not deny rising feelings of hurt and hat­ even rep­eat”. But, by some acco­unts,
the exhortation maro,
red. “Look what ‘they’ did
maro were repeated after
to us,” she hisses, pointing
every strident cry of ‘Jai
to the wailing China.
The riots in
Shri Ram’ by the crowd
Neither she nor hundr­eds
that was brandishing
of other victims, from both Raniganj and
sticks, swords and tride­
communities, of the recent Asansol help
nts. At some point, bombs
communal clashes which the TMC firm
exploded and gunshots
ravaged Rani­ganj and spr­ up its position,
were heard; people were
ead like wildfire to other
scattered in all directions.
areas of Bengal, in