Sambhal: Another city split into green and saffron 

On November 24, violence broke out in Sambhal, Uttar Pradesh, after a team conducted a second survey of the Shahi Jama Masjid, to ascertain whether it was built on the remains of a temple. Four people died, even as the police claim only to have fired tear gas and rubber pellets, blaming people for carrying country-made pistols instead. Samridhi Tewari reports on the city, where 31 people have been arrested

At the centre of Sambhal city lies the white-and-green, four-minaret Shahi Jama Masjid, a grand 16th century structure, built during Babar’s reign. It is Tuesday morning (November 26, 2024), two days after violence broke out in the three lanes that converge on the green-domed structure. In the central lane, from where the people allegedly surged, all the houses are locked.

The wires to CCTV cameras have been yanked out. The mosque bears witness to the violence — freshly marked gashes scar its paint, and cane rods and broken concrete dot its entry slope.

A couple of homes down the lane running perpendicular to the mosque show some stirring of activity. A municipal truck comes around to clean the drains and collect garbage. A middle-aged man in a skull cap and a white kurta-pyjama peeps out of his house, leaves his dustbin out, and quickly goes back in, locking the door behind him.

There is some construction work in a couple of plots, but unlike in Delhi, just 160 kilometres away, where GRAP IV regulations have disallowed building work because of high pollution levels, in Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal, most lanes are deserted. The fear is palpable.

In contrast, on Kot Purvi, the lane running parallel to the mosque on its eastern side, the shops are open. People read newspapers; poojas are being conducted — it’s business, almost as usual. Here, almost every house has a saffron flag and wall paintings of Hanuman, Shiva, or Ganesha.

Kot Garbi, the main market that sees the maximum activity in the city, is shut. Most of the boards indicate they are Muslim-run. The police have put a ban until November 30, on the entry of any “outsider, social organisation, or public representative”, thereby restricting political leaders from visiting. The city is a fortress now, with at least 10 police personnel every 100 metres or so.

The government suspended the Internet for a week. In 2023 India had the dubious distinction of leading the world in mobile and broadband shutdowns, as per a study by Access Now, a non-profit that works on digital rights. In October, when communal violence broke out in Bahraich in eastern U.P., the Internet was disconnected.

A build-up

What most people across India saw of Sambhal city on Sunday, November 24, were images of violence: tear gas, stone pelting, firing, arson. In the videos that went viral, the police were seen pulling children out of the crowd that had gathered after a second survey was conducted at the mosque, to determine whether under it was a temple of Harihar, considered the reincarnation of the Hindu gods Shiva and Vishnu.

The wuzu khana in the mosque, the ablution tank used before prayer, had been drained, allegedly to check the depth, leading to rumours of the mosque being dug up.

On Sunday (November 24, 2024), as the crowd built up during the survey that took a couple of hours in the morning, Zafar Ali, the President of the Shahi Jama Masjid committee, realised that everyone, including the people and the police, was on edge.

“I went outside to try and convince people that the mosque was not being broken, and while many left after being reassured, there were still some who stayed on, enraged,” he says. He realised that in case of even a slight skirmish, both the people and the police would react.

In the violence that ensued, four, including a 17-year-old boy, were killed and many were injured. Of the 2,500 people who were booked in seven first information reports (FIRs), 300 have been identified, including the Samajwadi Party’s (SP) MP Zia Ur Rehman Barq and MLA Iqbal Mahmood’s son, Sohail Mahmood.

While the SP has said that Barq was in Bengaluru at the time, the U.P. police have alleged in the FIR that he delivered a “provocative speech” on November 22 in the mosque, and incited people through WhatsApp.

Sohail, according to the police, incited the crowd at the time of the survey. People have been booked on charges of rioting, assault on public servants, promoting enmity, and damaging public property. Two women were arrested for allegedly throwing stones from their rooftops.

Similar to the protests in 2020 against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, the U.P. government has decided to make protesters pay for damage to public property. Posters of ‘stone pelters’ — who police claim to have identified through CCTV records — will be displayed at public places. Sambhal police say the mob attacked them with batons, hockey sticks, firearms, and tear gas shells.

The police took Ali’s phone and had called him in for questioning. A police officer says Ali had “leaked information” regarding the second survey to the people, leading to the violence. However, civil court orders are public documents.

Huddles of fear

Naeem, 28, had a sweet shop in Fatehullah Sarai, about a kilometre away from the main mosque. “The oil to fry the samosas was over, so he left to buy oil from a wholesale market near the Shahi Jama Masjid, at around 8 a.m.,” says Ishrat Jahan, 25, a neighbour, who now speaks on the family’s behalf, after media harassment. Naeem was to then head to the sweet shop for a regular business day. “In the afternoon, we got a call saying his body had been found on the road,” Jahan says. He had bullet injuries near his chest, with entry and exit wounds, indicating a shooting at close range, say the police.

The Commissioner, Aunjaneya Kumar Singh and Sambhal District Magistrate Rajender Pensiya, claim that at about 11 a.m. the mob began pelting stones from three directions.

“Police used tear gas and rubber pellets to control the crowd. The mob set fire to three cars and a bike, and began firing with country-made pistols,” says the Superintendent of Police Krishan Bishnoi. In the chaos, he says the police PRO was shot in the foot, a Deputy Collector had a fracture, and the circle officer was injured, along with 20 other officers.

Singh notes that most in the crowd were “young, unaware of the consequences, and influenced by provocateurs”. The Deputy Inspector General of police Muniraj G., says that children were used by the mob to throw stones.

In his two-bedroom house, with a seven-foot courtyard, Tehzeeb, 22, Naeem’s wife, observes iddah, a period of mourning after a husband dies. North India’s winter is not yet bone-chilling, though the atmosphere is heavy with gloom. She has four children, all below 12. “He had dreams to make them doctors or engineers,” Jahan says. The rice and potatoes cooked for a meal rot in a basket. Naeem’s mother wakes up, screaming for her dead son.

The family claims the police is harassing them. About 20 women gathered around Tehzeeb say the police knock on their doors at 11.30 at night, asking them to take the case back, or to abusively tell them he wasn’t shot dead. Naeem’s post-mortem report has not been released yet.

Naeem’s brother, Tasleem, claims the police, amid threats, took his thumb impression on a blank piece of paper. “I am illiterate. I don’t know what the police will write on the paper,” he says.

SP leader Akhilesh Yadav reacted on X, saying in Hindi, “Threatening somebody and taking their thumb impression on a blank piece of paper is a crime. The Supreme Court should take immediate cognisance and punish those responsible.”

Life disrupted

Most of the people involved in the violence had come to the market to either open their shops or to buy goods. Bilal Ansari, 22, who ran a clothing shop next to the Shahi Jama Masjid, was about to start his day. He lived with his parents, four brothers, and two sisters in Bada Moharram, not more than 3 km from his shop.

Bilal’s brother, Salman, 26, who works as a tailor, got a call that November morning. “The caller told me Bilal was in hospital. When I rushed to the emergency ward, all I could do was hold his hand. The last sentence my brother spoke was that he was shot by the police,” says Salman. Soon after, Bilal became unresponsive. “We rushed him to another hospital in Moradabad, [40 km away], but by then he had succumbed to his injuries. How will we ever go back to our lives? The police will never listen to us,” Salman says.

While Salman talks, sitting on a plastic chair at home, a group of 20 men of all ages gather around for support. Every time he explains the sequence of events, a neighbour says, “Musalmaano ko kaun nyaay dilwaega? (Who will give justice to the Muslims?)”

A sense of unease

Savita Rastogi, 63, got married and came to live in Sambhal in 1975. A year later, similar violence erupted in the neighbourhood, when the mosque’s maulana was killed by a Hindu man. She recalls arson and a curfew-like period for a month. “Nothing good comes out of violence,” Savita says, while on her way to a neighbourhood temple managed by her family.

Based on what her in-laws told her, Savita says the mohalla (neighbourhood) is over 300 years old. Earlier, it had a few shops that dealt in timber, but slowly, people began to deal in peppermint oil and set up sugar refineries. When she first moved here, she remembers going up to the terrace of her house in Kot Purvi and looking around. “Poora khandar tha (Everything was in ruins). Only the mosque stood out. I wondered why I had moved here, from Meerut,” she says.

After the violence and loot, people began moving to other cities. Moradabad and Delhi were developing in the 1980s and 1990s. The market’s map changed as more and more smaller shops began opening up in Sambhal for daily needs.

Savita also remembers stories around the Harihar temple, but says, “Hindus have enough temples to go to. This controversy has caused more problems for people living here. People have died. Today, there is so much media presence. Tomorrow the media will leave, but how will Hindus and Muslims ever go back to normalcy?” Now, most shops owned by Muslims are shut. Savita says, “I used to ‘take udhaar (goods on credit)’ from our Muslim brothers. I’m concerned about whether they are ok.”

With a red teeka (mark) on his forehead and an aum locket around his neck, Arpit Rastogi, 35, is finishing up a puja at his hardware store. “This market was the life of the city. Look how silent it has become. Now, people don’t even talk to each other,” Arpit says. He worries that the ongoing survey will deepen the divide between Hindus and Muslims. “Taking away land hurts, but what are we doing now?” he asks. The Hindu locality is predominantly populated by the Rastogis, a community involved in business and trade.

Digging up the old

The survey of the mosque to determine whether a temple lay beneath, was based on a petition in the District and Sessions Court Sambhal at Chandausi, filed by advocate Hari Shankar Jain. His son, Vishnu Shankar Jain’s name also features in the petition, as does Mahant Rishiraj Giri of Sambhal’s Kaila Devi temple. The Jains are involved in similar petitions on the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi in Ayodhya, the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi, and the Krishna Janma Bhoomi-Shahi Idgah mosque in Mathura.

The petition referenced the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958, that stipulates that the “public shall have a right of access to any protected monument”. The petition was filed on November 19 morning and the court had ordered the first survey of the mosque, which took place that evening, uncommon for all three events to take place on the same day. Now, the Supreme Court has directed the Sambhal district court to wait until the Shahi Jama Masjid Committee has a chance to approach the Allahabad High Court.

Areeb Uddin Ahmed, an advocate practising in Uttar Pradesh’s Allahabad High Court explains that the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991, aims to uphold India’s secular fabric by prohibiting the conversion of a place of worship’s religious character as it existed on August 15, 1947. Social media was also rife with opinions on how in May 2022, Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, who later went on to become India’s 50th Chief Justice, had allowed for an “ascertainment of a religious character of a place”, giving way to surveys of several mosques.

The U.P. government has constituted a three-member committee to conduct an enquiry into the violence.

As people try to put their lives back in order, albeit in fear, local YouTubers thrust microphones into their faces, asking for answers. They accost burqa-clad women, who avoid the mics. Later, one of women tells The Hindu, “The atmosphere is full of fear and hate. We don’t know if anything we say will be twisted and published on social media.”

Published - November 30, 2024 01:20 am IST