Shamli

Neither ‘Lynching’, Nor ‘Hate Crime’, a Muslim Scrap Dealer’s Death Is Now Cursed to Obscurity

Uttar Pradesh police, which lodged an FIR against two Muslim journalists and three others for calling the incident a “lynching” on social media, have not provided a reason as to how Firoz Qureshi died.

Jalalabad (Shamli): Jalalabad, a Muslim-majority qasba in western Uttar Pradesh’s Shamli, shot to infamy for the death of a Muslim scrap worker in early July this year.

A number of reports indicated that Firoz Qureshi, around 30-years-old, may have been lynched by a Hindu mob on July 4, 2024. But the state police soon lodged a first information report against two Muslim journalists and three others for calling the incident a “lynching” on social media. This move was criticised by journalist unions and many in the civil society.

Since then, Firoz’s death has polarised many in the region. While his family members believe that he died owing to injuries caused by the alleged beating that he faced at the hands of a Hindu mob, others have been inclined to speculate differently. Consequently, even after a fortnight, Firoz’s death has remained shrouded in mystery.

Business as usual

The newly-built and bustling alleys of Jalalabad market appear to have moved on, mirroring a usual business day, largely unaffected by the death of a poor scrap worker. Small grocery stores, makeshift eateries, repair shops, and fruit vendors make up the market.

Tucked inside its narrow lanes is a dense neighbourhood where the predominantly Muslim working classes struggle everyday to make a living. Firoz lived here with his wife, and his three children – two boys and an infant daughter. Their eldest is around five-years-old.

Firoz’s wife has not stepped out of her home ever since Firoz passed. His sons are scampering around, looking for a stray mobile phone to play video games on. The rest of his family are distraught.

Arshad Qureshi, a cattle trader and one of Firoz’s brothers, seeks insaaf, or justice, for his brother. “Many influential people have come to meet us since Firoz’s death. We have only asked for insaaf and a fair investigation. We do not expect any compensation from anyone,” Arshad says, adding that the whole family is worried about the future of Firoz’s wife and children.

Amjad and his brothers, along with their families, had gone to Hasanpur Lohari, another qasba a few kilometres away, to attend their nephew’s wedding on July 4. It was around late evening, when Amjad returned home, that he was informed by an acquaintance that the police had detained Firoz for his alleged involvement in a scuffle. He immediately reached the police chowki, where some policemen handed Firoz over to him.

“He was half-naked, and almost unconscious. His body had marks that clearly showed he was beaten up,” Amjad tells The Wire.

“The police said that some residents of Ghaasmandi had complained that Firoz was creating trouble in the area. So, the police had picked him up,” Amjad says.

Firoz’s brother Afzal. Photo: Video screengrab/The Wire

A loudspeaker and a wedding gift

When Amjad enquired with people of the neighbourhood about what conspired during the day, he was told that some Hindus in the adjacent mohalla Ganga Aryanagar, also known as Ghaasmandi, had beaten him up after an argument over the use of a loudspeaker. Ganga Aryanagar is one of the few localities in Jalalabad with a mixed population.

Unlike other mohallas of Jalalabad, Ganga Aryanagar is markedly prosperous. Wholesale grocery stores owned by Bania and Punjabi communities, a sparkly clean Jain temple, a school and a guest house managed by the temple trust, and a string of well-maintained houses owned by both Hindus and Muslims populate it.

According to Amjad, Firoz as a scrap dealer and like any other street vendor, used a loudspeaker that played a pre-recorded vendors’ call urging people to sell scrap to him. On July 4, Amjad says, Firoz left home early in the morning on his usual rounds. “But he could not do any business all day, so he decided to go for another round to the mohalla near the Jain Mandir at around 5 in the evening. That was the last we saw him before all of us left for the wedding. Firoz told us that he would attend the wedding reception a day later, on July 5. He hoped to make some money for a wedding gift,” Amjad tells The Wire.

Cut to 9 pm, Amjad brought Firoz to his home in a semi-conscious state. He said that by the time he and his brothers brought in a doctor, he was dead. “He couldn’t move, he was asphyxiated,” Kaif, Firoz’s nephew, adds.

The Jain Mandir square where the incident allegedly happened.

Kaif says that a few Muslim acquaintances who lived near the Jain Mandir told him that Firoz was dragged to the Jain Mandir chauraha (square) and beaten up after an argument ensued between Firoz and some residents over the noise that the Firoz’s loudspeaker made. Kaif immediately showed a picture showing Firoz begging a crowd to let him go. The picture had the daily Punjab Kesari’s watermark stamped on it. He also showed a video that showed what appeared to be blood clots on Firoz’s body and small wounds but no blood stains. The Wire could not confirm whether the video was shot before Firoz died or after his death.

By the time Firoz died, his family and a number of neighbours had gathered at the local police chowki. By this time, the eldest brother in the family, Afzal Qureshi, had arrived to speak with the police. “Many amongst us were feeling extremely angry over the way Firoz had been beaten. They urged us to block the roads. But I was categorical that our fight should be legal and peaceful and we will seek justice through proper means,” Afzal tells The Wire.

Kaif, Firoz’s nephew.

An FIR emerges

Afzal narrates what he learnt about the episode leading to Firoz’s death. “I am illiterate. I told the police what I had heard, while one among them was noting down my narration,” Afzal said. Afzal’s version became the basis of the FIR lodged by the police on July 5.

The FIR, and subsequently the post-mortem report, later became the primary factors that have created confusion over the death of Firoz.

Curiously, Afzal’s version is worded quite peculiarly. For instance, this is how Afzal is said to have described his brother Firoz, “…Yesterday, on 04/07/24 at around 08:00 pm, my brother Firoz who used to take drugs occasionally (kabhi kabhaar nasha kar leta tha) had gone to Ganga Aryangar for some work…”

The FIR then goes on to quote Afzal as saying that residents of Ganga Aryanagar – Pinki, Pankaj, Rajendra and their associates – beat up Firoz, before he was rescued by two persons named Ikram and Arshad with great difficulty. The FIR then added Afzal as saying that Firoz died at 11 pm and urging strict action against the accused persons.

On being asked about his description of Firoz as an addict, Afzal says, “When I was narrating the incident, a police personnel asked me whether he used drugs. I replied he used drugs occasionally. So, the police insisted that it should be included in the complaint.”

“Let us assume for once that he used drugs. But is it justified that a person who uses drugs should be flogged in the public,” Kaif asks.

Also read: Uttar Pradesh: 11 Days After Death by Lynching, Muslim Man Charged With Dacoity, Assault of Woman

Whither mob lynching?

Meanwhile, the police has dismissed all claims that termed Firoz’s death as a result of “mob lynching”, and has foregrounded aspects of Firoz’s “drug addiction” and his “unruly behaviour” in an intoxicated state. The post-mortem report also does not indicate any “wounds” on Firoz’s body that could have been the consequence of the beating he allegedly faced.

Speaking with The Wire, the Station House Officer of Thana Bhawan police station, Jitendra Kumar Sharma, who is also the investigating officer (IO) in the case, says, “Firoz, in a state of intoxication, forcibly entered a number of houses, following which residents of the locality complained to the police. He died after three hours of the incident.”

Asked why the police handed over Firoz to his family members instead of registering a case against his alleged trespassing, Sharma says, “The residents were not willing to register a case. As he was in a bad state, possibly because of an overdose, we thought it fit to hand him over to his family members.”

Sharma adds that the police will act according to the evidence gathered in the case. “The post-mortem report clearly says that there were no wounds found in his body that could have resulted in death. The viscera from his body has been preserved. We will take any further action after the viscera report comes.”

He insists that the reports declaring Firoz’s death as “lynching” are merely rumours and urges people to restrain from it, as such claims may “disrupt communal harmony in the region.”

Sharma says that there is no evidence to suggest that Firoz was beaten up, nor are there any eyewitnesses to buttress such a claim. The initial reports suggesting a scuffle over a loudspeaker or Firoz’s possible attempt at theft are also rejected by Sharma, who says that the evidence gathered after the initial probe did not back any such claim.

Another police official in Jalalabad, who did not want to be named, tells The Wire that no camera footage has been found where the residents were seen beating up Firoz. Notably, the Jain Mandir square where Firoz was allegedly beaten up has a number of CCTV cameras installed by the temple establishment.

As a result, the police have not arrested the accused persons named by Afzal. Firoz’s family members resent the fact that no action has been taken against the accused persons, but hope that the final post-mortem report will clear the air.

No ‘hate crime’, no cause of death

As the confusion over Firoz’s death has only exacerbated, multiple questions remain. Why has the police delayed the testing of viscera? Despite the sensitive nature of the case, the police have shown no hurry in clearing the clouds of confusion around Firoz’s death, and have instead resorted to booking social media users and journalists for disrupting communal harmony.

There are also some obvious discrepancies. While Afzal and others in the family said that Firoz left home for Jain Mandir around late evening at around 5 pm, the FIR notes that he left home towards Ganga Aryanagar only at 8 pm. The police claim that Firoz died three hours later at around 11 pm but have not clarified the number of hours that Firoz spent in the police chowki – something his family members appear to have no clear understanding about either. Only a clear timeline of the day can clear such doubts.

The family members say that Firoz went to Ganga Aryanagar on his usual round to collect scrap but the FIR notes that he went there “for some work”. The motive of Firoz’s trespassing, too, has not been established. The police have not said anything about Firoz’s possible attempt at theft, even as it does not appear to have verified the alleged fight that ensued over the loudspeaker noise.

While the police have dismissed a case of “hate crime”, they have not established a cause of death as yet. This has further intensified speculation on the matter, including the police’s own guess that Firoz may have died because of an overdose.

In Jalalabad, most people were tightlipped or claim to know little about what conspired on July 4. Both Muslim and Hindu residents express their distress over the incident that has garnered attention all over, but most also say that they got to know about it only a day or two later. A Hindu resident in Ganga Aryanagar tells The Wire, “We came to know about the incident only the next day. We heard that someone was trying to break into a Jain household.” They say that Muslims and Hindus have always lived together in the locality, and it was improbable that something like “lynching” could happen here.

Another Hindu resident says, “Both Hindus and Muslims live together here but barely interact with each other. But our businesses surely overlap and we work together in such times.”

Meanwhile, even as journalists have been booked, a video showing a Hindu godman justifying the “lynching” of a “Muslim thief” has become viral in the region. Several Hindutva activists elsewhere, too, have supported such “instant justice” for “Muslim thieves”.

As both the police and Jalalabad residents have struggled to name even a single eyewitness and produce conclusive evidence in the case, the scrap dealer Firoz’s death has been cursed to obscurity.

Shamli: UP Police Face Backlash for Slapping Criminal Cases on Journalists Over Mob Lynching Claims

“He used to pick up iron scraps, tin sheets, old mobile phones and other scrap items. They said accused persons objected to his use of the mike. There was a dispute over it and things took a turn for the worse. They asked him to play it elsewhere. They beat him up badly,” said Afzal, brother of Firoz who was allegedly murdered.

New Delhi: The Uttar Pradesh police is facing widespread condemnation for filing a criminal case against five individuals, including two Muslim journalists, who posted on social media about the killing of a Muslim scrap vendor in Shamli district, alleging it was a case of mob lynching. While the police have registered an FIR against three persons, all Hindus, for the alleged murder of Firoz, some glaring questions remain unsolved four days after the incident. The case was not registered for murder but under Section 105 of the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita, culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

The police have warned that they will take additional legal action against social media users who continue to challenge their version of events and suggest that the incident may have been a lynching, despite their denial of such claims. What’s unusual, however, is that even after so many days, no senior officer from the district has issued a video statement over the incident, as is the police procedure.

On July 6, the Shamli police have lodged an FIR against journalists Zakir Ali Tyagi and Wasim Akram Tyagi and three others — Asif Rana, Saif Allahabadi and Ahmad Raza Khan— for describing Firoz’s death as a case of mob lynching on social media site X. They were booked for promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion and for statements conducing to public mischief. These charges are covered by Sections 196 and 353 of the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita. A day later on July 7, police lodged another FIR on similar charges against an unidentified journalist of Hindustani Media, a little-known social media channel.

Also read: Gujarat: Angry with Muslims Playing Well, Pro-Hindutva Locals Lynch Muslim Man at Cricket Match

The incident took place on July 4. According to the FIR lodged at Thana Bhawan police station on the written complaint of the deceased person’s brother Afzal, a cattle trader, Firoz had gone to the Arya Nagar locality in the city to purchase scrap items from locals at around 8 pm. For some reason, in the FIR Afzal mentions that his brother “used to take drugs sometimes.” “Kabhi kabar nasha kar leta tha,” he said in Hindi. Afzal alleged that in Arya Nagar, three persons — Pinky, Pankaj and Rajendra, sons of one Dharmpal — and their associates assaulted Firoz. Two persons, Arshad and Ikram, brought him home where he died at around 11 pm, said the FIR. Sources said that Firoz was rescued by police from the site where he was assaulted after locals dialled 112, he was taken to the nearest police outpost from where his family members took him home.

The sketchy FIR was lodged on the afternoon of July 5 even though the incident took place late evening on July 4. Afzal told The Wire that Firoz had gone out to purchase old or damaged items with a loudspeaker attached to his pushcart, as is the culture in small towns across the country.

Asked if Firoz was targeted for his Muslim identity, Afzal, who was attending a nephew’s wedding when the incident happened, said he was not sure. “Allah only knows what motivated them,” he said.

A photo of Firoz, sitting on the ground outside with a dazed expression purportedly while he was being beaten up by some individuals, was widely shared on social media. It was not clear from the picture, who were around him and at what time the photo was taken.

Afzal claimed that locals had shot videos of the assault but nobody was willing to share it. “From the photo it is clear,” said Afzal, when asked if he believed it was a case of lynching.

If his brother did not die of injuries following the assault, how else did he die, wondered Afzal.

“When he was brought home, he was in a bad state and breathed his last after a short while. And now, they are saying that the post-mortem shows no injuries. Only God knows how this is possible!” said Afzal.

Thana Bhawan station house officer (SHO), Rajendra Prasad Vishishth told The Wire that the viscera of the body had been sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory and its result was awaited. When asked what prima facie investigation revealed as the cause of death, the officer stressed that there were no injury marks on the body whatsoever.

Afzal said that when Firoz was brought home, they tried to make him drink some water. “But he could not swallow it and spat it out. There is a doctor next door and we waited 10-15 minutes so that he could feel better before we took him to the doctor. But he passed away before that,” said Afzal.

Soon after Firoz’s murder created outrage on social media, where users saw it through the prism of the increasing hate crimes against Muslims in the country, Shamli police issued a note dismissing the theory of mob-lynching.

According to the police, on the night of July 4, Firoz had allegedly trespassed into the house of one Rajendra in Jalalabad’s Arya Nagar in a state of intoxication. “A scuffle took place between both sides,” Shamli police said, without explaining why Firoz had allegedly trespassed into the house at a busy time in the evening. Police said that after the scuffle, Firoz’s family took him home, where he later died.

What’s baffling is that although the police admit that there was a “hathapai (scuffle)” between Firoz and the other side, leading to his death a few hours later, they claimed that there were no serious injuries on his body. Citing the post-mortem report, which has not been shared with the media or the family members of the victim, police said there were “no apparent serious injuries” found on his body. “The death was not caused by any injuries,” police said.

The viscera of the body have been preserved and its report is awaited, added police.

Also read: Uttar Pradesh: 11 Days After Death by Lynching, Muslim Man Charged With Dacoity, Assault of Woman

Shamli police have issued several statements emphasising that the incident was not a case of lynching of a Muslim man by accused belonging to the Hindu community.

“There was no incident of mob lynching,” police said.

While repeatedly threatening action against social media users for referring to the incident as mob lynching, police alleged that an attempt was being made to spread “communal hatred” through “misleading” tweets giving it a communal colour.

Legal action would be taken against those making posts with the “sole intent of provoking communal hatred without any consideration of the ground facts,” said police.

On July 5, locals staged a protest demanding action against the accused persons. Thana Bhawan MLA from the Rashtriya Lok Dal, a BJP ally, Ashraf Ali Khan on July 5 described Firoz’s “murder” after a “brutal beating” as a “serious crime”. Khan appealed to the police and the administration to take legal action against the accused persons and punish them.

Two days later, however, Khan changed his tone and said that it was “not correct to portray the incident as mob lynching.” “An atmosphere of communal harmony prevails in our town. I demand from the administration that it should take appropriate action while keeping an eye on all aspects related to the incident. I appeal to the people of the town and the countrymen to avoid posting provocative and misleading posts on social media sites in connection with the incident,” said Khan.

DIGIPUB, a coalition of 90 digital media outlets and independent journalists, demanded that the Uttar Pradesh police immediately rescind the FIR against the journalists booked in the case. “Registering an FIR against journalists sharing public information in public interest is a grave overreach and misuse of criminal laws and an assault on press freedom that has a chilling effect,” said DIGIPUB in a statement.

Uttar Pradesh police must rescind the FIR against five people including 2 journalists who posted about the death of a Muslim man in Shamli. pic.twitter.com/JpAXoPhEd3

— DIGIPUB News India Foundation (@DigipubIndia) July 8, 2024

Notably, India has been ranked 159 out of 180 countries in the 2024 World Press Freedom Index released by Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

Little Known About Mughal-Era ‘Mosque’ in UP Where Muslim Youth Was Booked for Offering Azaan

While local Muslims believe the structure was a mosque, some Hindus say it used to be a fort belonging to Hindu rulers before the conquest by Mughals and Afghans.

New Delhi: A 21-year-old Muslim man in Uttar Pradesh’s Shamli district was booked for offering azaan at a dilapidated structure with a contested character, believed by locals to date back to the Mughal era. He was arrested, and later granted bail, after being charged for allegedly creating enmity between communities.

While The Wire could not independently verify the estimated age of the structure, those concerned with the matter claimed, without any documentary evidence, that it was 250-300 years old. While local Muslims believe the structure was a mosque, some Hindus say it used to be a fort belonging to Hindu rulers before the conquest by Mughals and Afghans.

Umar Qureshi’s act of offering namaz at the site allegedly violated a British-era mutual understanding between Hindus and Muslims in the region that neither community would use the premises for religious purposes or alter its status quo, said Neeraj Kumar, the husband of the local pradhan, on whose complaint an FIR was lodged.

The structure is located in Ahata Gos Garh (alternatively spelt Ahata Gausgarh) village in Thana Bhawan block of Shamli district in western UP. On Friday, January 5, police lodged an FIR against one Umar Qureshi, a resident of Jalalabad town, 5-6 km away, for allegedly offering namaz at the site held by him to be a Mughal-era mosque. The village Ahata Gos Garh has no Muslim residents, said Kumar.

Qureshi was booked under Section 505 (2) of the Indian Penal Code (statements creating or promoting enmity, hatred or ill will between classes) and Section 67 of the Information Technology Act. According to the FIR, a copy of which is with The Wire, on Friday at around 2 pm, Qureshi allegedly offered namaz at the site and “with the intention of spoiling mutual harmony in the society” clicked a video and photos of the act and shared it on his Facebook and Instagram pages. He allegedly made them viral on social media.

Apparently, this was not the first time he prayed at the site. A page matching Qureshi’s identity on Instagram, with over 44,000 followers, shows that his last dozen-odd posts were dedicated to the ‘mosque’ and appealing to people to widely share information about the poor condition of the structure. A video from December 29 (also a Friday) uploaded by him on his page showed him, barefoot, offering the azan while facing the structure. Large piles of cow dung had been spread out to dry at the foot of the unutilised structure as well as in the compound facing it.

In his written complaint, Kumar described the site as a 200- to 300-year-old khandhar (ruins) of a quila (fort) near his village. Namaz had never been offered at the site before this, he said, adding that Qureshi’s act had created outrage among the villagers.

Kumar told The Wire that in the past, too, locals from neighbouring villages and towns had visited the site out of curiosity and returned without any controversy. “People come here to see the site. We have no objection to it. But in this particular case, those who came here raised unnecessary slogans and gave statements to incite people and offered namaz as well,” said Kumar.

Kumar says some locals refer to the structure as Raja ka Quila but he does not know what to call it – a mosque or a fort – and admits he doesn’t know for sure what its historicity was. However, what Kumar is certain about is that the structure must not be tampered with. “Our bade log (ancestors) had reached a mutual understanding that no Hindu would offer puja here and no Muslim would offer namaz here. That’s it,” said Kumar, stressing that he wanted to avoid a communal controversy over the issue.

Anees Ahmad, Qureshi’s father, said his son cleaned parts of the ‘mosque’ out of enthusiasm and landed into trouble over the azan as he shot videos of the act.

“This is the age of videos. So, it was widely circulated,” said Ahmad, downplaying the incident. He said his son was back home after being released on bail but rejected The Wire’s request to speak to him.

Anees said his son assisted him in his a fabric store business.

Little is known about the actual history of the site. The official district Gazetteer of Muzaffarnagar, of which Shamli was a part of till 2012, published in 1980, and the much older edition of 1903 authored by British officer H.R. Nevill, do refer to a fort in Ghausgarh occupied by Zabita Khan, the son of Afghan chieftain Najib-ud-Daula, dating back to 1785.

However, one cannot readily verify if it was the same structure in question today or what stood before it.

Bhanu Pratap Singh, a professor in civil engineering in SRM University, Ghaziabad and secretary of a lesser-known group Manahar Kheda Durg Kalyan Samiti, claimed the Gos Garh structure was part of a Hindu kingdom Manahar Kheda in present-day Jalalabad. It was taken over by the Mughals during the era of Aurangzeb, he claimed, adding that Gos Garh village was within the territories of Manahar Kheda.

Singh further says, though without accessible documentary evidence, that during the British era a dispute arose between the Hindus and Muslims here over the identity of the structure and about offering prayers. Then in 1940, a decision was made at a joint panchayat that Hindus would not damage the structure while Muslims will not pray there, said Singh, who has visited the village.

The fact that most of the façade of the structure still exists today was testament to the local people keeping their promise of not destroying it, he added.

Singh said he had written to the Archaeological Survey of India on several occasions requesting them to take over the structure and preserve it for its historical value. He is concerned that if left to linger in its present state, the structure could become a point of a new dispute between Hindus and Muslims.

“This can become a big issue in the future.”

In 2013, the districts of Muzaffarnagar and Shamli witnessed large-scale communal violence which led to the death of at least 60 persons and the displacement of thousands of others.

Last year in March, the region had sprung into the news cycle after the Manahar Kheda Durg Kalyan Samiti submitted a petition to the district administration of Shamli, addressed to chief minister Adityanath, demanding that the fort of Jalalabad be renamed as the Manahar Kheda fort and be handed over to the ASI. The Samiti claimed that the Jalalabad Fort had been usurped by Jalal Khan, an Afghan Mughal commander, after poisoning a Rajput Hindu king of the 17th century.

The fort is presently occupied by the Arshad Ali Khan, the sitting Rashtriya Lok Dal MLA from Thana Bhawan, and a descendant of Jalal Khan. Many generations of Jalal Khan’s descendents have lived there. Khan says he has official documents to prove their right over the land.

Regarding the structure in Gos Garh, Khan says that because the village ceased to have a Muslim population, over time the ‘mosque’ turned desolate. Till 20-25 years back, people from Jalalabad would even go there to offer ceremonial namaaz and tarawi once in a while, he said. “It is 100% a mosque,” said Khan, though adding that he would provide the documentary references later.

In a detailed piece written last year titled ‘Hindutva eyes a Muslim fort in UP’, senior journalist Ajaz Ashraf documented the history of the Jalalabad Fort amidst demands to rename it. Ashraf linked the demand to rename Jalalabad Fort to current-day politics: “With the 2024 Lok Sabha elections a year away, the targeting of the Jalalabad fort is an outcome of Hindutva perennially inventing national, regional and micro-level symbols to widen the Hindu-Muslim chasm. Jalalabad is arguably the first instance of Hindutva coveting a Muslim-owned property.”

Superintendent of Police Shamli Abhishek said that historically, no religious function was found to be been held at the decrepit structure, which may “possibly have been a fort”.

“Clear instructions have been sent that if someone tries to start a new practice going against convention and tries to spoil the law and order, tough action will be taken against them,” he said in a video statement.

There was regular movement of the police in the village to prevent any law and order situation, the officer added.

The SP also asked the concerned parties in the matter to approach the civil court or revenue department for any sort of relief regarding the dilapidated structure.

UP: Man Who Killed Daughter for Inter-Caste Relationship Arrested

The man, a farmer in Shamli, planned the murder of his daughter after she refused to break up with a 20-year-old man from a lower caste.

New Delhi: A man from a village in Uttar Pradesh’s Shamli was arrested on charges of killing his 18-year-old daughter and setting her body on fire because she was in a relationship with a man from a different caste.

According to the Indian Express, the 56-year-old man – a farmer named Pramod Kumar – confessed to the police that he committed the crime. Superintendent of Police (Shamli) Abhishek told the newspaper that Pramod, who is from an upper caste, planned the murder after his daughter refused to break up with a 20-year-old man from a lower caste.

“Pramod said that a few days ago, his daughter left home with the 20-year-old youth without informing the family. She returned home on her own, a day after. Fearing social stigma, he decided to kill her. On the intervening night of September 9 and 10, he took his daughter to a field on the pretext of some work. He strangled her to death and set her body on fire,” Pankaj Tyagi, SHO of Jhijhana Police Station, told IE.

Pramod told the other members of his family that he had left the daughter at his brother’s house in Panipat.

On Friday evening, the police control room received information about a burnt human body in a field. The police seized the bones from the ashes and forensic experts and a dog squad were called in to investigate the death. The evidence pointed to Kumar’s involvement and he was arrested, according to reports.

UP’s Communalism Is Not a Singular Story. Here’s Why That Matters in This Election

Ahead of the first phase of the assembly polls, a long look at how caste and religious considerations shape political perceptions in UP.

Shamli: It was a bitterly cold afternoon and the rain took the electricity out as it often did in the district, where Mushtaq bhai and this reporter made up for the lack of heating by dipping sarson ka saag in warm makki ki rotis smothered with butter.

“I might vote for the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] this time didi, you never know,” said Mushtaq. He was a Muslim in a district in Uttar Pradesh where Muslims had been massacred in violence that had erupted in September 2013. But the thing about a good meal on a cold day is that it allows a journalist in an election some lag time, to relax and let the significance of this line sink in.

Shamli and Muzaffarnagar were the two neighbouring districts where a local clash between a few men from the Jat community and some Muslims was quickly and deliberately painted as communal. In the mob violence that followed, almost 60 Muslims were killed and 50,000 were displaced. It was the polarisation from this region that led the Hindu right BJP to win two successive state elections with an unprecedented majority.

It’s not inaccurate to say that the Muzaffarnagar-Shamli riots sliced the communal history of UP into two distinct halves. The pre and post riot eras. In an election season, the bends and shifts in the Hindu-Muslim story are most acutely visible from here. Ground zero.

Also watch | Eight Years After Muzaffarnagar Riots, Its Victims Are Still Living in Virtual Hell

For Mushtaq to say over lunch that he was considering voting for the BJP could sound preposterous to most anyone who scans back to scenes of ghost villages pockmarked with charred homes and Muslim families huddled in camps, living on scraps. But living in Shamli for the last year and a half had shown this reporter how strange and counter-intuitive the view up close can be and how Mushtaq’s words actually made sense.

The communal story in Uttar Pradesh, seen from this vantage point is not a singular story. Caste, sub-castes, cadres and even food complicate the plot.

Mushtaq’s words were like car headlights forcing their way through a dense fog. He was a Muslim from the Ansari caste – part of the Other Backward Classes or OBC list. Both parts of his identity mattered equally. As a member of a middling caste, he was bullied by more dominant castes – both Hindu and Muslim. And that, not just the memory of the riots would now influence his vote. As a professional mali, he had decided to vote for the party he calculated would make his everyday movement from one village and town to another safer, from thieves as well as caste bullies.

“When the Samajwadi Party was in power, it was hard to move on the Kandhla highway, (not far from where we were sitting down to lunch), because of the goondaism on the streets. You could get mugged, robbed. The highways are much safer now under the BJP,” he said, helping himself to another roti, his black kohl lined eyes gleaming. But then again, he added, his residential colony had not still made up its mind and was vacillating.

In Shamli, the main opposition to the BJP is the SP-RLD – an alphabet soup of dominant castes. The RLD or Rashtriya Lok Dal is led by the most dominant caste in all of western Uttar Pradesh – the Jats. You can tell a Jat section from any other in a village quite easily. Look for the biggest houses with a tiger motif on the wall, large double barrel doors and flashy gold pillars on either side. The only community where the men sit in various shades of undress in the village choupals or their private courtyards, legs crossed, hookah in hand, looking straight in the eye of any stranger passing by.

The entrance to a house owned by a Jat villager. Photo: Revati Laul

For a Muslim like Mushtaq, the non-communal, Muslim friendly party that fields a large number of Muslim candidates in every election is the Samajwadi Party – the SP. But in this election, the SP had tied up with the Jat-dominant RLD and the Jats are traditionally seen as Muslim bigots or at the very least, reluctant to vote for a Muslim candidate if that is the choice they’re faced with. In this election, wherever the alliance has given tickets to Muslims, the Jats have wondered whether to do a volte face and ditch the alliance in favour of the BJP. The Muslims in turn in Mushtaq’s village turned on the Jats and said, ‘If you don’t vote for the alliance candidate just because they’re Muslim in your area, we won’t vote for the Jat candidate contesting from ours. We’ll vote for the BJP instead.’

Apart from the surprise story of a Muslim like Mushtaq, there are middling castes like the Kashyaps with an equally counter-intuitive position. This time from the village Lissad, one of the main sites of the communal conflagration of 2013. All the Muslim inhabitants of this village were driven out to areas of Muslim concentration elsewhere, having to sell their land at throwaway prices to Hindus in the village. Monu’s family had bought their plot of land from a fleeing Muslim.

But Monu from Lissad, was a young, ambitious 24-year-old Kashyap in search of a job, money, power and social mobility. He wore tight jeans and hung out with the cool set in his village. This was the part his identity he wanted to keep. His political choices, he insisted weren’t determined by Lissad’s communal past. “Us Kashyaps had absolutely nothing to do with the violence against Muslims. It was the Jats that attacked them. And now those same Jats have tied up with the Muslim-friendly Samajwadi Party. Bhai bhai ho gaye sab?” Monu’s question bent the communal gaze in the completely opposite direction. If the erstwhile perpetrators had tied up with the victims, then which party was more communal – the BJP or the alliance?

‘You can tell a Jat section from any other in a village quite easily.’ Photo: Revati Laul

If the socialist opposition has internal contradictions, then the ruling BJP is riddled with them. While the party’s PR is stridently Hindutva, many supporters take what they like and discard what they don’t. Not too far from Lissad, in another Kashyap dominated village, Savita, a fiercely god-fearing woman spread out a charpoy in her courtyard and asked her samuh-sakhis or friends to come join our discussion. These were women from a cluster of micro-finance groups under the government run National Rural Livelihood Mission. “The thing is,” they explained more or less in unison, as the sun made Savita’s red lipstick shine brighter, “the Jats bully us all the time.” In their village, Babli had thrown garbage in the same waste plot of land as the Jats and that was too much for them. They had shouted at her but even though Babli was frail and tiny, she stood her ground and let out a volley of abuses. This was beyond anything the Jat male ego could stomach, so they punched her in the chest until she doubled up in pain and fell into the nearby ditch.

Babli went with her women colleagues to file a case against the Jats but the next day, the Jats paid a visit to the local police and threatened to finish off Babli’s family if she didn’t have the case against them dropped. If a Jat heavy party came to power, the women explained, their newly asserted strength as members of the government-run small business and finance schemes would be in tatters. In another village in Shamli, Savita had fought valiantly for the right of a fellow Muslim woman leader to not be outdone by the other women. So Savita was not communal. Her BJP leaning was clearly about making the dominant caste in the region diminish.

At the height of the year-long farmers’ agitation against the BJP government, people like Savita – Kashyaps, Sainis, Gadariyas, Giris – middling castes from the same OBC grouping as the Jats said over and over, ‘We’re glad Modi-ji has brought these farm laws and the Jats are getting screwed over. Serves them right.’

Many of these castes work for daily wages on sugarcane farms owned by Jats. Some have still not been paid their dues. Others have borrowed money from Jats who often double-up as moneylenders and have played an especially pivotal role in two successive pandemic years. The smaller castes got kicked out of daily wage jobs both on farms and brick kilns and subsisted on borrowed money. Banks only lend money if land or wealth is supplied as collateral. Jats lend without that, but at phenomenal rates of interest – as much as 30%. So, they’re disliked to the point where the most sensational news about protesting farmers being run over had little effect on Savita and her women colleagues.

Also read: The Lakhimpur Kheri Incident Didn’t Occur by Chance, it Was a Long Time Coming

This reporter who also doubles up as an activist was in a discussion about rights and the story came up, as did the video of a big fat SUV – apparently owned by a cabinet minister’s son ran over protesting farmers. The women listened half-heartedly, “Hmmm bahut bura hua, yes it’s terrible,” they said what was expected of them but their eyes weren’t in it.

It was as if someone decided to switch from an Akshay Kumar film to Swan Lake. No one said anything but no one wanted to continue the discussion. “Next he’s going to say there are people starving in the Sudan,” – a line from the film Notting Hill, came to mind. In the film, the actor Hugh Grant has a mad Welsh roommate who scoffs at being made to listen to news about things he’s supposed to feel guilty about. The women gave this journalist exactly that impression and deftly changed the subject to one that did interest them. Schemes being rolled out by the government. When could they get their labour id cards made and their Aadhaar cards? And their Ayushman cards?

As Hindu OBCs in Shamli, and by all accounts in much of the rest of UP seemed to suggest they’re sticking with the BJP, there is now some new math available to suggest why these conversations against Jats are not just the stuff of whimsy or by any means an exception to the rule. The academic and political journalist Nalin Mehta’s just written a book called The New BJP in which he’s counted the number of candidates fielded by the BJP as well as ministers in the UP government in the last assembly election of 2017 and the numbers provide the teeth to the anecdotes we’ve narrated so far. OBCs and Scheduled Castes or SCs – the official name for the group of Dalit castes account for more than half the BJP’s candidates in that election – 52.8% to be precise, 50% of all office-bearers in the party in 2020, 48.1% of UP’s council of ministers and 35.6% of the party’s district-level presidents.

What further complicates the question of religion is the crucial role caste plays amongst Muslims. Caste is as endemic to Indian Muslims as it is to Hindus and must be factored into the math especially in a state where the Muslim population in the state is 19% – 5% higher than the national average. Just as the Jats have other OBC Hindus riled up, Muslim Gujjars are the equivalent bullies in districts like Shamli.

Two days ago, this reporter’s colleague came to work with a hand wrapped in a crepe bandage from having beaten up a few Gujjar Muslim boys. “They were on smack or some drugs or the other and first they ran their motorcycle into a kid. Then they threatened to burn down our entire village,” said Akram bhai. He’s from the Fakir caste which is the equivalent of the Dalits in the hierarchy of castes. “Hamari beradri se ho kar woh aisa behave karte hain didi to mera khoon khaul utha – they’re from our religion and yet they behave like this, I couldn’t take it, I saw red,” he said.

It is caste bullying of this kind that explains why in the last one week, this journalist encountered Muslims from non-dominant castes – Fakirs and Jogis who said they would vote for the BJP to weaken the stranglehold of the powerful and landed Muslim Gujjars. One such person said he is campaigning for his ‘Bua’ – the term ‘aunt’ is used as a euphemism for the BJP candidate from the Kairana seat in Shamli – Mriganka Singh.

Also read: It’s Been Two Years Since the Poster Child of UP’s Farming Success Story Quit Active Farming

What is ironic about this stacking up of a few socially suppressed Muslim castes against dominant ones is that even the caste bullies are now saying they may vote for the BJP. Muslim Gujjars say they would like to underline their ‘Gujjar-ness’ over their ‘Muslim-ness,’ in places where they’re competing with their caste rivals – the Jats. They’re voting for the BJP wherever they think the Jats will vote for the alliance. “We’re Gujjars first and Muslims second,” some have said. A few are going still further, buying into the Hindu right’s saffron history by saying, “We were forcibly converted to Islam by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, now we must stack up and vote with our Hindu brothers, as Gujjars.” And so it is that the while-clad, macho Muslim Gujjars are feeding themselves on Islamophobia much like working class Brexiters in England or out of work white male Trump voters in America who voted themselves into even more distress because they believed it was for their own good.

In the very complex counter-intuitive Muslim world of Uttar Pradesh, a part of the story that’s less spoken of is the communal behaviour of Muslims towards pork-eating and pig-rearing Hindus and tribals. In the village Makhmoolpur, Somvati, a middle-aged and confident woman leader from the Valmik caste shows off her big fat accounts register. She is part of the government’s National Rural Livelihood Mission and is so good with numbers that she’s been saddled with all the accounting work.

This despite never having finished school, she says proudly, her big cheeks puffed with pride and her red sindoor gleaming on her forehead in the afternoon sun. Despite this leadership role, Somvati was humiliated in the middle of a sarkari meeting in the block office by a Muslim woman co-worker from a middling Sheikh-Sarvari caste.

“We would never eat or drink even a drop of water at your house,” said the woman, right in front of a room-full of colleagues. Somvati had to fight back the tears as she recounted the story. “This woman doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Many Muslims are more than happy to come to my home and eat.”

The humiliation re-surfaced when a village drunk said much the same of Somvati even though she had hired his services as a tent-wallah for a large-scale health camp she was overseeing. At the end of the health camp she noted that quite a few dominant castes – Hindu and Muslim had stayed away. Like her caste, many other Scheduled Castes as well as a few Scheduled Tribes like the Banwariyas vote for the BJP. If Muslims and dominant castes humiliate them, then they need the biggest bully of all to put the others in their place.

The audience at a rally of BJP’s Adityanath. Photo: Revati Laul

In the dense caste-communal fog, one person who seems to disappear and re-appear briefly and mysteriously is Mayawati. Traditionally, she is the keeper of Dalit votes or scheduled caste votes from at least a couple of castes – the Jatavs and Chamars.

This time, her party, the Bahujan Samaj Party or BSP has her voters baffled. Where are the big fat posters, cadres, meetings, canvassing? And if she comes and goes, are rumours that she may end up in some sort of alliance with the BJP just fiction?

Also read: The UP Assembly Polls Are Almost Here – But Where Is BSP?

Perceptions matter and Jatavs and Chamars in villages like Nala and Hathchoya in Shamli say they’re firmly with the opposition, whichever opposition party appears to be stronger – if not Mayawati then the SP-RLD combine. The Jatavs and Chamars are traditional believers in Guru Ravi Das whose verses are part of the Sikhs’ Guru Granth Sahib. It is this belief that many within the communities say has made it hard for the Hindu right to win them over or turn them into Ram-bhakts.

But perhaps there’s more than enough of ‘Ram-rajya’ (Ram’s kingdom) to go around even without them. The ‘Hindu-ness’ of things – from saffron flags to the expected kowtowing to Ram in the belligerent right-wing way is so much a part of the Uttar Pradesh political fabric that it’s no longer its most distinguishing feature. It’s a bit like patriarchy, only newer.

There is hope in this however, for those who are looking for some. If religious bigotry alone cannot cut it for a party as strong and well-entrenched as the BJP, then caste and its complexities has got to be their other big tool and the evidence from where this journalist is sitting suggests, that is where they shore up their chances.

It also means that the undoing of communal politics in the state cannot be determined by an election alone or indeed by the way people vote. And Hindu Kashyaps like Savita and Muslim Ansaris like Mushtaq, in their counter-intuitiveness point the way for a host of new political possibilities for those who have eyes and ears and an appetite for it, with or without sarson ka saag.

*All names of people are changed to protect their identities since this writer lives and works amongst them.

Revati Laul is an independent journalist and rights activist based in Shamli, Uttar Pradesh. She is the author of The Anatomy of Hate, a book that tracks the stories of the perpetrators of the Gujarat riots of 2002.

Watch | Uttar Pradesh Polls and Yogi Adityanath’s Visit to Kairana

Senior journalist Sharat Pradhan discusses the UP chief minister’s visit.

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Monday visited Kairana in Shamli district, where the BJP has repeatedly raised the bogey of an “exodus” by Hindu families, though this theory has been discredited. Speaking to the residents, Adityanath assured them of safety and promised his government’s support.

His visit to Kairana is being seen as part of a larger campaign strategy of the BJP for the upcoming assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. Senior journalist Sharat Pradhan shares his insights on the issue.

For Shamli’s New DM, the Challenge of Managing COVID-19 Spread in a Polarised District

“It’s once in a lifetime that people see a pandemic like this, so initially it was a challenge,” says Jasjit Kaur.

Shamli (Uttar Pradesh): It isn’t every day that a comb and a bottle of hair oil become the defining image of a person or place. But these are not normal times. And in the office of the district magistrate of Shamli, piled up in white squares, right in front of the magistrate’s chamber, were COVID-19 relief boxes, which upon opening revealed quite a lot about the place and the person in charge.

There was a hand towel, a small tube of toothpaste and a brush, hair oil, a comb, sachets of shampoo and soaps. There were also separate kits for women and snack boxes for children containing tetra-packs of juice and an assortment of chocolates. Also, neatly stacked behind the magistrate’s chair – carrom boards and strikers.

COVID-19 relief kits distributed by the Shamli district magistrate. Photo: Revati Laul

Jasjit Kaur took over as the district magistrate at the end of February, just a month before India went into lockdown. She is the first women to be put in charge of the district ever since it was carved out of Muzaffarnagar in Western UP in the year 2011.

Shamli has been the epicentre of communal violence in 2013 and this raised its head once again during the four successive lockdowns, where Muslims were spoken of as ‘COVID-19 spreaders’. It’s also a place where polarisation and chauvinism combine, highlighted most obviously by the district’s skewed sex ratio – or number of women to every thousand men. In Shamli this is lower than the rest of Uttar Pradesh – 878 women per 1,000 men – while the UP average is 912. This is still way below the national average of 940.

The district’s literacy rate is also abysmally low – at 53.89%. These numbers make it easier to understand why, even after four lockdowns, the people of Shamli observed next to no social distancing or safety measures. More men wore masks than women, but they mostly had them hanging around their chins as ornaments, instead of around their noses and mouths.

What appears on the surface may seem like a straightforward story of a woman battling many odds – patriarchy and polarisation along with a pandemic. But two extended telephonic interviews and plenty of time on the ground in Shamli has established one thing firmly – nothing moves in straight lines.

Also read: Healthcare and Nutrition for Women in Assam Was Already Inadequate. Then Came COVID-19

Excerpts from interviews with Jasjit Kaur

You took over at a time when a crisis was hitting. And Shamli is a very patriarchal space. I came to Shamli on May 1, I saw how everyone was out on the streets in close proximity. How have you been dealing with this?

Shamli is basically an agrarian society. People work in the fields, so they are of the opinion that nothing can happen to them. So it’s still very difficult to make people feel that COVID-19 can happen to them. There have been many relaxations since lockdown 4.0 and you see people moving around. So we’ve decided to set a very heavy fine for people because we can see that people don’t want to wear masks.

Unlike in Agra or Meerut where there was an explosion of cases that led to some fear being built about the coronavirus, that fear hasn’t set in here. Slowly cases increased and then they decreased and now they’re rising again. There are 11 at present. The last four cases have been of migrant workers that came in from Mumbai. But there is still no real fear of the virus so that is a challenge. But maybe with time some understanding of the virus will seep in.

Jasjit Kaur. Courtesy: DM’s office, Shamli

You joined at the end of February and COVID-19 started becoming a full-blown crisis in March. Can you explain the challenges you faced and whether being a woman in charge in a mofussil town was a factor or not?

There was no special challenge being a woman as such but because this was my first posting and the COVID-19 challenge just happened, it’s once in a lifetime that people see a pandemic like this, so initially it was a challenge.

In Shamli, we do not have a district hospital. It is under construction. There was a tiny hospital running in a small place and resources were strained as was the equipment. So we made a small isolation centre there, of five beds. And at that time, money for a hospital was not sanctioned. It got recently sanctioned – Rs 5.5 crore. So we can begin work on it. So we made arrangements in this new hospital building. We converted a section into a 100 bed quarantine centre. Lots of people came to help when we put out word that there was a lack of financial resources. I started a bank account were people could make donations.

There is also the question of asserting yourself. Like the time in early May when the Haryana government suddenly sent in busloads of migrants and overnight there were 4,000 of them.

In this case, Haryana had decided on two dates when they were going to send in workers. And they started two days earlier. So initially we did have a problem. I had to report to my authorities in Lucknow to say we can’t do this because we don’t have a single UP state transport bus in Shamli. If people are sent here in transit, I have to make a demand for buses. We have to order them from Muzaffarnagar or Saharanpur.

So I did talk to a few district collectors in Haryana. And I spoke with my seniors in Lucknow (the Uttar Pradesh state capital) to say that busloads of people have been sent in here with no prior information. I’m not prepared. Then our UP home department spoke with the authorities in Haryana. Then all the district collectors in Haryana started calling me and saying – madam if we have your consent, only then we will send in buses, otherwise not.

But first you had to call Lucknow and tell them to talk to Haryana on your behalf?

Yes.

Do you think this was because you’re new or because you’re a woman or a mix of the two?

It was nothing, it was because there was a lot of stress there of the UP labourers. And because of some miscommunication maybe that they could send them. I’ve never felt like this that because I’m a woman people are taking undue advantage.

Also read: How Gendered Labour Was Hard-Wired Into Upper-Middle-Class Households

A couple of social activists I’ve spoken to at the district level who’ve been involved in COVID-19 relief, some junior level officer apparently told a Hindu social worker the following – `If you are Hindu, go distribute relief kits in Hindu areas, don’t go to Muslim areas because they are COVID-19 spreaders.’ Are these things you’ve heard of or had to contend with?

No. This is an eye-opener, what you’re saying. I need to work on this to find out more.

In general there is this perception in the village that Muslims are spreading COVID-19.

Actually when it initially spread in Shamli, most cases were spread by those who attended the Tablighi Jamaat Markaz in Delhi. But now it’s the vegetable mandi and Hindu families that are spreading it, so the effect of those rumours have come down. We did try to generate awareness, we said anyone can get COVID-19. Hindu or Muslim. Ever since there is more diversity in the cases, Hindus have been infected and spread the disease, that’s gone down.

Carrom boards – part of the DM of Shamli’s COVID-19 care for children. Courtesy: DM’s office, Shamli

I noticed the kind of relief kits you had made, when I was in your office. They included things like hair oil and also your kits for children with chocolates and carrom boards. Was this your idea?

We have had lots of migrants coming here, to Shamli. And we had to shift them to institutional quarantine for 14 days. It is very tough for them to stay in one place without visiting their family, so I wanted to make sure they were comfortable. I’ve seen people in such distress as I’d never seen before – people walking such great distances. There are rivers at both ends – Karnal border and Panipat. Some people came across sitting on tyre tubes. With children in tow. It was something else! We tried to monitor these spots and roped in our village pradhans to help us get to these people, provide vehicles. And get them to shelter homes.

So they had all their daily use items, sufficient clean water and clean toilets. The kits weren’t just my idea. My team here is very innovative.

Also read: It Is Time to Stop Seeing Domestic Workers as COVID-19 ‘Carriers’

Providing clean drinking water and clean toilets must have been a challenge in the first few days, how did you pull it off, for 4,000 people?

Our municipal staff was there for ensuring the toilets were clean. They have their own tankers in which they mixed sanitiser and bleach powder which they were instructed to spray in the toilets. And there are three sugar factories here. They also have a sanitising mix that they use in their distilleries. That liquid they provided and we used that. And our fire brigades and the police used the mixture provided by these sugar mills to sanitise not just the toilets but also the premises – in the morning and in the evening.

Many departments had to pool in – the municipal staff, the fire department and police and sugar mills. And all of us were on duty from the morning to the wee hours of the following morning – up to 3 and 4 o clock, as migrants came in. The entire tehsil staff was totally exhausted. For three of four days 80 buses came in each day and then the numbers started reducing. I would sit there till 3am with my staff to motivate them. That inspired them to see that `madam’ was also there on ground.

I was in the field till 3 am and back on duty by 7 am. Once I go then everyone follows. And they know that madam has a home and a small child and is still sitting here night after night, so that actually helps.

So have you moved with your family or is your family in Lucknow?

No my family is here with me. My son (who is 1.5 years old) is here and because of the lockdown, my husband is with me for the past three months. He’s taking care of the kid and I’m taking care of Shamli.

Revati Laul is an independent journalist and film-maker and the author of The Anatomy of Hate, published by Westland/Context. This story is the result of a Laadli media fellowship, but the facts and ideas presented are the writer’s responsibility.

Before COVID, Shamli’s Frontline Relief Worker Had to Fight the Men

In western Uttar Pradesh, a women’s self-help group is taking the lead in spreading awareness about the coronavirus and ensuring that much-needed relief supplies reach the right hands.

Shamli (Uttar Pradesh): Her bronze sari with red sequined flowers gleamed in the afternoon sun. It was calculated to have just the right amount of drama without making too much of a statement. Sudha was in a commanding position in her village, Nala, in the district of Shamli, as she set up a desk at the front porch of her house, to begin distributing COVID emergency relief kits.

Her superior position was enough to set off competitors and jealous neighbours. This was Uttar Pradesh, where men ruled. But in the last two and a half years, Sudha had fought enough of them as head of a women’s collective across 14 villages. Now that seven hundred people of a total of 6,000 in her village were completely out of food, Sudha was in a unique position to help. As she sat down, back ramrod straight, ready with her list of most-deserving candidates, she acknowledged how far she had come from the time she started out by being labelled a slut and a pimp.

“Yeh madam ban rahi hai gaon ki – She’s becoming the madame of the village,” said one woman. “Aur dekhna ek din aise hoga yeh gaadi me bhar ke sab ko le jayengi saath me aur ganda ganda kaam karwayengi. Wait and watch, she will take all the women away by the car-full and make them do really dirty things.”

It all began with a knock on the door from women social workers attached to the government. They had come from Hyderabad and were asking women to form self-help groups or SHGs so they could apply for small loans and start small businesses. “Job lag gayi hai meri – I’ve been selected for a job,” Sudha said excitedly to her husband, Angrez Singh.

Angrez Singh was a man’s man. The way he sat with his chest out and surveyed the territory in front of him spoke for itself. “Naukri nahi karani hai – I will not have you work,” was his firm reply. But Sudha had a stirring within that she was unable to suppress. The women from the National Rural Livelihood Mission re-kindled a fire that was burning inside her ever since Sudha was a little girl. Growing up in the district of Bulandshahr in UP, she would close her eyes in front of the gods in temples and pray to them, asking to be made a working woman or a woman who travels and gets to see the world outside. She was married off instead when she was just in class ten, and in her new home in Shamli district, the only role she was expected to play was that of the good wife with her head covered at all times, face never to be exposed to people outside. After having three children and settling for the prescribed role, a knock on the door from the government proved to be a godsend.

Sudha prepares COVID kits for distribution (left) .Outside the house (right), she keeps her head covered. Photo: Revati Laul

“Mai aapka sar neecha nahi honey doongi – I will not do anything to take away from your honour,” she assured her man. He relented. With her initial loan, Sudha started a beauty business – women could buy makeup and she also provided parlour services in her home. Other women were even more audacious in their choices. Kavita became a mechanic, inspired by her husband who found out that making LED lights at home was a very profitable business.

In the last two and a half years, the SHG groups’ economic independence was threatening to overturn the entire village’s economy. Social activist Ashvani Singh who has worked with Sudha for the last year and a half explained. Women in rural Shamli mainly get work as agricultural labourers on wages that are much lower than their male counterparts. “If the men are paid 300 rupees a day, then women get anywhere between 120 to 180 rupees for the same work,” said Singh. If they stopped doing this work, the landowners would have to pay men more, upsetting their calculus entirely.

The more they asserted themselves, the more trouble the women were in, when the lockdowns part 1-4 put their battles temporarily on hold. Five days before the first lockdown, Sanjo, a Dalit woman who was part of Sudha’s group, was emptying the trash, when a man from the most dominant caste in the area – the Jats – told her that as a Dalit woman, she could not put out the garbage where dominant castes did. Sanjo, now armed with her new woman-centric strong coat, spoke back: “If you can throw your kachda here, so can I.” For this, she was shoved into the drain because even though her words were menacing, her frame was slight.

Sanjo put up a fight against a Jat man and for this she was beaten up. Photo: Revati Laul

Covered in muck, she got out and yelled back at the Jat man – “Kuttey – you dog.” This was too much for his caste ego so he ended up hitting her on the chest with bricks. The women rallied around in support and charges were filed with the local police. However, in an ugly twist, the Jats surrounded Sanjo and threatened to decimate her family unless she retracted her charges. Which she did. Sudha was planning to take further action, when India went into lockdown mode. Sanjo was so battered and bruised she could barely stand. She and her husband were both brick kiln workers and with those being mostly shut, they had nothing to eat. There were many others in the SHGs in similarly precarious positions.

At this point, Sudha, having created a network both with the government and civil society groups, asked NGOs to come and distribute rations. A lot was at stake. Feathers had been ruffled in villages across Shamli, starting with the pradhan or head of her own village. There were two opposing narratives here, instead of one, which in itself told the story of how assertive these women had got.

Narrative one – in which Sudha and her groups said they were up against a powerful and irate man. A spark was lit when these women were in a meeting where a social activist made a rousing speech: “We must start be resolving our own basic issues – over roads and electricity, water and rations. Only then will we seen as a force to reckon with. Otherwise anything we say about resolving other women’s issues will seem like a cruel joke.” Sudha and the SHGs in her care immediately put this to the test. They demanded that a road be built in a part of a village that had been so badly clogged with sewage and silt that it was impossible to get in or out, especially when it rained. In their version of events, their request kept getting blocked by the village pradhan – Pravin Kumar. They were forced to by-pass him and go up to the district magistrate.

Narrative two: In Pravin Kumar’s version, he had the road built. “Budget government se hamari li, gram panchayat humney karaya, usme samuh kya karega? The money came from the village coffers, their group had nothing to do with it.”

Shamli gets relief for now. Photo: Revati Laul

Now, by calling in an NGO, Sudha was taking on the pradhan again, just by the sheer optics of it. Helming a COVID relief operation that was a private initiative challenged Pravin Kumar’s role as the patriarch-provider. D day was tense. Men playing cards in the street, commented as Sudha got into a car with an NGO person. “Bhundhi thuthdi,” a slur in the locally spoken Braj bhasha – “the woman with the ugly face.”

As the truck full of potatoes and rice, masalas, dal, sanitary pads and condoms rolled in, Sudha and her associates pored over lists. Who to include and who to leave out? The social activist Ashvani Singh who was native to Shamli put Sudha’s operation in context. He had seen relief being distributed in other villages with a dominant caste Jat man at the helm. “It was calculated to add to his vote-bank. The poorest, the migrants, those whose votes didn’t count locally, were left out.” Far worse was the patronising language used, said Ashvani, “Bhaiyo bhukke logon ke liye khana hai. Yeh iske liye khana hai jo bhukka mar raha hai bilkul. This food is for the wretched and hungry, it’s for those people dying of starvation. Words that break the spirit of those being given rations.”

Now, with Sudha at the helm, care was taken to draw up lists of the most deserving without fear or favour. All those who got rations in the last round were struck off the list, even when they were members of SHGs. A brawl broke out. A frail looking woman with white hair and a fierce manner threatened to call the police. “I will have the lot of you arrested if you don’t give me some!” she shrieked. Sudha stormed into the house, past her desk, to an inner room and slammed the door. Her face was flushed with anger. “I cannot take this anymore,” she said in an outburst. Her sons and daughter and husband rallied around.

Relief supplies being distributed in Shamli. Photo: Revati Laul

Angrez Singh was by now very proud of his wife’s achievements, so he pitched in and fended off the angry woman. And followed it up with another surprise. He put colas and namkeen on a tray and served those who were waiting. There was so much humility and acceptance in his act, that Sudha finally melted. Her trademark smile was back. She marched back into the arena, glasses in place, register in hand, to call out the names of the next people on the list. Her pallu covered her face, presenting to the world a strange paradox – a woman in charge who was also, the mythical unchanging, submissive, good wife.

Revati Laul is an independent journalist and film-maker and the author of `The Anatomy of Hate,’ published by Westland/Context. This story is the result of a Laadli media fellowship, but the facts and ideas presented are the writer’s responsibility.

Out of Work, Her Future in Doubt, a Woman Finds Refuge in TikTok

Life is hard for women like Arti, and the lockdown has added new burdens – but the social platform keeps a secret star shining amid the grit of Shamli.

Shamli (Uttar Pradesh): The funniest people in this world are those who don’t know it.

As a factory worker who has not been paid her last month’s salary, you would think Arti would be angry or frustrated or wrung out, tired at the very least. And she may be all of that. But on the hugely popular social media app TikTok, a whole other persona is unleashed.

A worker by day and TikTok queen when off the clock, she has 2000 videos to her credit, most made in the post COVID-19 lockdowns. An archive of those would be on display here if it hadn’t been for the fact that Arti’s phone was stolen a day before this interview. And she does not remember her TikTok ID, so all her artistry is lost for now.

Shamli, where Arti lives. Photo: Revati Laul

Not being able to keep up with such sundry details is part of the mix and has to do as much with her tough background as her individual quirks. She does not know how old she is, for instance, or the name of the factory she works in.

In her life, those details are of little consequence.

Arti lives in a tiny two room tenement with her two young sisters. It’s opposite a spoon-making factory where she and one sister have jobs as assembly-line workers. She gets paid Rs 8,000 a month. It was about to become Rs 10,000 when the lockdown happened. Her factory sent her rations for a few weeks and said, sorry, they couldn’t pay her salary for now.

This much of her story is like hundreds, probably thousands, of workers in Shamli district in western Uttar Pradesh. Shamli is an industrial wasteland with mounds of unclaimed garbage framing its horizon. You cannot walk down a single road without fleas and faeces and the powdery bits of both getting stuck as grey grit in your nose, your hair and all over your skin.

People were out of work here long before three lockdowns took the bottom out of the place.

There aren’t that many women factory workers; most work is on a ‘dehadi’ basis, subject to the arbitrariness and machinations of contractors who get a cut of the daily wages. They are not on any employment exchange; most do not have Jan Dhan accounts, nor ration cards, as the number of days of work lost in procuring one didn’t seem worth it to many, until now, when rations are the new gold.

Arti had counted herself lucky to still have her job, or that’s what she was made to believe.

When the initial lockdown was enforced with a four-hour notice period on March 25, Arti and her three sisters were in Panipat in Haryana to see relatives. They were stuck. They needed to find a way back home.

Three times, in the middle of the night, the sisters – along with an infant niece deposited in their care – rode pillion with their uncle and cousins to the Haryana-UP border. Each time, they were turned back. The fourth time, they decided to walk.

On day one, their relatives took them on bike through long circuitous routes inside villages to the last motorable point, Samalkha in Haryana, where they spent the night. That was still 52 kilometres away from Shamli.

The next morning, they figured out how to cross the Yamuna river – sitting on a used rubber tyre and row it across. “We got on at 5 am and reached the other side at 9 am. It took long because we had a child with us so no one wanted to ferry us on a tube and take such a big risk,” Arti said. They walked the rest of the way, eight hours a day for two days, till they were home.

There is so much in Arti’s life that might break her, but she’s saved it all up for her new escape vault – TikTok.

It came out quite matter-of-factly, almost in an undertone, “TikTok bana lete hain, bas aur kuch nahi (I make TikTok videos, not much else).”

Arti (centre) with her sisters, Jyoti, to her left and Manisha to the right. Photo: Revati Laul

Everything about Arti, from the way she carries herself to her clothes point towards an inner defiance. She is not one to be reduced to a sum of her circumstances. The person who could wade across a river on a tyre if she had to, would use the make-believe to live out an altogether different life online. It wasn’t original and it wasn’t the stuff that Indian Idol is made of. But the performance was in the doing and in what its afterglow left on Arti’s face.

I saw this in the two videos she made with a new ID we created, on my phone. As I requested her to do a demo, I saw the drama unfold. Her eyes shone like two stars in her face and she sprung off her single-bed-cum-sofa, picked up a hand mirror and comb and disappeared into the adjoining room, slamming the door behind her.

She recorded her solo video in secret, shared at the top of this story. The second was a duet we recorded together, that allowed both of us to momentarily forget the traumas Arti had dealt with.

You wouldn’t know by seeing this, how Arti lost her father early in life and spent her adolescent years washing dishes in people’s homes with her mother. That nine months after their son was born, her husband disappeared without a trace. That her son, Dipanshu, would have been nine now, but he died of undiagnosed cancer. There is a portrait of him above the bed and the shelves on the wall opposite were stuffed with teddy bears from his birthdays.

Arti lost her mother in 2015 and now lives with the only close family that’s left, her sisters Jyoti and Manisha.

She lives from one day to the next and tries to get on with the business of living. “If this factory doesn’t re-open for some reason, we’ll just find another job elsewhere,” she said. She and her sisters already have one mapped out, just in case they need it.

Revati Laul is an independent journalist and film-maker and the author of The Anatomy of Hate, published by Westland/Context. She tweets @revatilaul.

The Invisible Virus and the Struggles of India’s Invisible People

From the video of a man scooping papaya fruit out of an open gutter to people eating plain chapatis, the lockdown has brought to fore the precarious lives of many in India.

There is a lockdown and then there is a super-lockdown. Right now, fifteen districts in Uttar Pradesh have been “completely sealed” or are in super-lockdown mode. The sharp spike in COVID-19 cases in the state has made the state government declare that nobody can step out until April 15, not to go to the bank and not for food. Food will be delivered home.

But where is home? Take, for instance, the district of Shamli in Western UP, a poky industrial belt, now completely sealed. This video was shot three days ago by two social activists – Himanshu and Deepak.

Video courtesy Himanshu and Deepak.

You will want to turn your eyes from his sumptuous meal of papaya fruit peels scooped out of the open sewer. But you must watch the entire 1:10 seconds play out as he stoops over the drain, foraging for the next peel and fishing out the tiniest bit of fruit from it. Is there any? A voice, off-camera, filming; asks the old man incredulously – “Kya kar rahey ho baba? (What are you doing, uncle?)” But ‘baba’ doesn’t answer. He is very focused on his food.

The UP state and in fact the government of India’s response to migrants has been that there is no need for them to complain, they are all being fed. The government said exactly this to the Supreme court, two days ago, in response to a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by rights activists Harsh Mander and Anjali Bhardwaj, that there are sufficient supplies to meet the needs of migrants, currently without their daily wages since the March 24, since ‘Lockdown’.

“We cannot say that they are not getting food,” said the court. Which makes our baba in this photo a nowhere man. He is invisible to the courts, to our government and to many of us who will ask – “How do you we know the authenticity of this video? It could be old. It may have nothing to do with the lockdown. This is malicious lies being spread to discredit our government’s valiant attempts to save all of us in this time of crisis.” And here, as ever, there is no counting and no proof on offer. We can keep saying that the following people took the video three days ago but who’s listening?

People walk home with their luggage from Nizamuddin station. Photo: Shome Basu/The Wire

Our nowhere man’s story cannot be called ‘fact’. We do not know where he came from or where he disappeared after the taking of the video. But facts are not the most defining feature of the lives of 80% of our labour work-force in India that is in the unorganised sector. It’s too difficult therefore to come up with accurate numbers or any numbers for the entire country. But here are some anecdotes from Shamli. Let’s not call them facts for now.

A source who we cannot name for reasons of safety and confidentiality visited a ration shop in the city area. The shopkeeper told him that the list supplied to him by the district magistrate’s office of people meant to be given free rations for the month of April, during the period of the lockdown, are all from rural Shamli, not from the area where his shop is located. They are unlikely to come to him for food. And those that are starving are mostly urban poor.

Also Read: In Photos: The Poor Set Off on Foot, to UP and Bihar, as Lockdown Makes Delhi a Ghost City

Migrants as well as locals who work in small factories such as one that makes pressure-cookers. When the lockdown was announced, the owner told his workers not to worry. They could stay on in the factory and they would be given food. After a few days, however, he threw his hands up and said he couldn’t hack it any more. “In these times of extreme deprivation, no one is going to buy a new pressure cooker. And I have stocks piled up already that I can’t sell. I might have to close, so I can’t afford to pay you or give you food any longer.” And that was that.

Most of these tiny factories, tiny stores selling soaps and cheap clothes stitched locally and shoes and chappals and furniture and farm-tools can’t afford to keep their workers and office boys. Most aren’t registered on any wage board and don’t have contracts. We know why that is. For quite a few decades, small and medium scale and even some large-scale industries have worked with a minimum requirement of permanent labour that needs to be unionised, paid a provident fund, health care etc., and relied increasingly on large contingents of less expensive unorganised labour.

“Dehadi pe kaam karney waley” or people who work on daily wages are mostly a shifting population of seasonal workers who earn and eat what they earn the same day. It’s barely enough for that. They don’t officially exist or many don’t. Like the man in our video, they don’t officially exist. By definition therefore, food deliveries the UP government is now promising can’t get to them either. These are just some basic ‘non-facts’.

Of the tiny proportion that do have ration cards, there is a second problem. Many have not paid the annual registry fee of Rs 20 for the card to be valid because they are often made to stand in line all day and lose out on that day’s wages of Rs 200 to pay the Rs 20 required. On balance, that didn’t make sense to most. Now, that twenty bucks is costing them a valid ration card.

Then there are the e-rickshaw drivers of Shamli. Taufeeq (34) is one and only recently paid for a new, multi-coloured vehicle. He is the sole earning member in a family of seven. His rickshaw cost Rs 1.3 lakh and he’s now got to pay EMIs and his rent, plus earn enough for food. But what can he do in a lockdown? We know his story through a citizen’s group in Shamli that’s been handing out food. “He’s looking out for help with food so he and his family can live a little longer,” is what we were told. “Live a little longer,” that’s the aspiration right now. Let’s live a few days, shall we? Nothing to take to court as a fact however.

People distributing food say they’ve seen sights they aren’t going to forget in a hurry. Those that are boiling plain water with salt and sipping it slowly as pretend-chai, to make up for the missing rotis. Some are better off. They’re eating whole chapatis. Without dal of course, but that’s asking for a lot. Too much aspiration.

People handing out snacks. Photo: Ismat Ara

And there is a woman somewhere in Shamli who was recently widowed. Her husband was killed, apparently in an encounter with the police sometime last year, but we can’t say for sure since the post-mortem report hasn’t come yet. She’s been waiting for it for nearly a year. She doesn’t have a ration card either. No husband, no card and now no food.

Also Read: DM, Public Provide Food After Hungry Kids Seen Eating ‘Grass’ in Modi’s Constituency

Another man, accused of stealing cattle and is in jail, has a hungry family that has scraped together a living by making and selling balloons and popcorn at weddings. The alleged cattle thief’s 12 and 13-year old children have stood outside weddings – i.e. happy places, with wooden poles stringing balloons and popcorn that other children attending these weddings with their parents have bought. Now of course that’s stopped and so has the food.

There’s a bus-conductor who lost his leg when the private bus he worked on turned turtle. He’s been out of work ever since – that’s a few months ago. His daughter came to visit with her children and then the lockdown happened. So, this man who was recently rendered jobless now has the additional burden of looking after his daughter and her children with no money coming in. Are the chief justice and our government listening? Perhaps they will deduce that these are perennial issues of the ever-present poor in strained times. Nothing specifically to do with COVID-19. These are invisible problems in times when we are hit by an invisible enemy.

As the government prepares for the next phase of handling the pandemic, one question hangs overhead like a necessary curse – should the lockdown, so supremely well-managed, be extended? Solutions are pouring in from everywhere, including from economists like Jean Dreze who have advocated that our grain stocks piled up in the public distribution system or PDS need to be emptied and distributed to whoever comes to the ration shops. That we should use the PDS to send grain free everywhere. That we have more than enough food in stock and money in the Centre’s coffers if we add up the oil deficit of over four lakh crores because world oil prices recently crashed.

The solution may be in plain sight, but it all depends on what we are looking at. And whether the man picking peels from the drain is in our frame of reference.

Revati Laul is an independent journalist and film-maker and the author of The Anatomy of Hate, published by Westland/Context. She tweets @revatilaul.