Hope floats

by DEEPA A (first published on 28 January, 2007 in The Hindu)

Much like a grandfather who peeps eagerly into a cobwebbed past to scoop up sepia-tinted memories of his children's first steps, Rehmanbhai Shaikh unwraps, at the slightest prodding, a boxful of stories about the neighbourhood that has been his home for 67 years.

A resident of the Saiyed Riyaz Hussain ki Chaali in Saraspur, Ahmedabad, the 72-year-old remembers a time when the now-locked textile mills provided employment and stability to locals, and religion wasn't the watermark that it is today, defining personal and public spaces. "Everything changed after the toofan of 2002," he says, referring to the riots. "There were some problems after the riots in the 1990s certainly, but now, everything is completely broken."

Today, neither community trusts the other, though Dalit and Muslim households are spread across the various chaalis (or chawls), in this locality of Ahmedabad's walled city area. Skirmishes with communal overtones are so common that a mother sending her children to school does so with a prayer that they won't be caught in the crossfire.

Difficult task

Nostalgia for a more peaceful and harmonious time is, perhaps, the main reason why Shaikh is sitting across the table with 30-odd like-minded people, both Hindus and Muslims, from the area. They have come together to form the Saraspur-Potalia Ward Ekta Samiti, which has the difficult task of ensuring that people from the two communities don't come to blows.

Set up last November with the support of Aman Samudaya (Peace Collective), an arm of the non-government organisation ActionAid, the Samiti's members plan to be out in the streets in case of trouble and personally appeal to their neighbours' better sense. Or, as Shaikh explains succinctly, "If there's a toofan, we will try to stop it."

By no means do the Samiti members imagine that this is an easy, or even straightforward, task. They have lived here for most of their lives, packing their bags to leave for safer places at the slightest whiff of trouble, and charting out escape routes with the precision of fire safety drills.

Some watched helplessly as their houses were looted and burnt in the 2002 riots and sought refuge in relief camps. They, possibly more than anyone else, understand the enormity of their mission statement. Despite the odds, if they have come together, it is because they feel that the area's reputation as a trouble spot holds little promise for their children's future.

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