Riots erupted in September 2013 in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts of western Uttar Pradesh. Fifty-two persons were killed — 37 Muslims and 15 Hindus, and, according to the UP state government, 50,955 displaced people were accommodated in 11 relief camps.
The documentary film En Dino Muzaffarnagar , directed by Shubhradeep Chakravorty and Meera Chaudhary, follows the series of events in the district between August 18 and September 7 that year, from the initial signs of communal trouble at Soram village, the Kawal incident where Shahnawaz, Gaurav and Sachin Malik were killed, to the Jat mahapanchayat held at Nangla Mandod.
First screened at Prithvi Theatre, Mumbai, the Censor Board refused to clear the film in June last year. After a seven-month battle with the censors, the film (with three cuts) was cleared in January 2015. During this time, Chakravorty, a critically acclaimed filmmaker, died of a brain haemorrhage. Currently, his partner Meera Chaudhary is attempting to show the film at various public spaces. Here she talks of incidents that fomented communal hatred in Muzaffarnagar, the hypocrisy that surrounds ‘
The day after the Kawal incident, I received the fake video from my father. (Chaudhary hails from Muzaffarnagar.) In one day, the video of two Hindu boys being beaten to death by Muslims was circulated from Muzaffarnagar and Shamli to Faridabad, Gurgaon and Delhi via Bluetooth and WhatsApp on mobile phones. We could tell that this was a doctored video. (The video was two years old, shot in Sialkot, Pakistan and circulated by BJP MLA Sangeet Som in Muzaffarnagar.) But we had no idea it would blow up into large-scale riots. When we went to the camps a month later, stories began to crop up. NGOs were able to gather a lot of information and there was a pattern emerging. It was said that the riots happened out of the blue. But that wasn’t the case. We heard so many stories at the camps that ‘this happened here, that happened there’. It is easy to get the stories of the victims and to locate the riot-hit villages. But finding out what happened before, that took a lot of time.
The film tells the story of what happened in Soram village, the two versions of what happened in Kawal. It also tells of two men — Sanjeev Baliyan, who became a BJP MP, and a landless man from Kutba Kutbi village who tried to save his village and maintain peace.
What pattern emerged?
The Hindu community and political leaders said at the time that Muslims had a strategy of leaving the villages before the riots. Actually, they seem to have got this idea because of the atmosphere building around them. There was a lot of rumour-mongering. Several incidents were taking place. There was no propaganda, but minority communities sensed that something was wrong. They started sending their daughters to safe places. Eight months before the 2014 general elections, the BJP started to open up offices in the area. Now, there’s nothing wrong with a party wanting to be fully prepared. But when you start distributing fake CDs/videos and run rumour campaigns… the BJP leaders may not have been in the riots but they created the atmosphere.
Throughout the documentary, it appears that eve-teasing was a means to fan communal tensions. Can you elaborate on that?
In Muzaffarnagar, in these areas, eve-teasing is common. Even we weren’t spared. Whether the boys are Hindus or Muslims, eve-teasing is prevalent. But then, over time, people started identifying eve-teasers as Muslims. That there was a concerted campaign of ‘Love Jihad’ where Muslim youth pretended to be Hindus, with kalavas (sacred red threads) tied around their wrists. BJP leader Umesh Malik told us the same story, ‘beware of Muslim boys who look like Hindus’. People here are conservative and there is also hypocrisy here. Equal status for women is a no-no but they will die to save the izzat of their women. Their manliness was being targeted. There were small meetings, vichar goshtis , about which the media was not informed. Only those who were pro-RSS, pro-BJP were called. They would talk on topics like ‘What should India be like in the 21st century’, but the film shows the statements made at these gatherings. And these are happening regularly, in colleges, community centres.
What happened in Soram?
On August 18, nearly 10 days before the August 27 incident, an eve-teasing incident happened in Soram village. A Muslim man travelling with his wife and sister was harassed by three drunken Hindu boys. They asked the man to get off the rickshaw and leave his sister behind. The Muslim man informed his friends, who thrashed the Hindu boys at Soram. Following this, a Muslim hotel in the village was vandalised by Hindu men. On August 27, at Kawal village, Shahnawaz was killed by Gaurav and Sachin for allegedly eve-teasing their sister. Shahnawaz’s father maintains that the brawl was only over a motorcycle. Both Gaurav and Sachin were killed by a mob. By September 7, Muzaffarnagar had exploded with communal violence.
Soram is one of the largest villages in the district, with equal numbers of Hindu Jats and Mullay Jats (Muslim Jats). We visited the village four times and people started to become conscious. We couldn’t get the interview of the Muslim girl who was eve-teased; her family was scared. But we met Umesh Malik, a BJP leader, who made out a different case. He claimed that Muslim boys were beating up Hindu youth, without giving any reasons. The police had to take the Hindu boys into custody. After that, the BJP began to call the police and state government ‘anti-Hindu’ and ‘anti-Jat’.
How tough is it being a documentary filmmaker?
As independent filmmakers, we struggle. There’s no real return on investment. We manage to sell a few copies to niche audiences. But yes, I don’t think documentary making is a full-time profession. In fact, those who want to make it a full-time profession are discouraged. There should be a support system for these filmmakers, but there is none currently. One should get support for these ideas, even if they’re risky ones.