Tremors of Violence; Muslim Survivors of Ethnic Strife in Western India
Author(s): Robinson, Rowena
ISBN: 0761934081
Year: 11/30/2005

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Witnesses don't trust enquiry commissions: Book
New Delhi, Apr 02: Unease and discomfort with the enquiry commissions are the reasons why witnesses turn hostile and lie, says a new book.

Also, there is an element of mistrust in these enquiry commissions because of which people tend to lie while submitting before them, says the book 'Tremors of Violence-Muslim Survivors of Ethnic Strife in Western India' recounting the experiences of people tormented by violence.

"There seems to be, further, among the victims of the violence, a certain mistrust of the capacity of the commissions to deliver the truth," says book by Rowena Robinson, an associate professor in sociology at IIT, Mumbai.

"The state government of Gujarat had to admit to the Supreme Court that the high court trial in the case of the Best Bakery violence may have been flawed and that the prosecution's 'hostile' witnesses may have been won over or coerced," says Robinson and goes on to establish a link between backwardness and communal violence.

"The interconnecting trajectories of riots and the economic and social marginalisation... is not a simple story...Studies on communalism have rarely been shy of showing that many riots implicate naked economic rivalries. Indeed, violence against minorities over the last several decades has involved enormous destruction of property and livelihood, apart from life" it says.

The book compiles the narratives and interviews of many survivors of post-1947 communal riots in Mumbai, Baroda and Ahmedabad (Gujarat) that turn to the role played by riots in "depressing their fortunes, changing around priorities, fracturing aspirations, fostering vulnerability and infusing stability".

The book highlights how communal violence and its repercussions had "considerably deteriorated" the social and economic position of Muslims in the society.

"In so many instances, children were taken out of school for sons had to contribute to the household, while sending daughters outside the house was fringed with an extra layer of insecurity, especially where a father had been killed and a mother struggled alone," says one such survivor of Dharavi riots in Mumbai.

Similarly, another survivor in Ahmedabad spoke of her bitter experiences on how her family business was destroyed during one riot and how every ethnic strife doomed them further.

"My husband used to sell leatherwork items. It was good business. Our house was burnt in 1985. We returned to rebuild it. It was looted and burnt again in the next two riots. Every four years or so we find our house destroyed. My husband is reduced to selling bangles now. After each riot, we have to learn to spend less and less," she says as quoted in the book.

Robinson who calls her book "an ethnographic study" of Muslim survivors of communal violence, has attempted to capture a cross-section of Muslims here - men, women, priests, religious leaders, social activists.

Bureau Report

source:
Zee News