'The Fire has Reached their Doorsteps': Gujarat Model of Exclusion Scaled Up

The ‘game’ of excluding Muslims and pushing them to the margins might only now be dawning on the rest of India. But it bears the hallmark of the ‘Gujarat Model’ that was once so widely acclaimed.

The Citizenship Amendment Act, National Register of Citizens, and National Population Register only extend a process long underway in the state of Gujarat, often referred to as a laboratory of Hindutva.

The exclusion these policies institutionalise or threaten has been perpetrated by Hindutva forces in Gujarat over the last two decades, a work they continue.

It was immediately after the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom that boards came up at the entrance of localities where the cadres of Hindutva organisations had a sizeable presence. They read, “Hindu Rashtra ke Karnavati Nagar ki XYZ colony mein Hindu bhaiyon ka swagat hai”— Hindu brothers are welcome in XYZ locality of Karnavati city in the Hindu State.

What was this if not a blatant violation of the Constitution?

Karnavati spelt an attempt to avoid using the city’s Muslim sounding popular name of Ahmedabad.

Then came the advertisements for housing schemes that read, “For Sale: Duplex, 2/3/4 BHK Flats…” and just at the bottom would be the line in Gujarati saying “Kewal Hindu bhaiyon maate” (For Hindu brothers only).

This advertised a segregation and ghettoisation that had anyhow become the norm, with Muslims knowing from experience not to purchase homes or flats in predominantly Hindu areas.

There were several reported occasions in places like Bhavnagar of Hindu fundamentalist organisational cadres staging dharnas (sit-ins) and singing Ram dhuns (songs) if they came to know that a Muslim was trying to buy a house in what had been defined as a Hindu area.

The same strategy was applied to compel Muslim Gujaratis to sell any properties they had managed to purchase in such Hindu areas.

In this way, Muslims were illegally prevented from purchasing new flats or lands in select, predominantly Hindu areas. This was to avoid “Islamic problems” is what the proponents of this segregation would say.

There have also been occasions —like in Talaja a couple of years back (video below)— where Hindus were administered oaths saying they would not make any purchases from Muslim-owned businesses.

Such calls for Hindus to economically boycott Muslims have been made time and again in the wake of 2002.

Over the last two decades Muslim localities are sometimes referred to as “Little Pakistan” or simply “Pakistan”. I reported this phenomenon in The Citizen some years ago, when Muslim households in certain localities of Ahmedabad started receiving electricity bills where their locality was referred to as Pakistan.

A year ago, a public interest litigation filed before the Gujarat High Court alleged that the Pavitra Yatradham Vikas Board set up by the Gujarat government in 1995 for developing religious sites by providing better amenities to visiting devotees had focused solely on promoting and developing Hindu religious sites over all these years.

The case is still being heard, with the next hearing scheduled in February.

Mujahid Nafees of the Minority Co-ordination Committee points out that the social processes of exclusion that have been going on all these years could not be addressed by civil society, whose primary focus was on providing immediate help to the victims of the riots.

“It is true that they have ensured that the communities no longer intermingle. Attempts were made to the extent of changing even the state transport bus routes going to Saurashtra so that they would not pass through the largest Muslim ghetto of Juhapura.

“The local administration has also been extending the areas under the purview of the Disturbed Areas Act. The deeply polarised people do not understand that this extension means nothing more than an absolute failure of the law and order enforcing agencies,” said Nafees.

The Act prohibits the sale of property by people of one community to another in areas notified as communally sensitive. It is alleged that while the Act exists ostensibly to check ghettoisation, it is actually being used to ensure that Muslims cannot spread out and live where they wish, while property prices remain high in the so-called disturbed areas.

According to Nafees, Hindu communalists have pushed Muslims to the margins in governance as well.

“There is no provision for minority development in the budgetary allocation of the state. The small amount of a few lakhs mentioned in the budget was under a subhead and that too for disbursing salaries.

“There are a lot of references to centrally sponsored schemes, making people wonder why these references are there in a state government budget.

“We have been seeking that a State Commission for Minorities be set up. The community has been pushed to the state of helplessness.”

To relate a first hand experience: I stayed in the Shah Alam area of Ahmedabad for a couple of days after the Gujarat assembly polls in 2017. Residents of the area elaborated on the state of affairs in detail.

The pitiable condition of roads, people being largely dependent on trust-run charity healthcare facilities, and the lack of new educational or vocational institutions told a grim story.

This in an area that stands adjacent to the high profile Maninagar constituency, which was represented by none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he was chief minister in the government of Gujarat.

At the time, local residents busted the Bharatiya Janata Party’s claims of an improvement in the law and order situation saying, “The Muslim goons have not vanished. It has just been ensured that they do not operate outside Muslim dominated areas.”

Observers believe that having achieved their goals of making Muslims pariahs or outcastes in Gujarat, Hindutva forces are now trying to do the same in other states as well.

They say the first step in this direction is to make the community feel unsettled and insecure.

This is precisely what has been happening in Uttar Pradesh for the past few days since the protests erupted on the CAA and NRC.

A senior political observer from the community told this reporter, “Things like the Babri demolition and the abrogation of Article 370 in Kashmir had a symbolic value for Muslims in the heartland. But now the fire has reached their very doorsteps.”