From the New York Times (April 18, 2012)
Can the Samajwadi Party ease UP's Shia-Sunni Conflict?
By Raksha Kumar
A chill ran down Ruby Rizvi’s spine when, about three weeks ago, she
heard the footsteps of hundreds of people outside her house near
Mahboob Ganj Chauraha in Lucknow. After ensuring the safety of her
three children, she peeped out of the window of her first-floor home.
The mob, some 1,500 strong, she estimates, approached her husband’s
pharmacy on the ground floor, with swords and metal rods.
Within minutes, they had wrecked it and looted stock worth about one
million rupees, or $20,000.
Zaheer Rizvi, Ruby’s brother, attributes the attack to the longstanding
antagonism between Shiite and Sunni Muslims in the area. The Rizvis are
Shiites, while the attackers were Sunni, he said. “Their attire clearly
showed that they were from the other community,” he said, noting that
they wore smaller skullcaps.
Since the Samajwadi Party came to power in Uttar Pradesh in March,
there has been a renewed sense of optimism that certain “Muslim
issues’’ would be carefully dealt with. One of the main campaign
promises made by the new chief minister, Akhilesh Yadav, was that a
quota for schools and state jobs would be established for Muslims based
on population. The state is 18 percent Muslim, and their support is
critical for any party.
“I am sure Akhilesh Yadav’s leadership will change things around. He
has a passion to solve our problems,” the spokesman of the Shia
Personal Law Board, Maulana Yasoob Abbas, said in a recent interview.
Hopes were raised further last week when the president of Samajwadi
Party, Mulayam Singh Yadav, increased the strength of the Muslim
cabinet ministers in the government by appointing more muslims to the
cabinet and appointed district magistrates and superintendents of
police from among the muslims, a concession to demands made by the
Shahi Imam, the lead Imam of the Jama Mosque in Delhi, Syed Ahmed
Bukhari.
Muslim leaders are now looking to the Samajwadi Party to work with them
on improving literacy and employment rates among Muslims, which fall
far below the state average. “I have traveled from Meerut to
Muzaffarnagar to Bijnor. The main demand of the community is that
employment be provided for,” said Maulana Abbas, adding that “they
should open more Urdu schools, employ more Urdu teachers and grant
reservations for Muslims in government jobs.”
Many leaders are optimistic that the Samajwadi Party will also help
quell the Shia-Sunni violence that has rocked eastern Uttar Pradesh for
decades. They say the frequency and intensity of the conflicts did not
decrease during the reign of the last chief minister, Mayawati, who
goes by one name. “If only Mayawati could control the violence, it
wouldn’t have gone out of hand,” said Maulana Abbas. But instead of
trying to broker peace, “she alienated herself from the masses,” he
said.
Shiite and Sunni sects have clashed here for generations. Some
attribute it to the fact that the former Avadh Kingdom, in present-day
eastern Uttar Pradesh, was ruled by the minority Shiite community
(estimated at 10 to 15 percent of the Muslim population in India) for
decades before the British took over, leaving the majority Sunnis
resentful. Others blame non-Muslim politicians. “The current crop of
political parties began all of this,” said Nawab Mir Jafar Abdullah, a
descendant of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, the last ruler of Avadh. “They
wanted to divide the Muslim vote so they can get the support of the
sections of the community.”
The Samajwadi Party has enjoyed strong Muslim support since its
formation in the early 1990s, because it was seen as standing against
the central government when the Babri Masjid Mosque was being
demolished by the Bharatiya Janata Party. Still, it lost to Mayawati’s
party in state-wide elections in 2007. Some Muslim leaders say that was
because the party failed to keep its promises such as reservations made
to the Muslim community.
While there are no official statistics on Shiite-Sunni violence in
Uttar Pradesh, frequent bloody clashes have been reported in recent
years, occasionally resulting in deaths. In February, the police used
tear gas and charged crowds with lathis, or bamboo sticks, during a
Sunni procession to mark the anniversary of Prophet Muhammad’s birth,
after stone-throwing broke out between Sunnis and Shiites. The violence
left dozens injured, according to news reports, and engulfed most of
Lucknow’s Old City.
Much of the violence has centered around religious parades and
festivals; community leaders have responded in the past by banning some
processions and establishing new routes for others. Other disputes have
dragged on for generations: The Supreme Court recently directed the UP
government to settle a battle between the sects over a cemetery in
Varanasi’s Doshipur area that is more than 130 years old. Similar
clashes over land and property have gone to court in the Deoria,
Azamgarh and Mirzapur districts.
The violence is all the more notable because Lucknow and the
surrounding area is known for its relative communal harmony. “There
hasn’t been a single act of Hindu-Muslim violence here,” said Nawab
Abdullah.
Lucknow residents like Ms. Rizvi say they have had enough. “This is my
home and all I want to do is live in peace,” Ms. Razvi said.
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