‘I didn’t go’: The last Muslim man in Indian town hit by religious strife | Islamophobia

Nanda Nagar, Uttarakhand, India — Each morning at 8am, Ahamad Hasan pulls up the brown shutter of his dry-cleaning store on the banks of the Nandakini river, which runs via the distant Himalayan city of Nanda Nagar within the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand.

He neatly hangs dry-cleaned garments in plastic covers on the pink partitions of his store. Then the 49-year-old waits for patrons.

Till September 2024, by lunchtime, he would have had between 20 and 25 clients come by, leaving their sherwanis, fits, coats, pants and winter put on. Some would sip a cup of tea with him whereas discussing politics and jokes, sharing their smiles and sorrows. A lot of the clients had been Hindu, a number of, Muslim.

However on at the present time, fewer than 5 Hindu clients go to his store by midday. And he is aware of there’s no level ready for a Muslim buyer.

Hasan is the final Muslim man on the town.

For generations, 15 Muslim households referred to as Nanda Nagar dwelling. It’s the place Hasan was born and raised, the place his household acquired invites for Hindu festivals and hosted neighbours on Eid. He has collected wooden for Hindu funeral pyres and shouldered the our bodies of his Hindu buddies.

That every one modified final September in an explosion of anti-Muslim violence triggered by a Hindu lady’s allegation of sexual harassment, however rooted in a broader shift in sentiment towards the minority neighborhood that Hasan had observed since COVID-19.

Hate-filled slogans and marches culminated in bodily assaults towards Muslims, as their retailers had been destroyed. Fearing for his or her lives, the city’s small Muslim neighborhood fled within the cowl of night time.

Solely Hasan returned, together with his spouse, two daughters and two sons, adamant that they may make it work in the one place he knew as dwelling. However the household lives in worry.

Their Hindu neighbours don’t converse to them. He not goes for walks alongside the river like he used to each night. He doesn’t let his youngsters and spouse meet anybody. And he worries about extra violence breaking out.

“I simply go to my store and are available again dwelling. That is our life now,” Hasan says. “After spending my entire life on this city, I really feel like I’m a ghost. I’m fully invisible. No one is even speaking to me.”

‘Beat Muslims with sneakers’

Nanda Nagar is a 10-hour drive from India’s capital New Delhi. Situated close to the India-China border, the city is nestled on the confluence of the Nandakini’s tributaries, and has a inhabitants of about 2,000 folks. The river Nandakini is without doubt one of the six tributaries of the Ganges river, and is taken into account holy by Hindus.

After Hasan’s grandfather migrated from Najibabad, a city in Bijnor district of neighbouring Uttar Pradesh state in 1975, their household settled on the town. Hasan was born a yr later.

Life was largely peaceable, he remembers, till 2021. Through the coronavirus pandemic, Muslims throughout India had been vilified due to conspiracy theories unfold by the Hindu far-right teams that accused the neighborhood of intentionally spreading the virus via their spiritual practices and by holding giant gatherings. The far-right referred to as it “Corona jihad”.

Out of the blue, Hasan felt his Hindu buddies develop distant. “Earlier than COVID-19, there was so many individuals in our dwelling on Eid, and on Diwali we used to get so many invitations from our buddies. However after COVID, this stopped,” he says.

However the occasions of September 1, 2024, had been a tipping level.

Per week earlier, on August 22, a younger Hindu pupil accused a Muslim barber, Mohammad Arif, of sexual harassment whereas he was opening his salon. The barber quickly fled the city.

On September 1, the city’s shopkeepers’ affiliation determined to rally to sentence the alleged harassment of the pupil and demand police motion. Hasan, together with different Muslims within the city, participated within the protest. “We went as a result of in any other case the Hindus would allege that we assist crimes dedicated by Muslims,” he remembers.

Nevertheless, the group quickly began chanting anti-Muslim slogans, threatening violence.

“As we had been strolling together with protesters, anti-Muslim slogans had been raised reminiscent of ‘Mullon ke dalaalon ko … Joote maaro saalon ko’ [the pimps of Muslims should be beaten by shoes],” he says.

Because the rally reached the police station in Nanda Nagar, a bunch of protesters grabbed a 30-year-old Muslim man, Harun Ansari, and began beating him. Hasan stated many Hindus justified Ansari’s beating by alleging that Muslims on the town had helped the accused barber, Arif, to flee.

In a cellphone interview from Najibabad, the place he moved after the assault, Ansari says that he acquired a number of accidents in his head. “I simply bear in mind being dragged by the group. After that nothing was seen to me,” he remembers.

After Ansari was overwhelmed, all the opposite Muslims, together with Hasan, fled from the rally and locked themselves of their homes. A mob of tons of of individuals got here and began pelting their homes with stones.

Hasan says the Muslim households stored calling the police for assist. “However nobody got here.” He additionally referred to as his Hindu buddies. “They weren’t even selecting up my name,” he says.

The Muslim households stayed indoors till late night when the mob went away. That night time, because the clock crossed midnight, Hasan quietly made his means again to his store, which is in entrance of his home.

He noticed that the shutter of his store was damaged and twisted. Dry-cleaned garments had been strewn throughout the road like confetti. The counter, a sturdy wood desk the place he stored financial savings value 400,000 rupees [$4,600] in a locked drawer, was shattered – the cash stolen. He had saved that cash for his youngsters’s marriages.

Fragments of the title board of his store, The Hasan Drycleaners, had been thrown like particles on the banks of the Nandakini.

“I’ll always remember that day,” Hasan tells Al Jazeera, whereas exhibiting images of his vandalised store.

However the next day could be even worse.

On September 2, an excellent greater protest was organised by Hindu far-right teams, who referred to as for folks from different cities to additionally assemble in Nanda Nagar. “There have been 1000’s of males and simply 60 or 70 policemen,” says Harun, the person who was thrashed the day prior to this. “Regardless of our complaints, no additional police pressure was referred to as.”

Darshan Bharti, a Hindu far-right chief identified for his hate speech towards Muslims, additionally visited Nanda Nagar that day. After his speech, “the mob went on a rampage and vandalised our properties,” says Hasan. They destroyed a makeshift mosque and threw a Muslim resident’s automobile into the river. Bharti didn’t reply to Al Jazeera’s questions on his go to to Nanda Nagar and on the violence that adopted.

“All Muslim households of the city hid on the highest ground of my home whereas the group was pelting stones. I nonetheless get shivers recalling that day,” Hasan says. His home has iron grills and a gate, and is a multistorey constructing, which made it a safer selection for the Muslim households to shelter in.

Arif, the barber accused of sexual harassment, was arrested that day from Uttar Pradesh after police registered a proper grievance towards him on September 1. Arif was remanded to police custody for every week after which launched on bail.

Nevertheless, the police knowledgeable the Muslim households that they may not take duty for his or her security any extra. At nighttime, officers escorted them into police automobiles and dropped them off in a close-by city.

For many Muslim households, it was the top of life in Nanda Nagar.

However not for Hasan. “That is my dwelling. My delivery and upbringing, the whole lot about my life, together with my id, belong to Uttarakhand,” he says, including that each one his id paperwork checklist Nanda Nagar as his deal with. “My whole household lives in Uttrakhand.

“The place will I’m going now?”

‘A complete boycott’

From the neighbouring city the place the police left them, Hasan and his household made their solution to Dehradun, the state capital located 266km (165 miles) away.

After a number of days in Dehradun, Hasan and 48-year-old Mohammad Ayyum, who was additionally from Nanda Nagar, petitioned the Uttarakhand Excessive Court docket on September 26, pleading for cover.

The Excessive Court docket ordered the senior superintendent of police (SSP) of Chamoli district, the place Nanda Nagar is situated, to “be certain that regulation and order is strictly enforced and no untoward incident happens focusing on any explicit neighborhood”. The SSP is essentially the most senior police officer of the district liable for regulation and order.

“After the Excessive Court docket granted us safety, I believed I may now go to Nanda Nagar, however no different Muslim household was able to accompany me out of worry,” Hasan remembers.

Hasan’s brother used to run a salon in Nanda Nagar. “However his landlord threatened him that if he didn’t vacate his store, he would throw his belongings out,” Hasan says. Different family who stay in Gopeshwar, a bigger city in Chamoli, didn’t supply his household any assist, Hasan says.

“After loads of thought, I made a decision I need to return, as the whole lot – together with my home and store, was in Nanda Nagar.”

Hasan added that his spouse was extra brave than he was. “She went to Nanda Nagar with our children first. I got here to city later. Regardless of worry, she instructed me if we don’t return, we’d lose our livelihood.”

To make sure, the household nonetheless faces a dilemma. Hasan has contemplated transferring his household to Dehradun after their daughter completes college. Nevertheless, his spouse believes that in the event that they transfer anyplace else, their home and store can be taken by locals.

Hasan lastly reached Nanda Nagar on October 16, solely to discover a Hindu man had additionally opened a dry-cleaning store going through his store, as direct competitors.

He tried to get his store repaired however no Hindu staff had been keen to assist. “It’s a complete boycott of Muslims”, he says. “They’ve unfold a lot worry that no employee is able to even restore our store. The employees instructed me they’ve been instructed by the Hindutva teams to not assist the Muslims.” Hindutva is the Hindu nationalist ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a paramilitary organisation and chief of numerous our bodies together with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Get together.

Hasan ultimately managed to open his store after repairing it himself. However no clients would come. He dialled his beforehand common Hindu shoppers, however they refused to return. Anybody who got here could be threatened by “Hindutva goons”, he says, and instructed to as a substitute go to the Hindu dry-cleaner.

“That day I realised that even dry-cleaning has a faith.”

A smile, lastly

Hasan’s household, too, has struggled in a brand new Nanda Nagar – one during which their faith makes them stand out.

His 16-year-old daughter was bullied at school, he says, “due to her faith”. Certainly one of her classmates instructed her that she ought to be expelled from the college as a result of she’s a Muslim.

“It stopped once we reached out to the principal with a grievance.”

Justice, for Hasan and the Muslims who fled the city, stays elusive. After the September 1 assault, Uttarakhand Police registered a proper grievance primarily based on what Nanda Nagar police station chief Sanjay Singh Negi noticed that day.

“I noticed that 250-300 folks had been loudly abusing ‘a particular neighborhood.’ After I tried to cease them, they pushed me apart. Then, I referred to as my seniors and requested for added police pressure,” Negi wrote in his grievance. He then wrote that the mob began vandalising retailers of Muslims and likewise vandalised a mosque.

“The agitated mob was focusing on a particular neighborhood attributable to which the ladies and youngsters from these households began screaming in worry.” Negi wrote that members of the mob had been carrying sticks, shovels and iron rods. Nonetheless, Uttarakhand Police haven’t arrested anybody up to now. Al Jazeera reached out to the Chamoli district’s Superintendent of Police Sarvesh Panwar however has not acquired any response.

In some methods, Nanda Nagar is a microcosm of a broader shift enveloping the state of Uttarakhand. Beneath Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami of Modi’s BJP, the state has witnessed a surge in hate crimes and discrimination towards Muslims in a number of cities. On the town after city, far-right teams have launched campaigns to strain Muslims to go away, in lots of instances efficiently.

Retailers belonging to Muslims are ransacked or burned. An financial boycott is unofficially instituted. And sometimes, Muslims additionally face bodily violence. Most lately, Dhami’s authorities notified the principles of a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) that stops Muslims and different spiritual minorities from pursuing religion-based private legal guidelines within the state.

Courts have stepped in on a number of events, however some activists consider they should do extra. “Courts of our nation don’t realise the magnitude of oppression Muslims are at present going through,” says Khursheed Ahmed, an activist primarily based within the state’s capital Dehradun who helped Hasan file a petition within the Excessive Court docket. “The oppression is on all fronts – bodily, emotional, monetary.”

Nonetheless, lately, Hasan has discovered a glimmer of hope.

On February 19, greater than 5 months after the September violence, one of many Hindu males who led the anti-Muslim protests got here to Hasan’s store. His spouse was managing their store on the time. The Hindu man had introduced a coat and trousers and requested in the event that they may very well be shortly dry-cleaned.

Hasan’s spouse then requested him, “You referred to as me sister and also you needed Muslims to go?”

The person replied: “Overlook what occurred. Your work is excellent. That’s why I’ve come to you.”

Hasan smiles as he remembers that incident. “I noticed at the present time as a result of I didn’t go and I put up a battle,” he says.

The ache of damaged friendships nonetheless hurts. “When Muslim households got here again to take their belongings, the folks with whom we used to sit down and snicker had been taunting us,” he says. “They questioned why we returned. It broke my coronary heart. Whereas bodily violence has subsided, the silent social violence continues.”

However Hasan refuses to surrender on the long run. Or, on Nanda Nagar.