Delhi is tense in sections, and pieces. There is Trilokpuri which continues to be tense after a serious bout of disturbances post Diwali. And there is Bawana village, on the outskirts of west Delhi, where, in anticipation of a showdown between Shia Muslims and Jats on Muharram on Tuesday, the authorities have blanketed the village with police and CRPF, barricades and checkpoints.
The Jats of Bawana and “a 100 other villages had held a Mahapanchayat in Bawana on Sunday, in which a decision was taken that this year the Muharram procession will not be allowed to pass through the village’s main street as has been the custom since 2006. “We will not budge,” a young Jat told dna on Monday evening. He was surrounded by half a dozen other young Jat men.
The elders had taken a decision, and now it was up to the young ones to see that it was implemented, if necessary with force. “They can bring in the CRPF, the police, the RAF or whatever. We will not let them crossover to this side of the canal,” said the same young Jat. “They (Shias) do this every year, put up a show of strength, marching up and then down our main street. But not this time, we’re prepared to take them on.”
The canal he was talking of is dry, and as dirty as a canal can get. It separates the Jat village of Bawana from the Mulsim enclave of JJ Colony, a resettlement colony where people of the low income group, mostly Muslims, from other parts of Delhi were settled by the Sheila Dikshit government in 2004.
“Before 2004, there was no JJ Colony, no Muharram processions through our main street and no tension. But Dikshit wanted to help her son Sandeep Dikshit, so she moved Bangladeshi immigrants from his son’s constituency and moved them to west Delhi,” said a Jat, this one also refusing to give himself a name.
Compared to Bawana village, which is as developed as any average residential colony in Delhi, JJ Colony is a ghetto, with narrow lanes and by-lanes, dirty to say the least and choc-a-bloc with people. The original four and five-storey buildings stand apart from the main colony. On Monday, the media was all over JJ Colony, asking the familiar questions on issues that plague Hindu-Muslim relations.
But the question everyon’s lips was: Will the Shias take out the Muharram procession on Tuesday, and will they go through the main street of Bawana despite the Jat Mahapanchayat’s Sunday diktat to keep away? We asked that question of Maulana Niyas Ahmed, Imam of Masjid Ameen Fatima of JJColony. “No, we have decided to curtail the procession this side of the canal. Our Jat friends seem to have this misconception that we carry out the procession to show out might. They are mistaken but we decided not to challenge them,” he told dna.
But the Jats are not convinced. They do not trust the Shias, and neither do they hold much confidence in the police, who they believe can swing any which way. Meanwhile, Trilokpuri remains tense even if calm. “We will not be taking out the Muharram procession on Tuesday. We will wrap the Taaziya in a black cloth and bury it, and we will wear black arm-bands as a mark of protest,” said Mahfooz Alam, a resident of Block 27.
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