In Gurugram, 60 days after arson and fire Premium

 Sabina Khatun, Robiul Mullah, Mansura Bibi, Nazia Bibi, Giasuddin, Anupama Pringunayap, Raju Mandal, and Rafiq: Fleeing violence, Bengali Muslim migrants in Gurugram's Sector 70A face job loss and heartbreak. Despite police efforts, fear of persecution lingers.

Battling the sharp, post-monsoon September sun and the rising dust, Sabina Khatun*, 26, wrapped in her green gamcha (light towel), cycles back from the high-rise buildings of Gurugram’s Sector 70, to her rented tin-shade, trapping the heat within. About 300 metres away from her informal housing, Khatun gets off her weathered cycle and walks back home, down the dirt track, her forehead crinkled in worry. Trying to catch her breath, she tells her brother-in-law that all the houses where she used to work as a cook have replaced her with someone else. “They have all appointed Hindu women, lest they have to go through days without having house help,” she says.  

Khatun had been absent from work for over a month, when she, her husband, and 7-year-old daughter, fled Delhi’s corporate suburb for their hometown, Malda, known only for its mangoes and mulberries. They had been here four years, with husband and wife making ₹30,000 a month, she working as a cook, he as a security guard in a housing complex near Tuplip chowk, in the same sector.  

But on August 1 this year, the sense of stability slipped away. At about 11 a.m, on a day following communal clashes that broke out in Mewat region’s Nuh in Haryana around a procession taken out by Hindus that turned violent, right wing men on about 25 motorbikes, allegedly rode aggressively into Sector 70A. Residents say about 800 people live here, in clusters of houses. The men allegedly bullied them into showing identity proof. Then, report residents, they set scrap yards and tyre repair shops ablaze, threatening to burn down the houses of the Bengali Muslim migrants. They demanded others shut shop, abandon their houses, and leave. All this took place just about 2-3 km from the Badshapur police station, not far from the secure gated communities.

The people of the area, both Hindus and Muslims, claim there had been no history of communal violence here until the wee hours of the same morning, when am imam had been murdered in a mosque, less than 10 km away. The Haryana police claims that two deaths or Gurugram residents were recorded during the communal clashes, the other death of a Bajrang Dal coordinator, who was a part of the Nuh procession.

The fear of losing their lives pushed almost all the Bengali Muslims in the area to retreat to their hometowns, primarily those bordering Bangladesh. “We were afraid that they would kill us, so we went back the night of the violence,” says Robiul Mullah, 33, who had migrated to Gurugram three years ago from Amtala, a town in the South 24 Parganas of West Bengal.  

Mullah, his wife, and their two toddlers fled Gurugram on the morning of August 2, leaving behind a life they had carefully built, adding little home accessories to their home that could just about fit a single bed, a cooler, and a fridge. “I had no idea when we could come back and resume our work, or how we would sustain ourselves,” he says. Back home, he claims that the lack of Hindutva politics made West Bengal a safe haven for those like him — the “lungi wearers”. “There is no life threat if you are in a lungi or niqab there. Here, they identified us by our choice of clothes, and threatened us,” says Mullah, a security guard at a shopping mall in Gurugram.  

Migrating for opportunity