Remains of a Riot

Can the 2024 Lok Sabha elections reverse the symbolic invisibilisation of Muslims from UP's socio-political arena?

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Rakhi Bose in Muzaffarnagar and Saharanpur

EVERY Eid, Mohd Mosam returns from Bihar-where he works in construction to his home in Palda village in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, and memories of his childhood come flooding back.

Mosam hasn't always lived in Palda. He was born in the nearby Kutba-Kutbi village, about four km away. Somewhere in the middle of the road between Palda and KutbaKutbi lies a little brick dome that the locals believe was built by Babur. Inside is a maze "just like the Bhul Bhulaiya in Lucknow, though smaller". Mosam remembers how he and his friends-mostly Jats and Jatavs-played inside the gumbad (dome) on Eid, and later ate sevayyian (sweet vermicelli pudding) at his home in the evening.

It has been eleven years since Mosam lost his childhood home to communal violence, dubbed the 'Muzaffarnagar riots' of 2013. He says that it wasn't just the home that was lost. "We lost our childhood".

As Muzaffarnagar prepared to go to the polls in the first phase of the Lok Sabha elections on April 19, memories of violence and displacement hung heavy upon Muslim voters, who comprise a substantial portion of the electorate in UP and yet have seemingly become socio-politically invisible as citizens in the past decade.

Muzaffarnagar and After