'Hindu changed': India's sleepy state becomes anti-Muslim tinderbox | Politics

Kadamtala (Tripura), India – The last thing Shahin Ahmed, 38, remembers about his brother, Alfeshani Ahmed, was calling him on the phone amid gunshots and cries.

At around 9pm on October 6, Alfeshani, a 36-year-old owner of a smartphone and electronic accessories shop, had just quickly closed his shop in Kadamtala market to rush home to Jher Jheri, a predominantly Muslim town. more than three kilometers. (about 2 miles) in North Tripura, a state in northeastern India.

The crowd was bustling in the market, and Ahmed knew that his shop would not be left behind. “Therefore, he left the shop, taking only his shop's account book which contained all his financial transactions and records,” Ahmed said.

Tensions had previously flared between local Hindus and Muslims after a Muslim car driver refused to pay a local Hindu club for Durga Puja, a major Hindu festival. The driver and passenger, both Muslims, were allegedly beaten up by members of the club.

The Kadamtala subdivision, which also includes the market, has a mixed population of Hindus and Muslims, with Hindus constituting more than 64 percent of the population and Muslims accounting for about 35 percent. Muslims, the largest group in the state, also make up about 9 percent of Tripura's 3.6 million people.

Muslims in Kadamtala and adjoining areas of North Tripura which has a majority of Hindus used to pay dues for Durga Puja festivals as a symbol of harmony between Hindus and Muslims. Manik Saha, the chief minister of the state, had earlier warned parties against demanding payment of Durga Puja subscriptions.

The situation, on October 6, however, turned sour overnight, as Hindu and Muslim groups clashed, leading to a massive deployment of security personnel. Police attacked the crowd and opened fire, according to reports.

17 people, most of whom are police officers, were injured in these communal conflicts and one person died.

It was Alfeshani. “He was on the phone with me when the bullet hit him in the head,” Shahin Ahmed, Alfeshani's brother, told Al Jazeera.

Bhanupada Chakraborty, who was the superintendent of police in the North Tripura district at the time, said the police did not target anyone, and the cause of Alfeshani's death was “still under investigation”.

His family, however, is against the police's decision. “He was shot in the head by the police,” said Alifjaan Begum, Alfeshani's mother, with tears in her eyes. “The fire in my heart will never end. It was murder.”

The trigger

Earlier, the Muslim delegation asked the local police to arrest those responsible for assaulting the Muslim driver and passenger. The Kadamtala police, in response, arrested two more people in connection with the alleged beating of a Muslim driver and a female passenger. Their arrest took place after a protest by local Muslims.

But tensions flared after a member of the Durga Puja organizers' club made a “subtle comment” about the Prophet Muhammad on Facebook, said a person who was part of the Muslim delegation, requesting anonymity. Al Jazeera can independently verify the comments.

A group of angry Muslims went in search of the young man in a Hindu-dominated area. “They threw stones and broke the doors and windows, causing the Hindus to panic, asking them to hand over the Hindu boy,” Bibhu Debnath, secretary of the Kadamtala Market Association, told Al Jazeera.

That angered the Hindus. Groups linked to the main Hindu Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) – the ideological head of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which also rules in Tripura – vandalized several Muslim shops in the Kadamtala market.

As the back-and-forth between the two groups intensified, Alfeshani tried to escape.

He couldn't.

'Burned by choice'

On the morning of October 8, Suhail Ahmed Khan, 40, finally arrived at his shop in the Kadamtala market. It was a five-minute walk from home, but it took two days before it was safe for him to go there, because of the violence.

The previous day on October 7, local Hindus and a mob from outside Kadamtala allegedly belonging to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal – factions of the RSS – had gathered on the outskirts of the market. They then went to the market, “burning and looting houses”, said local political leader Heera Lal Nath of the opposition Congress party. Tapas Roy, who heads the RSS in Tripura denied the allegations.

Khan's shop was burnt to the ground. A shop, which was stocked with smartphones and other electronic items in the Kadamtala market, was also ransacked.

This was the store where Khan had invested his life's money. “More than 57 lakh rupees [$67,550] it was on fire,” said Khan, trying to speak. “With such a loss, my life became death.”

“It was collective punishment,” said Khan, trying to speak. “They have hurt us psychologically and economically.”

Right in the center of the Kadamtala market, the Kadamtala Jama mosque was also set on fire by a mob on the same day on October 7. “They burned all the religious books,” Abdul Motin, adviser to the Kadamtala Jama mosque committee, told Al Jazeera. .

At the edge of the market in Saraspur area, Islam Uddin, 40, is rebuilding his burnt home. His house was among ten Muslim-owned houses, in a predominantly Hindu area, that were torched by a mob on the same day on October 7.

He said: “My family and I had to flee to save our lives.

His neighbor, Atarun Nessa, whose house was burnt down, is now living on charity from local NGOs. Her family's only source of income – ie the rickshaw her husband, Siraj Uddin, used to use – was burnt by a Hindu mob.

“It was the only way we could manage a piece,” 47-year-old Nessa told Al Jazeera, breaking down. “What kind of life are we living now?”

Several witnesses, who asked not to be identified, said police were standing by as “spectators” when an angry Hindu mob went on a rampage on October 7.

Local legislator Islam Uddin, of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), said the police allowed the burning. “If [police] wanted, they could have stopped the Hindu crowd,” he said, and added that “everything seemed to choose a side”.

Sudip Roy Barman, a lawmaker from the opposition Congress party, said the violence in Kadamtala was “state-sponsored” by the BJP. “BJP wanted to mobilize Muslims.”

When reached for comment, Chakraborty, a former superintendent of police in North Tripura, told Al Jazeera: “I'm not the right person to talk to the media.”

Al Jazeera's calls to Tripura's police chief, Amitabh Ranjan, went unanswered. Al Jazeera also sent his office a list of detailed questions but has yet to receive a response. However, in the past, he dismissed the allegations of the police not standing up during the violence.

'Muslims live in fear'

The clashes in Kadamtala are the latest incidents of inter-religious violence in Tripura in recent months, after clashes erupted repeatedly in August and October, over alleged blasphemy by Muslims. In retaliation, mosques were attacked, and in some cases, Muslim homes were burned.

For Sultan Ahmed, a Tripura-based activist and national secretary of the Student Islamic Organization of India, the latest attack brings back memories of the devastating riots that rocked large parts of the country in 2021.

“Muslims in Tripura still live in fear of what happened then,” Ahmed said.

Large Hindu mobs, allied with far-right groups, have attacked Muslim homes and mosques in many districts of the state, especially in North Tripura, which shares a 96-mile-long border with Bangladesh.

The attack was in response to Muslim mobs in Bangladesh who had attacked a number of Hindus there after a Quran was found on the knee of a Hindu deity during Durga Puja celebrations.

“Since then, any attack on Hindus in Bangladesh puts Muslims living in North Tripura on edge,” Ahmed said.

'Hindus have changed'

Tripura has long witnessed ethnic violence between the state's tribal communities and the Bengalis. However, this mountainous region has no history of conflict along religious lines between Hindus and Muslims.

Until Modi's BJP came to power in 2018.

While India's Ministry of Home Affairs has stopped publishing statistics on sectarian violence, data available from the National Crime Record Bureau on riots from 2016 to 2020 shows that Tripura reported only two cases of communal violence, and those were in 2019.

However, that number has increased significantly since then, with Hindu groups trying to “incite public sentiment” in about a dozen cases since 2018, said Uddin, a spokesman for the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

The incidents include right-wing outfits attacking Muslim rubber plantations in the state and claiming an ancient mosque as a temple.

Cases of abortion of Muslim men by Hindu mobs have also increased.

BJP spokesperson in Tripura, Subrata Chakraborty, told Al Jazeera that “there is no such [group] you get a right under the current government”.

“This government is a working government and a government that supports development,” said Chakraborty.

Meanwhile, Kadamtala is still tense. “Muslims who make up 70 percent of the market's customers now don't want to buy anything from a Hindu shop,” said Khan, whose shop was set on fire by a Hindu mob. “The consensus that was there will take years to come back, or maybe not.”

For Abdul Haque, who was a member of the BJP sub-unit in Kadamtala, the recent violence was a sign of a wider change.

“Earlier, during Hindu festivals, they would adjust the loudspeaker in such a way that it would not disturb the Muslims, but now, they raise the loudspeakers and play provocative songs,” he said.

“The Hindus have changed here.”