Sambhal: A History of Violence

By Vandana Menon 13 December 2024 In the dead of the night during Shivratri, a Hindu man entered the Jama Masjid in Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal, tied the Maulana to his bed, and slit his throat. It was February 1976. The violence and month-long curfew that followed put Sambhal on the map as a communally sensitive hotspot. Another riot broke out in 1978, so serious that Parliament considered sending a team to the tiny town on a fact-finding mission. The years 1976 and 1978 sealed Sambhal’s stereotype with two violent clashes in as many years — just before the 1980 Moradabad riots that triggered a wave of violence across Uttar Pradesh. And it has sunk into public consciousness, shaping the way that residents interact with each other, as well as the way the administration approaches the region. The fear and the fury explain why tensions came to a head this year, on 24 November, when locals clashed with the police after a team arrived to survey the Jama Masjid. It was based on a court case that claimed the mosque was built on the site of Harihar Mandir, which is where Kalki — the final avatar of Vishnu — is meant to be born. The Satyug, the golden age according to Hinduism, is supposed to start in Sambhal — with Kalki's birth. Instead, there was a clash that left at least five Muslim men dead, and all of Sambhal terrified. Now, the town is desperately engaged in a memory-making exercise — from the district administration to religious clergy on both sides, to the residents themselves. The residents of Sambhal say that the town has always been peaceful, except for the three years of 1976, 1978 and 1992 — right after the demolition of the Babri Masjid. But the local administration says otherwise. The district magistrate, the superintendent of police, and the local intelligence unit are all involved in digging up the past to reconstruct and prove Sambhal’s violent history. Local officials are on the hunt for people — especially Hindus — who have been affected and displaced by the violence in the 1970s. FIRs are being filed against those who diverge from the local administration’s version of events, in an attempt to contain the spread of misinformation and rumour. Even Wikipedia—the world’s largest open-source memory keeper—isn’t spared. The police are preparing to file an FIR against the website for carrying misinformation, after receiving a complaint that a webpage was edited inaccurately. “The situation in 1976 was very tense for a long time, which is why 1978 happened,” said Saad Usmani, a resident of Sambhal who has been a journalist for forty years. “It took years to rebuild trust and social harmony. And then 1992 happened, and the community was forever fractured. Whenever religion-based politics happens, Sambhal gets dragged into it.” The administration has put together its own list of riots, complete with specific details, the number of Hindus and Muslims who lost their lives, and how long curfew was declared afterwards. Their count stands at 15, dating back to 1936 and 1947, according to documents accessed by ThePrint. The smallest interpersonal conflicts are recorded, even if no one died or no curfew was declared. This narrative stands in stark contrast to the lived memory of Sambhal, which is home to a Muslim majority and Hindu minority. “Sambhal is as important, if not more, than Ayodhya. Just like Ayodhya is where Ram was born, Sambhal is where Kalki will be born. And he cannot be born in a mosque,” said Mahant Rishiraj Giri, the priest of the nearby Kela Devi Mandir who is a petitioner in the court case. “Sambhal’s history will only begin once the Masjid is destroyed and the Mandir is returned to its former glory.” History Of A Masjid Sambhal’s district magistrate, Rajender Pensiya, pores over a map on his desk. He’s busy trying to understand the topography of the hillock on which the Jama Masjid stands — and whether a temple existed below it. Old photographs of the mosque and its facade | Manisha Mondal | ThePrint ----- This Jama Masjid is no ordinary masjid. It’s one of the oldest surviving Mughal mosques in the country. It was declared a protected monument in 1920 and has remained so since, even though the millstone of time has changed its structure. “Sambhal doesn’t have a perfect history, but it has a long history,” said Chaudhury Ashraf Ali Khan, a prominent lawyer in the town and former president of the Jama Masjid, tracing its history to a mythical ‘Princess Sambhula’ who, according to local legend, recuperated in Sambhal’s climes — giving it its name. And these days, everyone’s a historian. Map of the Harihar Mandir and an image of the Jama Masjid | By special arrangement ----- Equipped with maps and old photographs, even local residents are out to find evidence that a Harihar Mandir was razed to the ground by Babur in the 16th century, and the Jama Masjid built in its place. All of Sambhal is discussing this — the Hindu side maintains that Babur demolished the temple and built the mosque in its place, while the Muslim community says that Babur had a mosque reconstructed or renovated on the same site. The map of the Jama Masjid complex | By special arrangement ------ Sushil Gupta (55), a Hindu resident who lives in the lane in front of the mosque, swears he remembers seeing a metal chain hanging from the dome of the mosque from his several childhood visits there — when times were more peaceful and the entire local community engaged with the mosque. When he discussed the mosque with his 82-year-old uncle in the days after 24 November, his uncle added to the memory: He remembers seeing a bell attached to the end of the metal chain. To Gupta, that’s enough proof. “There also used to be a framed sheet of glass in front of the mosque and it was written in parrot-green ink that it used to be Harihar Mandir. I don’t know what happened to that sign. But what more proof do you need? We all remember the zanjeer (chain) hanging from the gumbad (dome). Does that sound Muslim?” said Gupta, sitting in a Banke Bihari Mandir located barely 30 metres from the Jama Masjid, in the Hindu area around the mosque. The question of whether the mosque looks Islamic is on everyone’s mind. The facade of the mosque has been deconstructed multiple times, with people pointing out non-geometric features. A 1798 painting by a British artist is doing the rounds on WhatsApp — people say that since the painting features the mosque’s dome and no minarets, it’s proof that a temple could have been the original structure. A fairly recent lick of paint hasn't discouraged the public from describing aspects that are clearly modern as integral parts of a 600-year-old structure. A 1798 painting of the Sambhal Jama Masjid by a British artist | by special arrangement ------ Mughal historian Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi said that most domes had a provision for a chain with which a lamp or lantern was hung to provide light. This also became a common motif used in the early medieval period—as evidenced by 14th-century mosques in Gujarat. By Akbar’s period, this became a part of secular Mughal architecture, similar to other geometric motifs like the swastika and lotus buds. “Modern constructions are now being passed off as original structures. One cannot simply assign religion to architectural elements and designs, ” he said. What’s more is that according to historians like Catherine Asher, Babur was more interested in constructing gardens, and undertaking close study and cultivation of North Indian plants and vegetation, than building permanent structures, including mosques. Babur only gave orders for one mosque to be built: Kabuli Bagh, in Panipat, to celebrate his victory over Ibrahim Lodhi in the Battle of Panipat. The mosques in Ayodhya and Sambhal were built during his time and attributed to the emperor, as was the prevailing practice. Babur had never been to Sambhal, but his son Humayun was made governor of Sambhal and lived there. Humayun passed on the reigns to Akbar, and “Sambhal is said to have flourished under the Akbar rule but subsequently deteriorated in popularity when Akbar’s son Shah Jahan was made the in-charge of the city,” according to the district’s website. The website also mentions that Prithviraj Chauhan is “said to have” engaged in two fierce battles in Sambhal against Ghazi Sayyad Salar Masud, the nephew of Mahmud Ghazni. “There nevertheless is no circumstantial evidence to prove the same and is widely regarded as a legend,” the page reads. It then details how Qutub-ud-din Aibak seized Sambhal in the 14th century, after which Sikandar Lodi declared the city as one of his capitals in the 15th century. The controversy started when Annette Beveridge, a British translator, translated the Babarnama into English between 1912 and 1922. “She inserts a footnote — a translator’s note — saying that Hindu Baig built the mosque in Sambhal on Babur’s order, and alludes to the possibility of a temple having stood in the spot before. It is not a definitive mention,” said Rezavi, adding that neither the original Turkish text nor the translated Persian text of Babarnama had this detail. But Asher’s book, Architecture of Mughal India, mentions Sambhal as the first Mughal mosque, and that the Mughal noble who oversaw its construction knew about the legend of Kalki’s rebirth. And now, a new communal wrinkle has formed in Sambhal. Gupta claimed that a “Mohammedan killed the Maulana” in 1976 — even though several textual records, including parliamentary records and books like SLM Premchand’s 1979 publication Mob Violence in India say that it was a Hindu who killed the Maulana. The Maulana’s family moved to Ahiraula in UP’s Azamgarh shortly after — which several older Muslim residents remember. The claim that he was killed by a Muslim echoes the police line that the violence that took place on 24 November was actually between two Muslim factions — the Turks and Pathans. It’s an age-old distinction between Muslims who converted to Islam and those who didn’t, a fault line that history reflects. The Mughals were Turks — Humayun was deposed from his seat in 1539 by Sher Shah Suri, a Pathan. After Humayun’s death, an Afghan army of Pathans marched to Delhi to reclaim the throne from the Mughals, a revolt which the new emperor Akbar suppressed. And during Akbar’s reign, he appointed people from several ethnicities to nobility — Rajputs, Persians, even Europeans. But he never appointed an Afghan. Building a ‘Blood Bath’ Belt According to the local administration, the grand total of casualties in Sambhal over an 83-year period, not including 24 November, is as follows: 209 Hindus dead, four Muslims dead, and only 73 days of curfew. But even the records are conflicted. The 1976 riot is freshest in public memory because of the clear trigger: the maulana’s murder. A 65-year-old Muslim resident, Moin Uddin, remembered the weeks of fear that followed — the curfew was so intense that people were afraid to leave their homes. “We were scared to open our windows and doors because we thought we would be shot,” he said. “My father shouted at me when I opened the door one day just to see what was happening outside.” According to the local administration’s record, in 1976, rumours spread that a maulana was killed by Rajkumar Saini from Petiya — but the murder was actually committed by a fellow Muslim. This version diverges from other records and publicly available documents from the time. The administration's record alleges that Muslims demolished two temples in the area — Surajkund and Manasmandir — in retaliation. Intermittent violence continued through the year, after another skirmish in April led to further interpersonal violence in the by lanes by the mosque. But the 1978 clashes were larger in scale and duration. Living memory doesn’t explain exactly how it started, but parliamentary records show that it began in a local college, when students began to fight over certain ‘titles’ they’d assigned each other. The local administration said it took place around Holi, when Muslim shopkeepers set up their wares around the spot where Hindus were constructing the traditional Holi pyre. It was around the same time that college students gave each other ‘titles’. The fighting quickly became communal and bled out of the campus onto the street. The situation was so bad that the violence was discussed in Parliament in April 1978, in tandem with the violence that had taken place around the same time in Hyderabad. A concerned group of MPs — led by Sambhal’s Shanti Devi of the Bharatiya Lok Dal, and Anantag MP Mohammad Shafi Abbasi Qureshi from the Congress — brought up the violence. The debaters are careful with their language: the phrase “communal riot” was only used once during the entire debate, by Tumkur MP K Lakkappa. Devi said that this was the second case of communal conflict in as many years, ringing the warning bells well before the 1980 Moradabad riots. Qureshi brought up the inaccuracy of reporting: 17 Hindus were killed, while national newspapers reported the number of casualties being anywhere between 100 and 300. The question of a team of parliamentarians being sent to Sambhal to survey the situation also came up. But the present local administration puts the number of casualties in 1978 at 184. The Varshney-Wilkinson Dataset on Hindu-Muslim Violence in India between 1950-1995, by political scientists Ashutosh Varshney and Steven Wilkinson, has only four instances of communal violence in Sambhal: the largest being in 1978, with their reported number of dead at 16. “There were only 12 riots between 1950 and 1994 in which over 100 people were killed — and Sambhal doesn’t figure in them. A hundred dead is a massacre in a small-size town. From the perspective of someone who’s studied and written on riots, that would generally be an impossibility in a small town,” said Varshney, professor of political science and international studies at Brown University. “Most of these riots took place in large cities like Bombay, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, with the exception of towns like Aligarh and Meerut.” The Varshney-Wilkinson Dataset, which pulls its data from newspaper reports, doesn’t mention 1976 — possibly because a clear number of deaths haven’t been reported, "and it is hard to believe that if 100 or more people died, it would not be reported at all". But people remember the curfew. Both newspaper reports and the memories of several elderly residents of Sambhal estimate that the curfew in 1976 went on for at least a month — far longer than the seven-day curfew in the present administration’s version. “Sambhal doesn’t qualify as a ‘riot-prone’ town between 1950 and 1995 according to our dataset, but its neighbouring town, Moradabad, of which it was part, was a big one,” said Varshney, adding that ‘communal riots’ specifically refer to violence in which two mobs go at each other with deaths on both sides. “Riots have declined in frequency and intensity in India, and lynchings have replaced riots as the main mode of communal violence. And this has happened primarily after 2014.” By the late 1970s, the central government was taking issues of communal violence extremely seriously. The majority of communal incidents reported during this time were against Dalits. The Home Ministry’s annual report from the year 1978-79 contextualises communal incidents in a chapter on “law and order and political developments.” “As against 321 communal incidents in 1971, there were 240 in 1972, 242 in 1973, 248 in 1974, 205 in 1975, 169 in 1976, and 188 in 1977,” it said. “In 1978, 230 incidents have been reported of which two — one at Sambhal (UP) and the other in Aligarh (UP) — were of particular serious nature.” Historian Gyanendra Pandey’s book, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India, explains how and why the colonial government used communal violence as lens to understand the politics of various communities in India — and is often used loosely to describe conflicts between all groups, whether upper-caste and Dalit, Hindu and Muslim, or Hindu and Sikh. The politics of religion came to be labelled ‘communalism’ in the 1920s, and Pandey unpacks how — as he writes in a preface — “historians, administrators, politicians (and for that matter, the ‘people’ about whom we know least of all) have isolated ‘facts’ and served them as ‘history.’” The confusion over the numbers and exact events in Sambhal fades in comparison to the memory of violence. All it proves is one thing: that communal harmony in Sambhal could easily be disturbed. The Trope Of A “Sensitive Zone” “Sambhal is a miraculous place,” said Mahant Rishiraj Giri, while smoking a Cavenders cigarette. “I have been planning on filing this case since 1990, well before Babri. It is part of our history — if our elders didn’t pass it on, then how would I hear about this? And this is why I filed the case.” He waves his hand and a group of elderly men begin to sing local legends about Sambhal, and how the Harihar Mandir was destroyed. What they are singing about is how after centuries of bloodshed, even outside invaders will rise from their graves and chant “Harihar, harihar”. Local policemen sit around them and clap when the song is done. Sambhal has always been a “sensitive zone”, according to several former police officers. “Sambhal was a place of abundant tension and caution,” said AL Banerjee, former DGP of UP Police. “It was always known that way. And if you keep repeating something, it’ll sink in.” It’s a reputation that even the people can’t shake off. Peace committees, chaired by the SDM and attended by representatives from all communities, are regular affairs before every single Hindu and Muslim festival. But no peace committee meeting was held to prepare the public for the survey that took place on 19 November and led to the violence on 24 November. “Peace committee meetings are always normal and friendly, and people even come to complain about problems they have with each other. We always listen and try to sort it out,” said Nazim Saifi, who regularly attends them. Members of the Hindu community, however, said that they’ve been living in fear recently. Raghuvir Yadav, a shopkeeper who lives in Sambhal, said the community is always worried about upsetting their Muslim neighbours and sparking off a violent sequence of events. “Sambhal is a very sensitive place: during my tenure as SSP, there were communal tensions, skirmishes, and during each and every festival we were on tenterhooks,” said former DGP OP Singh, who was SSP of Moradabad during the 1980s. In 2011, Mayawati’s government even carved the district of Sambhal out of Moradabad, allegedly so that communal issues could be solved better, according to senior police officials at the time. But the Yogi government coming to power in 2016 only added further fuel to the fire, according to journalist Usmani. All the recent violence that has taken place in Sambhal is within a 10km radius and doesn’t spread. “This is not Babri, and there should be no communal angle here,” he said. “This entire event feels scripted, like a designed plan. Sambhal is a sensitive town, as they say. Despite a history of violence, the administration did nothing to prepare for this survey. If they were involved, perhaps people wouldn’t have died.” The Question Of Police Reform Every day, over 200 policemen patrol the Jama Masjid, marching through the narrow streets accompanied by uniformed RAF paramilitary soldiers. The entire street comes to a standstill as the police walk past, the only sound being their boots hitting gravel. It makes the Muslims fearful, and the Hindus feel safer. It’s a necessary show of force to keep the peace, according to SP Krishna Kumar Bishnoi. It helps to maintain law and order and remind Sambhal’s public that the police are present. “Sambhal is a very sensitive place. My job is to ensure peace and tranquillity,” said Bishnoi, who was also injured by the stoning that took place on 24 November. “And we have been able to do that — we didn’t impose a curfew because there was no need.” The long curfew of 1976 casts an even longer shadow over Sambhal. This was also the period during which the Provincial Armed Constabulary, UP’s armed police force formed to assist in maintaining law and order. But the PAC found itself fighting a different battle: of being notoriously violent and partisan. Banerjee added the demonisation of the PAC was unfair — an entire set of people were stigmatised and couldn’t perform their duties. “The image of the PAC has changed. There’s no fault of the PAC — they’re just doing their job,” said Usmani, who doesn’t see much of a distinction between police and paramilitary forces. “Anyway, whatever the PAC doesn’t do, the police does.” Prakash Singh, former DGP of UP police, said as far as the police and the PAC are concerned, their training is textbook: they have clear instructions to be impartial in situations of violence, and to work with local police to defuse the situation. “But in actual practice, it depends on what politicians convey — that shapes and orients the way the police function,” said Prakash Singh, who advocates for police reform. “What takes place next also depends on the officer on the spot and how he carries out offers.” The average police officer obeys instructions. “Ultimately, the evil starts at some level at the top,” said Singh. Many former police officers are of the view that the violence on 24 November was mishandled, and could have been avoided given the reputation that Sambhal has. “The problem is political control over the police, and the way political parties’ pushed their ideological agenda through the police,” added Singh. “The police must be insulated from all extraneous pressures.” Photographs of the Jama Masjid adorn the walls of his home office, lawyer and former president of the mosque, Chaudhury Ashraf Ali Khan traces a line of descent on his desk: this is how far Sambhal has fallen, he said. The region once used to be Asia’s largest producer of menthol, the foundation of a thriving local economy that specialised in bone-work. But communalism has destroyed this development. During the 1976 violence, the Khandsari Sugar Mill was shut for so long during the curfew that it never reopened fully and that industry ceased to exist too. “Politics has failed us. There are no good schools here. And when you abandon society like this, division and communalism is inevitable,” he said. He was 18 when the 1976 riots broke out, and remembers spending weeks in his home, never stepping beyond the courtyard. And he also remembers 1992, after the Babri Masjid was demolished, and the way his town never recovered. And what’s rubbing salt in the wound is the recent assault on the Ajmer Sharif Dargah: the anger around Ajmer is palpable, rippling through Sambhal and coming up in every conversation. Public memory paints a clear line: when it comes to historical monuments like the Babri Masjid and their own Jama Masjid, a “survey” leads to demolition. The Muslim residents of Sambhal said they are tired of proving themselves to be peaceful citizens of India. It’s a painful performance that they do whenever tension sparks and reporters descend on the town — questions over “sensitivity” and communalism are met with polite smiles and denial through gritted teeth. And the hurt is creating divisions within the community, with one set of Muslims forcing themselves to interact with the police, administration and journalists and another set withdrawing inward in suspicion and fear. Khan and his brother are one example. While Khan believes it is important to engage, his brother feels let down by the fourth pillar of democracy. But both are united in their belief that Sambhal’s lack of development throughout their lifetimes has contributed to it becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy of a communal tinderbox. “Backwardness and illiteracy — these are the two scourges of society that breed communalism,” said Khan. And there is almost zero trust in the political administration to help them. UP is ‘like a police state,’ and when even the law is biased towards the Hindu Right-wing, it is hard for those affected by communal violence to hope for justice, according to Usmani. “This isn’t communal violence. It’s the administration versus the Muslim community,” said Usmani. “This is the tragedy of our city, state, country — everything is now Hindu vs. Muslim.” ----- Edited by: Theres Sudeep Produced by Wasif Khan Visuals by Manisha Mondal Source: Sambhal: A History Of Violence URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islam-politics/sambhal-history-violence/d/134018 New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism