On February 23, vicious communal violence broke out in Northeast Delhi and continued for three days. Homes were set on fire, vehicles blast...
On February 23, vicious communal violence broke out in Northeast Delhi and continued for three days. Homes were set on fire, vehicles blasted, neighbourhoods looted and over a dozen mosques vandalised. Though Hindus faced loss of life and property, the brunt of the violence was borne by the Muslim community.
A month later, the nationwide lockdown to slow the spread of Covid-19 was implemented on March 25. Before long, media and state narratives began to claim that Muslims were “super carriers” of the coronavirus. By then, media persons had mostly disappeared from the riot-torn areas.
Northeast Delhi, one of India’s most densely-populated districts according to the last census, is a microcosm of the community’s livelihood patterns. Data shows that most Muslim workers are self-employed in the unorganised sector. Participation in salaried jobs is abysmally low. With the lockdown, the vast majority of people here have lost their sources of income.
I spent three days catching up with the people I had met during the violence, nearly 75 days earlier, to find out how the victims – beaten, profiled, isolated, and largely abandoned by the state – had been surviving, from riots to lockdown.
Scenes from riot-torn areas
Zardozi is an elaborate form of embroidery. The process involves craftsmen sitting cross-legged...
