Although India aspires by its Constitution to be a secular state since its modern formation as a nation state in 1947, the status of minorities –religious, caste, and gender in particular—has been precarious. The rise of Hindu fundamentalism especially in the 1990s led to the election of a Hindu fundamentalist government in 2014 and this party remains in power today. One of the most difficult moments in Indian history occurred in February 2002 when Hindu karsevaks (religious activists) were burned in a train fire in Godhra in the state of Gujarat. The Gujarat government and people led by Narendra Modi (India’s current Prime Minister) accused Muslims of the act and launched a pogrom against them. Official accounts of the events are mired in controversy and Human Rights activists have been repressed even as they have tried to bring justice to those who were killed, maimed, and displaced by the events. The rape of Bilquis Bano, the violence at Naroda Patiya, the destruction of the tomb of a Sufi saint and poet Wali Gujarati have gone down in India’s history as horrific events from this period. Zara Chowdhary was a teenager in Ahmedabad living in the Muslim side of town and writes about the fear, violence, curfews, and restrictions that occurred at this time.
Chowdhary’s narrative is harrowing—she does not spare us any details about the rapes, burnings, rioting, and the targeted attacks on Muslim homes and properties that occurred at this time. From her flat, C-8 in the Jasmine building, she observes and documents how ordinary Muslims especially the women experienced this time. She also narrates stories of survival and resistance. She uses the metaphor of threads to weave the story of her family and her community. We learn of her grandfather running away as a teenager from East Punjab just before Partition and carving out a life for himself in India. This decision spares him the violence of Partition but also cuts him off from his mother and siblings in Pakistan. Zara’s father is educated in the US but visa challenges force him to return to India and take up a mid-level bureaucratic job in the Gujarat Electricity Board. He experiences daily microaggressions and is bypassed for promotions because he is Muslim and his daily miseries lead to alcoholism. He is forced to “voluntarily” retire before he turns 50. Zara’s mother comes from a Southern Indian Muslim family and endures domestic violence as her husband physically assaults her when drunk. Her mother-in -law who is Gujarati Muslim despises her daughter-in-law and subjects her to many miseries as well. Mixed into this extended family is Zara’s aunt who is divorced and has a daughter. The aunt is a professor of economics at a Jesuit University and moves in with her brother and family when the violence against Muslims is launched in February 2002.
The young Zara observes, analyzes, and documents how the different members in her family navigate their Muslim identity—their relationships with their neighbors, with the working-class folks who serve them as domestic help, with their work, and with one another. She also talks about the loving relationships her parents had with some Hindu friends in Southern India whom they visited for summer vacations and who eventually helped her father find a job when the family fled Ahmedabad. She writes about the travails of the board exams that every teenager is subject to and which is doubly hard on a Muslim girl in the middle of a pogrom. She spares us no details about the physical confinement in their apartment for weeks as the mobs march through the city attacking Muslims. She also writes candidly about the psychological trauma of violence as well as the traumas of domestic abuse.
Zara Chowdhary’s narrative weaves back and forth in time and melds historical and journalistic information with the personal and familial. The relationship with her mother and sister are particularly poignant as is her connection to her grandfather. Her aunt models resistance and resilience and the author acknowledges her as a major influence. A note for the reader—this narrative is not easy to read because of its candid narrative of different kinds of violence—political, psychological, physical. It’s not a book for the faint of heart and at the same time it is one we must all read. It takes courage to pen such a memoir and reading it is an act of solidarity.
Zara Chowdhary will be in conversation with Tessa Hulls at Elliott Bay Books on September 27 at 7 PM
Nalini Iyer is a Professor of English at Seattle University where she teaches courses in Asian American, Postcolonial, and South Asian Studies. She is the author/editor of several books in literary criticism. She lives in Kirkland. WA.
