Hyderabad: Conflicts in the name of religion?

So, that’s our final field trip completed. This time it was one to Hyderabad, a city in Andhra Pradesh, a city that has two halves; the old and the new. A cit

y with a history going back centuries with a lot of diversity’ a diversity that has been a source of peace as well as conflict through its history. An example of this conflict was demonstrated while we were there; ongoing riots were happening between the two main communities there, Hindus and Muslims. It all started on Sunday 8^th April when a Mosque had pork thrown into it, later on that day there was beef found in a Hindu Temple. For both religions th

ese are two sacrilegious acts and the communities reacted by burning shops and attacking each other. The police’s response was to put a curfew in place, banning large groups of people from being in one area at a time. In the communities where the curfew was in place, people were not allowed out of their homes and people were not allowed into the areas. A large police presence was felt all over the city and the people felt a lot of fear! Who was responsible? That depends on who you talk to. The people who are working for peace in the area believe that it is a few that organise these types of acts, these people gain something from it. They use people in order to achieve it; offering large amounts of money to the poor, offering jobs

to the unemployed and other similar tactics. The deputy commissioner of Police that we met believed it was the people and was almost suggesting that it was the Muslims at fault as they did not like the Hindu rituals (he was a Hindu himself and clearly biased against Muslims), he believed in control of the situation rather than trying to solve it. He did not think this problem was solvable. But does he benefit in some way from the riots? Is his job not safe because of the civil unrest? Who suffers the most because of these situations; the riots and the curfews? It certainly isn’t the rich in the new city, they were moving freely about! It is the poor, those that do not want the riots in the first place (we talked to a few communities that felt that they could tell us) and because of the curfew cannot move about to earn their money or buy the necessary things that they need on a daily basis. For this group of people, the money they earn is a daily wage, based on what they sell. For some, they lost money buying stock that they then could not sell because of the curfew. No one knew when it would end.

While we were there, there were more attempts at causing more riots. There are people working very strongly within the community to prevent this from happening and trying to bring peace to the people. The bad stories like the riots hit the news often, people are hurt because of the conflicts but what about the good news stories? Not everyone in Hyderabad wants this conflict surely? No they don’t. We heard some incredible stories of young people saving their fellow class mates, teacher’s children by grabbing them and hiding them in their own homes. These were Muslims saving Hindus and Hindus saving Muslims. Why do these stories never get report in the media? Does the media benefit in some way from all the conflict? When looking at conflicts like this, it is important to ask these questions; who benefits and how do they benefit? If the average person of Hyderabad suffers more as a consequence of these riots, why would they cause them?

The NGO’s that are working hard to bring about change in the communities are working really hard and in a very unique way. The Henry Martyn Institute works in the centre of a community divided between the Muslims and the Hindus. For a long time they have worked to bring these communities together to prevent more conflict. It isn’t easy work by any means but they are succeeding slowly. They know that they may not see the results in their lifetime; it may the next generation of justpeace activists that see it. This does not stop them working for it. The unique way of working; they realised people from different faiths would not come together to talk about their issues but they would come if they had a common goal; to learn skills. This has been successful, the women especially build friendships and like all friendships they grow to understand each other! They celebrate festivals together, the women from different religions come together to celebrate. A few spoil this harmony through these acts of desecration.

The religious leaders of the area have condoned the acts of violence releasing statements that they will all help in the cleanup of all religious places no matter what faith they belong to. They say that those that are causing this violence in the name of religion are doing so of their own accord. No religion preaches violence and that they will work to promote messages of peace, harmony and justice that is at the core of all religions. Does this message need to go wider than to those people of Hyderabad? Would it be beneficial to the survival and peace of humanity for more to promote this message? To stop the acts of horrific violence being done in the names of religion? Would it break the negative stereotypes so many of us have of people of other faiths? Yet again I do not know the answers to these questions, what I do know is that more people need to be asking questions instead of accepting what we are told and following it blindly.