Reference Text

Some Muslims were distributing an Urdu pamphlet titled 'Be Indian, Buy Indian' outside Malegaon's Jama Masjid after prayers. It listed the names of a few American and British companies and called for a boycott of their products. A constable snatched some copies and tore them up, triggering a fight with the police. When a stone thrown accidentally hit someone involved in Dussehra preparations nearby, the clash took on a communal colour. What followed was 20 days of madness that spread also to the nearby villages. In all, 14 lives were claimed. Understanding 2001 requires some perspective on the social fabric of Malegaon and some history about how the town came into being. Nearly three fourths of the 7,00,000 strong population of the town is Muslim. A document called the 'Concerned Citizen's Inquiry Report into Malegaon Riots', authored in November 2001, provides some insight into how this came to be. Once a small junction known as Maliwadi, the town gained a reputation for being a source of employment when labourers moved from Hyderabad to help build a fort in the 18th century. The pattern kept repeating, from those fleeing hotspots such as Meerut and Awadh in 1857 to mill workers from famine hit Varanasi in 1862. When the town became one of the new centres for power looms in the 1930s, there was a further influx of labour from Uttar Pradesh and the Deccan. According to the 2001 report, the influx through the 1990s was so large that three new municipal wards had to be created. In the years that followed the setting up of power looms Malegaon seemed to encapsulate the early struggles of an industrial revolution an economy that was serviced by a teeming force of workers living in crude unorganised settlements, overseen by wealthy loom owners and traders. The town was also split into two halves along the Mausam, with the more prosperous Hindu side on the west and the Muslims on the east. The extreme income inequality played its part in a series of communal flashpoints in 1963, 1992 and then most notably in 2001. Some Muslims were distributing an Urdu pamphlet titled 'Be Indian, Buy Indian' outside Malegaon's Jama Masjid after prayers. It listed the names of a few American and British companies and called for a boycott of their products. A constable snatched some copies and tore them up, triggering a fight with the police. When a stone thrown accidentally hit someone involved in Dussehra preparations nearby, the clash took on a communal colour. What followed was 20 days of madness that spread also to the nearby villages. In all, 14 lives were claimed. Understanding 2001 requires some perspective on the social fabric of Malegaon