It was life as usual for residents of Nuh on 31 July before violence broke tranquillity and videos of burning cars went viral on social media, drawing the country’s attention to the headquarters of one of the most backward districts that is dominated by the Meo Muslim community.
The spotlight is back on Mewat, a Muslim-majority province that straddles Haryana and Rajasthan. The Mewati Muslims were for the longest time known as being closer to Hindus in their customs and practises. Among local people, Mewat got branded as a crime belt, and after PM Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, dozens of gau rakshak groups became active in this area calling it the beef belt. They have been laying siege to the Mewat highways holding night vigils to catch Muslims that they said were smuggling cows for slaughter. In recent years, Mewat has also emerged as a hub of cyber crime and sextortion rackets.
As Nuh burned this week, what Mewat is, depended on who was asked. This is why Mewat is ThePrint’s Newsmaker of the Week.
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Profile Mewat
The social disharmony that is now visible comes from a society that’s lagging on key indicators. In NITI Aayog’s 2018 ranking for the 101 most backward districts of the country, Mewat district (now Nuh) ranked at the bottom of the table.
Another NITI Aayog-sponsored study from 2015 said that despite being one of the most backward regions in India, the district hasn’t found much place in policy agenda till date.
“Development indicators pertaining to domains of education, health, standard of living and public infrastructure and services indicate a grim state of affairs across the district. The average figures yield low literacy rates for men which worsen among women. Being a Muslim dominated region, the cultural ethos is conservative, restricting the movement of women outside their homesteads. Education is considered as a not-so-important resource and thus, does not feature on the priority list of inhabitants. This may be due to the lack of livelihood connect with education, with only farming being the most plausible occupation option available to the local population. Government and private jobs are few,” reads the report.
Backwardness is more prevalent among OBC and Muslim community and less among SC population in this region, according to the report.
But that wasn’t the case always. “There was a time when Jats, Ahirs and Meos were all backward. But the Meos were marching forward very fast. Mehmooda became the first graduate from the Meo community in 1925. Dr. Moose Khan was the first Meo to have obtained an MBBS degree before the Partition of the country,” said Saddique Ahmad Meo, a retired engineer and a historian who has done extensive research on Meo Muslims.
It was Partition that served as a telling blow to the Mewat region.
“One must understand that the demand of a separate country Pakistan for and by the elite and educated class and the common didn’t have anything to do with it. Over two third of Mewat’s population migrated to Pakistan. From 3900 villages, Mewat was confined to 1250 villages. Over 90 per cent of the educated Mewat Muslims decided to migrate. This took Mewat at least a generation back in terms of education, which is the most important aspect of the development of a society. We had to start from zero after the Partition,” said Meo.
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Agriculture overdependency
The social fabric of a region often reflects the economic thread that binds it — how people live, work, survive. That the Mewat region is hugely agriculture dependent means the youth there have fewer options for livelihood.
“Mining used to be an additional source of earning livelihood for people of this area, but a blanket ban on mining on the Aravalli hills spread over Faridabad, Gurugram and Mewat (now Nuh) districts of Haryana by the Supreme Court put in 2009 has snatched that job avenue for local people. A number of people from this area earned a living by working as daily wagers with the mining firms before the SC ban,” said Aftab Ahmed, Congress MLA from Nuh assembly constituency.
The lack of job avenues is driving the youth toward illegal activities in Mewat. Of late, the region is being seen as developing into a new Jamtara where a number of youths are driven to cybercrimes — from OLX scams to sextortions.
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The demographics
Of the 90 assembly constituencies of Haryana, Mewat counts for just three seats – Nuh, Punhana and Ferozepur Jhirka.
Before the delimitation exercise for Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha constituencies in Haryana in 2007 and 2008, all Meo-dominated assembly constituencies formed part of the Faridabad parliamentary seat, and hence the seat returned Meo leaders thrice – Tayyab Hussain (Congress) in 1980, Rahim Khan (Congress) in 1984, and Khurshid Ahmed (Lok Dal) in 1988.
Meo Muslims converted from Hinduism, many had Hindu names till recent past, and still follow certain rituals of Hindus.
Meo historian Saddique Ahmad Meo tells that though the conversion of Meos from Hindus to Muslims occurred in phases centuries ago, many Meo Muslims used to have Hindu names like Arjun, Nakul, Sehdev etc till late 70s. “When India-Pakistan cricketing ties resumed after a long time in 1978, people here were so fascinated by the Pakistani cricketers that they started naming their children as Mushtaq, Sadiq, Imran, Javed and Zaheer. Some of those who already had Hindu names changed their names for Muslim identity.”
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Signs of simmer
The 31 July violence has come as a surprise to people, not only outside the Nuh district but also among a majority of people from the Meo community because the Mewat cultural region, of which the Nuh district is a part, has no big history of riots or violence. Though some temples were ransacked in the aftermath of Babri Masjid demolition.
“Ours was a peaceful area. People from both communities respected each other’s customs and culture. But over the past nine years, the Muslim community has been pressed too hard. At times, even breathing seems hard,” says an elderly Badlu Khan, sitting on the road divider at Nuh Chowk looking at the shops with their shutters locked and the road sans traffic Thursday pointing to the activities of cow vigilantes who he alleged have lynched several Muslim youths and the authorities have preferred to look the other way.
He, however, said this doesn’t justify what they (Muslim youths) did on the day of the Yatra.
“We have seen 1947 (partition of the country), and we know what toll this communal violence takes,” added 89-year-old Badlu.
(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)