Muslim Ritual Augurs Peace in Northern India : Religion: Minority sees the governing Hindus, now that they’re in power, as no longer a threat.

For three hours in the broiling north India sun, thousands of Shiite Muslims bathed themselves in blood, slashing their backs with chains and daggers, pounding their chests until they were raw and screaming praises to the Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, as they marched through this religiously divided city.

It was the annual Moharram procession of the Shiite sect of India’s Muslim minority, a grisly ritual of self-abuse and mourning to mark the death of Hussein. It takes place annually in cities throughout India and the entire Muslim world.

But there was something extraordinary about this Moharram in Meerut on Tuesday: the fact that the procession took place at all--and that the only wounds of the day were self-inflicted.

Just two months ago, the streets of this city of more than 1 million were bathed in a different sort of blood--the carnage of election-day rioting between Meerut’s Muslims and its majority Hindus, which left more than 24 dead and the city under curfew for more than a month.

What is more, three weeks ago a Hindu supremacist government that openly campaigned against the Muslims took power in Uttar Pradesh, the state that includes Meerut and that is India’s largest, most populous and most religiously volatile.

Many in Meerut feared that the emotion and violence of this year’s Moharram would reopen the floodgates of lingering Hindu-Muslim hatred. Others feared that the Hindu government would simply cancel the ceremony. But when the Shiites reached the sacred ground they call Karbala, a plot of land named after the city in Iraq where Hussein was buried in the 7th Century, and ended the procession by burying a dozen multicolored symbolic minarets just before sunset Tuesday, it was clear that there was a deeper message in Meerut’s Moharram this year.

Behind the bloody veneer of Tuesday’s ritual, there were strong signs that peace finally is beginning to break out throughout long-troubled northern India. And the brewing religious war between India’s 750 million Hindus and its 100 million Muslim minority, which left hundreds dead and the country polarized during the national elections earlier this year, now appears to be unlikely--with the Hindus the clear political victors.

“It is really very simple,” said Haji Akhlak, a city councilman and powerful Muslim leader in Meerut, who turned to an old Hindi-language proverb to explain the phenomenon: “If you place the thief himself in charge of the guard, then who will commit the theft?

“The Muslims feel that as long as there is a BJP government in power, there will be no more riots in Meerut.”

The BJP is the Hindu-supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party, or Indian People’s Party, which took power in Uttar Pradesh largely by rallying an unprecedented Hindu vote around its pledge to build a temple to the Hindu demigod Lord Rama on the site of a 500-year-old Muslim mosque in the Uttar Pradesh town of Ayodhya.

“We Muslims feel that all the time it is the BJP that is engineering the riots as a means to cow the Muslims and get the power,” Akhlak continued. “Now that the BJP has the power, there is no longer a need for the riots.”

Ansar Hussain Rizvi, president of this year’s Meerut Moharram committee, heartily agreed.

“We feel safe in a BJP government, because the mischief-makers are now our masters,” he said.”Now they want to establish themselves, so they want the sympathies of the Muslims also.

“For example, this BJP government ordered that during the 10-day Moharram period, we would get power and water without a break, 24 hours a day, for the first time ever.”

Such concessions from a party that has long been feared by the Muslims are only the initial auguries of what most Muslim leaders believe will be an era of peace between the two communities, which have attacked each other numerous times since the Indian subcontinent was partitioned into Islamic Pakistan and Hindu-majority but secular India 44 years ago.

The next critical step will be construction of the controversial Rama Temple, which the BJP’s well-organized religious backers announced Monday will begin Nov. 18. Although the Muslim leaders do not doubt that ground will indeed be broken for the temple that day, most are convinced that the new government will be forced to delay indefinitely a parallel plan to move or raze their ancient mosque.

At the heart of the Muslims’ confidence is the cynical art of Indian politics--that, and the fact that the Hindu revivalists won only at the state level in Uttar Pradesh and are still sitting in the opposition at the national level, where a weak, secular Congress-I party government now rules.

“The BJP was never really serious about the demolition of the mosque and construction of the temple,” declared Haji Akhlak, a wealthy Muslim leader.

“It was a drama they used to come to power in the state. If they do destroy the mosque and build the temple, they will have no issue to use to come to (national power) in the future.”

Hindu-revivalist leaders interviewed in Meerut, a city where Muslims now are 46% of the population and where many analysts look to assess the future of Hindu-Muslim relations, indicated that leaders such as Akhlak may be right.

Chendra Prakash Gupta, local secretary of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or World Hindu Council, which is spearheading the Rama Temple crusade, insisted that construction on the disputed site in Ayodhya “definitely” will begin Nov. 18. But he stressed that the site is a large one and that it is unimportant whether the mosque is moved this year or later.

And Gupta revealed the depth of resentment remaining between the two religious communities when he added his personal view of his Muslim neighbors, a few hours before their Moharram procession began.

“They think they were in power in India some 1,000 years back, and they think they are still a ruling race placed here to rule over the Hindus,” he said of the Indian Muslims’ ancestors, Mogul conquerors who spread the religion throughout the historically Hindu region centuries ago.

“That’s still the Muslim psyche,” Gupta said. “But now our thinking is, whoever resides in India today is a Hindu. . . . The Hindu feels, ‘This is my country.’ He feels humiliated, and his activities all go in that direction.”

But in several of the Muslim enclaves of Meerut, where Hindus and Muslims live apart after seemingly endless rounds of riots in the city, the emotion runs far deeper than mere humiliation.

For the scores of relatives of the dead from the last round of election-day riots, the pain of their loss is a reminder of the obstacles remaining on India’s road to religious peace.

It was on May 20 that a Hindu mob attacked and killed Abdul Rashid along with a dozen or so other Muslim voters lined up outside Meerut’s Sarnimal Ki Dharamsala polling booth. Two months later, tears of anger and grief were still being shed by his 42-year-old widow as she recalled that day.

Left with seven daughters, two sons and no job, Shanaz Akhtar expressed little thanks for the $5,000 the state gave her as compensation--an amount that would cover the dowry of just two of her marriageable daughters, she said.

“I told the magistrate, ‘I cannot sell my husband for 100,000 rupees. If you are giving me 100,000 rupees because my husband has been killed, I will give you 200,000, and you bring me the killer of my husband.”’

Yet Akhtar agreed with the assessment of her community leaders that the bloodshed is finished, at least for now.

Roshana Ara is not so certain. Her 27-year-old brother, Mahfooz Ali, a polling officer, was stabbed and beaten to death by the same mob that day. And she too resented the government’s compensation to the family for the loss of its only male: “Was my brother brought up for 27 years just so that one day suddenly he will disappear and a check for 100,000 rupees will appear? Take back this money and bring back our brother. Who will now carry forward the family name?”

Ara was among the many frightened Muslims who see few hopeful signs for peace in their lives.

“Every time it is said like this: ‘Peace is upon us.’ And yet Hindus and Muslims are dying, and every six months we are having riots,” she said angrily.

“When our men go for Friday prayers, the women are just standing in the doorway, waiting, not knowing if they will ever return. For us, anything can happen at any time.”