Last updated:
While we summarily condemn the targeted mass killing of Hindus in Bangladesh for what it is, perhaps it is time to seek justice for those who perished or were forced to leave their homes and hearths in Sambhal in 1978
Security personnel deployed outside Shahi Jama Masjid in Sambhal, Uttar Pradesh. (File photo/PTI)
As someone who has spent years keeping an eye on cases of communal violence in India, my own ignorance of the anti-Hindu pogrom in Sambhal 1978 has shocked me. While I have to plead guilty to collective amnesia about the incident, what is shameful is the recurring, pointed, targeted and repeated attention to the violence in Gujarat in 2002 – even in the context of the discussions surrounding the Communal Violence Bill which was abandoned by the UPA in early 2014 after fierce debates.
The overall narrative-building machinery has basically brushed under the rug all inconvenient truths, including instances like the violence that claimed the lives of 184 Hindus and triggered large-scale exodus of members of the community from “sensitive” areas. In fact, the level of comfort in ignoring one set of victims while not only acknowledging but privileging another set of victims of communal violence is so troubling that one looks over one’s shoulder to ensure no unfair claims are made.
What happened in Sambhal in 1978?
Large-scale targeted violence against Hindu residents of the mohallas of Sambhal was committed, which continued for about two months and resulted in the deaths of an estimated 184 people. Local residents whose families fled the mohallas – many of them in haste and to protect their lives and property – have alleged that no justice has been served in almost all cases involving Hindu petitioners. Some have pointed to the minority friendliness of the incumbent state government led by Ram Naresh Yadav of the Janata Party, who later joined the Congress. Others lament the lack of mere attention to the matter until the latest violence rocked the small mofussil town in Uttar Pradesh following the court-validated investigation of the Shahi Jama Masjid in November 2024.
For more than 46 years, Sambhal’s ghosts remained buried until temples – hidden from public view – were unearthed and ritual puja resumed by the administration. As ghosts 1978these temples were also buried, locked up, hidden – almost horribly – behind two and three-storey buildings, mostly occupied and built by members of the Muslim community.
It is hard to find facts, even clues about the timeline and bloodshed that took place in 1978. About the cause of the violence little is known. One story points to the killing of a local maulana by a Hindu man, while the other firmly blames the fact-finding mission on the Muslim opposition after the riots that broke out in 1976. What remains undisputed is the disproportionate number of Hindus killed and forced to flee their homes on due to fear of later reprisals. What also remains in the realm of uncompromising truth is the fact that a disproportionately skewed demographic now highlights mohallas that were once dominated by Hindus, mostly businessmen and their families.
The media in recent days has focused on a particular case of the Goyals who lost their patriarch – popularly known as Mamaji in the locality – to an angry mob during the riots who preferred to chop off his legs and arms rather than give him dignity in death. Ironically, the story of Mamaji would never have been known had it not been for the stone-pelting mob that challenged the survey team at the Shahi Jama Masjid – a mosque said to have been built after smashing a round of temples around the same time as the erstwhile Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. Another incident of mass killing of Hindus occurred when nearly 25 men, women and children, hiding in a wood factory, were burnt alive by a Muslim mob.
The pervasive but utterly problematic normalization of an opinion that posits only Hindu guilt as opposed to Muslim victimization could be held responsible for this collective amnesia that has surrounded the 1978 Sambhal violence. This when Hashimpura in 1987, Gujarat in 2002, Muzaffarnagar in 2013 and several others are invoked and re-invoked repeatedly, including being the trigger to introduce a disgusting unilateral communal violence bill by UPA-2, which was thankfully shown the door and not inscribed in law.
Hindu Genocide and Collective Amnesia
From the forced acceptance of dhimmis status to blood-soaked episodes of mass conversion during the early incursions of Islamic armies, the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate and the arrival of the early Mughals to the compulsion of Hindus to accept Christianity by the Portuguese in Goa and the Konkan coast, Hindus have suffered shameful, immeasurable violence . The Mappila riots, the Noakhali pogrom, the Great Calcutta murders and the Mirpur and Rajouri massacres are several instances of extreme, horrific violence against Hindus – leading to genocide – that have been summarily ignored by historians of British India, across schools, with the exception for the nationalist school.
Certainly, the wanton killing of Hindus was not considered important enough to dwell on while being inconvenient enough to be relegated to minor mentions and occasional paragraphs in textbooks. What’s more, historians have not shied away from whitewashing the Mappila riots as a “class war” in which the oppressed Muslims rose up against their Hindu oppressors.
In fact, it took a film (The Sabarmati Report, 2024) and the Prime Minister’s showing of it to a large section of people I know personally to admit that the burning of 59 Hindu Karsevaks on the Sabarmati Express in Godhra was indeed genocide. But don’t we tend to dismiss movies as fiction and therefore not be taken as verified historical data? Again, a result of an ingrained collective consciousness (or lack thereof!) to recognize anything outside the normalized discourse as either true or correct. I know, because I’ve been guilty of it myself for years. However, the truth has a way of coming out, no matter what the popular narrative is. A massacre of Hindus occurred in Chamba in 1998, which left close to 35 migrant workers dead in the district bordering Jammu and Kashmir. Perhaps the 2002 fidayeen attacks on Raghunath Temple and Akshardham Temple in the same year are some other cases of targeted killing of Hindus.
These claims can be dismissed by the vigilant citizens as terrorist attacks, followed by the ridiculous line – terror has no religion. Granted as it may have been, the issue of Sambhal 1978, one of the biggest cases of Hindu genocide in post-independence India, which was completely erased from public consciousness for political expediency, remains unanswered. Therefore, while we summarily condemn the targeted mass killing of Hindus in the Bangladesh for what it is, perhaps it is time to seek justice for those who perished or were forced to leave their homes and hearths in Sambhal 1978. Perhaps it is only atonement for our collective amnesia.
Roshni Sengupta is Professor of Politics and Media at IILM University Gurugram. The views are hers and do not reflect those of the institution. Opinions expressed in the paragraph above are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of News18.
