Sheltered from the breeze of a receding Indian winter by the portico of his orphanage home, Javed Qadir re-lated the events of seven years ago. In March of 2002, he was using his school lunch hour on a lazy Friday afternoon to attend the weekly prayer meeting in his hometown of Himmatnagar in India’s western state of Gu-jarat. Javed, then 11 years old, was looking forward to a weekend of fun with his mother and three younger sisters. As the man of the house, he explained with a smile, spending time at the prayer meeting helped fill a void in his life.
As Javed relates his story, I think about the three years I have known him, since I began volunteering with a grass-roots nonprofit organization based in New Delhi, the Zakat Foundation of India. A medical and graduate student from Case Western Reserve University, I was in India to apply my training in a real world environment where holistic medical services went beyond disease treatment and into the realm of teaching patients life skills. Established and funded by the local community, the efforts of the Zakat Foundation sealed my decision to do my master’s in public health project on site at their charitable hospital, Adam’s Care. It was at the hospital that I began participating in the care of the children of Happy Home orphanage, also under the umbrella of the foundation. Javed was among them.
The orphanage was founded in late 2002 to accommodate and rebuild the lives of 70 of the many hundreds of children who lost their families in the violence committed the previous February and March by right-wing groups against Gujarat’s religious minorities. The New York Times reported that the attackers were adherents of an ideology that “has long depicted Muslim and Christian Indians as converts to foreign religions,” pointing out that even Gandhi’s assassin was an “extreme adherent of this view.”
As I’m sitting with Javed, now 18 years old, scenes from my recent viewing of the Oscar winning movie “Slumdog Millionaire” are fresh in my mind. I think about the scene depicting the lead character, Jamal Malik, experiencing the outburst of violence against his minority community and being orphaned in the blink of an eye. Despite our three-year friendship, I have never broached the subject of the 2002 riots with Javed. But today, during our discussion about his plans for high school, I finally bring up the topic.
“I used to not want to talk about that,” he says, his voice noticeably more hesitant, “but I don’t mind now.” Javed explains that the mob had planned to target the women of his community, and had waited until the men were at the weekly prayer gathering. During the meeting, the congregation got news that their homes had been attacked, and the men ran home to save their families. In the hour that it took Javed and others to reach their block, however, the mob had “mistreat[ed]” the women, as he put it. Amid the violence, Javed helped move the surviving women and young children to the town square where the mob slowly encircled them.
Indeed, the right-wing activists, as documented in a 2002 report by Human Rights Watch, “descended with militia-like precision,” indicating that the massacre had been “planned, well in advance.”
Javed briefly goes quiet when I ask him about the fate of his mother and three sisters. He then proceeds with his story as if he had not heard the question.
Taking the cue, I decide not to probe the matter further, hoping their fate was different from hundreds of other women during the riots. In its report on the 2002 Gujarat riots, Amnesty International documents how “scores of Muslim women and girls were sexually violated—raped, gang-raped or mutilated,” and stated that “violence against women in such situations is predicated on the sexualization of women and their role as transmitters of culture and symbols of a particular community….” According to the report’s findings, 2,000 people died in the riots.
The orchestrated mob attacks spurred intense, cross-communal civil outrage nationwide. Two months later, a visiting relief team found Javed in one of the many refugee camps then beginning to dot Gujarat and brought him to Happy Home. The team of physicians at Adam’s Care continues to care for the orphanage’s children, many of whom have post-traumatic stress disorder.
As physicians-in-training in the United States, we are privileged to be able to witness daily acts of compas-sion, whether between strangers or members of a family. The interaction between the Adams Care staff and the Happy Home orphanage children is no different, and immediately apparent is the closeness they shared, perhaps the outcome of seven years of care. Today, the children are better adjusted, and the focus has shifted from counseling to education for the children at local schools and turning them into productive members of society.
For Javed, the move to the safety of the faraway city of New Delhi is not without costs. His schooling, initially in Gujarati, is now completely in English. After spending the last seven years relearning all that he knew, his English skills are now strong, and he is fast approaching the completion of his high-school education. Turning to his future, I ask Javed what he wants to do. “Become an actor,” he replies without hesitation, an ironic answer considering that I had not told him that my interview was partially inspired by “Slumdog Millionaire.” I wonder whether he knew why I was asking these questions. Despite everything Javed has been through, at least he will not have to live life as the character Malik did: as a chai vendor living an impoverished life and banking on a game show to find happiness. The road ahead for Javed is still difficult, but he is already en route toward a major achievement—completing his education. And perhaps one day we may even see him on Oscar night.
Saad Mahmood is a Taraknath Das Foundation grant recipient and a fourth-year medical student at Case Western Reserve University. He was assisted by Soumya Naidu, who graduated from Case Western Reserve University.