At most of the places in the country, the names of the martyrs have been put on specially constructed Memorials. But the Memorial in Malegaon is still waiting for the names of the seven martyrs to be written over it.
“I have always wondered how, the Muslims and the Hindus together, had decided to set a Mandir on fire”, said Dr. Iftekhar Ansari recalling the incident when on April 25 in1921, the Malegaonians set the Pophale Mandir on fire where, Bhaskarrao, the PI and Incharge of the only Police Station in Malegaon was hiding. He was ultimately killed by the people. A Muslim Constable was also killed in the same uprising.
He further said, “It demonstrates not only the harmony with which the Malegaonians were living then, but also shows their eagerness for the country’s freedom. For them, the freedom was above everything, even their religion. In fact, Hindus and Muslims, except few from both the communities as was the case everywhere, had demonstrated a rare unanimity during the whole struggle. I believe if it was a Mosque, a Gurdwara or any other place, it must have met with the same fate.”
Agreeing with Dr. Iftekhar, Ramzan Painter 74, who has collected more than hundred-years of the city records added, “A confirmed account of the exact situation during 1921, clearly suggests the harmony with which people were living.” Mentioning the name of Balu Shah, owner of the first newspaper in Malegaon and a prominent figure of that time who was actively involved in the whole movement with the Muslims, he added, “And who can forget the contributions of Advocate Tatya Khare and Gadgil Wakeel, who remained at the forefront in establishing a separate court in Malegaon.”
“I have always wondered how, the Muslims and the Hindus together, had decided to set a Mandir on fire”
But, as it had done at several other places in the country, the British Police registered the whole incident as rioting and hanged the upfront leaders of the uprising in Yeroda jail. However, after the independence in 1947, the State as well as the Central governments, mentioned the historic event of April 1921 as part of the freedom struggle and included the names of the seven martyrs in their gazettes with due respects. Also, when the Parliament passed a resolution for the construction of a Memorial of similar shape everywhere in the country and to put the names of the martyrs on them, a Memorial was also built in Malegaon.
However in Malegaon, unlike other places in the country, the names of the martyrs have not been put on the Memorial till now. Interestingly the civic body, despite passing many resolutions in its general meeting for putting the names of these martyrs on the Memorial, has also not cared for doing so.
And as if it is not enough to dishonor these martyrs, every year on Kranti Diwas when officials gather everywhere near these Memorials for offering their tributes, in Malegaon, no one cares to honor these martyrs.
source: http://www.ummid.com / Ummid.com / Home / by Aleem Faizee (headline edited)
Life in Malegaon appears to have returned to normal, even as Maharashtra struggles to contain the pandemic. As of July 15, the state had 107,963 active cases, with 10,695 deaths.
A new normal: Healthcare workers on a door-to-door Covid-19 test drive in Malegaon, July 14. / Photo by Milind Shelte
The covid-19 battle
On July 14, Malegaon’s Mohammad Ali Road, the city’s main commercial street, was full of shoppers, mirroring the sort of normalcy seen in days before the national lockdown in March, and presenting a stark contrast to the fearful retreat from public spaces seen in many areas of Maharashtra. The shops were open, selling everything from cutlery to electronics, and the restaurants and street food vendors were busy serving crowds of customers. Burqa-clad women thronged the ladies’ market. Life in Malegaon appears to have returned to normal, even as Maharashtra struggles to contain the pandemic. As of July 15, the state had 107,963 active cases, with 10,695 deaths.
Malegaon’s return to normalcy is striking and worthy of note because, till recently, the city was one of the state’s five Covid hotspots, alongside Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur and Aurangabad. Until May, the city had seen a daily average of five deaths due to Covid-19, and reported about 200 fresh cases in the early part of that month. Today, there are just 60 active cases in the city, most of them non-residents of Malegaon, with no coronavirus-linked deaths since May 25. The doubling period has improved from 2.2 days in April to 112 days on July 15, the best in Maharashtra. At 82 per cent, the rate of recovery in Malegaon is also much better than the state average (54 per cent). The turnaround was so hard to miss that, in the first week of July, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) sent a confidential letter to the state government, asking for permission to study the ‘Malegaon model’.
Malegaon is a Muslim-majority city (80 per cent residents are from the minority community), with a population of 750,000. The city administration’s success in controlling the pandemic is especially laudable given that the average population density here is 19,000 per sq. km, the state’s highest. In areas like Kamanipura, this goes up to 72,000 per sq. km, second only to Mumbai’s Dharavi, where 800,000 live in a 2.1 sq. km area. Maintaining physical distance, the standard-format safety protocol to avoid infection, is then practically impossible. The Malegaon Municipal Corporation (MMC) was also working with severe limitations, it still does not have a single ventilator.
Municipal commissioner Deepak Kasar says the MMC was struggling on two fronts. First, it had to tackle a staff shortage, with many workers refusing to report to work for fear of being infected. This even led to the MMC being unable to make use of the ambulances provided by the Bharatiya Jain Sanghatana, an NGO focused on disaster response. Second, Kasar says convincing people to come forward for screening, testing and quarantine was a Herculean task, especially since a communally sensitive environment had been created in the initial days of the pandemic.
The MMC’s task was made much more complicated by rumours on social media, one of which was that the coronavirus screening efforts were a conspiracy against Muslims. This led to people refusing to be tested and even attacks on MMC health workers who were conducting screening tests. In the last week of April and the first week of May, six ASHA (accredited social health activist) workers suffered burns after being attacked with boiling water. Many residents also reportedly refused to give their real names and symptoms to health workers. Superstition played its part, for instance, many believe the dead will not reach heaven if their eyes are open, leading to people touching infected bodies and increasing the risk of transmission. Another tradition requires women from households in which a death has taken place to isolate themselves for four months and eight days, this complicated contact tracing.
To address these problems, Kasar appealed to community leaders for help, especially the influential Mufti and local MLA Mohammad Ismail. Leaders like Ismail made appeals at mosques for people to stay at home and to cooperate with the MMC health workers. As a result, people increasingly came to see that the administration’s efforts were genuine, leading to more and more coming forward for testing. The success of the appeals to stay home was clearly visible on Eid-ul-Fitr (May 25). Malegaon’s Idgah Maidan was deserted, normally around 300,000 people gather here to offer prayers on the holy day.
Another initiative was to enlist community members for outreach, to spread information about the virus. Kasar roped in students of Ayurvedic and Unani medicine, aware that they were trusted within the communities. A Unani concoction called mansura kadha, with claimed immunity-boosting properties, prepared by the local Mohammadia Tibbia College, also played a bit role; the trust that runs the college has received requests for some 250,000 packets. The MMC also made short informational videos and uploaded them on YouTube, aiming to improve awareness about the coronavirus among Malegaon’s younger residents, especially women. Also important were the MMC’s efforts to give vulnerable households the resources they needed for home isolation. “We provided oxygen cylinders, though the police department was against the move,” says Kasar.
Maulana Imtiaz Ahmed Iqbal Ahmed, secretary of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind in Malegaon, says the community “scored over the fear factor…the mohalla clinics were the game-changer”. Kasar also points out that the success did not come at a major financial cost. “We did not send any patients to private hospitals, so the treatment bill was zero. We also spent less than Rs 20 lakh in the past two months on arrangements for quarantine and treatment,” he says. This stands in stark contrast to the efforts of other municipal corporations in the state; Pune has budgeted Rs 294 crore to fight Covid-19 for a population of about 4 million. Kasar says Malegaon has not only shown a decrease in Covid-19 cases but also other diseases, including those affecting the heart, lungs and kidneys. The ICMR study, once completed, will be submitted to a committee headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The MMC’s efforts have not only improved the health of Malegaon’s citizens, it has also rehabilitated the city’s reputation. Home to a local film industry and a textile cluster with around 125,000 power looms, Malegaon attracted some bad press in the noughties for being communally charged, a riot in 2001 and bomb blasts in 2006 and 2008 seemed to lend credence to its reputation for being volatile. But it has moved on since, and now with the success of the ‘Malegaon model’, it has built a case for an image makeover.
source: http://www.indiatoday.in / India Today / Home> News> Magazine> UP Front / by Kiran D Tare / New Delhi, July 18th, 2020
