Gaurang Raval
Youth worker, Co Founder Sauhard, Ahmedabad
Rising out of Hatred- A Youth Worker's Story of Transformation
“ I was brought up in a very small village in Gujarat. Growing up with friends from the same caste, religion and economic background, I had very little experience with diversity. I have spent 4 years of my childhood in RSS shakhas (branches). I learnt how to love and respect my Nation and my Religion. That other religions are not as good as mine and the ‘threat’ to my religion from ‘others’. This was the beginning of a long battle of love and hatred. I was studying with Muslim students but never interacted with them. I had always thought of them as fundamentalists and bigots. After school I came to Ahmedabad and enrolled in a convent college, Xaviers. It took me some time to adjust here. We used to say, “ Poora India basta hain yahaan” ( The entire country resides here) as students came from all over the country - Muslims, Christians, Parsis, Hindus, Tribals, and Atheists too ! And then the 2002 communal carnage happened in Gujarat. I strongly believed in my religious and caste identity and was quite an extremist in my views for people from other religions. I had a lot of stereotypes and was aggressive. My brother-in-law's shop was burned. Everyone said Muslims destroyed his shop. My anger increased and I donated a precious sum to an extremist religious group. After a year I got to know that an acquaintance had burned the shop for revenge and he was from my religion. By that time more than 2000 people had been killed in Gujarat. I was shattered. I felt guilty. I was confused. One day I heard about a workshop on communalism in Ahmedabad. During that workshop I watched a film on the communal clashes. I saw dead bodies. I could not identify whether they were Hindus or Muslims. That workshop changed me forever.”
The next 2 years, a ‘secular education’ of working with diverse young people, activists shifted Gaurang’s mindset.
“ The 2 years after the riots were quite heavy. I realised that I wanted to work with young people, because young people are being used and provoked to spread violence. If we don't work with the current generation and the next, this religious extremism and polarization will only grow. It's important to give young people an alternative platform. I became a part of ‘Nazariya’, a program with the NGO Drishti, to give an alternative perspective which isn’t being given by politicians or religious gurus or even their families. We worked with young people on conflict transformation and peace promotion from 2005-2011, through films and theatre. And in 2011, exclusively to work on communal harmony, promote secularism and to promote interfaith friendships we started Sauhard. Sauhard means harmony, peace , communities coming together and living together.”
He says, the pandemic and lockdown, made young people vulnerable to misinformation, intolerance and a stunted psychosocial development. Sauhard had to counter the hate wave by moving to the virtual platform.
“ Young people are trolled, not just online or in public but in their own homes by their families. If a young person doesn't go to school or college for a year, what happens to their socio-political worldview ? The loss of that space has negative connotations. By April we realised that the crisis is going to be big, but the division will be bigger. When the ‘Tablighi Jamaat’ issue was raised, people started spreading hate messages, not just limited to Muslims. We responded with an online campaign called “No Hate”, to amplify everyday voices of common people against communal hatred and violence through diverse mediums like music, conversation, sports etc. To counter the stigma towards Covid-positive people, Muslims, Frontline workers, Dalits, Migrants, Domestic workers, we curated an online curriculum working with young people on stigma, mental health, communication, online safety and constitutional values. The fact that common people who had no agenda, came out against hate, was really overwhelming. We also started working with schools and colleges to create micro-plans to be prepared to deal with issues of communal and inter-community hatred once they open, so that students from poor families can cope, and young people from minority communities are not blamed for spreading the virus. How do you work with a Dalit person, when you’ve never interacted with a Dalit boy or girl? How do you talk to someone who comes from the LGBTQ community or even support the LGBTQ community?”
As a sceptic, the kindness during the pandemic surprised him.
“I had only heard of how people had kept aside their caste, class, religion and helped everyone, during the 2001 earthquake. But I was witnessing it now. They've helped not just in money and material resources, but in also raising their voice to remove stigma and divisive propaganda. There are many incidents where people in small groups have run small campaigns, in their own housing societies, like my own. “ There is no ‘right way’ to work on such issues. Young people must be the focus. “If you go and ask someone straight to have an interfaith friendship or dialogue, people don’t. You must work on everything that connects to the issue. It's a fallacy that young people don’t want to get involved. If they were that disinterested, why would they join violent groups or become part of troll armies when they’re not even paid? Why are they on the streets protesting? These days it's common to be called a ‘Sanghi’ or a ‘Leftist’. It becomes challenging for young people who are confused and scared of being trolled or told off, whose parents say one thing, the media, their friends and you another. We are vociferous when it comes to protecting young people’s space to voice any opinion.
And I think politics and civil society both need a refresh button where younger people can enter and create newer strategies and spaces. Hegemony around ‘fixed’ ways to do interfaith work can hamper and discourage young people from stepping into such spaces at all. After all wouldn’t that be the same as silencing people’s voices, the very thing we fight against ? If we give them a platform, I am certain that young people will sustain these spaces.”
Interviewed by Nida Ansari
Collage by Shreya Roy Chowdhury and Pooja Dhingra; Embroidery on collage by Singhleton