Jahangirpuri now says we are bhai-bhai, long live brotherhood
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New Delhi: Residents from both the Hindu and Muslim communities at Northwest Delhi's Jahangirpuri where the communal violence took place last week, came out to uphold the communal harmony under the banner Tiranga Yatra' on Sunday evening.
Though there were forces deployed, barricades erected after the communal violence had almost been taken away following the Yatra. The Yatra was to show the solidarity between the two communities, and restore the trust and harmony in the area.
Jahangirpuri had been a calm area unaffected by the communal tension from the neighbouring region and other part of the country where people involved their own businesses, the least interested in other's religion and the practice, until the Hanuman Jayanti procession on April 16.
When the procession had taken through the area where Muslims reside in large numbers and people with ulterior motives in the procession began incendiary and provocative slogans aimed at the Muslims and the effort to desecrate a mosque met with the reciprocal attack.
This led to large gathering of mob from both sides and ended up several people from both sides and police personnel got injured in the stone pelting and firing. As a process of retaliation, the North MCD authorities used bulldozers to raze down buildings and shops, most of them belonged to members of Muslim community, in the guise of illegal encroachment.
Though there had the Supreme Court order against bulldozing the structures in Jahangirpuri the soon after the demolition began, the MCD authorities seemed to have given the least attention to it.
Now the atmosphere at the communally divided society changed. The Yatra, which was planned by RWA members and social workers in the area, heard slogans likes 'Hindu Musalman Bhai Bhai', 'Hindustan Zindabad', 'Vande Mataram' and 'Bhaichara Zinda Rahe' being raised in the air.
People came to meet each other, setting aside the wounds the violence had created among them. People also acknowledge the situation is now becoming normal. All the down the Yatra had gone in the area, it was welcomed by the showering of rose petals by locals from their terraces.