Zahir Janmohamed: Prof V K Tripathi and the fight for Schools in Juhapura:
On Tuesday, February 19, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation ratified its budget and elected to build the first municipal school in Juhapura, the largest ghetto of Muslims in Ahmedabad. Juhapura was incorporated into the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation five years ago and many residents wondered why the AMC took so long to build a school to serve Juhapura’s 350,000 residents. At the forefront of this struggle is IIT Delhi physics professor VK Tripathi. It was during a chance meeting with a sandwich shop owner in Washington DC that Professor Tripathi first learned about Juhapura.
Professor Tripathi, a long time Gandhian whose family was a part of Gandhi’s struggle for independence, was shocked to see the lack of adequate schools in Juhapura. Since his first visit to Juhapura in 2007, he has funded his own trips to Juhapura every two months to work for better schooling and for the Gujarat government to release minority scholarship funds. Six years later, Professor Tripathi’s work—along with many others—is proving successful. According to the Business Standard, the Gujarat High Court in a majority decision this past week ruled that the “Union government’s scheme of pre-matriculation scholarship for students of five minorities does not violate the Constitution of India and directed the Narendra Modi government to implement it in the state.”
I caught up with Professor Tripathi at the New Age High School in Juhapura a few weeks ago where we discussed his visits to the relief camps after the 2002 riots, his struggle with the Gujarat government to release minority scholarships, and what it means to be a Gandhian in today’s India.
Shortly after the train coach was burnt on February 27, 2002, you visited the Gujarat town of Godhra where the incident happened. What was your impression?
It was terrible. Dr. A.K. Sharma who went with me from Delhi and I decided to look at the train coach that was burnt. We went to see the site where the coach was burnt and then to the yard where the burnt compartment was standing. The newspapers said it was a mob that attacked the train compartment but there was no trace of it. The grass near the train track (at the site of coach burning) was still green. If there were fire then how could the grass be green (just adjacent to the train)?
I said this to the police officer standing near by. If a mob had thrown fire on the train, then the exterior of the compartment below the bars on the window would at least have some patches of fire but there was none. Thus there was no symptom that a mob did this. It was terrifying to imagine the kind of mischievous propaganda Gujarat state carried against the Muslims.
Can you describe the work that you started doing in Gujarat after the riots?
We two came to Gujarat for the first time on March 15, 2002. In Godhra, we met the district magistrate. She invited us to a meeting of the peace committee formed to address post-Godhra concerns. As I began to speak of reconciliation, I was bombarded with aggressive questions. A vast majority of the 80-85 people present reflected VHP line... Read more:
