Babri effect

The controversy surrounding Babri mosque and the imminent court verdict has begun to tell on the nerves of the people. It has also churned up a fear psychosis and a social upheaval, not to speak of any political undercurrent.
Among the most sensitive towns in Mahrashtra state is Malegaon. Many a Muslim family in the surrounding villages has begun to migrate to the city. Some of them also come to the city and sleep at night and then go back to their farms or villages for work. They entrust their material goods to their neighbours of different faiths. Whatever they cannot carry they leave. Whatever is valuable and easy to carry they carry with them.
A strange migration is seen of the tribal Bheel community. There are families of the tribal people working in the farms owned by Muslims just outside the town. As the verdict date comes nearer and fear psychosis grips the commonalty, the tribal people leave the farms before sunset. They walk a couple of miles to places which they think safer. Generally they stay with their fellow tribal people on hillocks or by the side of the commons of the villages nearby. In the morning they return to their place of work on the farms where they have their regular quarters.
One such temporary abode is the group of hillocks in Swand gaon and Daregaon area. A family of seven or eight would shuffle between the farm on the periphery of the town and the backwater settlement of the tribal people. They move with their animals. Their goats walk with them as they lead them to the beaten track through the rural lands spotted with village dust path, banks of rivers or canals. A boy of three carries a lamb of just less than a week old in his tiny arms. He is unable to make out why this forced shuffle between the places. Many of them have heard the name Babri first time and do not know the dispute.
It is amazing to see that the tribal people do not leave their dogs even behind them. But their dogs have to negotiate the distance with the hostile farmers’ dogs who bark themselves hoarse asserting their territorial claims.
The Muslim landlords do not mind this temporary migration enforced on their tribal servants by the courts throwing the ball into each other’s courtyard.
But do the litigants know how far has their litigation affected the commonalty and produced such ‘revolutionary’ change?