{"id":2929,"date":"2014-11-19T12:34:45","date_gmt":"2014-11-19T12:34:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nehadixit.in\/?p=2929"},"modified":"2023-09-08T09:12:38","modified_gmt":"2023-09-08T09:12:38","slug":"chaniya-cholis-dhamaals-and-other-things-we-make-in-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nehadixit.in\/chaniya-cholis-dhamaals-and-other-things-we-make-in-india\/","title":{"rendered":"Chaniya Cholis, Dhamaals and Other Things We Make In India"},"content":{"rendered":"
Shakeela calls the guards only when needed, like when she needs to leave home to go to the market. How can she trust them? It is the police who were mute spectators when her mother Qudrat and brother Mahmood cried for help twelve years ago. The police did nothing to save them when they were doused in petrol and set ablaze while still alive. Her brother Shabbir, his wife Zubeida and their children Sameena and Asif were maimed in front of their eyes. Nadeem, her three-month-old nephew, the prettiest child born in their family till date, was thrown alive onto a mass pyre. Shabnam, her 14-year-old niece, was raped and then cut into pieces by the same people who had cut open the womb of her cousin,\u00a0Kausar Bano Shaikh. The police repeatedly misdirected them to areas where the\u00a0tolas<\/em>, a colloquial term used for mobs, were waiting to kill.<\/p>\n In the early 1960s, Khurshid and several thousands of other workers migrated to Ahmedabad to work in the textile mills. It was here in 1861 that Ranchhodlal Chhotalal established the first textile mill in Ahmedabad and successfully\u00a0established<\/a>\u00a0the \u2018Made in India\u2019 brand in the next three decades. In the early years of Independence, there\u00a0were<\/a>\u00a075 textile mills here, which reduced to 40 in the 1960s. Workers claim this was the last time\u00a0pay<\/a>\u00a0was revised for them before 2012. On September 25, 2014, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the \u2018Make in India<\/a>\u2019 campaign to invite corporations from across the globe to invest and manufacture in India, the number of the mills here had shrunk to 15.<\/p>\n
\nShe was a key witness in the Naroda Patiya massacre trial. That is not the only way Shakeela\u2019s life is embedded in history though. The lives of three generations of Shakeela\u2019s family tells the story of modern Ahmedabad.\u00a0<\/i>
\nHindi translation available below<\/p>\n