DELHI, India (RNS) — Five years after riots swept through her neighborhood in northeast Delhi, the region around India’s capital, 18-year-old Anam Sa still wakes up in the middle of the night flushed, breathing fast, arms shaking.
Sa recalls most clearly how her father collapsed when he saw their three-storied house set on fire by Hindu rioters.
In February 2020, after the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi passed the Citizenship Amendment Act, which would exclude many Muslims from a fast-track to citizenship, Delhi witnessed a deadly, dayslong wave of violence in which Muslims saw their properties destroyed, mosques and prayer books set on fire. Hundreds of homes and shops were set ablaze by mobs wearing saffron headbands to signify their faith, and more than 50 people were killed.
As rioters stormed into dense and overcrowded neighborhoods in northeast Delhi, the epicenter of the riots, residents fled to their ancestral villages with little on their backs. When the flames subsided, most residents returned without homes, jobs or social security, haunted by memories of smoke, gas cylinders and petrol bombs.
Today Sa is a frequent visitor to Sabaat, a safe space on the outer fringes of Delhi for women survivors of religious hate and violence, where she has begun to heal. “In the last six months, I’ve learnt how to stitch dresses and trousers,” she said, her light-brown eyes kohl-lined. “We stitch fabric here, …