World Faith

Naseem Mohammad Shaikh is from Vadodara, Gujarat, in India. For seven years, she kept hoping her husband and parents would come back.

Naseem’s is a household name in Kalol. This is not because she is the first woman in Gujarat to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, for her efforts for the survivors of the 2002 violent riots in Panchmahals.

Seven years ago, in Delol village, her neighbours had suddenly gone into a frenzy that February morning. They were screaming hate, pulling out machetes and knives, and chasing their neighbors. The killing lasted for the next two days and when it was over, Naseem had lost 27 of her own family members. Some of the dismembered bodies were flung into the nearby Goma river, others were scattered in the slush of nearby fields.

Miraculously, as it now seems, Nassem was at a local maternity hospital that day. When Dr Macchi of Kalol Delivery Centre was putting the stitches on her, the mob was probably killing her husband, father, mother and her close relatives. Only her five-year-old son survived. “It was only later that village elders said they were all dead. None of their bodies were found,” she says.

Naseem continued to live on hope for a while. “A Hindu man in our village, Khoya Patel, saved my son, Shoaib. I kept believing some other kind souls would have saved the others too,” she says. All these seven years, the police never confirmed their deaths.

Since then, she has been living in a rehabilitation camp in Kalol and refuses to go back to the village. For good reasons. “My brother who survived the killing had earlier returned to our village. He was still in great trauma and when a bomb went off in the village bus stand, he lost his sanity. His wife returned alone to the rehabilitation camp,” she says.

In connection with Shakeel Basha in New Delhi, Naseem was agreed to start a World Faith Chapter in Gujarat. Where Naseem could call for violence, justifying her loss, she has chosen peace. Through her awesome work, we hope that no one in Gujarat will face the pain Naseem has.

At the recent IFYC Conference, Eboo Patel, Founder and Executive Director of the Interfaith Youth Core, spoke about World Faith, and specifically about the work happening in India under the World Faith’s National Director of India, Abdul Shakeel Basha.

A lot of people were at the IFYC Conference… That is why I am honored that Tikkun mentioned World Faith in their write-up of the conference. For the full article, please visit the article on Tikkun’s website.