Professor Juzar S Bandukwala, a prominent human rights activist died Saturday at his home in Vadodara of various ailments.
Bandukwala, who fought against the ghettoisation of Muslims in Gujarat was 77. He is survived by a daughter and son, settled in the United States.
Bandukwala had been an outspoken advocate for marginalized people’ rights since his undergraduate days, when he served as president of the Maharaja Sayajirao University students’ union in Vadodara in 1981. Since 2015, he has worked relentlessly in Gujarat to combat Muslim ghettoization, including campaigning against the displacement of Kalyannagar slum families and working for their rehabilitation.
He was at the receiving end of mob violence during the 2002 anti – Muslim Gujarat pogrom. His house in the Sama locality of Vadodara was gutted by a violent Hindu mob. This traumatic incident left severe mental scars on his wife, who fell into depression and passed away a few years later.
Bandukwala opted to live in a mixed neighborhood and continued to push for an inclusive society his whole life.
“As a matter of principle, I prefer to live in a plural locality. I still believe that true national integration can only occur when people of all castes and faiths live in proximity to each other. Unfortunately in India, people live in areas clearly marked as belonging to their caste and religion,” he wrote in an article in 2018.
JS Bandukwala devoted his life to the the upliftment of the Muslim community and advocated many reforms. He set up the Zidni Ilma Charitable Trust in 2006, and raised funds to extend financial support to the underprivileged children of the minority community. The trust, annually, supported the education of close to 400 students.
He helped rehabilitate over 450 Muslim and Dalit families in mixed localities.
Professor Bandukwala, an active member of the People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL), worked to ensure justice for Dalit and Muslim victims of caste and sectarian violence perpetrated by individuals, states, and local governments.
He refused hospitalisation despite suffering from Alzheimer’s and was being treated by his personal physician. According to his doctor, Bandukwala had been unwell for the last week due to age-related complications.
“He had diabetes and cardiac ailments among other comorbidities. He was also suffering from mild Alzheimer’s in the recent past. For the last one week, we had deputed medical staff at his residence because he was refusing to be hospitalised. He developed septicemia in the last few days. We were trying to convince him to get hospitalised last evening… He passed away this morning at his residence,” Dr Mohammed Hussain told the Indian Express.
Prof Bandukwala, a physics professor at MS University Baroda, was an anti-nuclear activist who fiercely opposed the Vajpayee government’s Pokhran bomb test explosions in 1998, noting the devastating consequences for the Indian Subcontinent’s delicate eco-system.
Prof Bandukwala, undeterred by malicious communal protests by a section of the majority community against the allotment of houses to Muslim slum-dwellers in a predominantly Hindu locality, and the Vadodara Municipal Corporation’s acquiescence to the protest and cancellation of the allotment, wrote to then-chief minister Vijay Rupani, describing the civic body’s action as akin to apartheid policy.
“The Muslims have the right to live anywhere, and not just in Muslim ghettos,” Prof Bandukwala asserted in his letter to the Gujarat chief minister. “This is segregation as practised in the USA before Martin Luther King struggled to abolish it 50 years ago. This apartheid system last prevailed in South Africa. Does Gujarat want a repeat of this apartheid in 2018 with regard to Muslims?” he had asked.
In 2006, Bandukwala received the Indira Gandhi Award for National Integration for his efforts to promote communal harmony.
Prof Bandukwala devoted his life for the upliftment of Muslims in Gujarat; educational, economic and social. He envisioned a just and harmonious society, uncorrupted by Hindutva hatred. He spent many years working towards a more inclusive society.
