Even in Asiya Bano, a young bride in Malpura town in Rajasthan's Tonk district, had overcome the shock of losing her parents in the violence that followed in the wake of the Babari Masjid's demolition in 1992, she would probably have spent her life worrying about how to bring up her four orphaned, school-going sisters. But 25 years old now, she sees brighter days ahead. The Malpura Welfare Society, formed by the regretful people of the town after the rioting, helped her to invest the Rs. 4.4 lakh compensation she got from the government, gave her money to build a house and aided her in completing formalities to get each of her sister a monthly Rs. 375 education assistance from the National Foundation for Communal Harmony ..

The riots, which claimed 26 lives in the town, stunned the normally peaceful Malpura, which has a population of 24,000, a third of them Muslims. So, once the frenzy died out, some people – government employees, businessmen and politicians - sat down to discuss how best to help the orphans. Thus was born the Malpura Welfare Society ... The society began its job quietly, first ensuring that the kin of the dead got the government compensation and then investing it in the best possible way in order to benefit the children. The ociety also solicited donations, from which the poorest mong the affected - such as Asiya Bano - were provided assistance for building houses. All the while, the members of the association had regular interaction with the victims in which they explained how neither community was to be blamed in isolation for their trauma.

The Malpura Welfare Society again played a vital role when the local administration sought its help in identifying victims for the scholarship scheme of the National Foundation for Communal Harmony ... Today, Abdul Khalique Qadri, who had just started going to school when his electrician father was killed, is in Class IV ... Salma, then 19, lost her husband Jamaluddin, a peanut seller, to a stray bullet and was left with a three-year-old son Ansar Ahmed and 10-month-old daughter Aneesa ... The society got their education assistance, even arrears, cleared ..

Now, with the children growing up, the society is fighting to make sure the government fulfils its commitment of providing jobs to them. It has ... taken up the case of Satya Narain, who lost both his parents in the riots and of Shakil Mohammad, 18, who has passed Class XII and is no longer eligible for scholarship ..

... If only there were more such associations in the country today.                                                                                                          (Source: The India Today, 16 February, 1998)