In June this year, Karwan e Mohabbat organised a festival in Hyderabad called Rehmat, to celebrate radical love and courageous kindness. ‘Rehmat’ in Urdu means compassion, kindness, and caring. The people celebrated in this festival contribute to our understanding of these concepts and to our understanding of India. Ahead of, on, and after Independence Day, we will look at them in a series. This is the second story. Read the first here.§What is more heroic than asking for peace after losing a loved one in an attack of hate? In such moments, anger is easier. But on January 7, 2018, Abdul Basheer’s family stood before the media and asked people not to seek revenge for his killing. “The Prophet we follow taught us to be patient. We have no right to take another person’s life,” the family said. These were not empty words. It was a call to stop another cycle of violence before it could begin.Asking for peace is rarely seen as an act of courage. More often, people believe that revenge is the way to protect honour and self-respect. This is especially true in Dakshina Kannada, where political killings have often been followed by revenge killings. Many people in the region have lived through this cycle for years. By asking for peace, Basheer’s family tried to stop another family from suffering the same pain. Abdul Basheer had worked in Saudi Arabia for nearly 30 years after leaving home in search of a better life. Upon his return, he hoped to spend a peaceful life with his wife, children and grandchildren. He had missed much of his children’s early lives while working abroad and wanted to make up for that time. Six months after returning home, he opened a small restaurant in Kottara Chowki, close to where he lived. Life had finally become stable until one night changed everything. On January 3, Abdul Basheer was getting ready to close his restaurant around 10 pm, as he did every night. A friend from a nearby scrap shop warned him that the city was tense and advised him to leave early. That evening, Basheer had attended his grandson’s baby shower, so he had opened the restaurant later than usual. Before leaving home, he told his wife he would eat after returning from work. But he would not return.On the same day a few hours earlier, Deepak Rao, a Bajrang Dal activist, had been killed in Surathkal. Soon after, a group of seven men went looking for a Muslim person to kill in revenge. Basheer had never met Deepak and had nothing to do with the murder. But he had no idea that he had become their target simply because of his religion. The men entered Basheer’s restaurant as customers. They ate his food and waited until he closed the shop. Then they attacked him. Basheer suffered more than 50 injuries. An ambulance driver found him about 15 minutes later and rushed him to the hospital. He fought for his life for three days before he died.The people who killed Basheer didn’t know that he had once saved a Hindu life. It was just an act of friendship back then, but now it is something we need to mention in Basheer’s story because of what happened to him. After kar sevaks demolished the Babri Masjid in 1992, instances of communal violence spread in different regions. Around eight people were killed in six taluks of Karnataka. Basheer was in Saudi Arabia at that time and the communal tension reached the Indian communities living there as well. Prabhakar was Basheer’s roommate, and had been his neighbour in Mangalore. When Muslim men came to attack Prabhakar in the heat of the tensions then, it was Basheer who stood between them, his family said. His faith was always in unity and harmony, those same principles he instilled in his children and brothers.“Basheer would never have wanted his killing to spark violence,” members of his family said to the media in the aftermath of his death.By the morning of January 7, hundreds of people had gathered outside AJ Hospital, where Basheer’s body was kept. Some local activists wanted to take his body home in a public procession. But his family and the police feared that this could increase tensions. Instead, they kept the gathering small. Basheer was buried at a nearby mosque in the presence of only family, neighbours and close friends. Many Hindu neighbours also came to pay homage, something rarely seen in the region during such tense times.Akash Bhavan, the village where Basheer’s family lived, was home mostly to Hindu families, with only a small number of Muslim households. Imran, Basheer’s eldest son, said that he grew up with friends from both communities and never saw those friendships differently. One of the people accused in the attack was Anoop, a childhood friend with whom Imran had once played cricket. Basheer’s brother Naushad with guests at the Rehmat festival in Hyderabad. Photo: By arrangement.Communal violence in Dakshina Kannada is often triggered by rumour. What happened in 2002 between the Mogaveeras, a fishing community, and the Muslim community in Udupi district is an example of how easily the poison of hatred can be injected. Local stories describe the deity of Mogaveeras, as the son of a Muslim father and a Jain mother. Despite this history, a rumour spread in 2002 claiming that Muslims were injecting Hindus with the AIDS virus, which then led to a series of attacks on Muslim homes by members of the Mogaveera community. Political campaigns led by Hindutva groups around issues like cow protection, religious conversion and the bogey of ‘love jihad’ have also deepened divisions between communities and increased mistrust.Muslims make up around 24% of the population in Dakshina Kannada, which is higher than both the state and national average. Many Muslim families have improved their economic conditions by working in Gulf countries and investing their earnings back home. Their comparative financial stability is contrasted with growing religious division. The killings of Basheer and Deepak occurred just a few months before the Karnataka legislative assembly elections and may have influenced the election campaigns too. These killings occurred when people were already recovering from the grief and tensions caused by the Ashraf Kalayi–Sharat Madiwala cycle of revenge killings in 2017.On the same night when Basheer was killed, 22-year-old Mohammed Mudassir was also attacked in Surathkal. Revenge is not always an emotional reaction. Over the years, ideas of honour, masculinity and loyalty have been used to justify violence. Many people come to believe that not taking revenge is a sign of weakness. Such beliefs keeps the cycle of violence alive. However, the onus of a sensible decision was not on Basheer’s family, who were already in pain. But this suffering made the family appear in front of the media and request people not to escalate the situation further. They didn’t want another family to suffer the pain they went through. They may not have been hopeful that the system would deliver immediate justice for Basheer, but they knew more violence will not lead to peace in the region. It would only create more unrest.Their appeal for peace did not bring Basheer back, nor did it guarantee justice. But it interrupted a cycle that had hunted many lives. In a region where retaliatory violence has become a norm, that decision was itself a resistance. As the renowned Urdu poet and writer Althaf Hussain Hali writes:“Mita dega aapas ki nafrat ko jis dam, Wahi ek ummeed-e-hidayat hai baqi.”“The day we overcome our hatred for one another, that alone will remain the true hope for guidance.”Killings have continued to happen one after another in Dakshina Kannada. Yet, what Basheer’s family did stands as a beacon of hope for peace and harmony.Safa KT is a multimedia producer associated with Kaarwan e Mohabbat.