7 - 13 March 2002
Issue No.576
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 7 - 13 March 2002 Issue No.576 |
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Eyes wide shut
Mukul Devichand clears a path through the terror, in a week in which more than 500 people were massacred in religious violence in western India
"For the past two days we have been completely under siege," Ishaq Seth wrote in a frenzied message sent to Al-Ahram Weekly.
Ahmedabad in flames: a building burns, set alight by rioting Hindu extremists in the commercial capital of Gujarat in western India. Over 500 people, mostly Muslims, died in the violence - many of them burned alive in their homes. The trouble was sparked when 58 Hindu political activists were killed by a suspected militant Muslim mob photo: Gautam Patel
Seth, a Muslim from Himmatnagar in the western Indian state of Gujarat, said on Sunday that he was still afraid to leave his home because of violent Hindu-nationalist mobs outside. "There is nothing we have been able to do till now," he wrote to the Weekly. "There is no police force or any other law enforcement agency in sight or anybody to listen to our pleas."
Large pockets of Gujarat seemed to descend into mob rule last week, as groups of Hindu extremists took to the streets. They were carrying out revenge killings for the torching of a train carrying Hindu-nationalist leaders. In that incident, two carriages were razed to the ground, killing 58 people -- mostly women and children. The attack was carried out by a seemingly well- organised Muslim crowd of more than 200 people in Godhra, also in Gujarat. It is still not clear who led the group.
By the next day, several Gujarati cities were in chaos as gangs of men -- many drawn from the ranks of extreme Hindu organisations Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) -- roamed the streets setting fire to Muslim shops and homes. On Thursday alone 194 people, mostly Muslims, had been murdered, and by Monday the death toll had reached 489, according to Reuters.
Ronak Raj, a Hindu resident of Gujarat's largest city Ahmedabad, told the Weekly that on Thursday, "Everywhere you looked, you saw fire and smoke coming out here and there. Actually it was a very targeted thing, because the mob set fire to only Muslim shops and their property."
"There were some local gangs who also engaged themselves in this," he added. "They started looting things from shops."
Many accounts of harrowing violence and massacre emerged from the chaos.
Take the story of Moinuddin Sheikh, a baker who watched his family die on Friday in an attack in which 65 Muslims were burned to death. "I saw my father, sister and mother being burned alive. Despite pleas for help, nobody came to our rescue," he told Reuters.
"People have lost their humanity. They have started behaving like rowdy, insensible gangsters," Namrata Raja, another resident of Ahmedabad, told the Weekly.
"I don't know what they are gaining from burning shops, restaurants and other places," she said. "It is very upsetting and scary, too."
By all accounts, Gujarati police failed to contain the violence, and in many cases they seem simply to have looked the other way as innocent people were murdered.
In one incident at Hatkewshwar Circle in Ahmedabad, three houses in a row were set alight. Meanwhile, 100 feet away, Indian Express reporters found three policemen sitting in chairs taken from a shop. When asked why they were not stopping the mob, one officer told the paper: "Let them do something also. After all, so many people were killed in Godhra."
Gujarat was the home state of India's famous non-violent Independence leader, Mahatma Gandhi. On Thursday, violence even spread to state capital Gandhinagar, named after the Mahatma himself. Gandhi once rallied against communal violence with the words "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."
His advice seems to be all but forgotten in the bloody events of last week.
Voices above violence
"From whatever angle one may look at the situation, there is no mistaking that there has been a colossal failure of the political leadership."The Indian Express, Saturday 1 March
"Communalism is an English term. Hinduism is not communal, it is national."
Acharya Giriraj Kishore, Vice-President of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) (quoted by Tehelka.com)
"We are trying to save ourselves today, but we will hit back."
Muslim man sheltering from mobs in a mosque in Ahmedabad (quoted by BBC)
"The carnage must be brought to an end."
Pakistani President, General Pervez Musharraf
"For God's sake, we request the strength of the army to be increased immediately otherwise riots may engulf the neighbouring states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and maybe even the rest of the country."
Mohamed Shafi Madni, Chairman, Islamic Relief Committee, Gujarat
"Now, for the first time, a xenophobic party on the centre-stage of politics is facing a challenge from its fundamentalists... However, even hardliners like Advani may have realised that extremism doesn't pay in Indian politics."
Amulya Ganguly, The Hindustan Times, Monday 3 March
"The Hindu organisations are mobilising their mobs and the whole government of Gujarat is looking the other way," a fearful Seth wrote to the Weekly from his besieged home. "Their intention is to totally annihilate Muslims."
By Friday, calls for the central government to contain the extremists and send in the army were coming from across India's religious and political spectrum. Gujarat's state administration came under particular fire for fanning the flames of communal tension.
"The singularly inept and slow response to the scenes of destruction and death raises disturbing questions about the Gujarat State Government's approach," wrote The Hindu in its Saturday leader.
Gujarat state, like India's central administration, is led by the Baratiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP is, in turn, part of the Sangh Parivar, the same ancient-Hinduism "revivalist" political stable from which more extreme parties, such as the VHP, also draw ideological inspiration.
The BJP has been heavily criticised for its role in the last big round of Hindu-Muslim violence over a disputed temple site at Ayodhya in 1992. At that time, about 3,000 people were killed in riots.
In many ways, the BJP's reaction to the killings by its more extreme cousins was seen as a litmus test of the party's ability to rein in violent sister-organisations and rule peacefully over a legally secular and diverse democracy with a 150-million strong Muslim minority.
This is especially so because the train which was set alight by the Muslim mob was returning from a vigil at the same disputed temple site in Ayodhya where the VHP intends to start work again on 15 March.
At the state level, however, the government's response was weak. Gujarat's BJP Chief Minister Narendra Modi was playing a dangerous game on Thursday, when he commented that he understood the anger of the people over the Godhra incident. For this he drew sharp criticism: "Modi should have foreseen that this kind of ambiguity was what the bloodthirsty mobs needed for encouragement," claimed an enraged Indian Express on Saturday.
The central government did eventually contain the violence by sending in the army on Friday, but not before the death-toll had reached catastrophic proportions.
Nevertheless, the government did eventually manage to crowd out the extremists, although it is unclear whether plans to spark up trouble in Ayodhya have been shelved. The head of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), another leading Hindu-nationalist group, caved in to pressure and issued an appeal for peace. "This violence must stop immediately because innocent and hapless people become its inevitable victims," he said.
Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee also joined in the calls: "Burning alive of people, including women and children, is a blot on the country's face," he said in a nationally televised address.
By Sunday, most of the violence in large urban centres had been stopped by heavy troop deployments, and rural clashes were becoming more isolated.
The hope in many quarters is that faced with the terrible scenes in Gujarat, the BJP will grow more moderate. As a national party it needs to win cross-communal support in elections. It presides over a 40-party ruling coalition and is turning against the VHP and other extremists in the Sangh Parivar.
Meanwhile, just as an eerie calm began to descend on Gujarat on Monday, fears of a Muslim backlash began to circulate.
"In all, the situation is improving but still people have a fear that the Muslims may retaliate badly," Raj told the Weekly from Ahmedabad. "Let's all pray to God and hope nothing happens."
Seeking to give frightened people a reason for the madness, India's Home Minister LK Advani suggested on Monday that the attack on the train -- the spark that started the violence -- might be linked to the same Pakistan- based militants who attacked the Indian parliament last December.
"The needle of suspicion points to some outside element," he said.
In pointing to Islamist groups, India is drawing a link between events in Gujarat and other acts of violence by outlawed Pakistan-based militant army Jaish-e Mohamed, which is allegedly responsible for killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan last month.
The well-coordinated nature of the attack on the train suggested to many Indians that there had been an intelligence failure on the government's behalf. "Surely, none of this could have been done without preparation, direction and leadership. Why was this missed out by all our intelligence agencies?" asked The Times of India on Monday.
Intelligence failure or not, however, suspicion between Hindus and Muslims is on the rise in secular India. The world's largest democracy is going through a crucial faze in communal relations as the BJP government struggles to retain power in state elections over the next month. The bloodbath in Gujarat is also shocking a nation that had not seen major communal violence since 1992.
Ishaq Seth, confined to his home in Himmatnagar, told the Weekly to "consider his message an SOS." Another Ahmedabad resident, Aditi Patel, echoed his sentiments: "People are being slaughtered and it's sad that the Muslim-Hindu issue is coming up again."
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