14 - 20 March 2002
Issue No.577
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 14 - 20 March 2002 Issue No.577 |
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The dust has not settled
Tensions remain high in India, a fortnight after religious violence rocked Mahatma Gandhi's home state, writes Sudhanshu Ranjan from New Delhi
The irony could not have been more obvious. Two weeks ago, Hindus massacred Muslims, and vice versa, in the land of Mahatma Gandhi ó known in India as the Father of the Nation ó who himself was a martyr to the cause of non-violence and Hindu-Muslim unity. The religious violence in the state of Gujarat claimed more than 600 lives in less than a week, dealing a body blow to India's secular and progressive image, reducing it instead to a barbaric banana republic.
It all started on 27 February with the now-infamous Godhra incident, in which at least 57 train passengers were burnt alive and many injured. The deaths were caused when the Ahmedabad-bound Sabarmati Express train was stoned and set on fire by a 2,000-strong Muslim mob at the Godhra junction.
Most of the victims were volunteers from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), an extreme Hindu-nationalist group, who were returning from Ayodha, east of Gujarat. They had been participating in a religious ceremony for constructing a temple on the disputed site of an ancient mosque. Four bogies of the ill-fated train were completely gutted by fire, as the mob put petrol cars to deadly use.
The incident was tragic and gruesome, to say the least. What happened afterwards, though, was genocidal.
Violence broke out in Godhra and other parts of Gujarat as soon as the news of the attack on the train began to spread. In no time, the whole state had become a great smoking cauldron of communal frenzy. The seemingly-senseless violence kept on claiming innocent lives from the Muslim community, and the flare-up went on engulfing new areas day after day. The administration, meanwhile, looked on.
In and around Ahmedabad, the capital of Gujarat, where Gandhi's Sabarmati religious commune is located, over 200 Muslims were burnt to death and their property looted. This death toll includes the Gulbarga Society in Chamanpura, where a former MP from the Congress party, Elsan Jaffrey, and 60 others were set on fire.
At Panderwada and Khanpur villages in Dahod district, over 100 Muslims were burnt alive, their property looted and their shops gutted. In Vijapur Taluk, 32 Muslims were burnt alive in two villages, Sardarpur and Ladol.
Furthermore, 27 charred bodies were recovered from Mehsana; over 30 killings took place in Baroda; and 15 bodies were recovered from Mehmemada Taluk, in Khera district.
The frenzied mobs did not spare places of worship either. According to one estimate, at least 30 mosques were demolished, with Hindu idols installed in their places. While the Muslim minority community is too cowed to do anything right now, this could mean more trouble later if attempts are made to rebuild the mosques at the site of the new "temples."
For the first time in history, the Sufi shrines or dargahs were attacked. In Gujarat's Sufi traditions, they remain places where members of all communities assemble and meet regularly. Dargahs are regarded as a meeting ground of the Hindu and Muslim religions ó a fact not appreciated either by the VHP or the fundamentalist Tablighi Jamaat, if their posters are anything to go by.
Local politicians, far from hanging their heads in shame, seem to be using the tensions to get ahead. According to one report, Gujarat's current BJP chief minister, Narendra Modi, is toying with the idea of dissolving the state's legislative assembly and seeking a fresh electoral mandate, to cash in on the high-running Hindu sentiments.
Nevertheless, all right-minded people throughout the country are in a state of shock. What has angered them most is the way Chief Minister Modi blamed the Godhra carnage on Pakistani terrorists. Modi even went as far as justifying the backlash, saying that he understood Hindu sentiments.
Accusing fingers have been raised by the media and the opposition parties against Modi, for collaborating in the organised carnage. Instead of trying to stop the rioting, he allowed it to spread till over 600 people were killed. The reason? He was pandering to his constituency. He wanted to show his party and those who voted him to power that he was punishing the Muslims for Godhra.
For his part, Modi rubbished the charge: "I brought sanity within 72 hours of the violent outbreak. It would have taken months before communal rioting could be brought under control during the previous Congress government."
Modi is openly rallying against the media. He is charging the press and the TV channels with misleading the people. According to him, there was a terrorist conspiracy behind the whole incident and the media, instead of exposing that conspiracy, chose to exacerbate the violence by running inflammatory visuals showing homes being set ablaze and people being terrorised.
The BJP also accused the opposition parties and the "pseudo-secularists" of double standards ó they did not condemn the cold-blooded killings of Hindus at Godhra, the BJP claimed, but they are shedding tears over the killings of Muslims.
India's Home Minister LK Advani rejected all calls for Modi's dismissal. In parliament on 11 March, Advani went hammer and tong against the Congress, citing the example of anti-Sikh riots in New Delhi in November 1984. Advani said that although nearly 3,000 Sikhs were killed, there was not a single shot ordered by the then Congress administration, whose leader Indira Ghandi had just been assassinated by Sikh militants. But in Gujarat, he added, police opened fire on several occasions, the army was deployed and the hooligans were arrested.
The militant Hindu-nationalists, VHP and Bajrang Dal, are not repentant and explain away the rioting as an expression of the way the majority Hindu community has felt for some time. Harshbhai Bhatt, the central vice-president of the Bajrang Dal said: "For years, Hindus have been pushed around. There is no outrage when Amarnath pilgrims are murdered or Hindus are massacred in Kashmir. Every day our security forces are dying on the border. Temples are being demolished. How come no one speaks out? How is it that when innocent men, women and children are burnt alive in a train in Godhra there is no outrage, but when Muslims die in riots there is such a hue and cry?"
Gujarat is limping back to normal. An eerie calm prevails there. Should it be assumed that the worst is over? Perhaps not. With the VHP hell bent on conducting "Bhoomi Puja" (worship of the land) on the undisputed land at Ayodhya on 15 March and the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) being just as firm on not allowing the VHP to do so, confrontation and flare-up seem inevitable.
It is not all bad news, however. The announcement by BJP Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on 11 March that "no token Bhoomi Puja will be allowed on the undisputed land" has come as a big relief to the Muslim community. The VHP is not prepared to relent, however, and it has decided not only to go ahead with its programme in Ayodhya but also to perform "Ramnaam Sakirtan," a symbolic rallying-prayer, in every major town and village across the country. So the stage is set for confrontation between the government, headed by the BJP, and its "natural sympathiser," the VHP, and for other conflicts between moderates and extremists in the Hindu-nationalist movements.
Last week, initiatives taken by the moderate Hindu-nationalist politicians to mediate between the VHP and the AIMPLB seemed to rekindle some hope for a negotiated settlement of the vexed Ayodhya dispute. Even these sincere efforts have come to nothing, however. The formula, put to the VHP and the AIMPLB on 5 March, involved the VHP maintaining a status-quo as regards the mosque and, in return, being given an uncontroversial 43-acre plot next door to the disputed site and being allowed to perform some symbolic prayers at the actual temple site.
So the glimmer of hope has died down. Now, worried Indian eyes are set on the court for an expeditious decision; and on the government, for maintaining peace.
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