2002 Gujarat riots

The skyline of Ahmedabad filled with smoke as buildings and shops are set on fire by rioting mobs.

The 2002 Gujarat violence refers to incidents that took place in the State of Gujarat, India involving reciprocal violence between Hindus and Muslims.

The official estimates of the death toll given to the parliament on May 11, 2005 by the Manmohan Singh government and based on Gujarat government statistics, are 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus dead, 223 missing and 2,548 injured. The report placed the number of riot widows at 919 and 606 children were declared orphaned. There are human rights groups which believed that the death tolls were higher, in the upwards of 1000 and up to 2000. The United States Congressional Research Service also places the figure at "up to 2000, mostly Muslim". Tens of thousands were displaced from their homes because of the violence. Only after the violence subsided in the month of May did a significant fraction of the displaced returned to the affected regions.

The then ruling BJP party maintained that this was in retaliation for the burning to death, on February 27, 2002 of 58 Hindu pilgrims, mostly women and children, by a Muslim mob. This attack also resulted in the injury of 43 Hindus.

Several international news media agencies, governments, non-governmental organizations and human rights advocacy groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have reported on the riots. Some of them have referred to the incidents as a "massacre". They have also been critical of the Gujarat government's responses, to the point of alleging it's complicity in the riots. Organizations such as Human Rights Watch further criticize the Indian government for failure to address the resulting humanitarian condition of people, "overwhelming majority of them Muslim",who fled their homes for relief camps in the aftermath of the event. In turn, some have accused these news media agencies, non-governmental organizations and human rights advocacy groups of media bias and bias against Hindus.

Godhra train burning

Main article: Godhra Train Burning

58 Hindus, including 15 women and 20 children were burnt alive in a train coach at Godhra Station, allegedly by local Muslim protesters following an altercation with Kar Sevaks on board the train.

The images from the train burning were broadcast in print as well as the electronic media, especially in local Gujarati language newspapers. Modi blamed the Pakistani secret service Inter Services Intelligence behind the incident.

The Chief Minister of the BJP ruled state, Narendra Modi ordered a state funeral for the deceased in the train burning incident. The timings of the arrival of the dead bodies to the state capital Ahmedabad were advertised on the radio may have contributed to a very large turnout of people in an already charged atmosphere. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad issued a call for a peaceful state-wide bandh on February 28 2002. That bandh was later supported by the ruling BJP government.

Post Godhra violence

The first incidents of attacks on the minority Muslim community started at Ahmedabad, where Hindus began throwing stones at and later burned a Muslim housing complex known as Gulburg Society, and then spread elsewhere. The initial violence was instigated by unsubstantiated rumours, endorsed by a senior VHP leader, of Muslims having kidnapped three Hindu girls during the Godhra train attack. Thirty three towns of the state were severely affected and had to be placed under curfew at one point or another during this period. According to allegations made by Human Rights Watchs report compiled by Smita Narula, Muslim monuments like mosques and tombs were demolished,and at some places temples erected over them . U.K newspaper "The Guardian" reported that "two hundred and thirty different Islamic monuments, including a 400-year-old mosque were destroyed or vandalized" which "Right-wing Hindu scholars justified saying that India's Muslim Emperors had demolished Hindu temples to build mosques", so the gangs who tore down the Muslim shrines were merely "redeeming the past" .

Attacks on Muslims

In Naroda, according to Human Rights Watch, at least 65 Muslims were killed, many of them women who were sexually assaulted by violent mobs[6]. One of the witnesses stated before the Nanavati commission that that BJP leader Maya Kodnani, Bajrang Dal leader Babu Bajrangi and others had led mobs on February 28 last year in the Naroda-Patia area.

A high profile case involved an Ex-Congress MP who was surrounded by Hindu Mobs while many other Muslim residents in the area took shelter in his compound. Ehsaan was believed to have contacted the local police stations, MPs of the area as well as the Chief Minister Modi to save the people from the ever increasing mob. However, no police reinforcement had reached his place and few policemen present were ineffective and unwilling to control the violent mob." Eventually he was burnt to death, along with fifty others.

According to HRW in its widely-quoted report, mobs of "thousands", dressed in "saffron scarves and khaki shorts" - the signature uniform of the RSS - and "armed with swords, sophisticated explosives, and gas cylinders", were guided by voter lists and printouts of addresses of Muslim-owned properties, information obtained from the local municipal administration. The report further charged that in some cases members of the state police force "led" the mobs, "aiming and firing at every Muslim who got in the way", or instead of offering assistance "led the victims directly into the hands of their killers". Calls for assistance to the police, fire brigades, and even ambulance services generally proved futile.

Kausar Bano was nine months into pregnancy when on February 28 2002, 500 strong armed mob stormed into their house at Naroda Patia. Her womb was allegedly cut open with swords and the fetus was burnt along with herself and 7 other members of her family of 12. Bilkis Yakoob Rasool was six month pregnant when, on March 3 2002, a mob attacked their house in Randhikpur village located in Dahod district and gang-raped her while killing 14 of her closest relatives. She was left for dead but she survived. During the trial for these crimes , she subsequently identified 20 of the accused including 6 policemen in an ongoing trial.

Qutubuddin Ansari is a Gujarati Muslim tailor who made headlines India-wide after being photographed pleading a Hindu mob for his life during the riots. He later left Gujarat and settled in Calcutta, at the behest of West Bengal's ruling CPI(M) government.

Best Bakery

Main article: Best Bakery Case

Fourteen people, including women and children, were killed by a mob at the Best Bakery in the town of Vadodara on the night of 1 March. The ensuing murder trial received wide attention after witnesses retracted testimony in court and all accused were acquitted. The Indian Supreme Court, acting on a petition by social activist Teesta Setalvad, ordered a retrial outside Gujarat in which nine accused were found guilty in 2006. A key witness, Zaheera Sheikh, who repeatedly changed her testimony during the trials and the petition was found guilty of perjury.

Attacks on Hindus

Attacks on Hindus by Muslim mobs in Danilimda, Modasa, Himmatnagar, Bharuch, Sindhi Market, Bhanderi Pole, and other localities in the city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat were perpetrated by Muslim mobs . The attacks have been described as "retaliatory" by Human Rights Watch. There was significant loss of life and property . and many Hindu Dalits were rendered homeless.

The attacks on the Dalit community were particularly severe. Among the more significant attacks was the one in Khariwadi of Shahpura slum. The Muslim manager of a nearby hotel rallied a group of Muslim youths and set the houses of the Dalits on fire, first taking care to remove all inhabitants of the Muslim houses to a safe place 35 Hindu families had their houses burnt down, and two girls were burnt alive. Asylum was provided to the Hindus by a Sindhi hotelier. Similar attacks were recorded against Dalits by Muslim mobs armed with swords in Behrampura. The attacks on Dalits have largely been ignored by the "secular" politicians, and several Hindu Nationalist organizations such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Bajrang Dal came to their aid.

A BJP member and municipal corporator testified before the Nanavati-Shah comission that Muslims in the Amraiwadi area unfurled the Pakistani flag and raised pro-Pakistan slogans ten days after the Godhra riots, accompanied by cries demanding that "Kaffirs" be killed and their houses emptied. He said that attacks on Hindus were continuing in the area and claimed that riots were triggered after Muslims instigated them "with an intention of spreading fear".

In September 2002, at least 29 people were killed when suspected Islamic fundamentalist gunmen engaged in the Akshardham Temple attack in the city of Gandhinagar in Gujarat. The Pakistani ISI and Islamic terrorist group Lashkar-e-Toiba were accused of supporting the terrorists , but they have denied this accusation .

Over ten thousand Hindus were made homeless as a result of the Gujarat violence. In several residential areas, including Mahajan No Vando, Hindus were targeted following calls for retaliation. After looting the Hindu homes, the threw kerosene on the roofs and ignited their houses. According to one Hindu who lived through the violence.

In the morning the mosques began announcing that Islam was in danger, that there was poison in the milk. This is their code word. We are the only Hindus here, poison here means us. The rioting lasted between 2:15 p.m. and 5:30 p.m.

Many Hindus fortified their residential areas and did not leave them to go to work, following a young man being killed on the way to work by Muslim mobs.

Role of government and police

The Modi led state government was reprimanded at various levels including the National Parliament and internationally. The Indian Supreme Court has been strongly critical of the state government's investigation and prosecution of those accused of violence during the riots. It was observed that the Gujarat government referred to the death of 58 people in the Godhra train episode as carnage while those post Godhra events, where at least 1000 perished were referred to as disturbances seen as an effort to pass on the subsequent deaths as a natural reaction to Godhra Train incident.

According to New York Times reporter Celia Dugger, witnesses were "dismayed by the lack of intervention from local police", who often "watched the events taking place and took no action against the attacks on Muslims and their property".

Hindu residents of Mahajan No Vando, part of the Muslim dominated area of Jamalpur, told HRW that on March 1, the police ignored phone calls and left them fend for themselves when a Muslim mob attacked. Numerous calls by Hindus throughout the riots were ignored by the police.

The United States Department of State in its International Religious Freedom Report 2003 stated:

The Gujarat state government and the police were criticized for failing to stop the violence, and in some cases participating in or encouraging it. NGOs report that police were implicated directly in nearly all the attacks against Muslims in Gujarat, and in some cases, NGOs contend, police officials encouraged the mob. The Government dispatched the NHRC to investigate the attacks against Muslims, but the NHRC's findings that the attacks against Muslims "was a comprehensive failure on the part of the state government to control the persistent violation of rights of life, liberty, equality, and dignity of the people of the state," led to widespread criticism in the Hindu community and allegations of government partiality.

G.T. Nanavati, who leads the official commission investigating the riots said in 2003 that the evidence recorded till then did not indicate any serious lapse on the part of the government or police in Gujarat.

Role of Hindu nationalist organisations

Some independent reports have blamed the Sangh Parivar organisations to be responsible for orchestrating the riots. These organisations include the RSS, VHP, Bajrang Dal and affiliated organisations. The adult victims of the Godhra train burning were pilgrims and some may have been members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.

The People's Union of Civil Liberties allege that pamphlets were in circulation by the Sangh Parivar which could have ignited the violence further. Peoples Union of Civil Liberties is an Indian Civil Rights group along the lines of the American Civil Liberties Union that enumerated the list of these alleged documents. They also reported that that there are "elements of economic boycott" against the Muslim community in most areas of Gujarat.[7]

Shortly after the riots, when most Muslims were still in relief camps, a leaflet campaign "urging Hindus to boycott Muslim-owned shops and other establishments" was widely reported. The leaflets urged the Hindu reader not to frequent Muslim-owned restaurants, work in Muslim-run offices, hire Muslims or see films starring Muslim actors; they further assured the reader that the boycott would "throttle these elements. It will break their backbone. Then it will be difficult for them to live in any corner of this country." The economic boycott and "pressure from Hindu radicals" caused fewer employers to re-hire returning Muslims. No group claimed direct responsibility for the leaflets but a senior official of Viswha Hindu Parishad (VHP) was quoted as saying he was "in complete agreement with whatever is propagated through them".

However, the Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom, John Hanford, reported that while religious intolerance was a major concern in Indian politics, "we don't believe that the Central Government even under the BJP Government was involved in inciting those riots."

Response of the Gujarat Government

The BJP government has defended the actions of Narendra Modi's administration against charges of 'genocide'. They said that the killing of 254 Hindus, mostly in police firing, indicates how the state authorities took effective steps to curb the violence . In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Home Affairs Sriprakash Jaiswal confirmed the Hindu death toll in the incident(s). He, in turn, accused the Congress for misrepresenting the extent of the riots as part of a political agenda.

BJP MP Balbir Punj disputed allegations of bias against Muslims by the BJP-run state government, pointing out that the majority of the arrestees during and after the riots were Hindus..

Indian National Human Rights Commission's Confidential Report

In its Proceedings of 1 April 2002, the Commission had set out its Preliminary Comments and Recommendations on the situation and sent a Confidential Report of the team of the Commission that visited Gujarat from 19 March-22 March 2002 to Gujarat government and Central Home Ministry. The Gujarat government in its reply did not provide its response to the Confidential report. Therefore, the Commission was compelled to release the confidential report in its entirety and observed that nothing in the reports received in response "rebuts the presumption that the Modi administration failed in its duty to protect the rights of the people of Gujarat" by not exercising its jurisdiction over non-state players that may cause or facilitate the violation of human rights.

It further observed that "the violence in the State, which was initially claimed to have been brought under control in seventy two hours, persisted in varying degree for over two months, the toll in death and destruction rising with the passage of time despite the measures reportedly taken by the State Government".

The report claims failure of intelligence, failure to take appropriate action, patterns of arrests, uneven handling of major cases, and "Distorted FIRs: ‘extraneous influences’, issue of transparency and integrity" as key factors in the incident(s).

Aftermath

The Indian government's compensation policies offered 200,000 rupees for families with dead members on the train and 100,000 rupees for families who had relatives die in the riots. According to Celia Dugger of the New York Times, it has been called discriminatory by Muslims as all of the train burning victims were Hindus and about 75% of the riot victims were Muslims.

After the violence, there was calls for Gujarat CM Sri Narendra Modi to resign from the opposition Congress Party and even some parties supporting the BJP-led national Government. After a few weeks he submitted his resignation to the Governor of Gujarat. Elections were held later that year and he won in a major landslide.

Controversies on the riots

Allegations of Complicity of the state machinery

Planning

• Muslims in Ahmedabad alleged that there were elements of planning in the violence. Human Rights Watch alleges that they also had detailed about buildings and businesses held by members of the minority community while there were also cases where Hindus living in mixed neighbourhood were attacked and driven out of their homes. . Human Rights Watch also alleges that that the trucks carried quantities of gas cylinders. Rich homes of people belonging to the Muslim community and business establishments were first systematically looted, stripped down of all their valuables, then cooking gas was released from cylinders into the buildings for several minutes [8].

• Telegraph reports of Indian Intelligence admitting of a "deliberate delay" in deployment of the army in riot affected areas in order to give a free hand to Hindu mobs seeking revenge for Godhra Train Burning.

• In response to allegations of state involvement, Gujarat government spokesman, Bharat Pandya, told the BBC that the rioting was a spontaneous Hindu backlash fuelled by widespread anger against Muslims. He said "Hindus are frustrated over the role of Muslims in the on-going violence in Indian-administered Kashmir and other parts of India" .

• RB Sreekumar, who served as Gujarat's intelligence chief during the riots, made similar allegations. The Gujarat government issued a statement denying the charges, saying they had "no veracity". The Gujarat government claims that the charges are false and were instigated out of malice because Mr. Sreekumar was not promoted.

State Inquiry

• The first inquiry panel was headed by Justice KG Shah (retd). His panel faced accusations of partisanship on the grounds of his former affiliations with the BJP and the claim that the panel should have been handled by a sitting judge, rather than a retired one. However, Shah was unfazed by this decision, citing that he has not been given enough time to complete the full inquiry, but expressed confidence in the abilities of his panel [9].

• Another commission was headed by G.T. Nanavati.In 2003 Justice Nanavati stated that evidence recorded till that date had not indicated any 'serious lapses' on the police or the administration of Gujarat during these riots. These comments came before the two-man commission investigating the riots had recorded testimony in Ahmedabad and Vadodara.Justice Nanavati later clarified to the Indian Express that his statement was that "no serious allegation had come on record against police and the administration during the district level hearings." He further explained that "This does not include the hearings conducted with regard to Godhra incident and affidavits which have been filed before the Commission," of which there were over 3000 from riot victims

Relief efforts

• Human Rights Watch further alleges that state enforcement and state machinery continues to "harass and intimidate" key witnesses, NGOs, social activists and lawyers who are fighting to seek justice for riot victims.

• The state government was attacked by the media and certain NGOs for allegedly having done little towards relief and rehabilitation for the welfare of victims in setup and administration of relief camps. . The sanitary conditions and overall hygiene were reported to be "appalling" by the BBC, .

• Refugees of the riots were supposedly being "harassed". The government justified some actions taken against these refugees saying that was necessary to ensure security .

• Gujarat government spokesperson Pandya however denied the accusation and claimed that the state was extending all possible help to the people in the camps.

• As a consequence of the leaflet campaign, observers claimed that ten months , a year and even two and half years later, the economic boycott of Muslims was still severe in many parts of the state. As a consequence of the boycott and and continued threats, relief organisations lamented that they were having to build "ghettoes" for the displaced.

Allegations of atrocities against women

There has been widespread public outrage regarding atrocities against women during the riots, including acts of rape, in respect of which FIRs were allegedly neither promptly nor accurately recorded, and the victims allegedly harassed and intimidated.

An international "fact finding committee" formed of experts from US, UK, France, Germany and Sri Lanka claimed that "Sexual violence was being used as a strategy for terrorising women belonging to minority community in the state..

Taking a stand decried by the media and other rights group, the National Commission for Women accused organisations and the media of needlessly exaggerating the plight of women victims of the riots. Nafisa Hussain, a member of the NCW, went on record saying that several organisations and the media have needlessly blown out of proportion the violence suffered by minority women in the communal riots of Gujarat .Other groups have challenged the stand of the NCW.The newspaper Tribune reported that "The National Commission for Women has reluctantly agreed to the complicity of Gujarat Government in the communal violence in the state." The tone of their most recent report was reported by the Tribune as "lenient".

Criticism of media and allegations of biases

There have been several allegations of biased reporting of the riots by the media. Specifically, allegations have been made of deliberately loading the reports against Hindus and whitewashing the violence perpetrated by Muslims. Several newspaper columnists have lambasted media agencies for biased partisan reporting of the riots. The media, as well as several opinion makers, have been criticized for ignoring the causal connection between rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Jammu and Kashmir and other parts of the country and the resulting frustration of Hindus that led to the riots and falsely attacking Hindus as the sole cause and the sole perpetrators of the violence. Jayalalithaa Jayaram, general secretary of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, also criticized the media and politicians for bias, saying "it is saddening and strange that when such acts are perpetrated against the minorities all political leaders rush to condemn. But when the majority is attacked, not a single political leader condemns it."

A Bhartiya Janata Party MP also responded to criticisms from the press and advocates such as Arundhati Roy by accusing them of hyperbole and sensationalising the riots as part of an agenda of what he calls 'defamation' and 'left wing anti-India propaganda' . In particular, Punj writes "She (Roy) terms Gujarat the 'petri dish' of the Sangh Parivar. The fact is that Godhra has been used as a crucible by the secular fundamentalists." Punj later continues, "Loss of 900-odd innocent lives (both Hindus and Muslims) is definitely not a 'genocide' of any one community". Punj also says, "The secular pack is not only guilty of parading half-truths but also of condoning and inciting violence".

Bias of the intelligentsia

Columnist such as Rajeev Srinivasan of Rediff.com accused "the self-proclaimed 'intelligentsia' has been equally at fault: it has attempted to mislead the public with its biased and one-sided perorations".He says that there is a decidedly Marxist,"Nehruvian" and anti-Hindu bias in the intelligentsia in India that leads them to believe that Hindu lives are "less valuable" than Muslim lives. This leads them to ignore the atrocities perpetrated by Islamic Fundamentalists against Hindus, as well as the Godhra Train Burning that precipitated the riots, and deflect attention away from them by focusing on the actions of the Hindus.

B.J.P. Member of Parliament Balbir Punj has written a scathing article against Arundhati Roy's biased reporting and debunked many of her assertions as outrageous falsifications, though he did not deny her death toll figures concerning Ehsaan Jaffry incident.

External links

• Harsh Mander Cry, the Beloved Country: Reflections on the Gujarat Massacre.
• Democracy: Who is she when she's at home? by Arundhati Roy
• Fiddling with Facts as Gujarat Burns - Balbir Punj
• Destruction of Gujarat's Muslim heritage
• The full story of Kauser Bano
• Truth in Gujarat by Balbir Punj
• Godhra train fire conspiracy theory bogus, says counsel
• Lalu panel calls Godhra an accident, what about flaming rags, ask victims
• Godhra train carnage survivor says he heard blast
• “We Have No Orders To Save You”:State Participation and Complicity in Communal Violence in Gujarat- Human Rights Watch Report
• Politics By Other Means: An Analysis of Human Rights Watch Reports on India - Criticism of Human Rights Watch Report, Guest column for the South Asia Analysis Group
• Rakesh Sharma's documentary India: Final Solution depicts the nature and the milieu of the Gujarat Riots of 2002. Interview with Rakesh Sharma. BBC profile of India: Final Solution
• Foreign missions: undiplomatic leaks - Allegations of anti-India media bias
• Time Cover Story on Gujarat Riots