2002 Gujarat riots

2002 Gujarat violence
The skyline of Ahmedabad filled with smoke as buildings and shops are set on fire by rioting mobs.
Date 2002 Location Gujarat, India
Belligerents
Indian Muslims	Indian Hindus
Commanders and leaders
Gujarati Muslims	Gujarati Hindus
Casualties and losses
790 dead	254 dead

The term 2002 Gujarat violence (reported by Luke Harding in an opinion-editorial of The Guardian as the "Gujarat Genocide") refers to the violent incidents that took place in the state of Gujarat in India. They began in February of 2002 as a response to the Godhra Train Burning. The ruling BJP party maintained that this was in retaliation for the 27 February 2002 fire which killed 58 Hindu Karsevaks and injured 43 in Godhra.

Official estimates, given to Parliament on May 11, 2005 by the UPA-Congress government of Dr. Manmohan Singh based on Gujarat government statistics that 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus dead, 223 missing and 2548 injured. The report placed the number of riot widows at 919 and 606 children were declared orphaned.. However human rights activists quote 2000 victims, a majority of them Muslims, including about 20 percent Hindu victims. These activists also believe that thousands were displaced from their homes between the ends of February and May 2002 in Gujarat. These figures are however uncorroborated.

Several international news media agencies, non-governmental organizations and human rights advocacy groups such as Human Rights Watch have reported on the riots and have been critical of the Gujarat government's responses, to the point of alleging their complicity in the riots. In turn, these news media agencies, non-governmental organizations and human rights advocacy groups have been accused of media bias and bias against Hindus.

Godhra Attacks

58 Hindus, including 15 women and 20 children were burnt alive in a train compartment at Godhra Station. Intelligence agencies were aware of an impending disaster as the areas around the small town of Godhra was called as mini-pakistan. Godhra has been a site of violence before, with Muslims in the region targeting Hindus. This particular incident was instigated by a Muslim mob in retaliation for the Hindus expressing their support for a Ram Mandir (Temple of Rama) in Ram Janmabhoomi. The images from the train burning were broadcast in print as well as the electronic media, especially in local Gujarati language newspapers. 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. Modi blamed the Pakistani secret service Inter Services Intelligence behind the incident. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad issued a call for a peaceful statewide bandh on February 28, 2002. That bandh was later supported by the ruling BJP government. 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 a rumour that Muslims had kidnapped three girls from the trains. 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 Human Rights Watch, 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" .

Incidents

Most of the deaths were the result of Hindu mobs collectively attacking Muslims and their property primarily by arson. The violence continued unabated with only one section of the population becoming the primary targets. Thirty three towns of the state were severely affected and had to be placed under curfew at one point or another during this period. Some incidents that became very well known are Naroda Patia, Gulbarg Society in Ahmedabad and Best Bakery in Baroda.

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[2]. 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, MP's 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.

Arundhati Roy, in her articles, made several claims about the details of the situation in Gujarat at the time , particularly regarding the murder of former Congress MP Iqbal Ehsaan Jaffery where she said that his daughters were raped and burnt by a mob which eventually killed at least 150 persons. BJP MP Balbir Punj, writing in Outlook India, has criticized her recounting of the events and pointed out several deliberate errors inserted by her. He mentions that Ehsaan Jaffery's daughters were not in Gujarat at the time of incident debunking many of her assertions. However, Punj did not deny the killing of 150 persons in this incident.

During the night of 1 March 2002, 14 people, including women and children, were killed. Out of the 14 who died, 3 were Hindus. Despite repeated phone calls to the local police, a police vehicle reportedly only drove by once but none of the police officers took any steps to stop the attack, which lasted through the night.. The prime witness to the case, Zaheera Sheikh has been found guilty of lying to the court and has been sentenced to one year in prison. Human rights activist Teesta Setalvad also is believed to have induced her to fabricate accusations against the defendants. In fact, the prosecution stated that Sheikh and her mother may have demanded money from Setalvad to make statements in court .

Kausar Bano was nine months into pregnancy when on February 28th 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 3rd 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.

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.

According to testifying witnesses, Muslims in the Amraiwadi area unfurled the Pakistani flag and raised pro-Pakistan slogans ten days after the Godhra riots. There were continued claims of Hindus being attacked in the area .This was accompanied by cries demanding that "Kaffirs" be killed and their houses emptied, said Ashok Patel, a BJP member and municipal corporator. He further 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, Supreme Court and internationally. 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". However, the police did not necessarily possess religious bias. On March 1, the police were observed as leaving Hindus to fend for themselves when Muslims organized retaliatory attacks on the Hindu locality of Mahajan No Vando. Numerous calls by Hindus throughout the riots were ignored by the police.

The official commission led by G.T. Nanavati concluded there was no lapse on the part of the government or police in Gujarat. "The commission had given time to all the affected to file additional affidavits on incidents that had taken place in their respective localities during the February-March riots"

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 victims of the Godhra train burning were members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. Some believe the Sangh Parivar launched a campaign against Muslims and to a lesser extent the Christians in Gujarat. The attack on the Muslims was a backlash against the terrorist attacks while attacks on Christians were justified by their intense proselytizing among Dalits and tribals.

Muslims who were forced to move to the Relief camps are reported to have found it difficult to return and restart economic activity because of bad blood between them and the Hindu community.

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.[3]

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 has 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". Punj also pointed out that the majority of the arrestees during and after the riots were Hindus, calling into question allegations of bias against Muslims in the BJP-run state machinery.

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 19-22 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.

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[4]. Human Rights Watch alleges that they also had detailed precise knowledge 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. [5]. 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.

• 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" NGO says Gujarat riots were planned.

• RB Sreekumar, who served as Gujarat's intelligence chief during the riots, made similar allegations[6]. 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.[7]

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 [8].

• 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.

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".

Allegations of Media Bias

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.

Bias of the Intelligentsia

Columnist such as Rajeev Srinivasan 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.

Bias of the New York Times

Celia Dugger, a journalist with the New York Times, has written several articles on the riots. Her reporting of the 2002 Gujarat violence and other communal incidents has been criticized by several organizations , activists and blogging scholars as biased against Hindus .

In particular, Ramesh Nagaraj Rao, professor and chair of the Department of Communication Studies and Theatre at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia and author of several books regarding contemporary Hindu society claims that Dugger has reported disproportionately by focusing on the Hindus to the exclusion of the violence perpetrated by Muslims, including the Godhra Train Burning immediately preceding the riots. He also points out that U.S newspapers have misrepresented the death toll figures. He writes "(The editorial) does not mention that a train was burned and 57 people, all Hindus, and mostly women and children, were charred to death on February 27.Instead, they say it all began because of the “attempt by Hindu fanatics to build a temple!" When Hindus kill Muslims, The New York Times mentions both groups, with the stress being on Hindus who are supposedly doing the killing. When Muslims kill Hindus, Muslims are not mentioned. Many American readers don't go beyond the headlines, especially dealing with international affairs. The NYT, by skewing headlines against India's Hindu majority, seems to indicate to its readers that Hindus are to blame for all religious conflict in India".

Bias of The Guardian

The reports of the Gujarat riots by the United Kingdom based newspaper The Guardian has been criticized for leftist bias, specially for misusing the term "Genocide" by conservative and former Rediff columnist Varsha Bhosle writing that their claims of "Hindu bias" in Gujarat courts are unfounded, .

Bias of Human Rights Watch

Yatindra Bhatnagar, chief editor of "International Opinion", has criticized Human Rights Watch representatives and those of related organizations of having an anti-India bias with regards to their reports of communal riots in India between Hindus and Muslims, particularly in reference to the Gujarat riots. He writes that, instead of trying to heal the wounds of such incidents, organizations like Human Rights Watch focus disproportionately on blaming Hindus exclusively for the incident and trying to deflect attention from the violence perpetrated by Islamists in the Godhra Train Burning that precipitated the riots. In particular, he criticizes Human Rights Watch representative Smita Narula and her colleagues for providing a "blatantly one-sided" account of events and dismissing his concerns to that effect.

In addition, the reports on the Gujarat riots compiled by Human Rights Watch have been criticized by Arvin Bahl, a guest contributor to the "South Asia Analysis Group", as "one-sided" and "biased". He claims that the reports generally "are based on half-truths, distortions and sometimes outright falsehoods". He points out that Human Rights Watch's claims about the Bharatiya Janata Party advocating a Hindu Nation as its core ideology are false. He further says that his analysis of the reports accuse the Gujarat government for planning the riots but do not provide any evidence to back those assertions. He also criticizes Human Rights Watch's labeling of the attacks on Hindus as "retaliatory". In his analysis he states that while he does not deny that Hindu extremists were responsible for the riots, he "objectively analyze[s] the complexity of communal conflict in India and avoid[s] the generalizations associated with HRW reports.". Furthermore, Justice G.T. Nanavati of the Nanavati Commission has rejected the HRW claims of exclusive Hindu involvement, stating that On the evidence that they have recorded so far, it would not be fair to say that only Muslims were targeted. And there was a contrast of day and night in the versions of the riots as projected by the national English media and the sharply contrasting versions appearing in the local Gujarati papers of all hues. Every Gujarati newspaper reported the riots in the same way, that after the first three days of rioting from Feb 28 to March 2, from 3rd March 2002 to the last riot, every riot was started by Muslims. Initially though Hindus may have been the perpetrators of violence because they were angry, later members of both communities were engaged in the violence.

References

External links

• The violence of security
• 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
• Foreign missions: undiplomatic leaks - Allegations of anti-India media bias