AHMEDABAD — Mariam Bivi’s 18-year-old, polio-stricken son was burned to death by a Hindu mob. Now she can’t stop thinking about him begging his killers for mercy.
Since her son was killed, all the 45-year-old Muslim woman has wanted to do is flee Gujarat state’s main city, Ahmedabad, where she has lived for 40 years.
More than 825 people, most of them Muslims, were killed in a wave of revenge killings in Gujarat after a Muslim mob set fire to a train carrying Hindu devotees, killing 59 in late February.
Now, many Muslims crammed into some 100 relief camps across Gujarat say they want to leave the state and escape their memories of adults, children — even babies — being burned, clubbed and hacked to death by Hindu gangs.
“If I stay here, I’ll never be able to get over the pain of losing my son,” Bivi, 45, said, tears choking her voice, in a relief camp where she has been housed with her husband. “Maybe another place, other people could help me start a new life.”
Thousands of people have already fled Gujarat since India’s worst religious violence in a decade erupted on Feb. 27, relief workers say.
Non-government groups and relief workers say their departure from the state, which has a long history of religious strife, plays into the hands of hard-line Hindu groups.
An estimated 90 percent of Gujarat’s 51 million people are Hindu and nine percent are Muslim.
“The idea of the fascist Hindu forces which led the reprisal attacks was to drive Muslims out of Hindu neighbourhoods, or the state, once and for all,” said Cedric Prakash, a Jesuit priest and director of the Center for Human Rights, Justice and Peace.
“The attitude is to isolate the Muslims,” he said.
In recent days, the violence has ebbed but authorities say rebuilding trust between Muslims and Hindus will be difficult.
“The healing of riot-inflicted agony will be slow and painful. It will be a hard task to discourage Muslims from leaving Gujarat,” a senior Gujarat minister said.
But many Muslims, opposition parties and civil rights groups accuse the Hindu nationalist state government of failing to help Muslim survivors of the riots.
They even allege the Bharatiya Janata Party state government turned a blind eye to the violence, allowing Hindu mobs free rein to kill, burn and loot — accusations it has denied.
A police officer in Ahmedabad said police had arrested 10,885 people for allegedly taking part in the riots but did not know how many, if any, had been charged.
Under Indian law for certain offenses, police have 60 days to file charges against anyone in detention. In the past, India has had a extremely bad record of prosecuting those who took part in religious riots.
Bivi’s husband Hassan Abubakker, 65, whose house and hotel was burned in the mayhem, said they had no choice but to leave. “I’ll go to (the southern state of) Kerala from where I came. No one will kill us there,” he said. Two of their sons are already in Kerala where it is less communally charged.
“Several thousand Muslims, who made Gujarat their home for decades, have gone back to their native places or relatives in other states,” said an Ahmedabad camp worker.
Even if they are willing to stay in Gujarat, others are loathe to return to mixed communities for fear of fresh attacks.
One, whose 19-year old son was lynched and his body set on fire, vowed never to go home.
“If I’m alive, it’s only because of Allah’s grace. The Hindus destroyed everything we had. I’d never go back to live among them,” said Sultan Farid, head of the only Muslim family in Khamod village on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.
Relief workers say there are also attempts by hard-line Hindu groups such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal to frighten people away from the relief camps set up in majority-Muslim areas. (R)
BOMBAY — Sporadic Hindu-Muslim clashes rocked an area near India’s commercial capital of Bombay after three people died in a fresh outbreak of religious violence, police said yesterday.
Mobs ransacked shops and huts in Thane district, 60 km north of Bombay, despite a curfew and the deployment of paramilitary forces to contain the violence, which comes just after India’s worst religious bloodshed in a decade.
“Stray incidents took place last night after 11 p.m. (1730 GMT). Some huts and shops were ransacked,” Thane Police Commissioner S.M. Shangari told Reuters.
“Over 100 people have so far been arrested in connection with the rioting on Tuesday night and arrests are continuing.”
The trouble was sparked by the deaths of two Hindus and a Muslim on Tuesday night that police blamed on a personal quarrel. It follows Hindu-Muslim rioting in neighboring Gujarat state that killed more than 825 people, mostly Muslims, last month.
