NEW DELHI, 27 April — The brutal violence unleashed in Gujarat following the burning of 58 Hindu train passengers claimed nearly 2,000 lives, a fact-finding report says.
In what is probably the most exhaustive investigation into the Gujarat carnage, Communalism Combat says the economic loss suffered by Muslims all over the state totals a staggering 35 billion rupees.
Also, mobs linked to the Gujarat government and the ruling Hindu extremist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) destroyed or damaged nearly 270 mosques and Islamic religious and cultural monuments since the start of sectarian violence Feb. 27.
The death toll put out by Communalism Combat, a Bombay-based publication edited by Javed Anand and Teesta Setalvad, is much higher than the official statistic of over 900 dead and is at par with what was reportedly put out by a British High Commission document leaked by a newspaper here and whose contents have not been denied. The 150-page report says the orgy of violence that enveloped Gujarat was nothing short of genocide.
“Even during the unspeakable horrors that communities inflicted on each other in 1946 and 1947, all organs of the state had not been directly involved in stoking the fires,” it said. “Not so in Gujarat, 2002.”
It said the pogrom launched by Hindu right-wing groups in response to the train killings at Godhra Feb. 27 “sits well with what the UN defines as genocide against the innocent Muslims of Gujarat.”
The report has tried to document the links between the killer mobs and groups such as the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), the BJP, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal — groups that are collectively known as “Sangh Parivar”.
“Dead bodies no longer resembled human beings: they were reduced — whenever they had not been burned to ashes — to a grotesque and pathetic sight that were a haunting reminder of the depth of hatred and the intense dehumanization that the politics of inherent superiority and exclusiveness generates.
“Rape was used as an instrument for the subjugation and humiliation of a community. A chilling technique was the deliberate destruction of evidence — barring a few cases, women who were gang raped were thereafter hacked and burned.”
The report says when the 58 train passengers, including VHP activists, died by burning, Godhra District Collector Jayanthi Ravi said repeatedly over Doordarshan and All India Radio that “the incident was not pre-planned, it was an accident.
“It was only after 7-7.30 p.m., when Chief Minister Narendra Modi spoke and called it a ‘pre-planned, violent act of terrorism’ that the official version changed.” This theory provided the legal charge to the Hindu backlash. It says the days preceding the Godhra carnage there was a nationwide security alert because of the Hindu right-wing campaign to build a temple at a mosque site in Ayodhya.
In Bombay, 8,000 preventive arrests were made. “In contrast, even after Godhra happened, the Gujarat police arrested only two persons in Ahmedabad. And both were Muslims.” The report — packed with eyewitness accounts of some of the most horrendous incidents of violence and rape — says both in 1965 and 1980 sectarian trouble in Godhra was quickly brought under control by the authorities.
“If a similar, no-nonsense and non-partisan approach had followed the Godhra incident, by promptly apprehending the suspected criminals, tension would have been contained. That this did not happen suggests a lack of intent on the part of those in government.”
The report names police officers close to RSS, BJP and VHP leaders and Hindu right-wing leaders who took an active part in the fury. It says a section of the state police were brazenly anti-Muslim, pushing back Muslims who were fleeing the violence back into the hands of killers gangs.
“The government allowed the violence to spread, did not take adequate preventive measures, did not keep the army on stand-by, and once carnage had been unleashed, revealed its non-representative character farther. “There has not been one word of apology or regret from Modi or his government.”
