NEW DELHI, 28 February — Tension rose several notches between majority Hindus and minority Muslims in India yesterday after a mob set fire to a train full of Hindu activists, burning 57 of them alive. The activists were attacked at Godhra in the western state of Gujarat while returning from Ayodhya in northern Uttar Pradesh, where Hindus are gathering to build a temple on the ruins of the Babri Masjid. The destruction of the mosque in December 1992 led to countrywide riots in which up to 3,000 people, mainly Muslims, were killed.
Hours after the attack, sectarian clashes broke out in Gujarat. Police said shops and a bus were burned in the state capital Ahmedabad, while two Muslims were stabbed to death elsewhere in the state. “The situation is tense all over Gujarat,” said state Home Minister Gordhanbhai Zadafia.
In Ahmedabad, police said a crowd surrounded a bus in the mixed Hindu-Muslim district of Bapunagar, ordered all the passengers to disembark and then torched the vehicle. “Nobody was hurt in the incident,” said police deputy sub-inspector V.S. Shinde.
The director general of the Railway Protection Force (RPF) said stabbings and clashes had been reported in Baroda and Anand in which two people had been killed and scores injured.
Hours after the morning attack, police were still pulling charred bodies burned beyond recognition out of a blackened carriage of the Sabarmati Express. The train was on its way to Ahmedabad from New Delhi.
There were conflicting reports about what sparked the attack. One police officer said the activists were shouting pro-Hindu slogans that enraged Muslims on the train. Another official said some of the hard-line Hindus had got into a fight with Godhra platform vendors after refusing to pay them.
The express train later resumed its journey onward with unburned cars and survivors. But it was attacked again, this time by radical Hindu activists, when it entered Baroda station. The Times of India reported that an agitated mob of Hindus stabbed two Muslims to death and attacked other Muslims on the train. The “death train” finally reached Ahmedabad late in the evening, hours behind schedule. Police in some areas of Godhra were ordered to shoot troublemakers on sight and the town of 300,000 was shuttered and the streets largely deserted. Godhra has a large proportion of Muslims — about 40 percent compared to a national average above 12 percent.
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee appealed to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) to shelve its plans to build a new temple on the Ayodhya site. He also canceled a visit to Australia next week to attend a Commonwealth summit.
Hard-line Home (interior) Minister Lal Krishna Advani, who has been implicated in the demolition of the mosque in Ayodhya, also warned the VHP that anyone moving ahead to build the temple would face legal action. “The Vishwa Hindu Parishad has embarked on a course of action in Ayodhya which is fraught with dangerous consequences,” he said in a statement. “The developments in Ayodhya can thus precipitate a serious law and order problem.”
But the VHP rejected the government’s pleas, called for a state-wide strike in Gujarat today to protest the attack and said it would begin building a new temple as planned in March. “It will be done in a peaceful manner. We will not allow any violence,” VHP Vice President Acharaya Giriraj Kishore said.
Mahant Ram Chandar Paramhans, architect of the temple construction drive, labeled the attack “a dangerous act of provocation” against Hindus. “This should not be taken lying down,” he said.
Uttar Pradesh Home Secretary A.K. Bishnoi said the state authorities had received a request from the Home Ministry in New Delhi to try and prevent the continued influx of Hindu radicals into Ayodhya.
Flouting court orders banning any construction until the row is settled, the VHP has initiated a ceremony as a prelude to building the temple next month, drawing thousands of Hindus to Ayodhya from across the world’s second most populous nation.
