SADARPUR, India - 4 March 2002 The cement homes in the narrow cul de sac on the edge of the village stand open, ready for their owners to return, to light a wood fire in the kitchen, turn on the small television that still stands on a shelf in the corner and bolt the door. But after what happened here early Saturday morning, no one believes the Muslim laborers of Sadarpur will come back.
It was after 2 a.m. that the assault began. “Ten thousand people”, I was told, from surrounding Hindu-majority villages descended on Sadarpur and in little over one hour slickly eviscerated this little community of about 140 Muslims.
There was nothing spontaneous about the attack: the planning was clearly meticulous. Tree branches and lengths of concrete sewer piping were dragged across access roads to stop army and police reaching the village. When the thugs arrived, they first flooded the dead-end lane with water, then electrified the water with cables hooked up to the mains. They clambered on to the low roofs of the houses, smashed holes in them and hurled in petrol bombs and gas cylinders that exploded inside, starting fires and driving the residents out into the lane. There, many were electrocuted. Their bodies were dragged back into the houses to burn.
Others fled out of back windows into fields. Some got away, others were hunted down and incinerated. Some were sheltered in homes of sympathetic Hindus in the village, but the marauders tracked them down, hauled them away and butchered them. At least 28 men, women and children died.
“Now itís not possible for Muslims to stay here,” a Hindu living nearby says flatly.
Fifty kilometers away, in the majority Muslim village where the survivors have found shelter, one of them agrees. “We decided that we must leave that place,” says M.Y. Pathan, a teacher. “We left everything behind, we came with what we were wearing. And we donít want to go back, even to collect our belongings.”
The Hindu-Muslim violence in the west Indian state of Gujarat has claimed nearly 500 lives in the past five days, though police say privately the figure may be more than one thousand.
The first 58 to die were Hindus, activists returning from Ayodhya, incinerated in their train carriages. But in wave after wave of retribution that followed, practically all who died have been Muslims.
And while arsonists continued to attack Muslim homes and businesses in Ahmedabad, the stateís commercial capital, yesterday, Gujarat was struggling to come to terms with the fact that these new waves of murder and destruction have been different in kind from anything the state has seen before.
In cities, towns and villages across Gujarat, Hindu militants are seizing the opportunity to kick-start a program of brutal communal cleansing.
A Hindu hotel clerk in Ahmedabad told me, “Now each and every Muslim is a target.”
There was rumor of trouble in Sadarpur on Friday evening. “We were told, some people will attack,” says Pathan.
“So we called the police.” An officer and five constables duly showed up, gave bland assurances and went away.
Far from being an outburst of communal frenzy, this was a surgical strike, carried out with military ruthlessness and discipline. All the bodies had been removed when the Independent visited the site, but evidence of the massacre was all around: the huge puddle in the lane, anomalous in this parched zone; a burned-out jeep; bags and cases hastily half-packed for flight; and in home after home, beds where victims had died, burned out, nothing left but the charred frame and a stinking black spongy mess on the floor.
Yet strikingly there was no looting here. Televisions sit untouched. Shiny galvanized food dishes sit neatly aligned on sideboards. The murder of 28 people in Sadarpur ó one survivor claims the true figure is 55 ó followed precise instructions. And if the object was to “purify” one small corner of Gujarat, it has worked a treat.
In Sawala, where 20 survivors from Sadarpur have taken refuge, I asked another teacher, G.M. Bahelim, what is the future for Muslims in Gujarat?
Bahelim is bleak. “India is our country, our motherland,” he emphasizes. “But the BJP” ó the Hindu fundamentalists who rule both in Gujarat and, in a coalition, at the center ó “really want the Muslims of India to go to Pakistan. They donít want to give us any protection. They are saying, if you want to live in India, become our serfs.” (The Independent)
