The reign of terror unleashed by the marauding Hindu mobs in the Indian state of Gujarat in February-March was said to be the “spontaneous” Hindu reprisal for the burning of a train in Godhra on Feb. 27.
Dozens of fact-finding teams from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and human rights groups in their reports have blasted this assumption and concluded that it was a “result of preparation, distribution of weapons and the promotion of hatred and ill will against the Muslims of this state in a very systematic way.”
If we look back at the orgy of violence and the way the barbaric attacks were carried out by the Hindu mobs led, in most of the cases, by Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal activists, it is easy to conclude that the riots were premeditated and pre-planned.
The Gujarat holocaust has officially claimed over 1,000 lives yet independent sources put the toll at over 2,500. It has attracted widespread domestic and international condemnation. The victims are mostly Muslims.
The Indian media received accolades for its “impartial and bold coverage” of the communal violence. However, if we take a second look at the media reporting of the carnage, one thing becomes immediately obvious. The print and electronic media have, it seems deliberately, ignored the violence and brutality against the helpless womenfolk of the community. They failed to highlight the pain and agony suffered by hundreds of Muslim women.
The excuses given for this by a few leading Indian journalists is unconvincing and hollow.
The horrors were macabre. The pitiless brutality against women and small children by organized bands of armed men is more savage than anything witnessed in the riots that have shamed India sporadically during the past century.
Harsh Mander, an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer who was posted in the state during riots and later quit the service in disgust, has also written about the barbaric attacks on Muslim women.
“I have never known a riot which has used the sexual subjugation of women so widely as an instrument of violence in the recent mass barbarity in Gujarat. There are reports everywhere of gang-rape, of young girls and women, often in the presence of members of their families, followed by their murder by burning alive, or by bludgeoning with a hammer and in one case with a screw driver. Women in the Aman Chowk shelter told appalling stories about how armed men disrobed themselves in front of a group of terrified women to terrorize them further.”
What can we say about Kausar Bano, an eight-month pregnant woman, who begged to be spared? Her assailants instead slit open her stomach, pulled out her fetus and threw it into a blazing fire before her eyes.
What can we say about a family of 19, mostly women and girls, killed by having their house flooded with water and then electrocuting them with high-tension electricity?
What can we say about Farzana, 13 and Noor Jahan, 12, of Chara Basti, Ahmedabad, who were gang-raped? The rapists later put a rod in FarzanaÕs stomach and then burned her alive. A 13-year-old boy Azharuddin is an eye-witness to this bestiality.
Take the case of Sultana of Eral village of Panchmahal district. Sultana and her group were attacked by a Hindu mob on the main road. They ran toward a nearby river but since Sultana was carrying her child Faizan, she fell on the road and then, “They caught me and stripped off all my clothes and I was left stark naked. One by one all of them raped me, I lost count after three. Then they cut my foot with a sharp weapon and left me there.”
Saira, 12, Afsana, 11, Naina, 12, Anju, 12, Rukhsat, 9, Nilofar, 10 and Hena, 11, are all survivors from the horrors of Naroda Patiya in Ahmedabad where 80 people were burned alive and many women and girls raped, maimed and some brutally killed in what is probably the worst carnage in the current spiral of violence.
These girls are young and for them making sense of what they have seen and heard seems impossible. They have been scarred for life, their trust in Hindus shattered. They will naturally speak of “evil Hindus.” The Hindus who burned their houses, the Hindus who did not let them escape, the Hindus who unleashed terror on them, the Hindus who raped them, the Hindus who raped their mothers and sisters before their eyes and threw them alive into a blazing fire.
These girls became friends only in the relief camps, although they all grew up and lived in Naroda Patiya. Now they will probably share a lifelong bond of victimhood. But they are children still, resilient survivors, their eyes still bright and curious.
Will they ever forget what had happened to them? Will these girls who earlier had scores of Hindu friends, ever again make friends with Hindus? For the crimes of a mad and misguided minority, the whole Hindu community has become an object of hatred for these victims.
Women are feeling an acute sense of betrayal. They feel betrayed by neighbors, friends, people they had lived with, celebrated festivals with, conducted business with. These people along with the mob looted, killed and burned their houses and families. How do we rebuild their trust?
These stories are only the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds of rape victims who survived and are living in a precarious condition in relief camps in and around Ahmedabad. They embody the numerous experiences of evil that were felt by Muslim women and girls in Gujarat at the hands of the Hindu criminals.
There are hundreds of Kausars and Sultanas whose stories have not been brought before the public.
Women forced out of their burning homes, running for their lives on violent streets, were not only chased and attacked by Hindus but far worse, by the police, whose job was to protect them. Rather the police provided protective shields to crowds bent on pillage, arson, rape and murder, and were deaf to the pleas of the desperate Muslim victims, many of them women and children.
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi admitted the involvement of the police force in the communal violence but exonerated them by saying “police are human beings as well and not inured to the sentiments of society.” This is hardly surprising because butchers like Modi are not only being tolerated but protected by the central government to continue with their nefarious and criminal activities.
Even the External Affairs Ministry came to the rescue of the murderers and their cohorts when it declared it to be an “internal affair” of the country and called upon European Union and others to keep out of it.
Encouraged by the support Modi got from his bosses now he has embarked on a “Gaurav Yatra” (Pride Rally) to celebrate the pride of what has happened in the state under his leadership in the past few months.
While Modi insists the rally is meant to highlight the governmentÕs achievements, it is clearly designed to revive communal hate and cash in on Hindu support ahead of assembly elections.
The fact-finding teams have given graphic details of the police complicity in the violence against Muslims. They have reported continuing police atrocities against Muslim women on one pretext or the other.
Those who visited Gujarat in the aftermath of the genocide say that the impact of fear on Muslim women can be seen clearly. With the entire community under threat, women in particular are paying the price with their freedom and mobility. Mothers fear for the safety of daughters. Husbands fear for the safety of wives.
These incidents are a pointer that in many ways women were the central character in the Gujarat pogrom, and their bodies the battleground where Hindu forces waged a war of supremacy.
Ironically, there is virtual silence in the media about the incidents of sexual violence and bestiality against Muslim women. None of the newspapers or TV channels have given voice to the pain and agony suffered by these unfortunate women.
The explanation for this indifference is that rape stories were provocative, and that in the early days of the violence, the media “had to play a socially responsible role, and not incite more violence.” However, the media censors the rape stories even now.
Senior journalists have been quoted by fact-finding groups as saying that they would have been accused of rumor-mongering if they had carried stories about rape, given that most of the victims were dead and that those who survived neither had medical examinations nor lodged police complaints.
Why has the media not carried stories saying that women on the run from marauding mobs cannot be expected to undergo medical examinations within 72 hours of their abuse? To expect them to undergo examinations is even less credible when no Muslim in Gujarat today can enter a police station confidently that he will get a hearing and lodge a complaint. How come the media expected a rape-victim to lodge a complaint?
Due to the indifferent attitude of the media the crimes against women in Gujarat have been grossly under-reported and the exact extent of these inhuman acts in both rural and urban areas demands thorough investigation. If the government does not investigate promptly, independently and thoroughly, those who perpetrated these violence will remain free to repeat it.
What happened in Gujarat was a grave human tragedy. It would be both tragic and criminal negligence in the extreme if the perpetrators of this “Tandav” or the dance of death are not brought to justice.
