Asia Times: Gujarat: A return of street politics?


	March 5, 2002	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Gujarat: A return of street politics?
By Sudha Ramachandran

BANGALORE - The wave of violence that has swept across the western Indian state of Gujarat is the worst the country has seen in a decade. As of Monday morning, the official death toll in communal violence was said to be over 450.

With the deployment of several columns of the Indian army across the state, the violence is said to be more or less under control in the cities. However, the bloodletting continues in rural areas, and tension persists, as does the thirst for revenge.

The brutal attack on the morning of February 27 at Godhra, allegedly by Muslim mobs, left 60 people, mostly activists of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Congress) dead. While this incident provided the spark that has left Gujarat burning for several days, it occurred against an increasingly vitiated and communally polarized atmosphere in the country. The VHP has been mobilizing activists to build a temple at Ayodhya in the state of Uttar Pradesh, at the site of a 16th century mosque which its activists had destroyed a decade ago. That incident sparked off nationwide Hindu-Muslim riots which killed over 2,000 people.

There are conflicting reports on what actually happened that morning at Godhra. Estimates of the size of the mob vary between 500 and 2,000. Whether it was a spontaneous attack or premeditated is being probed.

"Even if it was just 500 people attacking the passengers, that large a number at a small-town railway station could have been possible only if they had been brought together," a bureaucrat from Godhra pointed out to Asia Times Online.

An investigation into the Godhra attack is on and a few of those believed to be involved have been taken into custody. While the identity of those who masterminded the attack is yet to be firmly established, senior ministers in the Indian government have pointed an accusing finger at the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

A Godhra datelined report in the Deccan Herald said that police are looking for two Kashmiri maulvis (religious teachers), who arrived in the town after the September 11 terrorist incidents in the US. The two, believed to be members of an Islamic extremist organization, Tablig Jammat, that has taken root in Godhra, are said to have delivered inflammatory sermons at mosques in Godhra. So extreme were their speeches that they angered even moderates within Godhra's Muslim community.

Gujarat is among India's most communally polarized states, with a history of serious communal rioting. A hunting ground for communal forces, it is from Gujarat that the VHP and its sister organizations have been able to recruit most of their activists for the temple construction project at the disputed Babri Masjid site at Ayodhya. The VHP, in fact, considers Gujarat to be the "laboratory" for its Hindutva (Hindu primacy) ideology.

However, parallel to the spread of Hindu fundamentalism in Gujarat has been the increasing Islamic extremism in the state. Intelligence reports indicate the mushrooming of madarasas in Gujarat, some of which are said to be encouraging extremism.

Gujarat borders Pakistan. The ISI's role in Gujarat through its local recruits and the underworld is believed to be significant.

In the context of the Indian government's crackdown on Islamic extremism (while ignoring Hindu extremism in its own backyard) and the growing tension in the country in the run up to the VHP's March 15 deadline for beginning construction of a temple at Ayodhya, the situation was ripe for a communal conflagration.

The horrific incident at Godhra might have been the result of failure of Indian intelligence. What happened after that was the result of a failure of the Indian state to protect the life and property of its citizens. That Gujarat would explode in violence was expected. Yet the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-run government in the state failed to take preventive action.

For at least 48 hours after the Godhra killings, no effective steps were taken either by the state or central governments (both run by the BJP). They remained mute witnesses as Gujarat hurtled out of control. Within 24 hours of the Godhra attack, reports that mobs were targeting and torching Muslims and their property throughout the state while police stood by were pouring in. VHP and Bajrang Dal (an extremist fraternal wing of the VHP) activists were seen leading many mobs.

Gujarat's Chief Minister Narendra Modi even justified the post-Godhra violence targeting Muslims. "Five crore [50 million] people of Gujarat have been stunned and shocked due to the barbaric act committed by terrorists in Godhra. People have observed restraint as the authorities have been forced to impose curfew in only 27 of 200 towns of the state," he said.

In one incident, Ehsan Jaffri, a Muslim and a former member of parliament belonging to the opposition Congress party, and 19 members of his family, were burned to death. Jaffri had made repeated calls to the police for protection. It never came.

As mobs ran riot in Ahmedabad and other cities, the police looked the other way. Modi, meanwhile, sat back. On February 28, even as Gujarat was burning, he said, "I am absolutely satisfied with how the police and government handled the backlash ... I am happy that violence has largely been contained."

It was only after hundreds were killed that the state government, after much dilly-dallying, requisitioned the services of the armed forces. The government defended the delay in deploying the army - troops arrived only around noon on Friday - on the grounds that "there were no army columns in or around Ahmedabad" for immediate deployment. The explanation convinced no one since there is already a heavy deployment of troops along the India-Pakistan border in Gujarat.

It was only on Sunday, four days after Gujarat erupted in violence, that Union Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani, whose electoral constituency Gandhinagar is in Gujarat, visited the strife-torn state.

The events in Gujarat post-Godhra are a macabre replay of what happened in Delhi in 1984 soon after the assassination of then premier Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. The Congress government at that time allowed its hoodlums to "punish" the Sikhs. Around 2,000 Sikhs were killed in the carnage that followed.

"When a tree falls the earth shakes," said Rajiv Gandhi, her son and successor as prime minister, providing instant moral justification for the mobs lynching and burning Sikhs. A few months later, the Congress was swept to power in national elections on a sympathy wave.

Last week, the BJP lost two of the three constituencies in which by-elections were held in Gujarat. Its performance in other states too was dismal.

Having lost the electoral battle recently in Uttar Pradesh and other states and its poll prospects showing that it is unlikely to win any in the near future, is the BJP taking the battle to the streets?

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