Asia Times: Gujarat hits at India's secular heart


	April 6, 2002	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Gujarat hits at India's secular heart
By Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI - Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee visited riot-torn western Gujarat this week, more than a month after the provincial government there run by his pro-Hindu, Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) began a crackdown against minority Muslims.

So far, hundreds of people are believed to have been killed, and many thousands others have become refugees in communal violence that has persisted in the state since February.

Significantly, Vajpayee's first halt on the well-televised, day-long visit was Godhra, where a train carrying Hindu devotees returning from Ayodhya town in western Uttar Pradesh state was firebombed by a Muslim mob on February 27, resulting in the death of 60 persons. The incident triggered off violent reprisals, unchecked by the state government led by Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Gujarat is the only state directly ruled by the BJP, and Modi hopes to be returned to power when the state goes to elections this year.

Vajpayee's next stop was the Shah Alam camp in the textile city of Ahmedabad, where he sought to assure some 10,000 Muslims who have sought shelter there that "the entire country was with them". He said it was "heart-wrenching that people should become refugees in their own country".

"What happened at Godhra was shameful, but what happened afterward was worse," the prime minister said, calling for the restoration of amity between Hindus and Muslims. "There is no other way," said Vajpayee, who had ridden to power along with the BJP by dint of whipping up majority Hindu sentiments over the building of a temple at a site in Ayodhya where fundamentalists had torn down a 16th century mosque in 1992.

At the Shah Alam camp, Vajpayee said that he was appalled to see that people were being burned alive. "In this country we burn dead bodies not living people," he said, referring to the Hindu custom of cremating dead bodies.

News of Vajpayee's visit failed to stop the fighting and two Muslim families were immolated in Abasana village, 85 kilometers from Ahmedabad, on Wednesday. News reports said that five people were killed in Abasana on Wednesday and a sixth later died of burn injuries in hospital.

Vajpayee was expected to announce a relief package for the survivors, but critics said that whatever he did or said would be too little and too late. For over a month, Vajpayee appeared paralyzed by pressure from Hindu fundamentalist groups that back his party and failed to intervene in Gujarat. He failed to react when Gujarat's chief minister announced US$1,000 as relief for the families of those who died at Godhra - and half that amount for the victims of the violence that followed. He also ordered the transfer of conscientious police officials who tried to stop mobs attacking Muslim homes and businesses.

Opposition parties that visited Gujarat in March demanded in parliament the sacking of Modi, a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or National Self-help Organization, best known for military-style drills and an attitude that Muslims and other minority groups must remain subservient to the Hindu majority in the country of more than 1 billion people.

Modi's arrogant reaction to the calls for his ouster was that the violence in his state was likely to continue as long it was discussed in parliament. He also blamed the media for adding to the violence by "overreacting" to the massacres.

It took a visit to Gujarat by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), a statutory body, and a stinging report submitted by its chairman A K Varma that indicted Modi's government, before Vajpayee chose to visit the scene of what has been described as ruthless ethnic cleansing. Varma, in his report submitted to Vajpayee on Monday, accused Modi's government with "serious failure of intelligence". He told newspersons separately that by intelligence he meant both literal and figurative.

Noting that the police and administration in Gujarat were being "influenced by extraneous considerations or players", the NHRC called for investigation into what really happened at Godhra to be investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the federal sleuthing agency.

According to some newspaper reports, the Godhra incident was triggered by boisterous kar sevaks (Hindu religious volunteers) teasing Muslim women at railway stations that they passed through on their way to and from Ayodhya.

Varma said that grave questions arose out of the Gujarat situation concerning fidelity to India's secular constitution and serious violation of fundamental rights enshrined in it guaranteeing life, liberty, equality and dignity for all citizens. He also noted that no high official or political leader had cared to visit the larger refugee camps and that the inmates lived there in terror and were helpless in preventing their homes and property from being looted or burned down in their absence.

Independent officials, notably Harsh Mander of the elite Indian Administrative Service (IAS), have reported on how mosques and dargahs (tombs of Muslims saints) were razed overnight and replaced by idols of Hindu deities by well-orchestrated mobs.

"How can people who stabbed, burnt and killed their neighbors call themselves Hindus?" K Subrahmanyam, the country's topmost security expert and consultant to the Vajpayee government, demanded to know in an editorial-page commentary in the Times of India newspaper on Thursday.

Vajpayee said that the events in Gujarat had shamed him and he felt unable to face the international community when he traveled abroad, especially to Muslim countries.

(Inter Press Service)