The Gujarat riots of 2002 were a dark chapter in Indian history that left a lasting impact on the nation. The violent communal clashes between Hindus and Muslims in the state of Gujarat resulted in widespread destruction, loss of life, and a deep-seated divide within society. This article aims to shed light on the causes, consequences, and lessons learned from the Gujarat riots.
Thirty-eight-year-old Mehboob Mansoori lost eighteen family members in the massacre of Muslims in the neighborhood of Gulmarg Society, Ahmedabad. He was interviewed by Human Rights Watch three weeks after the attack. His story is representative of many testimonies contained in this report.
`They burnt my whole family`.
On February 28, we went to Ehsan Jaffrey’s home for safety. He is an ex-member of parliament…. At
10:30 a.m. the stone throwing started. First there were 200 people then 500 from all over, then more.
We were 200-250 people. We threw stones in self-defense. They had swords, pipes, soda-lemon bottles, sharp weapons, petrol, kerosene, and gas cylinders. They began shouting, “Maro, kato,” [“Kill them, cut them”] and “Mian ko maro.” [“Kill the Muslims”]. I hid on the third floor.
Early at 10:30 the police commissioner came over and said don’t worry. He spoke to Jaffrey and said something would work out, then left. The wall in front of the house was broken at 11:30 a.m. When they entered the hall we had lost our spirit, we had no weapons, we couldn’t fight back. Other people also came there for safety. When the gas cylinder exploded I jumped from the third floor. This was around 1:30 p.m.
At 3:30 p.m. they started cutting people up, and by 4:30 p.m. it was game over. Ehsan Jaffrey was also killed. He was holding the door closed. Then the door broke down. They pulled him out and hit him with a sword across the forehead, then across the stomach, then on his legs…. They then took him on the road, poured kerosene on him and burned him. There was no police at all. If they were there then this wouldn’t have happened.
Eighteen people from my family died. All the women died. My brother, my three sons, one girl, my wife’s mother, they all died. My boys were aged ten, eight, and six. My girl was twelve years old. The bodies were piled up. I recognized them from parts of their clothes used for identification. They first cut them and then burned them. Other girls were raped, cut, and burned. First they took their jewelry, I was watching from upstairs. I saw it with my own eyes. If I had come outside, I would also have been killed. Four or five girls were treated this way. Two married women also were raped and cut. Some on the hand, some on the neck. At 5:30 p.m. a car came, it was the assistant commissioner. They brought us out slowly; some were hiding in the water tank underground. Some tried to get out but were attacked. Sixty-five to seventy people were killed inside. After the police came we told them to take us somewhere safe. They brought us to the camp. We didn’t go to the police station. Three patients were admitted in the civil hospital. On March 3 and 4 the police came here to file complaints, but only after camp organizers called them.
SUMMARY
Indian government officials have acknowledged that since February 27, 2002, more than 850 people have been killed in communal violence in the state of Gujarat, most of them Muslims. Unofficial estimates put the death toll as high as 2,000. At this writing, murders are continuing, with violence spreading to rural areas fanned by ongoing hate campaigns and economic boycotts against Muslims. The attacks against Muslims in Gujarat have been actively supported by state government officials and by the police.
The violence in Gujarat began after a Muslim mob in the town of Godhra attacked and set fire to two carriages of a train carrying Hindu activists. Fifty-eight people were killed, many of them women and children. The activists were returning from Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, where they supported a campaign led by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council, VHP) to construct a temple to the Hindu god Ram on the site of a sixteenth century mosque destroyed by Hindu militants in 1992. The Ayodhya campaign continues to raise the spectre of further violence in the country—Hindu-Muslim violence following the destruction of the mosque claimed thousands of lives in the city of Bombay and elsewhere in 1992 and 1993. The VHP claims that the mosque was built on a site that was the birthplace of Ram. Between February 28 and March 2, 2002, a three-day retaliatory killing spree by Hindus left hundreds dead and tens of thousands homeless and dispossessed, marking the country’s worst religious bloodletting in a decade.
The looting and burning of Muslim homes, shops, restaurants, and places of worship was also widespread. Tragically consistent with the longstanding pattern of attacks on minorities and Dalits (or so-called untouchables) in India, and with previous episodes of large-scale communal violence in India, scores of Muslim girls and women were brutally raped in Gujarat before being mutilated and burnt to death. Attacks on women and girls, including sexual violence, are detailed throughout this report. The Gujarat government chose to characterize the violence as a “spontaneous reaction” to the incidents in Godhra. Human Rights Watch’s findings, and those of numerous Indian human rights and civil liberties organizations, and most of the Indian press indicate that the attacks on Muslims throughout the state were planned, well in advance of the Godhra incident, and organized with extensive police participation and in close cooperation with officials of the Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People’s Party, BJP) state government.
The attacks on Muslims are part of a concerted campaign of Hindu nationalist organizations to promote and exploit communal tensions to further the BJP’s political rule—a movement that is supported at the local level by militant groups that operate with impunity and under the patronage of the state. The groups most directly responsible for violence against Muslims in Gujarat include the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Bajrang Dal, the ruling BJP, and the umbrella organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteer Corps, RSS), all of whom collectively form the sangh parivar (or “family” of Hindu nationalist groups). These organizations, although different in many respects, have all promoted the argument that because Hindus constitute the majority of Indians, India should be a Hindu state.
.jpeg)
MASSACRES IN GODHRA AND AHMEDABAD
Godhra
The ongoing violence in Gujarat was triggered by a Muslim mobs’ torching of two train cars carrying
Hindu activists on February 27, 2002. The attack followed an altercation between Hindu activists and Muslim vendors at the train station in Godhra that morning, around 8:00 a.m., but the sequence of events is still disputed. Fifty-eight passengers were killed, including fifteen children and twenty-five women, according to Gujarat state officials.Among the victims of the Godhra massacre was Gayatri Panchal, a sixteen-year-old girl who saw her father and sisters burnt alive. She told the press, “After pelting stones, they poured kerosene on our compartment and set it afire. I was pulled out of the broken window. I saw my father and sister inside. I saw them burning.” After a visit to the massacre scene, the chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, Justice J.S. Verma stated, “I saw the burnt coach and saw chappals [sandals] still strewn. There were chappals of children too.”
Godhra, a city of 150,000, is evenly split between Hindus and Muslims, most of whom live in separate neighborhoods. Godhra was placed under curfew for a year after communal clashes in 1980. Serious clashes occurred again in 1992 after the destruction of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. The Godhra railway station is situated in an overwhelmingly Muslim section of the city. For three weeks preceding the killings, trains carrying Vishwa Hindu Parishad activists had been stopping daily in Godhra.The activists were coming to and from Ayodhya, where the VHP sought to begin construction of a Hindu temple on the disputed site of the mosque destroyed by Hindu activists there. VHP leaders had set March 15, 2002 as a deadline to bring thousands of stone pillars to the site in order to begin construction of the temple. There are significantly divergent accounts about the events leading to the dispute that resulted in the Godhra killings.
Human Rights Watch was not able to independently verify the accuracy of these varying accounts, but it was widely reported that a scuffle began between Muslim vendors and Hindu activists shortly after the train arrived at the station. The activists, who had been chanting Hindu nationalist slogans, were said to have refused to pay a vendor until he said “Jai Shri Ram” or “Praise Lord Ram.” As the train then tried to pull out of the station, the emergency brake was pulled and a Muslim mob attacked the train and set it on fire. Initially Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi claimed that the killings were an “organized terrorist attack.”Federal government sources speculated that they were “pre-meditated,” or the work of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).However, senior police officials in Gujarat have now concluded that the killings were “not preplanned” but rather the result of “a sudden, provocative incident.” In addition, a report from the Railway Protection Force (RPF) has concluded that the killings resulted from a spontaneous altercation between VHP activists and merchants on the railway that escalated out of control, rather than a planned conspiracy. There was some forewarning of violence from within the police itself. Additional director general of police G. C. Raigar, had provided intelligence ahead of the Godhra incident that VHP volunteers were moving in and out of Gujarat and could instigate communal violence. He was removed from his post after presenting evidence to news media that law and order in the state could be compromised by VHP volunteers coming to and from Ayodha. He had also questioned the government’s ability to provide security to the Hindu activists or take other measures, despite repeated warnings. Over sixty persons have been arrested for the Godhra train attack.
Unlike the persons who have been arrested for revenge attacks on Muslim communities in Gujarat, the Godhra arrestees were initially charged with crimes under the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance, now the Prevention of Terrorism Act.The charges under POTO were eventually dropped after considerable pressure, but Chief Minister Modi reserved the state government’s right to pursue charges against the Godhra arrestees under POTO at a later time “if thought fit.In response to heightened national security concerns, and as relations with Pakistan deteriorated and violence in Kashmir and elsewhere escalated, the Indian government introduced POTO, a modified version of the now-lapsed Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) of 1985, which facilitated the torture and arbitrary detention of members of minority groups and political opponents. POTO was introduced as a bill during India’s winter session of parliament in 2001 and signed into law by the president pending parliamentary proceedings on the ordinance. POTA was passed on March 27, 2001. Under TADA, tens of thousands of politically motivated detentions, systematic torture, extrajudicial executions, and other human rights violations were committed against Muslims, Sikhs, Dalits, trade union activists, and political opponents in the late 1980s and early 1990s.In the face of mounting opposition to the act, India’s government acknowledged these abuses and consequently let TADA lapse in 1995. Civil rights groups, journalists, opposition parties, minority rights groups, and India’s National Human Rights Commission unequivocally condemned POTO.
POTA sets out a broad definition of terrorism that includes acts of violence or disruption of essential services carried out with the “intent to threaten the unity and integrity of India or to strike terror in any part of the people.” Since it was first introduced the government has added some additional safeguards to protect due process rights but POTA’s critics Chandrasekaran, “Provocation Helped Set India Train Fire,” Washington Post; Kingshuk Nag, “Godhra Attack Not stress that the safeguards don’t go far enough and that existing laws are sufficient to deal with the threat of terrorism.
.jpeg)
The Ahmedabad Massacres: Naroda Patia and Gulmarg Society
Naroda Patia and Gulmarg Society were the site of two of the deadliest massacres in Ahmedabad. Human Rights Watch visited both sites and interviewed numerous eyewitnesses to the attacks who have since been residing in relief camps. Some of their testimony is included below.
Naroda Patia
Located just across the road from the State Reserve Police (SRP) quarters, Naroda Patia was the site of some of the most brutal attacks in Ahmedabad. On February 28 at least sixty-five people were killed by a 5,000- strong mob that torched the entire locality within minutes. Countless others sustained severe burns and other injuries. Women and girls were gang-raped in public view before being hacked and burned to death. Homes were looted and burned while the community mosque, the Noorani Masjid, was destroyed using exploding gas cylinders. Extensive use and access to Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) cylinders has also been cited as evidence of official collusion. Naroda Patia used to be a mixed community of Hindus and Muslims.
The nearly one thousand Muslims were in a minority and lived in a slum facing the state transport workshop.Most surviving Muslim residents are now scattered in relief camps.In the days that followed February 28, hundreds of youths brandishing swords, daggers, axes, and iron rods were seen shouting “Jai Shri Ram” and roaming roads lined with gutted shops and littered with burned trucks, rickshaws, and other vehicles.
Human Rights Watch visited Naroda Patia three weeks after the attacks. The Muslim homes were
completely burned while the Hindu homes stood unscathed. The area’s mosque, the Noorani Masjid, just across the road from the SRP post, had also been destroyed. According to one human rights activist who visited the site of the burned mosque soon after the attacks, at least sixteen gas cylinders, used as explosive devices, remained inside the mosque.
A thirteen-year-old boy described the role of the police during the attack: The police was with them. The police killed seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds. The mob also burned down our home. At 10 a.m. they went after our mosque. Thirty to forty tear gas shells were released by the police as we, about fifty boys, were trying to save the mosque…. They killed one seventeen-year-old and eight to ten other boys were injured…. We kept calling the police but no one came…. The police would pick up
the phone and hang up when they heard it was from Naroda Patia. Another eyewitness interviewed by Human Rights Watch added: “When we tried to run, the police started firing. It was morning time. Many were hiding in Masjid Chali [lane]. We came here [to the camp] early on the morning of March 2.”Fifty-five-year-old Salima Banu, a resident of Naroda Patia was a witness as her son was shot and killed by the police:
`My son was running to save his life and the police shot him. Our home was behind Noorani Masjid. They were coming to set the mosque on fire. Then we started running. A bullet hit my son’s arm and then his stomach. No one was answering the police phone. The police took their side and not ours. My son’s name was Shafiq. He was eighteen years old… No one came to help. He was suffering so much. His arm fell off. I have received nothing from the government…. So many people are also missing. Some have lost their mother, their son, their father. Samuda Bhen, a mother of two, lost all her valuables in the looting and burning on February 28 and the days that followed and identified members of the Bajrang Dal, Shiv Sena, and the police as the main culprits: They took my daughter’s dowry. This is my daughter [she pointed to her]. She is seventeen. Her name is Mumtaz. She was supposed to get married. Now the groom won’t come. They also burned my son’s rickshaw. They burned everything after we left. During the attack they were screaming “Kill them. Cut them.” We left on March 1. We stayed at home until then. The police sided with them. They were Bajrang Dal
people. They were wearing saffron bandannas. There were also Shiv Sena people. First the police came, they searched the mosque, they were checking for weapons to see if it was safe for the others to come. Then the others came. The police station is right near us. The police was with them for three full days. We kept telling them to help us.31 Forty-year-old Naseem Banu told us: “Wherever we hid, the police showed them where we were. The police remained standing when our homes were burned down.”
Attacks on Women
Naroda Patia residents interviewed by Human Rights Watch also witnessed rapes and other forms of
sexual violence against Muslim women and girls during the attacks.
A female eyewitness told Human Rights Watch, “they raped them, cut them and then threw them in a
well. They cut them with swords. Everything is gone, you won’t even find dogs there.” Samuda also witnessed the raping and killing of young girls: “They took young girls, raped them, cut them and then they burned them.”
Others simply did not have the words to describe the attack: “You won’t be able to bear it if we tell you. They are scared, they won’t speak, people have been asking for days what happened. What difference has it made? We don’t want to go back there. Our lives are in danger there [Naroda Patia]…. We won’t go back to Patia; we will go anywhere else. We even left without our shoes, all our hard-earned saving are gone.”3 One female resident said, “Some girls even threw themselves into the fire, so as not to get raped.” A ten-year-old girl added, “I saw it also, they cut them down the middle.”
Testimonies collected by the Citizens’ Initiative, a coalition of over twenty-five NGOs, and submitted to the National Human Rights Commission are replete with incidents of gang rapes of Muslim girls and women and the role of the police during the attacks, particularly in Naroda Patia. These testimonies are cited as transcribed by the Citizens’ Initiative. A resident of Naroda Patia, Ahmedabad testified that eight out of eleven family members were killed on February 28, two after being raped.The surviving three members sustained serious injuries:
``It was morning and I was cooking. My husband, my three children and I were in my house
while my mother-in-law, my brother-in-law and his wife along with their three children was
in the adjoining house. A mob of 5,000 came and we started running. We were cornered
from all the sides. SRP (State Reserve Police) personnel were also chasing us. It was 6:30 by
now in the evening. The mob caught hold of my husband and hit him on his head twice with
the sword. They threw petrol in his eyes and then burned him. My sister-in-law was stripped
and raped. She had a three-month baby in her lap. They threw petrol on her and the child
from her lap was thrown in the fire. My brother-in-law was hit in the head with the sword
and he died on the spot. His six-year-old daughter was also hit with the sword and thrown in
the fire. My mother-in-law had with her the grandson who was four years of age and he was
burnt too. We were that time hiding on the terrace of a building. My mother-in-law with her
heavy body was unable to climb the stairs so she was on the ground. My mother-in-law told
them to take away whatever money she had but to spare the children. They took away all the
money and jewelry and burnt the children with petrol. ([My] mother-in-law was raped too). I
witnessed all this. Unmarried girls from my street were stripped, raped and burnt. A 14-year
old such girl was killed by piercing an iron rod in her stomach. All this ended at 2:30 A.M.
The ambulance came on the scene and I sat in it along with the bodies of my husband and
children. I have injury marks on both my thighs and left hand that was caused by the polic e
beating. My husband, my daughter and son had 48%, 95% and 15% burns respectively. Both
my husband and daughter died in the hospital after three days…. The police was on the spot
but helping the mob. We fell in their feet but they said they were ordered from above (not to
help). Since the telephone wires were snapped we could not inform the fire brigade.38
Like hundreds of others, a resident of Naroda Patia witnessed the gang rape of girls and women. The
names of the victims have been omitted to protect their privacy:``
``We were cooking and were informed to be in the house only as there was tension in the area.
We went to the nearby society [neighborhood] and took shelter on the terrace. People from
the Hindu society told us to take shelter in their houses. There were only men in there and
none of the women and children. Then they told us to escape towards Naroda (an area). We
requested them to allow us escape towards the SRP (colony). SRP said, “24 hours have been
given to beat you up.” Society (place of refuge) brought us out on the road and told us to go
to Naroda. We disagreed knowing that it is a far place. So they started beating us with sticks,
hockey sticks and pipes. They accused us that we had come there to riot and asked us to get
out. We came out to face a big mob armed with sharp weapons, kerosene and petrol cans….
All adult males were then beaten, fallen on the ground and burnt. The residents of the
gopinath society [neighborhood] segregated young girls (Muslims) and made them stand on
one side. They were raped and we watched this as some of us were on the terrace.
We were 400-500 people on the terrace…. The girls were stripped and then two men held
them down by legs and arms. Those who raped were 20-25 in number. The girls screamed so
loud that even now when I remember my blood boils.``
They [the attackers] were given twenty-four-hours time (to beat us). If we were given even
two hours time we would have shown them (dealt with them). I know the face of the persons
who raped. The rape started at 6:00 in the evening until 9:00 at night. The girls were then
burnt. I still remember their loud screams. When Asif Khan, a 25-year-old youth pleaded
SRP to let us go he was beaten up badly and he managed with difficulty to get out of their
hold. We can identify the SRP men. We can also identify the residents of gopinath
society…. 11 of our youth died in private gun firing.`
The most terrible was they have cut the slutts of the pregnant women and removed the babies and burnt both mother and the child.
….…. TO BE CONTINUE IN PART-2.
MY VIEW:
Gujrat riots which happened in 2002 was pre-planned and to be called a `pogrom`. Then state govt failed to control the riots, instead of controlling they encouraged for riots. Then chief minister , now Prime minister Mr Narendra modi was solely responsible for the riots. He himself is responsible for encouraging the rioters. Even state police was asked to support the rioter`s and to remain silent and let the killings happen.
We the muslims of india ask you when the victims of this riots gets justice?
when the rapists of Bilkis Bano will get arrested and gets `THE DEATH SENTENCE?
`Mr prime minister you have made ur political buildings on the graves of the innocent muslims.!
Ref: ` “WE HAVE NO ORDERS TO SAVE YOU”
State Participation and Complicity in Communal Violence in Gujarat
Vol. 14, No. 3(C)