By Luke Harding
When will the violence in Gujarat stop? Judging by the
horrific events of this weekend, not yet. Nearly two
months after communal rioting first broke out in
India's most infamous state, there were more deaths in
Gujarat.
Some 17 people were killed and at least 100 injured in
fresh Hindu-Muslim clashes. The state's main city
Ahmedabad continues to burn. A group of Muslims
dragged a police constable into a lane and stabbed him
to death on Sunday.
The police responded by going on a killing spree,
shooting dead at least six Muslims in the Gomtipur
area of the city. They included an 18-year-old girl,
Nazimabanu Mehmood Hussain, and her 42-year-old
father. She and the other victims of what is
euphemistically known as "police firing" were shot in
the head at point blank range.
The depressing cycle of violence follows a
now-familiar pattern in which Gujarat's partisan Hindu
police force - instead of trying to stop the violence
- trains its guns on India's minority community.
The response of Gujarat's unrepentant Hindu
nationalist chief minister, Narendar Modi, has been to
blame the media. In full-page adverts in Sunday's
Indian newspapers Mr Modi accuses his critics of
"malicious propaganda". They have tarnished Gujarat's
reputation by spreading "untruths", he says.
Few people outside India's ruling Bharatiya Janata
party (BJP) - of which Mr Modi is a member - share
this view. Last week a leaked report compiled by
senior diplomats at the British high commission in New
Delhi squarely pointed the finger of blame for the
violence at Mr Modi and his administration.
The report also suggested that the official death toll
- 800 - was a gross underestimate. A truer figure was
2,000, with the vast majority of dead Muslims, the
report noted. Extremist Hindu organisations began
preparing an attack against the state's Muslim
community well before the Godhra tragedy, in which a
Muslim mob burned to death 56 Hindus on a train, the
report added.
In a declaration to be made public this week, the
European Union compares events in Gujarat since
February 27 with the persecution of the Jews in Nazi
Germany. "The carnage in Gujarat was a kind of
apartheid ... and has parallels with Germany of the
1930s", the declaration says.
While secular Indians have been appalled by the epic
scale of the retaliatory destruction in Gujarat, Mr
Modi has become a hero among hardliners within the BJP
and its Hindu revivalist allies. It is this, perhaps,
which explains why India's BJP prime minister, Atal
Bihari Vajpayee, had refused to give in to persistent
demands from the opposition to sack the defiant Mr
Modi.
It seems that many in the BJP and its revanchist
sister organisations feel that India's Muslims have
finally got the beating they deserve. "The Muslims
have to be taught a lesson, once and for all", Pravin
Togadiya, the secretary general of the extremist
Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), opined on Sunday.
Mr Vajpayee clearly finds the violence embarrassing.
India's reputation internationally has suffered badly.
New Delhi's previously plausible argument that the
problem of extremism was one that only affected its
archrival Pakistan now seems hollow. But with the BJP
in deep electoral trouble, many within the ruling
party believe that continuing Hindu-Muslim unrest is
the best way to consolidate its Hindu vote bank and
bounce back to victory in a general election scheduled
for 2004.
India's ultra-nationalist home minister LK Advani -
seen by many as a successor to Mr Vajpayee - has
defended Mr Modi. The bodies have continued to pile
up, but Mr Advani has maintained a sphinx-like
silence, which appears to hint at approval. Several of
the prime minister's secular coalition partners,
meanwhile, have also demanded Mr Modi's dismissal.
But they have refrained from pulling the plug on the
government, realising that loss of office, which an
early general election would bring, means loss of
influence, power, and money.
With more deaths every day Mr Modi's declaration in
yesterday's Indian newspapers that "Peace is our
collective responsibility" seems nothing more than a
sick joke.
From The Guardian
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Terbitan : 29 April 2002
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