Posted by on April 02, 19102 at 12:32:32:
UmmahNews.com, 2 March 2002
Last Wednesday’s attack on an Indian train in which extremists of the right-wing Hindu nationalist party,
the VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad) and their families were burned to death was sparked off by their
abduction of a Muslim girl.
The passengers were riding in three compartments (called bogeys) of the Sabarmati Express and heading
for Ayodhya to join a gathering of fellow kar sevaks (volunteer workers) who have pledged to build a
temple on the site of the demolished Babri Mosque (built by the first Moghul emperor Babar in the 16th
century).
The story begins not in Godhra but in a town called Daahod, some 70-75 km away.
At around 5:30-6:00 a.m. the train reached Daahod railway station. Here, the kar sevaks initiated an
argument with a Muslim stallholder who had served them tea and snacks before destroying his stand. The
stallholder filed a complaint at the local police station but the kar sevaks proceeded on the train to the next
stop, Godhra.
At about 7.00- 7.15am the train reached Godhra railway station. All the kar sevaks came out from their
reserved compartments have refreshments at the small tea stall on the platform owned by an elderly
Muslim and his employee.
The kar sevaks started a quarrel with this stallholder too. While beating him and pulling his beard they are
reported to have repeatedly shouted the slogan: "Mandir Ka Nirmaann Karo, Babur Ki Aulad ko Baahar
Karo" (Start the construction of the temple, throw out the sons of Babar).
Hearing the chaos, the stallholder’s 16 year-old daughter came to intervene. She pleaded with the kar
sevaks to stop beating her father and leave him alone. The kar sevaks the carried off the young girl to the
train and locked her inside one of the reserved compartments (S-6).
As the train started to move out of Godhra with the elderly man banging on the compartment doors, two
stall vendors jumped onto the last bogey of the moving train and pulled the emergency stop chain to halt
the train. The train came to a standstill about one kilometre away from the railway station.
The two Muslim stallholders pleaded unsuccessfully with the kar sevaks to release their captive. Hearing
all the chaos, people in the vicinity ran towards the train. When they asked the kar sevaks to let the girl go
they responded by closing the carriage windows. This infuriated the crowd who began to pelt the bogey
with stones.
The compartments on either side of S-6 also contained kar sevaks of the V.H.P, many of whom
descended from the train and used the bamboo sticks from their banners to attack the assembled crowd.
The crowd retaliated. Some young men ran off to bring diesel and petrol from trucks and rickshaws
standing at the nearby garages in Signal Fadia (a place in Godhra) and torched the compartments.
After hearing about this incident, members of the V.H.P (Vishwa Hindu Parishad) living in the area went
on the rampage burning down the garages in Signal Fadia and the Baddshah Masjid at Shehra Bhagaad.
muslimnews.co.uk, March 06, 2002
Jan Morcha, edited by Sheetla Prasad, is a Hindi daily published from Ayodhya. The paper carried the
following story on the 25th of Feb. 2002. You may recall that the events described below took place 2
days before the gruesome burning of the train at Godhra in Gujarat. The contents are blood curdling
and I thought that the report might be of some instructional value, especially in the context of
Newtonian Physics as understood by the Gujarat CM & his Mentors.
I have tried to stay as close to the original as possible and some of the phrases may not sound as
elegant as they would have, had the translation been done in Propah English.
The translation of the text:
Bajrang Dal Activists on Sabarmati Express beat up Muslims, forcing them
to shout Jai Shree Ram Slogans
Bhelsar(Faizabad),24 February (our correspondent). Trishuldhari Bajrang Dal workers, travelling to
Ayodhya on board the Sabarmati Express this morning, let loose a reign of terror upon dozens of helpless
Muslim passengers, Burqa clad women and innocent children. They also targeted the people waiting at the
platform, forcing them to shout slogans of Jai Shree Ram, A few even declared themselves to be Hindus
in order to escape their wrath.
According to eyewitnesses, close to 2000 Trishul carrying Bajrang Dal workers, on board the Sabarmati
express coming from the direction of Lucknow, began indulging in these activities from the Daryabad
Station. Any one identified as a Muslim, on the train, was mercilessly attacked with Trishuls and beaten
with iron rods. Even women and innocent children were not spared. Burqas were pulled off, women were
beaten with iron rods and were dragged, people waiting at the platform were also similarly targeted.
This continued between the Daryabad and Rudauli Stations. According to an eyewitness, a youth who
protested against this barbarism was thrown off the train between the Patranga and Rojagaon Stations.
Several women, badly wounded and covered in blood, jumped off the train as it pulled into Rudauli
around 8 a.m. The Bajrang Dal activists also got off the train and started attacking those that they
identified as Muslims from among those present at the platform.
Ata Mohammad from Takia Khairanpur waiting to catch a train to Allahabad was badly beaten, some
others were forced to shout ‘Jai Shree Ram’ some escaped by declaring that they were Hindus. 50 year
old Mohd. Absar lives near the station, he was grabbed as he stepped out of his house his long beard was
rudely pulled before he was repeatedly stabbed with trishuls. Another man from the Rudauli Police
Station area who happened to be at the station was badly beaten with Iron Rods. Local residents rang up
the police.
By the time the Police Chowki-in-Charge, Bhelsar arrived at the station the train had left and the injured
were being rushed to the hospitals. No report was registered at the Police station since the Officer-in
Charge was unavailable. The injured have no idea why they were attacked.
Rumors are rife. The people are petrified; respected Hindus and Muslims of the area have condemned the
shameful attack, Muslims religious leaders have appealed for peace and requested that there be no
retaliation.
World Socialist Web Site, 5 March 2002
India’s ruling party abetted communal carnage in Gujarat
By Keith Jones
There is compelling evidence that leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the dominant force in
India’s coalition government, abetted the anti-Muslim riots that convulsed the western state of Gujarat last
week.
Not only do local activists from the BJP and the BJP-allied Vishwa Hindu Parishad (or World Hindu
Council) figure prominently among those named by police as orchestrators of the communal violence.
There have been numerous reports from journalists and Muslim victims that police stood by and watched
as mobs mobilized by BJP and VHP activists attacked Muslim neighborhoods and villages. Ostensibly
many of these mobs had formed to voice their support for a bandh or general strike called by the VHP
and backed by the state BJP to protest an earlier atrocity in the Gujarat district town of Godhra allegedly
perpetrated by Muslims.
India’s National Human Rights Commission has demanded that the BJP-controlled Gujarat government
explain what it has done to suppress communal violence in the state, adding that reports “suggest inaction
by the police force and the highest authorities in the State to deal with this situation.”
The major opposition parties, including the Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist), have
issued a statement condemning the Gujarat government for its “abject” failure to protect human life and
property. “We are of the view that without the criminal negligence, if not connivance of the State
Government, such dastardly events could not have happened.”
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has all but publicly defended the anti-Muslim violence. First he
noted that “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.” Then, in a second reference to the Godhra
attack, Modi commended the state’s population for their “remarkable restraint under grave provocation.”
Needless to say, Modi is rejecting all calls for an inquiry into the police and state government’s handling
of the crisis.
A report in the London Daily Telegraph suggests that India’s central government, which is controlled by
the BJP-dominated National Democratic Alliance, also played an important role in allowing the
anti-Muslim violence to continue.
The Telegraph cited an unnamed senior military officer as saying that early last Thursday evening the
military had 13 transport aircraft fuelled and ready to fly troops to Ahmedabad from Jodhpur in
neighboring Rajasthan, “But for an inexplicable reason, even though it was apparent the state police were
proving incapable, 1,000 troops were flown out only the next morning.”
Furthermore, when the troops did arrive, they were not provided with proper transport or intelligence.
“When the army was eventually deployed on Friday evening, it was not taken to the trouble spots,” says a
second officer, described by The Telegraph as an intelligence official . The army was “merely asked to
display itself in areas from which the Muslims had already fled. It was a calculated decision by the state’s
Hindu nationalist government.”
The violence in Gujarat is India’s worst communal bloodletting since the wave of rioting set off by the
December 1992 razing of the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya. Although the BJP leadership, in
deference to its coalition partners has backed off from its previous commitment to build a Hindu temple
on the Ayodhya site, the party is inextricably connected to the Ayodhya issue, since it was the BJP’s main
rallying cry in the early 1990s.
Gruesome violence
On Monday, the Gujarat police reported that the death toll in six days of gruesome violence had reached
572. The communal carnage was precipitated by the February 27 attack at Godhra on several railway cars
carrying Hindu fundamentalist activists back to Gujarat from Ayodhya, where they had gone to support
the scheme to erect a Hindu temple on the site of the razed mosque. Allegedly carried out by a mob of
Muslims, the Godhra attack left 58 dead.
In the ensuing 48 hours, communal violence erupted in Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Surat, Baroda and Gujarat’s
other major urban centers and in many Gujarat villages. In harrowing scenes, Muslim men, women and
children were bludgeoned to death, set ablaze after being doused with gasoline or burned alive in their
homes. Muslim-owned tea-stalls, shops and businesses were systematically looted and torched. Only after
the mobilization of army personnel and repeated firings on riotous crowds—the police report 97 deaths
due to police firing—did the violence abate.
Significantly, outside of Gujarat, India’s only major state still governed by the BJP, there were only
isolated instances of violence. And the VHP’s call for a nationwide general strike Friday, March 1 was
completely ignored.
In a nationally-televised address Saturday, India’s Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee called the
communal violence in Gujarat a “black mark on the nation’s forehead,” adding that it had “lowered
India’s prestige in the world.”
However, the leader of the BJP said nothing about the actions of the Gujarat state government, nor the
hostility against Muslims which has been whipped up over the Ayodhya issue by Hindu activists aligned
with his own party and is echoed in his own anti-Pakistan war-mongering.
Vajpayee’s immediate fear is that the events in Gujarat could cause the NDA coalition to collapse. Several
coalition partners, including the National Conference of Jammu and Kashmir and the Telugu Desam Party
government, draw considerable Muslim support. They have justified their alliance with the Hindu
chauvinist BJP on the grounds that they can keep its communalism in check. The Gujarat events come in
the aftermath of the BJP’s rout in last month’s state elections, a rout that has changed the national
political equation and caused all of India’s political players to reassess their position.
While trying to keep the NDA coalition in tact, Vajpayee also faces the problem of conciliating his party’s
increasingly restless Hindu nationalist base. Vajpayee cancelled his trip to last weekend’s Commonwealth
heads of government meeting in Australia to deal with crisis in Gujarat. But he has spent much, if not
most of his time, consulting with BJP officials, Hindu religious leaders and leaders of the Hindu
supremacist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) on how to persuade the VHP not to proceed with its
plan to defy India’s Supreme Court and begin constructing a temple on the Ayodhya site on March 15.
A third concern for the BJP leadership is that the communal violence has shattered the government’s
attempts to gain international backing in its conflict with Pakistan by contrasting a purportedly democratic
and tolerant India with a military-ruled Pakistan that is allied with Islamic terrorism. The truth is both the
Indian and Pakistani elites have tried to defect social discontent by fanning communalism and religious
fundamentalism.
In a strong indication that the BJP intends to try to weather the current crisis by continuing, if not
intensifying, its belligerence against Pakistan, senior BJP officials have claimed that the attack on the
Hindu activists at Godhra was organized by Pakistani intelligence with the aim of provoking anti-Muslim
riots and sullying India’s reputation. This claim has a double-purpose: to fan hostility to Pakistan and
cover up the BJP’s responsibility for the communal carnage in Gujarat.
Washington Post, Wednesday, March 6, 2002; Page A10
Provocation Helped Set India Train Fire
Official Faults Hindu Actions, Muslim Reactions for Incident That Led to Carnage
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
GODHRA, India, March 5 – For two days, as the Sabarmati Express snaked across northern India, some
Hindu activists in cars S-5 and S-6 carried on like hooligans. They exposed themselves to other
passengers. They pulled headscarves off Muslim women. They evicted a family of four in the middle of
the night for refusing to join in chants glorifying the Hindu god Ram. They failed to pay for the tea and
snacks they consumed at each stop.
When the train pulled into this hardscrabble town in western India on the morning of Feb. 27, the
reputation of its rowdiest passengers preceded it. When they refused to pay for their food, Muslim boys
among the vendors at Godhra station stormed the train.
When the confrontation was over, 58 Hindu passengers – mostly women and children – were dead,
incinerated by a fire that consumed cars S-5 and S-6. In retaliation, mobs of enraged Hindus descended
on Muslim communities across Gujarat state, igniting riots that killed more than 500 people, India's worst
religious violence in a decade.
Indian officials have characterized the riots as Hindu rage for an attack on innocent activists. However,
interviews with passengers on the train, witnesses to the incident and police and railway officials suggest
that the train fire was not a premeditated ambush by young Muslims, but rather a spontaneous argument,
provoked by the Hindu activists, that went out of control.
"Both sides were at fault," said a police official here, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The
provocation was there and the reaction was strong. But no one had imagined all this would turn into such
a big tragedy."
B.K. Nanavati, the deputy police superintendent in Godhra, said the investigation does not support the
contention by Gujarat's chief minister, Narendra Modi, that the assault on the train was a "terrorist
attack."
"It was not preplanned," Nanavati said. "It was a sudden, provocative incident."
The confrontation illustrates the volatile mixture of religion, history and extremist politics that plague
India, a Hindu-dominated but officially secular nation of 1 billion people. In 1947, when India achieved
independence and was partitioned to create the Muslim nation of Pakistan, thousands of Hindus fleeing
Pakistan settled in Godhra. Enraged that Muslims in Pakistan had evicted them, they vented their anger at
Godhra's Muslims, burning their homes and businesses with truckloads of gasoline.
Since then, government officials have deemed the city one of the country's most "communally sensitive"
places. In the 1980s and again in 1992, it was wracked by riots, some started by Muslims and others by
Hindus.
Today, the population of 150,000 is almost evenly split between Hindus and Muslims, who live in
segregated communities separated in places by the train tracks. There is little interaction between the
groups, which regard each other with suspicion.
Hindus, who question the depth of the Muslims' loyalty to India, refer to the other side of town as
Pakistan. The Muslims contend they are mistreated by the local Hindu-dominated government.
Enter the World Hindu Council, whose cadres want to transform India into a Hindu nation with limited
minority rights. The group, part of a coalition of Hindu-nationalist organizations that includes the ruling
Bharatiya Janata Party, favors a confrontational approach to push its agenda.
At council rallies, members brandish tridents and swords – symbols from Hindu mythology – and shout
Hindu slogans. And in 1992, the group led a mob of Hindus who destroyed a 16th-century mosque in the
eastern town of Ayodhya. Since then, the council's followers have made pilgrimages to Ayodhya, where
they hope to build a temple to Ram on the site of the razed mosque.
Activists from Gujarat state, where the Hindu council has a strong base, often made the trip on the
Sabarmati Express. Along the way, witnesses say, they frequently would scream out "Victory to Lord
Ram" and "Victory to Hindus" as the train passed through Muslim neighborhoods.
"There was a history of provocation," said Syed Umarji, a wood trader who lives in a Muslim
neighborhood near the tracks here. "They would say these things all the time."
On the train that left Ayodhya on Feb. 25, members of the Hindu council were particularly boisterous
because of a government order that they vacate the Ayodhya grounds. Muslims who were on the same
train say the activists walked through the cars shouting taunts such as "Wipe out every Muslim.
"The train was full of them," said Fateh Mohammad, a Muslim passenger who was traveling with his
daughter and son-in-law. "They were shouting and dancing all the time. All the Muslims were very
scared."
Savita Darbar, a member of the Hindu council who was on the train, insisted that her group was not
confrontational. "We were just singing prayer songs to Lord Ram," she said. "We did not bother the
Muslims."
As the train came to a stop in Godhra, however, all the elements were in place for a fight.
The train was five hours late, largely because the activists' behavior had forced the conductor to make
several emergency stops. Instead of arriving quietly in the middle of the night, the Sabarmati arrived at
7:43 a.m., just as word of the group's behavior had trickled in from vendors at other stations.
The vendors in Godhra were resolved not to be victimized. The Hindu council members, too, were ready
for action: Rocks collected from near the tracks were piled near the doors of their cars.
When the Hindus refused to pay for their tea and snacks, several young Muslims jumped on the train as it
started to leave the station and pulled the emergency brake chain. With a piercing squeal, the Sabarmati
ground to a halt a half-mile from the station, in the middle of a Muslim neighborhood. An argument
ensued, drawing hundreds of residents.
Police and railway officials said they do not know who began throwing stones first. But the officials said
they believe that after about 10 minutes, one or more Muslims poured a flammable substance on a
mattress and ignited it between the S-5 and S-6 cars.
A few minutes later, a fire broke out at the other end of the S-5. Within moments, the car was engulfed
by flames.
Police officials said they are not sure how that second fire began. Nanavati said the Muslims could have
set another fire, or the Hindus, trying to respond in kind, might have accidentally sparked a blaze in their
own car, which was filled with kerosene and cooking gas.
"It could have been an accident," Nanavati said.
Thus far, the railway police have arrested only Muslims – 41 of them – in connection with the fire, a fact
that galls Muslim leaders here.
"They should arrest the Hindus, too," said Shoail Sadamas, an accounting student who witnessed the
incident. "They were not innocent victims."
Special correspondent Rama Lakshmi contributed to this report.
expressindia.com, March 08, 2002
Mobs used voters lists to target victims
Express News Service
Ahmedabad, March 7: Police investigating the systematic manner in which mobs identified minority
targets, picking up houses, restaurants and business establishments, believes that voters lists were used to
a deadly effect.
''The manner in which targets were selected indicates that the mobs had perfect information about who
was living where and owned what,'' said officials of an investigating agency in Ahmedabad.
''Even if one or two families were living in a largely Hindu-dominated area, those who lead the mobs
knew exactly where their houses were. This shows they had precise information about their targets,'' says
City Mayor Himmatsinh Patel.
A preliminary report with investigating agencies states that those who lead the mobs were armed with
voters lists too. ''This has happened. The people who were at the forefront of the mobs were grassroot
level workers of parties. They knew the wards and areas well and who lived where. There is no doubt
about the fact that they sat with the lists on the night of February 27 and prepared for what to do the next
morning,'' an official said.
''If they ever are identified, we are sure they must be the people who have sat at party tables outside the
polling booths during elections. They would know the demography and population profiles of the areas,''
sources said on condition of anonymity.
Senior police officers said, the pattern of attacks last week clearly indicated those who lead the mobs
knew where the targets were exactly. ''After that it was just a matter of inciting the mob, whether they
knew who lived there or not, to attack them,'' officials said.
Police is also investigating reports that business rivals also passed on information to the mobs. ''This is
especially the case with restaurants, hardware shops,'' said officers.
A senior city police officer said, ''Even they did a survey of Duffnala area in the posh Shahibaug area
where most of the senior government officers stay in their official bungalows. It seems now that Godhra
was only an issue, this master plan was prepared months back and they were just waiting for a chance.''
Requesting anonymity, he also said that even lists of restaurant owners in the city on the basis of their
religion were with the mobs. That is why none of the assets owned by others were left untouched. ''It
seems, as we go deeper into investigation, everything was pre-planned.''
BBC, Wednesday, 6 March, 2002, 10:09 GMT
Hindu hardliners 'led Gujarat attacks'
VHP leaders are alleged to have led the mobs
Police in the Indian state of Gujarat say hardline Hindu leaders led some of the mobs involved in recent
riots in which more than 600 people, most of them Muslims, were killed.
Preliminary police reports name local leaders of the hardline Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu
Council) in two attacks in the state's commercial capital, Ahmedabad, that left nearly 100 Muslims dead.
The VHP is leading a campaign to build a temple on the ruins of a demolished mosque in the northern
town of Ayodhya, a dispute which is being seen by some of having triggered off the riots.
On Tuesday the VHP agreed to place their plan on hold after talks with one of India's top Hindu leaders,
the Shankaracharya of Kanchi, Jayendra Saraswati.
'Leading the mobs'
First Information Reports (FIR) into the two attacks, which took place in the suburbs of Meghanignagar
and Naroda, say local VHP leaders led mobs which set houses in the Muslim-dominated areas ablaze.
Filing an FIR is the first step in an Indian criminal investigation.
In Meghaninagar, 42 Muslims including a former MP of the Congress Party, were burnt to death when
their housing complex, Gulbarg, was attacked.
Police Inspector Kirit Areda lodged a report in which he alleged that a local VHP leader, Deepak Patel,
led the Hindu attackers.
"These persons, armed with weapons, led a mob of 20,000 to 22,000 which attacked Gulbarg Society and
set it ablaze," Inspector Areda's report was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.
Another report filed at Naroda police station accused nine VHP leaders of leading an attack which killed
50 Muslim factory workers living in a shantytown.
But Gujarat state VHP joint secretary Jaideep Patel said the police had "falsely implicated" his colleagues.
Rejecting criticism
The Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, angrily denied on Tuesday that his government had failed
to do enough to stop the violence.
In an interview with the BBC Mr Modi, described his government's response as a success story.
He said that he was not happy about what had happened in Gujarat but he was happy about the response
of the authorities and defended the police, saying they had done excellent work.
Temple issue
The violence broke out last Wednesday when 60 Hindu activists were killed in an attack on a train in
Gujarat.
A cycle of retaliatory bloodshed followed soon after.
Since then, the Indian Government has been trying to persuade the VHP to stand down from their
controversial temple campaign.
The VHP has now attached a set of conditions to its latest offer to postpone its plan to build the temple at
Ayodhya.
It says it wants the government to handover a piece of land next to the disputed area so that it could
go-ahead with its temple construction plans, the mediator says.
The Observer, Sunday March 3, 2002
Police took part in slaughter
India's lawmen offered little protection against Hindu gangs massacring Muslim neighbours
Luke Harding in Ahmedabad
In an alley next to her affluent bungalow, Mrs Rochomal's mobile phone was still ringing yesterday. Her
son's jeans were drying on the washing line. The dishes of her last meal had been carefully stacked, ready
to be washed.
Mrs Rochomal - an elderly Muslim lady - was not in a position to take her call. Her charred, mutilated
corpse lay in the sunny courtyard, framed by the metal posts of an upturned bed. It was not just the
kerosene that had killed her. The Hindu mob that poured into her home two days ago had slashed her
twice across the face. They had also cut her throat.
A few clues hinted at Mrs Rochomal's final terrifying hours: a small blue address book was abandoned
next to her Nokia cellphone. She clearly knew what was coming and had been trying to summon help
while hiding in her outside pantry.
The fact that Mrs Rochomal lived 80ft away from a police station reveals a bleak truth about the violence
that has convulsed India over the past four days: it has been state-sponsored.
The authorities have done little to prevent the inferno that has swept the western state of Gujarat - not
because of incompetence but because they share the prejudices of the Hindu gangs who have been busy
pulping their Muslim neighbours.
Indian troops yesterday finally took control of the rubble-strewn streets of Ahmedabad, the state's main
city. They took up positions on the edges of Hindu neighbourhoods. The mood was calmer. But the
army's belated deployment seemed little more than a political calculation that the Muslims had now got
the beating they deserved.
'Everything is finished,' rickshaw driver Narinder Bhai said, gesturing at the charred interior of his home
and his ruined fridge. 'Many people have been killed here. My wife and children have disappeared. I don't
know where they are.'
Narinder's home is almost next door to Mrs Rochomal's, in the Ahmedabad district of Naroda, which
suffered the worst battering. Hindu mobs armed with iron bars and machetes burned down the entire
colony on Thursday and Friday.
Yesterday, it was almost completely deserted: a ruin of smouldering rickshaws, charred family
photographs and abandoned homes. 'The crowd was so big, the officers could not control it,' one
policeman said. 'They have done their job very well.'
The reality is that the police made no effort to hold back the mob, and in certain places even joined in.
'Several policemen without uniforms started firing guns at us,' said one Muslim resident, Naseem Aktar, in
the suburb of Bapunagar. 'They killed six or seven people.'
The violence - prompted by last week's gruesome attack on a train carrying right-wing Hindu activists
back from the temple town of Ayodhya - is clearly an embarrassment for Hindus of moderate views.
In an address to the nation, India's elderly Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, yesterday appealed