Consequences
1. Alienation
1.1 Hate speeches and the atrocities
that follow against sections of our people are generating fissures and
divisions in our society. Deep-rooted and serious alienation is being
caused by these hate campaigns against minorities in different parts of
the country. As is evident especially in Kashmir, Muslims all over India
are experiencing this alienation. In the absence of any concerted
effort, on the part of government, central or state, to check growing
hate politics and brutal violence, it is difficult to see how the
problem of alienation and its damaging consequences can be remedied.
Among those engaged in this cynical project are the chief minister of
Gujarat, Shri Narendra Modi, his ministerial team, the Bajrang Dal and
the VHP represented by people like Shri Praveen Togadia and Shri Ashok
Singhal.
1.2. The current practitioners of
hate, preach and pursue the same philosophy that contributed to the
tragic partition of the country in 1947. Having made impressive
organisational gains since then and having spawned numerous affiliates —
VHP, Bajrang Dal etc — the same forces are back to playing the same
game. Through word and deed they relentlessly send out the message that
Muslims are not safe in this country. The inevitable consequences are
clear for everyone to see.
1.3. Apart from numerous instances of
brutality and bestiality, and the sheer scale and magnitude of the
malevolence, the Gujarat carnage is perhaps epitomised by the fact that
even High Court judges — one sitting, the other retired; both Muslims –
experienced deep insecurity and utter vulnerability at the time. With
the government offering them no protection whatsoever, both had to flee
their homes. The house of Justice Divecha (retired) was ransacked and
partly destroyed. When the Tribunal met him in May, two months after the
carnage, Justice Kadri, a member of the bench, did not feel safe enough
to return to his official accommodation. This threat to the judiciary
cannot be treated lightly. Every citizen is fully entitled to equal
protection of law. But when judges are not safe, what of the common man?
2. Muslims as Second Class Citizens
2.1. Reducing Muslims to the status of
second-class citizens would appear to have been the central objective of
the perpetrators of the carnage. Eight months after the violence, the
Muslim community in Gujarat continues to face terror and economic
boycott. There is little hope of speedy justice being done. Many of the
accused, almost all the chief culprits, are out on bail. Evidence placed
before the tribunal showed how, in villages where people have dared to
return, organised economic and social boycott had reduced them to
penury. This is the story in parts of Gandhinagar, Sabarkantha, Anand,
Bharuch, Ankleshwar, Mehsana and Dahod districts as also in Ahmedabad
and Vadodara city. Tens of thousands have not been able to resume work
because of the comprehensive economic crippling; even insurance claims
have not been met in many cases. Far from helping a badly bruised and
battered community, with word and deed, Shri Modi’s government continues
to gloat over their predicament. This state of affairs calls for
immediate intervention from every institution of the state and civil
society, not only in Gujarat but also from all over the country.
3. Women
3.1. An issue that needs to be
recognised and sensitively handled is the high number of female-headed
households, widows and victim-survivors of sexual violence. Special
measures need to be taken for the material, emotional and psychological
healing of this section.
4. Children
4.1. There are at least 33,000
children and young persons who have faced attacks on their own person or
been eyewitness to most gruesome forms of violence being inflicted on
their near and dear ones. Both state and society must make consistent
efforts to reach out to them so that the trauma that they have been
inflicted with is dealt with in a humane fashion and does not become the
cause of growing alienation.
5. Ghettoisation
5.1. Cities of Gujarat, especially
Ahmedabad, have seen increasing ghettoisation since 1991. This enforced
ghettoisation following frequent communal clashes, isolates communities
from each other, ruptures normal social interaction and
inter-dependencies, and creates a dangerous climate within localities
and colonies where demonisation and stereotyping of the ‘other’ becomes
so much easier. This is hardly conducive to peace and social harmony in
a multi-religious, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic society like ours.
Active steps at the policy level need to be taken to reverse the trend,
which is being so cynically promoted by the RSS/Vishwa Hindu Parishad/BJP.
6. Communalisation of Public Space
6.1. Gujarat, claimed as the
laboratory of Hindutva where ‘a successful experiment’ was
recently conducted by proponents of this ideology, has seen a gross
communalisation of public spaces in many of its cities, Ahmedabad
probably being the worst. Today, there are many schools, especially
elite and middle class ones, that will simply not admit Muslim children.
Despite complaints being filed, the government has done little to curb
or control this sort of discrimination. During the Gujarat carnage,
medical doctors were seen leading the carnage and clinics and hospitals
were used to plan the attacks. Dr. Praveen Togadia of the VHP is a
cancer surgeon while his second-in-command in Gujarat, Jaideep Patel, is
also a doctor. During the carnage, the Sola Civil Hospital, Ahmedabad,
was almost entirely out of bounds for severely injured Muslims in need
of urgent medical attention. The VS hospital, on the other hand, was
accessible and that is where most of the injured were taken. Until late
April, goon squads of the Sangh Parivar sporting saffron
scarves around their necks stalked the VS hospital’s corridors,
brandishing bared swords to terrorise Muslims into running away. Muslims
in the police force, other government departments, or in the public
sector, too, have been completely alienated and have to face constant
humiliation and threats.
7. Impact on Education
7.1. With regard to the state
examinations for the Standards X and XII, which took place in end-March
and early-April 2002, the Gujarat government was openly partisan. The
examination centres of Hindu children were relocated to
majority-predominant areas, while terrorised Muslim students were forced
to appear for examinations in Hindu-majority localities where VHP/BD
goons roamed the streets. The government refused to re-schedule exams,
whether of Std X and XII or RTBA and MA II, despite pleas from Muslims
as thousands of students were physically dislocated and emotionally
tormented by what the community had been through.
8. Economic Decimation
8.1. The state-sponsored carnage
economically crippled the Muslim community which suffered losses to the
extent of Rs. 3,800 crores, according to independent estimates. The
Gujarat Chamber of Commerce has estimated the primary damage to
industrial outfits, hotels and establishments belonging to the Muslim
minority at around Rs. 2,000 crores. Non-Muslims, too, suffered heavily
due to the disruption of economic activities. Of the over 20,000 persons
who lost their jobs as a result of the destruction of hotels belonging
to Muslims, some 7-8,000 were from the tribal Rabari community. Today,
the majority community, too, feels the impact of the economic
devastation sorely. (See chapter on Economic Destruction, Volume II).
9. Religious and Cultural
Desecration
9.1. Like other parts of India,
Gujarat too has been home to a live syncretic culture enriched by
different traditions. Local history, shrines, language and poetry
reflect this. One tragic consequence of the Gujarat carnage has been the
systematic targeting of numerous symbols of Muslim culture, be they the
shrines of great Indian classical singers, litterateurs, dargahs
or centuries-old mosques. (See chapter on
Religious and Cultural Desecration, Volume II).
10. Minority Identity a Target
10.1. The situation in Gujarat was so
malignant that for weeks it was difficult for Muslims to be hailed by
their names even in elite Hindu-predominant parts of the city of
Ahmedabad. Many Hindus shaved off their beards for fear of being
mistaken as Muslims. In the genocidal climate that prevailed, every
aspect of a Muslim’s identity was a target for violence.
11. Forced Migration
11.1. The sheer brutality of the
violence triggered a mass migration of Muslims from Gujarat. Daily wage
earners from Naroda have fled to Karnataka and Maharashtra, their native
states. Thousands from Panchmahal and other districts moved to Rajasthan
and UP. In many cases, Muslim girls have been sent back to their native
places in rural UP, thus putting an end to their education.
12. Impact on Muslim minority in
other states
12.1. The impact of the recent carnage
in Gujarat, and the years of hate campaigns that preceded it, is not
restricted to Gujarat alone. It has already impacted into
intra-community and state-citizen relations in other parts of the
country. It is therefore critical that drastic measures are initiated
soon, to bring justice to the victim-survivors of the Gujarat carnage,
ensure reparation and heal the deep wounds caused by the unprecedented
violence. It is imperative that the government of India absorbs the full
message and meaning of Gujarat and ensures that this sort of violent
mobilisation is not allowed to grow and spread in other states of the
country.
13. Conservative Trends among Women
13.1. Experience shows that any
community which feels threatened and vulnerable tends to cling harder to
past traditions and lapses into more conservative religio-cultural
practices, especially with regard to women. The apparent burgeoning of
the burqa in Mumbai after the 1992-1993 pogrom against Muslims is
a case in point. The widespread incidents of sexual crimes against women
have given rise to a similar trend in Gujarat.
14. Arming of Civil Society
14.1.The common man’s threat
perception has increased dramatically since the carnage in Gujarat. The
Tribunal gathered evidence to show that there was a steep rise in the
demand for ammunition by those licensed to carry firearms. The largest
gun dealer in Ahmedabad, and arms dealers in Vadodara, have recorded a
marked increase in the sale of cartridges, revolvers, pistols, and guns.
There are over 3,300 licensed arms holders in Surat. This growing need
among citizens in Gujarat to arm themselves, is a dangerous trend, to
say the least. With faith in the state and the police machinery totally
eroded, this can only lead to more violence and internal conflict.
15. Hidden Agenda
15.1. Irrespective of what some of
them might otherwise proclaim, by their actual conduct, the saffron
brotherhood comprising of the RSS/VHP/BD/BJP/Shiv Sena among others, has
increasingly demonstrated its hostility to the Indian Constitution since
the late-eighties. Now, with state power in their hands, the hidden
agenda is being pursued from within the government. The sectarian and
undemocratic worldview inherent in the very ideology of Hindutva
has, in the past decade, been explicit in the politics of hate and
violence preached and practised by its proponents. The political
atmosphere in the country has been increasingly vitiated since the
Somnath to Ayodhya rath yatra of the then BJP president, Sri LK
Advani in 1990, culminating in the demolition of the Babri Masjid on
December 6, 1992.
16. Decline in India’s
International Stature
16.1. India’s respected stature before
the global community as a secular, democratic nation has been
irretrievably damaged by the state-sponsored carnage in Gujarat. That
this is so is apparent from the recent statements of Prime Minister,
Shri Vajpayee and the deputy Prime Minister, Shri Advani, both being
forced to admit, while on foreign soil, that the Gujarat carnage was a
"blot on the nation."
17. Brutalisation of Women,
Adivasis and Dalits
17.1. The violence in Gujarat was
marked by the cynical manipulation and mobilisation of a section of
Adivasis and Dalits for loot, rape and mass murder. The Sangh Parivar
has worked assiduously and intensively since 1998, indoctrinating and
training Dalits in urban areas and Adivasis in the tribal belts. Women
from middle and upper middle class Hindu houses have participated in the
violence. In Naroda and some parts of Vadodara there have been
disturbing signs of their egging on their men to brutal violence. They
even actively participated in the looting of shops.
18. Attack on Akshardham
18.1. The terrorist attack on
Akshardham on September 24, 2002, shocked the country. It appeared to be
a direct reaction to the Gujarat carnage. The mindless attack on
innocent worshippers at the Akshardham temple suggests a blind desire
for revenge and retaliation. It is the selfsame politics that governed
the carnage unleashed after the Godhra tragedy.
18.2. Unless this cynical cycle of
violence and counter-violence is stopped, economic progress, a healthy
society and development all around will be sacrificed. Neither Gujarat,
nor India can afford this. The deep schisms caused by the Godhra
tragedy, the post-Godhra carnage and the Akshardham attack will take
years to heal. The lives lost, often in the most inhuman and degrading
way, cannot be recovered; homes destroyed, looted and burnt will take
years of tearful labour to reconstruct; properties lost and destroyed in
the calculated violence have been lost forever.
18.3. More difficult than effective
reparation and reconstruction will be the hugely difficult task of
restoration of trust between victim-survivors and the rest, a faith so
utterly destroyed in the most brutal way.
18.4. After the attack on the temple,
which claimed 28 innocent lives, the plea of a parent who had lost a
child in the massacre comes to mind. Telecast all over the networks, she
pleaded strongly that her sorrow was private, that she did not want her
grief to be converted into political capital. Victims of the arson who
lived at Naroda had made similar pleas following the Godhra carnage but
they went cynically unheeded.
18.5. Genuine reconciliatory measures
at community levels, unmindful of political considerations need to be
undertaken. Justice must be done and the guilty punished for peace and
reconciliation to result. How successfully the physical and emotional
healing takes place is dependant on the sincerity of the efforts made by
politicians, the administration, the police and other sections of
society.
The system needs to be cleansed and a
genuine commitment to secularism and democracy reaffirmed.
18.6. The message that needs to go out
is that the poison of communalism, which is the politics of hatred and
division, can take us only further on the road to disaster. The ordinary
Hindu, the Muslim and people of other faiths have no faith in this; it
is cynical politicians who have been playing with this dangerous fire.
19. All is Not Lost
19.1. If this report, concerned with
unveiling the truth and identifying the hate- mongers, the instigators
and the perpetrators of violence, points to a very grim reality, it must
not be concluded that there is no room for hope any longer. The Tribunal
remains convinced that the vast majority of Indians, whatever their
caste, creed, or community, still believe in tolerance and compassion.
Even at the height of the state-sponsored carnage and at great personal
risk, many individuals and organisations showed great courage, and,
through word and action, worked for peace and amity.
This is true of Gujarat as much as the rest of India.
It is to such individuals and organisations that the state should turn,
and engage with them to initiate an action plan for political cleansing,
for cleansing of the administration, for the secularisation of public
space and for the speedy delivery of justice to those so brutally and
morally wronged by the hate-bred violence.