CARNAGE

Gujarat: Looking Back Looking Forward

THE CARNAGE at Godhra : 27th February 2002

58 passengers mainly women and children died in a fire in the S6 coach of the Sabarmati Express, near Godhra.

The train was apparently carrying a large number of Kar Sevaks, returning from Ayodhya.

Barely hours after the incident the Chief Minister of Gujarat described it as a "pre-planned, violent act of terrorim" and the Union Home Minister Advani blamed it on a "foreign hand". Whereas after three months of investgation, forensic tests indicate that fuel could not have been thrown from outside but from inside the train. Their utterances only served to worsen the atmosphere. For example Modi started refering to the passengers in the bogie as Ram Sevaks or Ram Bhakts. Yet today no one is quite sure as to who the women and chidren actually were?

57 killed as mob torches train in Gujarat, The Hindu, 28 Feb, 2002

How it happened
OUTLOOK Volume XLII, No.9 March 11, 2002

Godhra : Truth about the Train Incident on February 27, Mainstream, March 30, 2002

Unanswered Questions & inconsisencies related to the train fire incident FRONTLINE magazine March 29, 2002 vol.19, No.6

Human Rights Watch Report

Months after GODHRA, contradictory versions keep surfacing. All accounts including that of the National Human Rights Commission suggest that the violence against Muslims in the rest of Gujarat which followed this incident, was planned months in advance, and that the Godhra arson was only an excuse to implement the plan. -Jyoti Punwani, Dateline Godhra. Price Rs.25/-

Backdrop

- Events in Ayodhya for the March 15 'Shilanyas'

- VHP warning of a "Hindu backlash" against those opposing the temple

- Hate propaganda in Gujarat

Bravado or intimidation? Threat of mass mobilization over Ayodhya, The Statesman, 22/02/2002

Ayodhya, once again (The Asian Age dated 28th Feb. 2002)

Misbehaviour of the Kar Sevaks reported by Jan Morcha from Faizabad, Gujarat Carnage 2002 by Dr.Kamal Mitra Chenoy and others

WHETHER GODHRA WAS PRE-PLANNED OR NOT, it definitely was an excuse for brandishing the saffron flag and openly giving vent to the long nutured hatred against the Muslim community

THE POGROM: an organised massacre of Muslims in Gujarat

28th February, 2002 Gujarat Bandh called by VHP

Organized mobs of the VHP, RSS, Bajrang Dal went on to butcher and burn Muslims and Muslim-owned property in Ahmedabad.

The violence spread to all the major cities in Gujarat.

It went on for days, weeks, months.

A well-hatched scheme to make maximum political gains out of Godhra had been launched.

In fact, KK Shastri, Chairman, Gujrart Unit of VHP, told rediff.com that list of shops owned by Muslims in Ahmedabad was prepared on the morning of February 28.

Ahmedabad Police Commissioner said on 1st March that "Nothing illustrates police role better than police commissioner P.C.Pande's statement that, `Police were not insulated from the general social milieu...(When) there's a change in the perception of society, the police are part of it and there's bound to be some contagion effect".(The Telegraph, March 2, 2002).

Gujarat Riots The Top 5 Myths and Facts
By Shalini Gera and Girish Agrawal

Sandesh Gujarat Carnage 2002 by Dr.Kamal Mitra Chenoy and others

Gujarat: The Laboratory of Hindu Rashtra, ISAF [R.L53a.620]

Reports of Fact Finding Teams. NHRC,

A Step back in Sabarkantha, Bela Bhatia, Seminar, May 2002

By soft peddaling the violence, both the Chief Minister and the Prime Minister, indirectly encouraged the perpetrators.

Narendra Modi:

"Every Action has an equal and opposite reaction"

"What happened is secular violence which happens during communal violence"

"I have brought peace to the state in 72 hours"

Atal Behari Vajpayee:

"A black mark on the forehead"

Police Inspector KK Mysorewala, of Naroda Police Station, the area of the worst-incidents:
"Jao, mera to upar se order hain"

The attacks have been actively supported by state govt. officials and by the police. - Human Rights Watch

ABSOLUTE IMPUNITY !

Politicians were seen actively guiding the looters, and arsonist, and the killings

The Gujarati press blatantly published lists of targets on some pretext or the other, and published some contorted or completely false stories which incited violence. Whereas, the Cable TV like Star TV whose field reporters alerted the whole nation and the world to the targetted violence against the Muslim community, were atacked by Advani and Modi, they are still silent about Sandesh, and Gujarat Samachar stories.

It was not a pogrom, it was GENOCIDE : a deliberate extermination of a people

The mayhem continues for 72 days after the Godhra Carnage. It was a systematic attack aimed at decimating an entire people's

livelihood

shelter

self-esteem

education

THE AFTERMATH

Over 100000 refugees and displaced people

(state of the camps)

Children by the thousands, are not only orphaned by traumatised...

and now ELECTIONS ...

WHAT IS TO BE DONE ?

Women and children were subjugated to the worst forms of sexual brutality

One section of women have catalysed to the looting and arson

Appointment of KPS Gill in the first week of May
Systematic attack on sources of livelihoods, shelter self-esteem Women The sheer brutality and scale the systematic nature of attack the targeting of economic interests attempts to ghettoise by destroying property, and taking over public spaces attack on those sympathetic, or secular minded, or inter-religious couples attack on health and administrative persons and NGOs found sympathetic Ethnic Cleansing in Ahmedabad: A Preliminary Report by SAHMAT fact finding Team to Ahmedabad. [R.L53a.40]
Role of police in Gujarat carnage
Engineered holocaust by Prof. D.N.Pathak
Gujarat ki prakruti by Shurbha Mukherjee
Plumbing new depths, Frontline
Gujarat Violence: Meaning and Implications by Riaz Ahmed
A State sponsored massacre of Indian Muslims

Other related Docsweb: Debate on the Anglo-RSS Nexus

Compiled by John, Nalini,Veena and Vinod 2002

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