A look at the events that led to the worst riots in Gujarat since Partition

She didn't want to die. The child growing within her didn't even want to be born yet. But that last day of February, in the obscure Naroda Patia locality of Gujarat, death-at its ghoulish best-lay in wait for them both. In a siege of untempered hatred, 5,000 mindless marauders bore down on 200 families, undeserving victims of their faith. Heavy with pregnancy but spurred by fear, she ran too. Only till the dead-end of the alley. SCARRED FOR LIFE: A riot victim at Ahmedabad's Shah Alam refugee campThey cornered her, forced out her unborn child and torched it in a gloating frenzy Then they killed her too. That evening, the police in Naroda Patia counted 27 charred bodies, among the 73 trapped to their deaths in a 60 sq ft alley.About 200 km away at Kedia village near Lunawada, another nameless man died an easier death. The mob just sliced his head off before splitting it into two. Khan was among the 50 people in a truck trying to dodge a chasing mob. But when the vehicle broke down a short distance away, nearly 100 men torched it. Within 30 minutes, 30 aboard the truck were dead..preferred-source-banner{ margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom:10px;}FACE OF DESPAIR: A grieving member of the Bohra community at DahodIn a week of a vengeful spree following the February 27Godhra carnage, more than 600 people have died across the state and 20,000 rendered homeless in Ahmedabad alone.Mosques and dargahs have been burnt or damaged, and several have been converted into Hulladiya Hanuman temples or Godhadiya temples in honour of the Godhra victims. Fluttering saffron flags signal a perverse victory. Despite a past pockmarked by communal riots, Gujarat has all but lost its moorings as a tolerant society.The immediate provocation for the riots may have been the Godhra inferno, but the savagery of retaliation belies a resentment spanning years. The Hindu-Muslim gulf has been widening since the 1969 Ahmedabad riots, the 1989 rath yatra on the . Ayodhya Ram mandir issue.and has been fuelled by the Kashmir conflict. The heightening Indo-Pakistan tension and Islamic terrorism in the past two years-from cross-border terrorist attacks in Kashmir to the December 13 Parliament attack-have given Hindu militancy both momentum and respectability. In fact, Gujarat is perhaps the only state where the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) resembles a mass movement.I never saw such a huge mob - they burnt alive my husband Zakia Nasin, wife of a former MP, Ahmedabad Nasin with Jafri's pictureEhsaan Jafri, a former MP living in Ahmedabad's Gulmarg Society, began calling the police at 8.30 a.m. His wife Zakia Nasin was worried-they lived in a Hindu area-but Jafri had faith in his neighbours who had called to warn him of mobs. By noon, a hostile crowd was pelting stones and Jafri's pleas went unheeded. The ex-MP began calling politician friends, but it was of no use. The mob swelled to about 5,000 and began throwing burning tyres. Jafri sent his family upstairs while he stood at the gate. "That was the last time we saw Jafrisaab," says Zakia, who denies he used his gun. The police arrived at 5 p.m. after the mob had razed the complex. His neighbours showed that they deserved his faith-the mob was not local-and dozens of residents lost their lives with him.The past few months have seen mounting public opinion on the lack of action against Pakistan-over Kargil and more recently the Parliament attack. In fact, during his attempts last week to pacify Gujarat, Union Defence Minister George Fernandes was not only pummelled by stones, but also queries like, "Why isn't India attacking Pakistan?"Indifference to or perhaps ignorance of global compulsions has fuelled hostility and the state's Muslim population is being held responsible for Pakistan's jehadi policies.Another aggravation has been the mushrooming of Deobandi madarsas in the border state over the past two years. The lackadaisical attitude of the Keshubhai Patel and Narendra Modi governments in curbing their growth has widened the gulf between the communities. In fact, police officials attribute the ferocity of attack at the Gulmarg Society and former MP Ehsaan Jafri's house to the presence of one such madarsa in the complex.Public ire has also been building against the BJP-led coalition Government at the Centre. The predominantly pro-BJP population in the state that has sent over 20 saffron MPs to the Lok Sabha since 1991 has been frustrated by the party's failure to deliver on core issues, particularly the building of the Ram temple in Ayodhya. If the mandir issue is back on centrestage, they believe it is a reaction to the recent violence. The VHP, mean-while, is still sore over its failure to score on the issue of cow slaughter last year. Despite the clout of Pravin Togadia, VHP international general secretary, no action was taken to effectively implement the law banning cow slaughter.I am no stranger to communal hostility but this dance of death was unbelievable Ayub Qureshi, labourer, Ahmedabad Joshi (right) and TirmizThe scars on their bodies tell their tale better than Ayub Qureshi and his family can-they are still in shock. Qureshi, a labourer, was attacked by a frenzied mob on the fateful day of the bandh in the hut where he lived with wife Najma and his four little children. The hapless family managed to run to the State Reserve Police camp nearby, but were refused entry by the guards who said they didn't "have orders". They were soon seized and kerosene was poured on them. His son Sohel, 5, and daughter Faranaz, 7, were torched to death before their eyes. He says, "Being from Ahmedabad I am no stranger to riots, but this was unthinkable. It was a dance of death. It will haunt us forever."Last week, what marked the slaughter of people was the unprecedented intensity as well as societal sanction. The underclass was supported in the looting by the middle and upper middle classes, including women. They not only indulged in pillaging but openly celebrated the destruction and mounting death toll. Residents from posh localities in Ahmedabad didn't balk at taking to the streets at the slightest hint of an approaching mob. By the chief minister's own admission, the pattern of rioting didn't correspond at all to Gujarat's 100 most sensitive localities. New areas joined the sectarian frenzy. Implicit in this participation was an expectation of tacit, if not overt support, from the state Government. As Maheshbhai, an entrepreneur, says, "For the first time we have had a chief minister who has stood up. The Muslims have been the aggressors for the past 50 years. This time it was different." The blame for the initial explosion on February 28 is being pinned on the Modi Government for its failure to arrest those responsible for the Godhra massacre. The slum from where the train attack was launched was illegally constructed on Railways land and each of the 10 main suspects involved in the attack has a criminal back-ground. Some even enjoyed political patronage. Haji Billal, one of the main accused, was known for his links with smugglers and traffickers. Such was his notoriety, claims a BJP MLA, that "a few months ago the authorities had difficulty pasting a notice on his door". On February 27, the VHP asked the state Government to act against them and when it failed, the public anger was directed against all Muslims.The VHP and other Sangh organisations not only perceived the anger but also streamlined it successfully. Aware that people would shy away from blatant aggression in their own areas, outsiders were recruited to attack pretargeted localities. It was not a communal flare-up, it was all political Sanjay Joshi, chemist, AhmedabadHOLLOW VICTORY: Burnt shells of cars throng Ahmedabad after the riotous frenzyA 15-year-old friendship, A three-year-old partnership-Sanjay Joshi and Zahiruddin Tirmiz's A1 Medical Shop near Ahmedabad's Ellis Bridge could well have symbolised India's popular "unity in diversity" slogan. But as the finance minister read out the budget on February 28, their shop was being pelted with stones. A few hours later, the mob, now almost 10,000 strong and led by a local politician, set it ablaze after looting it. Their loss: Rs 5 lakh in stocks besides the store. But the greater loss was the shattering of their faith that a Hindu-Muslim partnership could stand as a bulwark against politically incited communal mistrust. "It was not communalism, it was politics," says Joshi. And they are determined to rebuild their store and their belief.In most cases, the locals didn't protest and actually egged on the rioters, so intense was the hatred of the "other". There was also a deliberate attempt to mar the economic interests of the Muslim community. Not only were shops and establishments with obvious Muslim names attacked, but in a chilling revelation of the meticulous planning, so were those with names like Aashirwaad or Saffron that were jointly owned by Hindus and Muslims. Armed with information on share-holding and partnerships, they swooped down on establishments that variously included a medical shop near Ellis Bridge, the Honda franchisee on Gandhi Nagar road and the truck operator who carted Opel cars at Halol. The approximate loss suffered by business in six days of violence: Rs 500 crore a day.Worse, there is a sinister move to impose economic sanctions against Muslims. The thrust is to choke credit to Muslim businessmen, even those with Hindu partners, by using the credit risk rating systems to make funding costlier. E-mails to this effect are said to be doing the rounds.The exactitude of planning is demonstrated by the assault against the mercantile Bohra community-it has never been targeted in any of the earlier riots. The Bohras suffered immense losses in the Panchmahal and Sabarkanta areas, with Dahod alone accounting for Rs 40-60 crore. Almost every Dawoodi Bohra establishment-shop, mill or factory-has either been looted or torched. Nearly 70 per cent of the pulse mills around Dahod are owned by Bohras; none has been spared.LOSING HOPE: Lehriben Nainaji, a resident of the Bhilvas slum colony in Ahmedabad who lost her house along with 75 othersQureshi with his surviving daughtersThough the state Government is at pains to explain that the attackers are criminals or Adivasis, it is hard to understand how they were able to mark out Bohra shops from the rest.The Adivasis form a large part of support base for the Hindu frontline outfits which is how the BJP wrested the Dahod parliamentary seat from the Congress in 1999. Its MP Babubhai Katara is incidentally the chief of the Dahod VHP unit. Though on the face of it the Adivasis have been enrolled in 11,500 bhajan mandals across Dahod and Godhra, these mandals-founded with the VHP's blessings-operate as hubs from where the mobilisation for the attacks is said to have begun. Last week, Sanjeli village was looted and torched by an Adivasi mob. Every family is homeless and over 700 villagers have shifted to a relief camp near Dahod.Kishinbhai Mamnani, vice-president of the VHP's Dahod unit, does not agree. "Nobody is promoting or sponsoring the riots by using the Adivasis. They have simply reacted against their exploitation by the Bohras." He adds that they now recognise themselves not just as ''tribals but Ram bhakts". If that is indeed so, the transition to a Hinduised identity hasn't had wholesome consequences.What these riots have revealed is the extent of hatred in society. It is a hate that crossed the bounds of mere prejudice and descended to murder. Which is why when young boys at the Muslim refugee camps speak coldly of retaliation, the future looks frightening. The only state to persist with prohibition could do with some sobriety.- with Uday Mahurkar Published By: AtMigration Published On: Nov 30, 1999--- ENDS ---

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A look at the events that led to the worst riots in Gujarat since Partition

In a week of a vengeful spree following the February 27 Godhra carnage, more than 600 people have died across Gujarat and 20,000 rendered homeless in Ahmedabad alone.

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