The dreaded finally happened. The cynically targeted bullets of Pakistan’s
mercenaries, that claimed the life of 100 innocent Hindu pilgrims headed for the Amarnath caves and ordinary labourers in different parts of J & K (some died in the cross–fire between the paramilitary forces and the extremists) had a devastating fallout in far–flung Gujarat.

In Ahmedabad, Surat, Sabarkantha (Lamabadiya, Khed Brahma and Modasa villages), Palanpur and Rajkot, Muslim business establishments — powerlooms, granaries, printing presses, shops and godowns — were cold-bloodedly targeted by the indigenous terrorist squads. They were led by elected representatives belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and leaders of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bajrang Dal (BD).

A senior correspondent of the Financial Express has estimated that in Surat alone the total damage caused by the selective destruction through full-fledged arson of Muslim-owned power looms at Rs. 10 crores. In the Modasa village of Sabarkantha district, of the 63 business establishments charred to ash, 51 belonged to Muslims and 12 to Hindus.

Within hours of the massacre on our northern border, the leaders of Hindu extremist outfits expressed were gearing up for ‘retaliation’.

In Gujarat, the intentions were clearly ruthless and sinister. The international general secretary of the VHP, Praveen Togadia, announced at a press conference in Ahmedabad on August 2 that the VHP was declaring a state–wide bandh to protests the massacres. The Gujarat government, ruled by the BJP, formally declared its support to the bandh. Within hours, all–Gujarat-based textile manufacturing associations and the Surat Textiles Federation and Diamond Merchants had also extended support.

If Gujarat is ‘Hindutva’s laboratory’, as the proud proponents of this political ideology have so often declared, what happened in the state on the day of the bandh — August 3 — should be viewed as one more instance of Hindutva in action.

The fact that all sections closed down business and shops on that fateful day, to express their outrage at the killing of the Amarnath yatris and other innocent Hindus, was just not enough for the squads of Hindu rashtra. Office bearers of the VHP and BD — in many cases helped by elected representatives of the BJP – publicly bayed for revenge. And they got it. With the help of the government and the police. In the form of destruction worth crores of property and businesses owned by Muslims in the state.

When asked what his organisation planned to do the next day, Raju Desai of the Bajrang Dal had declared in a live interview to a local Surti channel, Eyewitness, at 11.30 p.m. the night before the bandh: “Tomorrow, we will create problems, 100 people have been killed at the border”.

When interviewed by this writer, Nikhil Shah, a journalist working for a local newspaper, Pratinidhi, revealed that on the morning of the bandh, he was present at a meeting of the Bajrang Dal at Varaccha Road attended by around 400 activists. At the meeting, a leader of the Bajrang Dal was entrusting batches of 50 volunteers each with the responsibility of a particular area. All of them were given a specific brief, “Create trouble. If shops are open shut them down. Where shops are already shut, destroy the Muslim-owned ones.” The groups left on their assignments armed with iron rods, lathis and other instruments.

The role of the police in Surat and the rest of Gujarat has raised many questions. In Surat, police commissioner Kuldip Sharma has been credited with evacuating to safety some 2,000 Muslims from Vishramnagar and Ravitalao. He also arrested, on-the–spot, two corporators belonging to the BJP (Ganesh Prajapathi and Suresh Varodia) who were caught carrying iron rods, lathis and swords in their vehicles on August 4.

Despite these steps, however, the failure of Sharma and his force to act on the publicly declared intentions of the Bajrang Dal and the VHP, in Surat at least, his instructions to strip the policeman of rifles the day before the bandh and the noticeable absence of the police in areas where homes and businesses were destroyed over a three–four hour period (Vishramnagar itself that had also suffered in 1992 in the post–Babri Masjid bouts of communal frenzy) on August 3, has generated outrage.

Sharma’s explanation for some of his conduct is the barrage of political pressure that he came under from the goon squads of the BJP–VHP–BD after Ganapati immersion day last year when the unruly behaviour by the processionists had led to police firing in which three persons died.

Whichever way one looks at it, both the administration and the police were either browbeaten into paralysis, or they actually assisted the zealots. When a 1,000–strong mob stormed into and destroyed the Famous Boot House in Saraspur, Ahmedabad, where were the cops? The assault of an elderly Muslim couple with a man wielding a trishul just outside the Navapura chowky in Surat (see photo) only proves the point.

Eighty–seven incidents of criminal acts have been lodged under one-composite FIR in Surat. State–wide offences also record details of criminal and provocative actions in which VHP and Bajrang Dal activists have been named. If the past record is anything to go by, no arrests are expected to follow.

In other parts of Gujarat, squads of the Hindu extremist groups had a field day on bandh day. As never before, the bandh–related violence exposed the lawlessness of not merely the VHP–BD squads but the BJP’s elected representatives.

The miscreants destroyed a dargah in Ahmedabad, stoned the collectorate in Rajkot, destroyed 40 buses of the Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation (the tyres of 283 buses were deflated to make a point), attacked the Birla Secondary High School in Porbunder, attacked St Xaviers Society schools in Meghraj and Billimoria. It was well-planned anarchy meant to paralyse, threaten and browbeat even the law and order machinery.

All the incidents in different parts of Gujarat were obviously aimed at economically crippling the minority community. Total number of lives lost were the five, from Surat. In Lambadiya village, rocks were hurled at Muslim shops and even some homes continuously over two days (August 4 and 5), destroying the harmony existing between adivasis and the minorities for centuries. The scale and venom of the stone throwing led to mass–scale evacuation from the villages in impoverished conditions.

Two years ago, when sustained violence broke out in Randhikpur and Sanjeli in Gujarat (see Welcome to Hindu Rashtra, CC, Oct 1998), the destruction had also been pre-planned to enable the takeover of the local transport business from the hands of Muslims once they were cleansed out of the area through terror tactics.

From power looms in Surat, to the local granaries/godowns of grain merchants of Sabarkantha, to shops and printing presses elsewhere, the singular objective seems to have been the destruction of businesses and economic crippling of Muslims.

Gujarat state, the laboratory for Hindutva, has witnessed a qualitatively different kind of violence unleashed on both Muslims and Christians since the BJP returned to power in February 1998. Innocent Christians and Christian missionaries have been made targets of a venomous and unsubstantiated propaganda against the alleged “conversion motive” of their institutions, even as the same Hindu political elite patronises convent schools! The sub–text behind the attacks on Muslims has of late been dominated by “ultra nationalist” venom and discourse.

In July 1999, in the midst of a world cup cricket contest (in which Pakistan and India also played against each other) and the conflict in Kargil, the streets of Ahmedabad sprouted barely–veiled threats in graffiti that came up in Muslim dominated areas overnight. Under the banner of the BJP’s Yuva Morcha, they hurled threats at Indian Muslims while abusing Pakistanis and Nawaz Sharif. On July 21-22 the charged atmosphere led to a communal skirmish. Again, the Bajrang Dal used this chance to attack Muslim shops and establishments.

Gujarat goes in for elections at the corporation level (in Surat and some other towns) and panchayat level all over the state in September 2000. Hindutva’s response to the tragic massacre of Amarnath yatris is being viewed by political observers in the state as preparation for the polls. And the ‘success’ of the bandh-driven violence is being evaluated as pre-poll success for the BJP.

An emasculated and impotent political opposition in the shape of the Congress(I) — the tribal areas where the violence broke out is Amarsingh Chowdhury’s constituency — will make the BJP’s march to victory (that has little else to tom–tom to the people about, in terms of performance) easier than before.

A judicial inquiry into the post-bandh violence is what local and national rights groups are demanding, given the serious questions about the conduct of the executive, administration and the police machinery. Though compensation has been announced by the state, in Surat at least the amounts being dished out do not in any way reflect the extent of the damage.

The land that gave us Gandhi — the sub-continent’s apostle of non-violence and communal harmony — stands bloodied and battered once again by the brute force of Hindutva.

(A fact–finding report on the violence is Gujarat is being collectively prepared by various groups, including the Quami Ektra Trust, Sanchetana, Dakshin Gujarat Adivasi Sangh, Vikas Adhyan Kendra, Gujarat, and the People’s Union for Human Rights. This writer was part of the fact–finding team that visited Surat).

Archived from Communalism Combat, August 2000, Anniversary Issue (7th) Year 8  No. 61, Cover Story 4

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