Events
Hindu nationalists called for a bandh (general strike), to take place on the following day. Despite the fact that bandhs are frequently associated with violence, and have thus been made illegal, the Government of Gujarat, led by Narendra Modi, endorsed the strike. Unlike chief ministers of other states, such as Jharkhand, Bihar,15 and Maharashtra,16 Narendra Modi, took no precautionary measures against the imminent violence, such as preemptive detentions, which are legal and effective in India. Nor did he send an appeal to the Prime Minister to ask the news media to exercise restraint while covering the violence, and issuing strict ‘no riot’ instructions to the police force. To the contrary, as the violence ensued, Modi "justified this massacre by calling it a natural reaction to the Godhra violence."[17] Modi then ordered that Star News and other liberal media that were actively reporting the violence against the Muslim community in detail, leave Gujarat for “airing provocative coverage.”[18]
In the three days following the fire in the Sabarmati Express, the Sangh Parivar, with the knowledge of Modi and his cabinet,[19] led a campaign of targeted anti-Muslim violence across Gujarat, in which 16 of 24 districts were affected.[20] Some of the worst violence occurred in rural areas hundreds of miles from the train incident at Godhra. Had the violence been a“spontaneous reaction” as Narendra Modi and several other Gujarat officials claimed, it should have been concentrated only in the areas immediately around Godhra.
Moreover, subsequent investigations[21] found that only Muslim-owned businesses were destroyed, including hotels with Hindu names, or with Muslim dormant partners, where public registry listed the owner as Hindu. Inventories of Muslim businesses, including hotels with Muslim partners, and Muslim residences were made available to the mobs by BJP, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), and Bajrang Dal leaders and cadres, and the Gujarat State Police,[22] as were voter registration lists/electoral rolls that aided in the targeting of Muslims in mixed, or dominant Hindu neighborhoods. In Gujarat, with its history of communal violence, the events of February 28 through March 02 emerge as distinctive based on the scale and scope of sexualized and gendered violence, and the complicity of the state government in enabling the massacre and allowing it to continue.[23] There is strong evidence that the anti-Muslim violence following the fire on Sabarmati Express was planned. Witnesses described how Sangh Parivar mobs were armed with liquid gas cylinders, tridents, knives, and sticks. People from rural areas were trucked into neighboring villages and towns to participate in the violence, sporting the uniform of the Sangh -- saffron scarves and khaki shorts.
Mob leaders used cell phones to coordinate the movement of thousands of armed men through densely populated areas. Many of the mobs descended upon Muslim neighborhoods, homes, and businesses, hacking and burning people and property. Women and girls were beaten, thrown into wells, targeted for rape, gang rape, and collective rape, sexually mutilated and burnt. Mobs participated in the severing of women’s breasts, the tearing open of women’s vaginas and wombs, forcing the abortion of fetuses and their display on trishuls.[24] The elderly and children, even unborn children, were not spared.[25]
Police participation and complicity with the Sangh Parivar-led violence has been clearly and carefully documented. Much of the violence took place within sight of the local police stations. Witnesses testified that police officers often refused to come to the aid of Muslims, or took active part in the violence, to the point of shooting and striking at Muslims as they ran from the mobs. Rakesh Sharma's documentary on the Gujarat violence, Final Solution, shows footage of police officers shooting tear gas into Muslim sections of town as rioters waited to enter. Frantic calls for help to police and state government offices often resulted in little aid, or a betrayal: "We have no orders to save you."[26] Even politicians were not impervious to this onslaught; Ehsan Jafri, a prominent Muslim and a former member of the Indian Parliament, made more than twenty phone calls seeking help for his family and those who had gathered at his home for protection; his pleas remained unanswered, and he and many others were tortured, brutally killed, and burned on the street.
The Gujarat Police routinely did not register First Information Reports and refused to take action against the mobs.[27] In a survey conducted between March 05 to March 13, 2002, 2,797 Muslim families who were impacted were interviewed from within 17 relief camps in Ahmedabad, and some from villages near Ahmedabad and Sabarkantha. Of the 1,783 families that responded to a specific set of questions about actions taken by the police, 9.8 percent reported that the police had fired on them, 14.2 percent said that the police had acted against the victims, 31.1 percent reported police inaction, and only 2.9 percent reported that the police had been supportive.
The Citizen’s Initiative report documents some of the responses given by the police: “We don’t have orders to protect you”- To a group of women who were asking help to protect girls being raped on the roof of near by building with the State Reserve Police standing close by; “They have been given twenty four hours to kill you” -- to people who asked them for help; “If you want to live in Hindustan, learn to protect yourself” -- response given to some people who dialed 100 for help; “Why didn’t you also die? They should have killed you also” -- to a person who went to lodge a complaint about his kin being killed.”[28]
The violence continued for over thirty-six hours as the Indian national army remained on standby. Modi claimed that the army had been called for on the evening of February 28 and arrived on March 01. Even as approximately 600 troops reached Ahmedabad and other areas on March 01, they were not mobilized. The state government failed to utilize the armed forces and assist them with adequate transportation support, or provide them with information regarding the locations of outbreaks of violence.[29] While large-scale attacks ended on March 02, the violence continued into the following weeks, erupting into episodes.
Subsequent forensic investigations have established that Coach S-6 of the Sabarmati Express could not have been set on fire from the outside on February 27, 2002, and that the fire that destroyed compartment S-6 started from within the train compartment. The interim report of the Justice U. C. Banerjee Commission, released on January 17, 2005, has concluded that the fire in Coach S-6 of the Sabarmati Express on February 27, prior to the mass killings which ensued on February 28, was “accidental,” and not a “terrorist” attack on Hindu pilgrims as claimed by Narendra Modi and other Hindutva leaders in their attempt to justify the violence that followed.30 Narendra Modi declared in August 2002, that: "It wasn't merely a communal riot, it was like a mass agitation," and later in an August interview with Rediff: “What happened in Godhra supports our contention how innocents are being killed ruthlessly. Gujarat has helped India convince the world community how terrorism is damaging us.”[31] Hindu nationalists continue to maintain, with no factual basis, that Godhra was an act of (Muslim) terrorism.
Haren Pandya, the then Home Minister of Gujarat, testified before a Citizen’s Tribunal about a meeting which took place on the evening of February 27, 2002, where Chief Minister Modi asked his officials “not to come in the way of what will occur in the next few days."[32] As a directive from his position as Chief Minister, such action constitutes an endorsement of violence and the state’s complicity in the events that followed. Pandya was forced to resign from government after he testified. On March 26, 2003, Haren Pandya was assassinated in his hometown of Ahmedabad. The death was investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation, with controversial findings.[33]
Various investigations (listed in earlier footnotes) have inquired into the precise nature of the genocidal violence used by Hindutva mobs[34] to target Muslim communities in Gujarat. Fact-finding teams have concluded that, based on the reach and impact, the implementation of violence that occurred, including across the districts of Ahmedabad, Dahod, Gandhinagar, Kheda, Mehesana, Panchmahal and Sabarkantha, between February 28 and March 02, must have been premeditated and could not have erupted spontaneously. These investigations have asserted that Narendra Modi, as the head of state of Gujarat, not only failed to take preventative measures against those who were planning the violence with his knowledge, but undertook a series of measures that either tacitly or explicitly condoned the violence.
The horrific breakdown of governance in Gujarat and the Sangh Parivar's infiltration into the state and judiciary have made justice and the hope of reparation, as well as security and healing, impossible. The situation was exacerbated by the endorsement of Modi by then BJP government at the center, and post-election in May 2004, in the absence of intervention on the part of the Congress-led alliance. Three years have passed. Narendra Modi remains the Chief Minister, and many of the perpetrators of the violence walk free. The Government of Gujarat continues to harass and discriminate against its Muslim, Christian, and Sikh minority populations, adivasi,[35] dalit,[36] and other marginalized groups, as well as secular activists and intellectuals, with new policies and prejudiced application of existing laws such as the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA).
The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor of the United States Department of State released a report on International Religious Freedom in 2002, pointing to the culpability of the Government of Gujarat in the violence, its violations of human rights and religious freedoms, and the targeting of other minority groups, such as Christians, following the event.[37]
