The Gujarat Genocide
Publication time: 8 April 2007, 15:53
Assalamu alaikum ,
I am S. A. from India. I am a frequent visitor of Kavkaz Center since years..I am happy to see about Gujrat massacres of Muslims by Hindus mentioned in your website..Muslims have ruled India up to 1000 years and never treated Hindus in this way as they did in Gujarat and all other parts of India in their only 50 years of rule.. Thousands of Muslims burnt alive and thousands of women raped and with so horrified manner and not only these mobs but also with the help of Police and Govt isolated Muslims and sponsored this massacre.. And even Muslim world also abandoned the Muslims of India.. I am sending you a just small text about what happened in Gujarat with Muslims....May Allah protect you all mujahideen.. And I hope that Shamil Basayev and Khattab and other great mujahideen are now in Jannah and happy Alhamdulillah great reward from Allah.
So here is that text..
The Gujarat Genocide
On Feb. 27th 2002, a train in Gujarat, India was attacked. In the name of that attack (though it is clear the attackers were not Muslims) the Hindu fundamentalists carried out a genocide of Muslims all over Gujarat, India. It had been pre-planned months earlier. Newspapers and cheap literature fanned the hatred of Muslims, whose only crime was to be born as part of the Muslim minority in India which has a Hindu majority. Though women were raped, heinously tortured and burnt, not one Hindi perpetrator has gone to prison for these crimes because the fundamentalist BJP party reigned supreme, both in Delhi and in Gujarat. India is now a "flawed democracy laced with religious fascism - as represented by the Hindutva, the Sangh Parivar and all its branches - the BJP, VHP, and RSS.
by Garda Ghista
Gujarat ke firraq se hai khaar khaar dil
Befaab hai seenay mane atish bahar dil
Marham nahin hai iske zadhm ka jahan mane
Shamshir e hijr se jo hua hai figar dil
My heart is thorn-filled with longing for Gujarat
Restless, frantic, flame-wrapped in the spring
On earth there exists no balm for its wound.
My heart split asunder by the dagger of sepoaration!
Wali Gujarati, Sufi saint-point
Born in Ahmedabad circa 1650
Died in Ahmedabad 1707
Tomb razed February 28, 2002
On February 27, 2002, a train in Gujarat, India was attacked. Several of the train cars carried Hindu volunteers (called kar sevaks) returning from the demolished Babri Masjid site (in Ayodhya, the alleged birthplace of the Hindu God, Rama � in the state of Uttar Pradesh) where they had gone to help construct a Hindu temple on top of the demolished Muslim mosque. The train car numbered S-6 was set on fire just outside Godhra, a town 120 kilometers east of Ahmedabad in the western state of Gujarat. Fifty-nine men and women perished in the fire. It was not known how or who started the fire, and the reason for the fire was also not clear.
However, by late evening of the same day, there were public statements by the Gujarat government (controlled by the BJP, a fanatic right-wing Hindu fundamentalist party) declaring that their volunteers had been attacked. State officials further claimed that it was the work of local Muslim residents, plus that there was alleged involvement of Islamic terrorists from Pakistan. Within hours of these proclamations by state government bodies, there was a full-scale attack by Hindus on the Muslim communities across the state of Gujarat.[i]
While newspapers unanimously proclaimed that because of the burning of the Sabarmati Express in Godhra a spontaneous violent attack erupted on the Muslims of Ahmedabad and surrounding areas, there is now substantial evidence to show that these attacks were not at all spontaneous. Rather they were planned to the minutest detail far ahead of time and certainly before the burning of the train car.
Long before, representatives of the BJP party had distributed weapons to Hindu homes as a preparation step, along with thousands of flyers urging Hindus to �kill the Muslims!� Armed mobs carried with them printed lists of Muslims to attack, and Muslim houses had been marked beforehand. The information came from the recent Gujarat census, along with government records from the sales tax department, revenue department, and the state electoral rolls.[ii] In places like Himmatnagar, mobs insisted on setting fire to every single Muslim business on their list, even when told that the list was outdated and that Hindus now owned some of the shops targeted for arson[iii]. It was a full-scale genocidal attack across the length and breadth of Gujarat. Thousands of armed Hindus moved through the towns and villages over an area of hundreds of miles. The arsonist battalion consisted of: a truck of thugs from the states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, who were armed with trishuls (tridents), iron rods and swords in one hand and alcohol in the other, while shouting violent slogans;
a tanker full of inflammable fuel, a tanker full of acid, a truck carrying hundreds of gas cylinders, and an ambulance to treat the injuries of any Hindus who were wounded.[iv] They all carried similar weapons and methodically carried out the same kinds of crimes. First they would throw a white acidic powder that caused the outer skin layers to peel off. Once the flesh was bared they would set the body on fire.[v] They brutally killed thousands, and sexually assaulted, raped and violated women and girls in the most gruesome ways, also in a systematic, pre-planned fashion. One woman, Kauser Bano, nine months pregnant, had her belly cut open, her fetus wrenched out, swung on a sword and thrown into a fire. An eyewitness to the rape of Khairunissa told how she was raped by eleven men. Then her head and her mother�s head were cut off.[vi] Many of these women and girls were burnt afterwards so as to leave no evidence of the crimes. Wealthy Hindus convinced Muslims to take refuge on their land only to then organize their massacres.[vii] Arundhati Roy has succinctly summarized the attack:
Across Gujarat, thousands of people made up the mobs. They were armed with petrol bombs, guns, knives, swords and tridents. Apart from the VHP [a branch of Sangh Parivar, a right-wing Hindu extremist organization] and Bajrang Dal�s [also a branch of Sangh Parivar] usual lumpen constituency, Dalits [the lowest castes in India] and Adivasis [the original inhabitants of India] took part in the orgy. Middle-class people participated in the looting. (On one memorable occasion a family arrived in a Mitsubishi Lancer.) The leaders of the mob had computer-generated cadastral lists marking out Muslim homes, shops, businesses and even partnerships. They had mobile phones to coordinate the action. They had trucks loaded with thousands of gas cylinders, hoarded weeks in advance, which they used to blow up Muslim commercial establishments. They had not just police protection and police connivance, but also covering fire.[viii]
While the official number of dead is given as 762, independent sources estimate the number of slaughtered Muslims as being between 2,000 and 5,000. Another more than 150,000 Muslims who managed to survive the massacre were forced to flee to relief camps. Still more fled outside Gujarat to relatives in other states, traveling even as far south as Hyderabad for safety. The financial losses estimated by Muslims were 38,000 million rupees, with 1,150 hotels burned in Ahmedabad city, and over 1,000 trucks owned by Muslims burned. About 250 mosques and shrines (dargahs) were demolished. The entire state was ravaged by Hindu fundamentalist mobs in a pre-planned attack, resulting in the displacement of Muslims from lands they had inhabited for generations.[ix]
Did the world not hear her screams?
Even after the initial 72 hours, the violence continued with the active support and collaboration of local police, along with the complete indifference of all other state institutions. They provided no humanitarian or medical support, nor did they initially provide any compensation for losses suffered.
In Vatwa and other areas, loudspeakers played tapes of voices shouting �Kaato!, Maaro!� (�Chop, Kill!�) every single night -- to continue the terror. Vendors of vegetables and milk were warned not to sell to Muslims.[x] The police actively hampered the filing of cases by Muslims and blocked any attempts by victims to obtain justice through legal means. Muslims had to see their own possessions sitting in the homes of their Hindu neighbors, and women had to see their rapists daily. In 2002 Anil Dharkar published a 500+ report compiled by the Citizens for Justice and Peace entitled Concerned Citizens Tribunal � Gujarat 2002: Crimes Against Humanity: An Inquiry into the Carnage in Gujarat. As this Tribunal noted in its report:
"The tragedy of women from the villages having to go back to the intimacy of a rural atmosphere � where all families are known to each other �and continue to live with the perpetrators of such crimes cannot be imagined."[xi]
Investigations carried out afterwards by civil rights groups and even state bodies such as the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) documented the complicity of the state government as well as the central government in the carnage, the pre-planned sexual assaults on Muslim women, and the systematic destruction of Muslim property. Rather, when the local and statement governments failed to provide relief, it was the civil society that came forward, providing shelter, food and medicines to the victims, and later who raised funds to rebuild houses and help the terrified Muslims resettle in safer areas. Many non-Muslim men and women from tribal, Dalit[xii] and other communities also came forward to give support. These people, just like the Underground Railroad in the United States in the 19th century, acted at great risk to their own lives and managed to save the lives of countless Muslims being hunted down like dogs by Hindu mobs. On February 28th near Gulberg Society in the heart of Ahmedabad, witnesses report that BJP [the political wing of the mother organization called Sangh Parivar] thugs played cricket using human skulls.[xiii] Arundhati Roy wrote:
"Right now we�re sipping from a poisoned chalice �- a flawed democracy laced with religious fascism. Pure arsenic � Gujarat has been the petri dish in which Hindu fascism has been fomenting an elaborate political experiment."[xiv]
According to Roy, Muslims are no longer served in restaurants, Muslim children are not welcome in local schools, and Muslim students are too terrified to take their exams. Religious fundamentalism has no boundaries in its evil designs and implementations, as witnessed in Hitler�s genocide of Jews and in Bosnia.
As news spread across India, individuals, non-governmental organizations, women�s groups, human rights organizations and civil liberty associations came forward to help. They collected food grains, clothes, books, medicines, and provided medical care and building materials for house reconstruction. All people � from young students to the elderly -- came forward to help, even if just by spending time with traumatized children and giving comfort to new helpless widows. Lawyers came to help victims fill out the requisite forms at the police stations and in the courts.
And right alongside these humanitarian efforts, the international general secretary of the VHP, Dr. Praveen Togadia, threatened a doctor making deliveries of medicine to Muslim women in the relief camps.[xv] At Sola Civil Hospital, BJP municipal corporators were �actually telling the doctors who to treat and who not to treat [ i.e. Muslims]�. VHP mobs also stopped ambulances from going to Muslim areas.
Documentation of Genocide
Since that time, a conscious effort has been made by civil rights groups to compel the local and state government to take responsibility for the genocide. Citizens� groups, journalists, judges and doctors formed fact-finding committees and published more than 50 reports of the carnage, demanding compensation, reparations and justice. Films, including The Final Solution by Rakesh Sharma, have also been produced and distributed nationally and internationally but have been censored in India. The Minority Commission of India in their report declared the Gujarat Government responsible for not protecting the life, liberty and freedom of minorities in the state, as guaranteed by the Indian constitution. Among national constitutional bodies, it was the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) that took active measures to ensure justice and drew national attention to the complete failure of the state government to control the violence.
Train Car Mystery
The primary �justification� given by fascist Hindus -- including the then Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee -- for the Gujarat genocide was that is was revenge for the Godhra train car tragedy. However, the detailed background to this tragedy is generally avoided. The BJP had recently lost state elections in Uttar Pradesh and hence, to rouse Hindu sentiment, they began agitating again for the construction of a Hindu temple on the ruins of a destroyed mosque in the Hindu holy town of Ayodhya. Large numbers of BJP activists from Gujarat traveled to Ayodhya and back as part of the BJP�s campaign. The kar sevaks (Hindu �Brownshirts� who wear orange and often smoke ganja or marijuana) were well known for starting violent incidents at train stations along their journey. In Godhra, when police knew that kar sevaks were passing through, all train stalls were closed and police ensured that no bearded Muslim remained on the platform when the Sabramati Express train passed.[xvi] The Hindu newspaper Jan Morcha reported on February 24, 2002 that the Bajrang Dal [specifically the militant wing of the BJP�s umbrella of organizations] on the same Sabramati Express train that caught fire in Godhra unleashed a �reign of terror� on Muslim women in burqas and frenziedly stabbed Muslim men. It further stated:
"Anyone identified as a Muslim on the train was mercilessly attacked with trishuls (tridents) and beaten with iron rods. Even women and innocent children were not spared. Burqas were pulled off, women were beaten with iron rods and dragged [about], and people waiting at the platform were similarly targeted."[xvii]
As soon as these Hindu militants alighted at Godhra station they began to beat Siddiq, a bearded tea vendor, trying to make him offer salutations, to the Hindu god, Ram. Seeing this, other tea vendors removed their nametags to hide the fact that they were Muslims. A VHP thug wearing an orange headband grabbed a sixteen-year-old girl, Sophiya Shaikh from Vadodara. Before he could cover her mouth, she screamed for help and was rescued by her mother and sister. VHP activists also stoned the vendors when they tried to escape onto other trains. This caused Muslims living near the station to come and begin throwing stones in protest.[xviii] Anil Soni a reporter for the Gujarat Samachar in his article, �Truth About the Train Incident,� said that the tea vendor�s teenage daughter came and tried to save her father from the Hindu thugs. Instead of hearing her pleas, they grabbed her and took her inside the car, and then the train began to move while being stoned. It is then that the train car mystery began.
To this day there is no evidence to confirm Chief Minister Narendra Modi�s claim that Muslims conspired to set the train car on fire. Rather, his statements are giving a carte blanche to Hindus to implement the genocidal intent of destroying all Muslims, as propounded by the extremist Hindutva ideology. According to journalist Syed Shahabuddin, many irregularities concern the train car burning.[xix] The railways took six months to make the reservation public � that, too, under media and Parliament pressure only. Second, a case was made that a Muslim mob from the nearby locality first stoned the passengers in train car number S-6, and then they poured petroleum into the coach from outside and set it on fire. Despite denial by the Muslims, the entire world believed this initial story. Gujarat Chief Minister Modi and then Home Minster L.K. Advani both proclaimed to the media that the ISI (Pakistani intelligence) was involved. To date, not a drop of evidence points in this direction.
Another question arises: why did the Muslims supposedly target only coach number S-6 when many other coaches were full of Hindutva volunteers? Further, there is no explanation from the Ahmedabad Forensic Science Laboratory report (filed by the police) stating that the coach was set on fire not from outside but from inside. This fact absolves the stone-throwing Muslims in a flash. The window grills on the car were not broken. No attempt was made to break into the car. The doors of the coach were locked from inside. In fact, many regular passengers, including women and children as well as Muslims were in Coach S-6, and not volunteers, as claimed by the Hindutva and BJP politicians. Then Prime Minister Atal Vajpayee, Chief Minister Modi �- the entire Indian leadership --- all avoided publishing a list of passengers, perhaps because it would contradict their virulent claims that all passengers were Hindu volunteers from Ayodhya, and this was the excuse they needed to set Gujarat on fire.
The Forensic Science Lab report stated that 60 liters of inflammable liquid (petrol or kerosene) had been poured into the coach from one of the side doors. However, it is difficult to imagine this being done without any resistance from passengers. The question arises, was it petrol? Possibly the material used was not petrol but was a solid/incendiary powder which once ignited reaches very high temperatures in a matter of seconds. This same powder was used afterwards in Ahmedabad to burn buildings, melt iron railings, window grills and collapsible gates. It is possible that the incendiary powder was sprinkled at the two ends of the coach, which would explain why Saeed Naqvi, a well-known journalist, noted on his visit that passengers seemed to rush toward the middle of the coach until they were engulfed by the fire. The killers could have easily escaped to the neighboring coaches. Once again, the question arises, who planned and organized this train massacre? Gujarat Congress Party President Shankersingh Vaghela, a former acolyte of the Sangh Parivar and the BJP, has publicly accused the Sangh Parivar of this crime. He said that he knows them well, and that they ruthlessly planned the train car horror in order to justify their next carnage �-the entire genocide of Gujarat Muslims, which due to State support went unchecked for three days and was organized to the last detail. Another article published in the Times of India on July 3, 2002 tells of a second report by the Forensic Science Lab�s Assistant Director, Dr. M.S. Dahiya. In this report he states:
"After inspecting the bogie [car S-6] and the tracks, it was found that there is no effect of fire below the windows. Taking this fact into account and the burning pattern on the outside of the bogie, the conclusion is that no inflammable liquid was thrown into the bogie from the outside�. It also does not look possible that inflammable liquid was thrown in from the doors of the bogie."
M. Kartik, a lawyer, and human rights activist, testified before the International Initiative for Justice (IIJ) panel, saying that the Ahmedabad police report confirmed irrefutably that Muslims were not involved in the burning of train bogie S-6. Also according to Kartik, witnesses were talking only about smoke, not fire. Furthermore, of those who were burned, all were burned above the waist and not below the waist. They were burned on the face, head and hands. No fuel fire, such as petrol, could do this. One woman who managed to escape told Mr. Kartik that there was no fire on the ground - that fire was only on the top and the side of the bogie. People died primarily of suffocation. Kartik concludes that the thick rubber of the vestibule was on fire, hence the heavy black smoke in the compartment. Mohan Jagdish Yadav, the RPF Police Constable at Godhra, gave testimony before the IIJ panel and told the following: people who came out of bogie S-6 had black faces and some burn injuries on the head. None were burned below the waist. He saw no flames coming from inside the coach. He saw only smoke. He saw no flames on the floor of the area between the doors. He did not smell any inflammable fuel like petrol, kerosene, diesel, etc. And he also did not see any Muslims preventing passengers from leaving the coach. The cumulative evidence points to the conclusion that an incendiary chemical (powder) was used to burn the car and create heat of up to 600 degrees. It would seem logical that members of the Hindutva themselves started the fire, so as to have an excuse to proceed with their genocide of Muslims -� something they had planned and prepared for months beforehand. However, to the present date there is no evidence to conclusively prove that the fire was deliberately planned.
Pre-Planned and Pre-Meditated
The sexual assaults on Muslim women were planned in the Bajrang Dal camps long before the train car burning. Bajrang Dal stalwarts distributed pamphlets that said women should be assaulted. They read: �Don�t feel guilty to rape women of the other community.� As the Concerned Citizens Tribunal summarized, there were six levels of destruction in the Gujarat genocide: physical, economic, sexual, cultural and religious, resistance to rehabilitation, and a publicly declared desire to kill all Muslims in Gujarat.[xx]
This woman wants to know, what ideology, what religion, what political party dares to propagate so much hatred, so much torture of women?
Professor Kesharrm Shastri, the 96-year-old chairman of the Gujarat branch of the World Hindu Council, was involved in drawing up a separate list of Muslim shops for looting in the city of Ahmedabad immediately after the Godhra incident. When questioned, he said, �it had to be done, it had to be done. We don�t like it, but we were terribly angry. Lust and anger are blind.�[xxi]
Ashok Singhal, a leader of the VHP (Vishva Hindu Parishad) openly declared that the Gujarat genocide was a �matter of pride.� For him, as for all fundamentalists worldwide:
"Gujarat has shown the way and our journey of victory will begin and end on the same path."[xxii]
May Allah protect you all..
take care,
Allah hafiz
The Letter's department
KC
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