The Economist
Aug 12 2004
SECTARIAN TENSION IN INDIA
It still hurts
AHMEDABAD
Truth and justice, like reconciliation, prove elusive in Gujarat
THE scar left by the pogrom directed at the Muslim minority in the Indian state of Gujarat in February and March 2002 has yet to heal. That is partly because not a single murderer has been convicted, although perhaps 2,000 people died. The state government is under pressure from local activists, human-rights groups and India's staunchly interventionist Supreme Court to see that justice is at last done. But it continues to act less like a scourge of illegal violence than its sponsor.
This week, the Supreme Court rebuked the state government's prosecutor for his failure to secure the arrest of ten of 21 Hindus accused in an infamous court case arising from the violence: the burning to death of 14 Muslims in a bakery. The accused have already been acquitted once, after witnesses withdrew their evidence. Prosecutors appealed, but in April the Supreme Court ruled that a fair retrial was impossible in Gujarat and moved the case to the neighbouring state of Maharashtra.
The state government may have reasons for subverting the judicial process. Led by Narendra Modi, a charismatic but demagogic hardliner from the Hindu-Nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), it is accused of having done little to prevent the slaughter. Many think it was complicit.
The government has, however, acted against those accused of the horrific “crime” that sparked the carnage. Using the controversial Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), it has charged 123 Muslims and detained nearly 100 over a fire in a train compartment, which took place in the town of Godhra. Of the 58 people asphyxiated or burned to death, many were Hindu devotees, returning from a gathering at the contested site of a temple in the holy town of Ayodhya. A Muslim mob was alleged to have doused the carriage with petrol, ignited it and locked the doors.
Revenge for this massacre was the BJP's explanation for the slaughter that followed. Even Atal Behari Vajpayee, the BJP's leader and, at the time, prime minister, seen as a moderate, asked “Who lit the fire first?”. That foreigners and the liberal English-language press in Delhi largely ignored the Godhra massacre, concentrating on the killings of Muslims—some 9-10% of Gujarat's 50m population—heightened the sense of grievance. It helped Mr Modi lead the BJP to a landslide victory in state elections in December 2002.
Yet forensic analysis and eyewitnesses have cast doubt on the government's theory of a preplanned arson attack. A hideous accident seems more likely. Last month, the railway minister in the government that came to power in Delhi in May, Laloo Prasad Yadav, announced an enquiry into the Godhra incident.
Mr Modi's critics were encouraged by the BJP's surprise defeat in the general elections and by its relatively poor showing in Gujarat itself, which they like to interpret as a repudiation of the BJP's communal politics. Local human-rights and social-welfare groups have had a renewed burst of energy, compiling lists of demands of the new central government led by the Congress party. The government this week agreed to one, revoking POTA, but not, as petitioners had hoped, with retrospective effect.
Harsh Mander, an activist and writer, says that if the government fails to do more it risks “missing a moment in history”, when it has a chance “to make amends for past injustices”. It may already be too late, however, to rebuild trust between Hindus and Muslims. The killing accelerated their segregation—a process, says Hanif Lakdawala, a prominent social worker, that is now 90% complete.
An example is the expanding ghetto behind the Bombay Hotel in Ahmedabad, Gujarat's main city. A warren of crude redbrick houses—much of it, during the present monsoon, under water—it is now home to some 4,000 Muslim families, mostly fugitives from the 2002 violence.
One of them, Yusuf, drives an autorickshaw, a three-wheel taxi. He is still too scared to return to his old home. Just last month, depositing passengers in a Hindu district, he was recognised as a Muslim and locals threw stones at him. Two weeks ago, fresh clashes erupted in Veraval, 320km (200 miles) south-west of Ahmedabad. But in the Bombay Hotel settlement, surrounded by 4km in either direction of exclusively Muslim slum, he feels safe. Muslims complain of a tacit economic boycott; employers put job applications bearing Muslim names to one side. In response, conservative Muslim organisations are gaining influence.
Communal relations in Gujarat raise concerns far beyond the state. This month, India's film censors refused a certificate to “Final Solution”, a documentary on the 2002 pogrom and its aftermath, which has won prizes at film festivals from Berlin to Zanzibar. The censors accused the film of promoting “communal disharmony”. Its maker, Rakesh Sharma, says they have become politically partisan.
The BJP itself has been in some disarray since its election defeat. Some members partly blame the setback on the stigma of the Gujarat pogrom. But the BJP's more fervent supporters—who idolise Mr Modi—accuse the party of having compromised its core “Hindu” principles to court moderate support. In Gujarat itself, Mr Modi has survived, for now, a rebellion from within the local party. His job was in jeopardy not because of his hardline views but because his high-handed manner has alienated many state legislators. For this reason, many in Ahmedabad still expect him to go later this year. The debate in the BJP over how to assess his rule, however, will go on much longer. So, sadly, will its effects on Gujarat's communal relations.
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