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State-Sponsored Terrorism in the Republic of India
Communal Violence and the
Institutionalization of Religious Discrimination
by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
This report
analyses the causes and context of the recent rioting in the state of
Gujarat in India by Hindu nationalists. It begins by documenting the
sequence of events leading up to the riots, before analyzing the
escalation of violence itself and isolating its principal causes. The
role of the Indian authorities in the riots is also discussed. The
report attempts to place the recent crisis in context with the history
of communal violence in India, particularly in terms of conflict
between the Hindu and Muslim communities. The historic role of British
colonialism and the contemporary role of the international community
in fuelling factors conducive to communal antagonism within India are
highlighted. Against this broad historical and international context,
the rise of Hindu nationalism and its detrimental impact on communal
relations – for instance, in terms of religious discrimination,
repression and even apartheid – is explored. Finally, the report
discusses the responsibility not only of the Indian government, but
also of leading members of the international community for the
intensification of violence in the country often on communal lines. In
this respect, the little known role of the United States and the ENRON
corporation in India are examined as a case in point.
I. The Inception of the Current Crisis: Provocation and Reaction
Towards
the end of February 2002, rioting by Hindu mobs broke out across the
Indian state of Gujarat. The rioting was sparked after the death of 58
Hindus on a train in what was described by Indian officials as an arson
attack by a mob of Muslims in Godhra, a town southeast of Ahmadabad.
Exactly what provoked the attacks on the train was at first unclear.
According to some initial reports, passengers were “misbehaving with
women on the train”. Other reports suggested that: “Muslims were angered
by a rumor of an attack on a mosque in Gujarat state.” Yet another
report stated that: “Hindu activists returning from Ayodhya had been
chanting provocative slogans as the train passed through Muslim areas.”
According to local police station chief J.
K. Katija:
“Muslim tea vendors and their neighbors stoned the
train, then set it on fire when Hindus, chanting nationalist slogans,
refused to pay for snacks during a five-minute halt… Fourteen children
were among the dead. The Hindus were returning from the site of a mosque
torn down in 1992 where they now want to build a Hindu temple.”
The
arson attack occurred in the context of increasingly aggravated
religio-communal tensions. According to another local police
chief, Raju Bhargava, tension had been building in Godhra in
the five days prior to the arson attack, as well as in other
towns in Gujarat. “Hindu nationalists travel by train across
Gujarat to and from a religious site in Ayodhya, in northern
India, where the World Hindu Council vows to build a temple to
the Hindu god Rama on the ruins of the 16th century Muslim
mosque.” Hindu nationalists had destroyed the mosque in 1992,
sparking nationwide riots resulting in the deaths of around
3,000 people. Police chief Bhargava stated that the Hindu
activists traveling by train “often refused to pay for food
taken from Muslim vendors at the stations, and brandished
sticks as they shouted slogans, causing resentment and anger to
build up.”
Inter-communal tension between the Hindu and Muslim communities
had been exacerbated by the decision of “two extremist Hindu
groups allied to the BJP [who] gave [Prime Minister] Vajpayee a
March 12 deadline to make a decision to allow work on the
temple to go ahead.” The passengers of the attacked train had
been returning from a religious ceremony at the northern town
of Ayodhya, where the proposed temple is planned.
A report by Washington Post
correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran described the build-up of
tensions and hostility as a consequence of the activities of a
rowdy mob of Hindu nationalists. Based on interviews with
passengers on the train, witnesses to the incident and police
and railway officials, he concludes that the train fire was
“not a premeditated ambush by young Muslims, but rather a
spontaneous argument, provoked by the Hindu activists,” that
went out of control. “For two days, as the Sabarmati Express
snaked across northern India, some Hindu activists in cars S-5
and S-6 carried on like hooligans”, Chandrasekaran recorded
from Godhra. “They exposed themselves to other passengers. They
pulled headscarves off Muslim women…
“They evicted a
family of four in the middle of the night for refusing to join in chants
glorifying the Hindu god Ram. They failed to pay for the tea and snacks
they consumed at each stop. When the train pulled into this hardscrabble
town in western India on the morning of Feb. 27, the reputation of its
rowdiest passengers preceded it. When they refused to pay for their
food, Muslim boys among the vendors at Godhra station stormed the
train.”
Describing in
detail the sequence of events, Chandrasekaran reports that:
“The train was five hours
late, largely because the activists’ behavior had forced the conductor
to make several emergency stops. Instead of arriving quietly in the
middle of the night, the Sabarmati arrived at 7:43 a.m., just as word of
the group’s behavior had trickled in from vendors at other stations. The
vendors in Godhra were resolved not to be victimized. The Hindu council
members, too, were ready for action: Rocks collected from near the
tracks were piled near the doors of their cars.
“When the Hindus refused to
pay for their tea and snacks, several young Muslims jumped on the train
as it started to leave the station and pulled the emergency brake chain.
With a piercing squeal, the Sabarmati ground to a halt a half-mile from
the station, in the middle of a Muslim neighborhood. An argument ensued,
drawing hundreds of residents.
“Police and railway
officials said they do not know who began throwing stones first. But the
officials said they believe that after about 10 minutes, one or more
Muslims poured a flammable substance on a mattress and ignited it
between the S-5 and S-6 cars. A few minutes later, a fire broke out at
the other end of the S-5. Within moments, the car was engulfed by
flames.”
However, the
cause of the second fire that engulfed carriage S-5, resulting in the
death of 58 Hindus - mostly women and children – is unclear. According
to police reports, whether or not the second fire was caused by Hindus
or Muslims is uncertain. “Police officials said they are not sure how
that second fire began”, records the Washington Post. “[Police
official] Nanavati said the Muslims could have set another fire, or the
Hindus, trying to respond in kind, might have accidentally sparked a
blaze in their own car, which was filled with kerosene and cooking gas.”
B. K. Nanavati, the Deputy Police Superintendent in Godhra, thus
confirmed that the ongoing investigation into the incident does not
support the contention by Gujarat’s Chief Minister Narendra Modi, that
the train assault was a “terrorist attack”. He stated that: “It was not
preplanned. It was a sudden, provocative incident. It could have been an
accident.” Another local police official, speaking on condition of
anonymity, observed that: “Both sides were at fault. The provocation was
there and the reaction was strong. But no one had imagined all this
would turn into such a big tragedy.”
In the
aftermath of the arson attack, indiscriminate reprisal attacks
were instigated by Hindu mobs throughout the state of Gujarat
against Muslim civilians. The escalating attacks on the
minority Muslim population by Hindu nationalists, have turned
out to constitute the worst communal violence in India since
1992, continuing for days on end. To date, nearly 700 Muslims
are confirmed dead, although credible reports indicate that the
death toll is probably over a thousand.
II. The
Escalation of Communal Violence
Organised attacks on Muslim civilians in Gujarat by extremist Hindu
groups broke out in purported response to the train burning incident.
The attacks were accompanied by the looting and destruction of homes,
businesses, and holy places. In the initial stages of violence, at least
50 mostly Muslim-owned buildings were torched in Ahmadabad. Rioters
blocked roads - in one instance, dragging a truck driver from his
vehicle and killing him. On the highways elsewhere in the state, gangs
of young men with sticks and iron rods stopped cars, looking for
Muslims. Roadside tea and tobacco stalls owned by Muslims were burned to
the ground. In three towns, seven Muslims were stabbed to death
overnight. On the 95-mile route from Godhra to Ahmadabad, roadside
businesses were burned and village boys used tires to barricade the
roads. Before dawn near the village of Udalpur, some 2,000 Hindu
nationalists with petrol and kerosene “burned half a dozen shops
belonging to Muslims, and a spice factory,” according a police officer,
J. Chaudhary.
In one of the worst incidents on Thursday, dozens of Muslim
labourers were killed when their homes were set on fire. At least eight
children burned to death. On 2 March, police reported that at least 30
Muslims were burned alive when armed Hindus set fire to Pandarvada
village in Gujarat state on Friday.
By 3 March, the death toll had risen to nearly 500 after Hindu
mobs had stormed the village of Sardarpura, setting houses and shops
ablaze by lighting fires near cooking gas containers. Twenty-seven
Muslims died in that attack, according to local police officials
speaking on anonymity. Baker Moin-uddin Sheikh, 31, watched his family
die in an attack on Friday in which 65 Muslims were burned alive. “I saw
my father, sister and mother being burned alive. Despite pleas for help
nobody came to our rescue,” he said. “Will someone take action against
them for being responsible for my family’s brutal killing?”
London Guardian correspondent Luke
Harding’s description of the violence depicts a sequence of
unrestrained bestial carnage unleashed by Hindu extremists on
Muslim civilians that is almost genocidal in intent and scale.
“The events of the last two days”, he reported on 2 March,
“have been described as rioting. But rioting fails to evoke
what has really been going on - an attempt by one dominant
community to pulverize its weaker rival.” He refers to an
incident where an Indian Muslim MP was mobbed, beaten and
burned to death by Hindu rioters rampaging through the streets
of Gujarat: “The mob broke into Ahsan Jafri’s compound in the
middle of the afternoon, tipping kerosene through the windows
of his two-storey house…
“The former Muslim MP who had served India’s Congress
party with distinction, tried to summon help but the police did not
respond to his increasingly desperate telephone calls. When Jafri
resorted to firing into the air, the 10,000 strong Hindu crowd stormed
his home, and carried him into the street.
“Nobody is sure whether he was already dead when they
poured paraffin over his head and set him alight. The crowd also dragged
out his brother-in-law, his brother-in-law’s wife and their two small
sons. They were burned too. The Chamanpura district of Ahmedabad - a
small Muslim enclave surrounded by a sea of Hindu houses - was a vision
of hell yesterday. In a pyre outside Jafri’s house was the tiny
blackened arm of a child, its fist clenched.
“Jafri’s nameplate lay in a still-smouldering heap of
charred books and human hair. Everyone from the Gulbarg housing society
suffered the same fate. Outside their verdant courtyard, Hindu crowds
gathered yesterday to peer at the remains of their Muslim neighbours.
Not much was left: only twisted spines tangled among bicycle wheels and
mattresses... Yesterday western India continued to blaze, as Hindu mobs
across the state of Gujarat systematically turned on their Muslim
neighbours.”
Police
and army forces deployed by the government to restore law and
order have largely granted Hindu extremists a free reign in the
state. “The carnage was made possible by the city’s Hindu
police force, which merely watched yesterday as gangs rampaged
through Muslim areas”, observes Harding. He cited the plea of
one Muslim resident, Mrs Dishu Banashek: “We are being killed.
Please get us out of this hell. They are firing at us. Several
of our women have been raped. You must help.” The area in which
she lives, Sonaichali, has been transformed, reports Harding,
“into a film-like war zone. A Hindu crowd armed with machetes
and iron bars stood less than 15 metres from her house, on the
opposite side of the street…
“All the shops on the Muslim
side of the road were ablaze by yesterday afternoon, surrounded by a
carpet of bricks. Smoke blotted out the sky; gas cylinders exploded.
Officers in blue uniforms from India’s rapid action force charged
theatrically at the Hindu mob, but later abandoned the area, leaving its
Muslim residents to their fate.”
Indeed, the belated arrival of about 900 troops in Ahmedabad on
1 March amounted to little more than an ineffective PR stunt, in a city
whose population is about 5 million, of whom 15 per cent are Muslim.
“[T]he army’s belated deployment seemed little more than a
political calculation that the Muslims had now got the beating they
deserved”, observes The Guardian.
Summing up the violence, the Hindustan Times reported in
an Editorial that: “There are thousands of horrifying stories of
bestiality that make butchers like Idi Amin look like Mother Teresa. But
here’s just one instance of how the government brazenly, shamelessly,
let violence loose in Gandhinagar, near Narendra Modi’s house, where no
one lives except ministers and government officers…
“A mob of trishul-waving youths, blood-lust writ all
over them, attacked a television news team not far from the residence of
the chief minister, right on the main road. The car was smashed, the
team was asked to ‘prove’ they were Hindus, which, fortunately, they
were, while some of the ruffians screamed, ‘We will kill some Muslims
today and then relax’.
“They then began to vandalise the car, smashing its
windshield, lights and fittings. And these sacrilegious louts then had
the temerity to take the name of Lord Rama and snarl: ‘Say Shri Ramji ki
jai’ to the terrified newsmen. Not satisfied with the way they said it,
they screamed again: ‘Louder! Louder!’ When the team was finally allowed
to go, a brick was thrown by these vicious trolls through a window of
the car smashing into the head of the cameraman. Obviously they couldn’t
contain their bloodlust.”
Christians have also been targeted in the
attacks. The All India Christian Council called for a ban on
Hindu extremist groups in the aftermath of the violence,
reporting that many Christians were victims of the rioting. The
Council’s Secretary-General John Dayal reported that members of
the World Hindu Council and other extremist groups allied to
the ruling BJP, burned down a Catholic mission in Sanjeli
village, attacking two priests with stones. He also reported
that a Hindu mob had ransacked a missionary school near Godhra.
In an official statement, the Council announced that Hindu
extremists have “engaged in a constant hate campaign against
the minorities”, and are training hundreds and thousands of
people in armed warfare.
The result has been a confirmed death toll
of over 600, which continues to steadily increase as the
corpses of mostly Muslim men, women and children are uncovered
in different areas of Gujarat. Reports strongly suggest that
the total number of people killed is over a thousand. As the
London Independent has observed: “The deaths of nearly
450, and probably more than 1,000, Gujaratis, nearly all
Muslims, in four days of communal bestiality have exploded the
claim forever the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP)
claim to have presided over an era of communal peace.”
Indian officials confirm that 52,000 Muslims are living in
refugee camps and makeshift huts in Muslim neighborhoods after
having fled the violence.
Longtime Delhi-based foreign correspondent Peter Popham brings in focus
the context of these gruesome atrocities in what he describes as a
“neo-facist” brand of Hindu nationalism rooted in distortions of the
Hindu religion.
“… the Vishwa
Hindu Parishad (VHP, or ‘World Hindu Council’), an extremist group
within the same Hindu nationalist family as the BJP, is pressing ahead
with its plans to begin construction of the long dreamed-of temple to
the god Ram in Ayodhya, on the ruins of the mosque torn down by a mob of
the same people in December 1992. These two events, the Gujarat
bloodbath and the Ayodhya temple, are intimately connected.”
Describing the key tenets of this pseudo-religious ideology, Popham
records in an article which is worth quoting from copiously:
“The first man on earth was an Indian, and a Hindu.
Hinduism was the primeval religion, not just of India but of the world.
There was no Aryan invasion of India, no enslavement of the southern
Dravidians. Hindus were here from day one. Other people arrived on these
shores, but eventually they bent the knee to Bharat Mata, Mother India,
and were knitted into the Hindu fabric. Only the Muslims (and to a
lesser extent the Christians) stood out. They smashed temples and
erected mosques on the rubble, with sword and fire they tore millions of
Hindus from the breast of Mother India and brought them forcibly over to
Islam. It is the duty of patriotic Hindus to reverse that historic
wrong.
“That, reduced to its crude essentials, is the Hindu
nationalist creed, and it helps to explain why the primary goal of the
most powerful political party in this vast, impoverished country, with
all its desperate problems, should be the construction of a temple in a
squalid little town in Uttar Pradesh. Ayodhya, goes the mythology, is ‘Ramjanambhoomi’,
the birth place of Ram, an avatar of Vishnu. The Muslim invader Babur
(and this, too, is myth) tore down the great temple that stood here and
built the Babri Masjid mosque, demolished by the mob in 1992. ‘Hindu
Rashtra’, the true Hindu nation, cannot come into being until the temple
is rebuilt.
“The men who have been ruling India for nearly four
years, including the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, and his
powerful second-in-command Lal Krishna Advani, the Home Minister, are
true believers in this, India’s exotic variety of neo-fascism… But while
India’s stature grew abroad, at home Mr Vajpayee was often described by
critics on the left as the ‘mask’ of the BJP, the acceptable face of a
neo-fascist movement that was only biding its time.
“Mr Vajpayee, increasingly doddery at the age of 78,
remains in place; but in the past week the party's mask has been ripped
away. The war on terrorism and India’s long military stand-off with
Pakistan, which continues undiminished, have given a new licence to the
Hindu nationalists. Muslim equals terrorist, they tell each other: we
have it on American authority; we have 140 million terrorists in our
midst. At the same time, recent BJP losses in state elections both in
Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh have given the hardliners a new urgency and a
new determination. Strike, they have been told, while the BJP still
holds power. Strike to maintain and increase that power. Now is the
moment for dramatic, decisive action…
“The BJP rose to power, as fascists do, through
violence and the threat of more: the Ayodhya demolition signalled its
rapid rise from obscurity, the vision of a state where Hindus rule
supreme continues to excite its ideologues… [M]uscle power – and that
includes the mass burning alive of women and children – can yield
political power.”
III. State-Sponsored Acts of Terrorism, Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
Credible reports have emerged from multiple sources demonstrating that
the almost weeklong stint of bloodthirsty carnage in the state of
Gujarat were government-sponsored. An Editorial in The Hindu
raised some pertinent questions on the failure of the government to
respond promptly and effectively to the escalation of violence: “The
singularly inept and slow response to the scenes of destruction and
death raises disturbing questions about the Gujarat State Government’s
approach…
“True, any
administration will necessarily require some lead-time to react to a
sudden and potentially explosive development. The Narendra Modi [Chief
Minister of Gujarat government] regime however showed little signs of
having come to grips with the situation as late as Thursday evening,
leaving the field absolutely free for rampaging mobs to go about their
‘business’ - looting, pillaging and setting blocks of houses afire at
will - and there appeared to be a clear design behind all the
‘senseless’ violence, going by the targets they had chosen - shops and
houses owned by the minority community in revenge for the Godhra
incident.”
The
Hindu goes on to highlight the probability
that the BJP-backed Gujarat administration deliberately engineered
conditions in which Hindu nationalists could freely rampage through the
state:
“If the law enforcing machinery in
Gujarat has been notoriously politicized and communalized, the fact that
all the current lawlessness that has been unleashed in the name of a VHP-sponsored
‘band’ to protest against the Godhead carnage more than explains the
State BJP regime’s deliberate lack of firmness in containing the orgy of
violence. There has also been an inexplicable delay in calling in the
Army. Such a partisan approach to critical issues of governance like
maintaining public peace and ensuring the security of citizenry will
seriously undermine the legitimacy of the Modi administration.”
An Editorial in the Hindustan Times raises similar
issues, citing reports that the Gujarat police were
intentionally reigned in by the government: “This abdication of
responsibility is also evident from reports that the police
were often passive bystanders during the mayhem perpetrated by
the rioters.”
There are endless examples of this. Luke Harding of The
Guardian highlights the brutal murder of an old Indian
lady, Mrs. Rochomal, in her home by a mob of rioting Hindu
extremists, an atrocity that had occurred with the consent of
local police officials. “Her charred, mutilated corpse lay in
the sunny courtyard, framed by the metal posts of an upturned
bed. It was not just the kerosene that had killed her. The
Hindu mob that poured into her home two days ago had slashed
her twice across the face. They had also cut her throat…
“A few clues hinted at Mrs
Rochomal’s final terrifying hours: a small blue address book was
abandoned next to her Nokia cellphone. She clearly knew what was coming
and had been trying to summon help while hiding in her outside pantry.
The fact that Mrs Rochomal lived 80ft away from a police station reveals
a bleak truth about the violence that has convulsed India over the past
four days: it has been state-sponsored.”
The reality, Harding reports, is not only that “the police made
no effort to hold back the mob”, but the fact that “in certain places
even joined in.” One Muslim resident, Naseem Aktar, in the suburb of
Bapunagar, testified that: “Several policemen without uniforms started
firing guns at us. They killed six or seven people.”
According to other testimonials from “Muslim survivors of
grisly massacres and the unchecked 30-hour orgy of violence and arson”,
“the police simply stood by, or in some cases even encouraged the
rioters as they went on the rampage, burning entire families to death in
their homes.” Sakina Inayat Sajid, who lost six of her family and whose
husband is missing, narrated from her hospital bed how “The police
actively supported the rioters, almost as if they were accompanying
them.” The few policemen she pleaded with for help in Shehajpuri Patia
told her to “go and die elsewhere.” However, all exit points had been
surrounded by mobs armed with swords, iron rods, acid and paraffin.
Yet other testimonials are cited by Ananova News Service, which
reports that:
“A girl
has described how police slapped her mother and called her names when
she pleaded with them for protection in the Gujarat riots. She says
police stood by and watched as the mob hurled homemade bombs at shops
and beat the Muslim residents with sticks... ‘Instead of protecting us,
they were supporting the mob’, said one man in Ahmadabad.”
The
Gujarat government has even incriminated itself in its own
public statements and actions, with regards to its increasingly
blatant role in sponsoring acts of genocide. The Independent,
for instance, reports that: “After the killing of 58 Hindus in
a train last Wednesday, the event that ignited the violence,
Gujarat’s Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, quickly announced
compensation of 200,000 rupees, about Ł3,000, to the bereaved
families…
“Hundreds of Muslims have
died since, but there is no word of compensation for them. Mr Modi
endorsed the VHP’s call for a strike last Friday, his official nod to
the ensuing bloodbath. The police have stood idly by while the mob did
its work; sometimes, victims allege, they actively led the violence.”
Chief Minister Modi had also described the initial
train-burning event as “an organized terrorist attack” –
despite the official police reports confirming that the event
could have been an accident, and that it is unclear whether the
perpetrators had been Hindus or Muslims. Modi additionally
indicated the government’s tacit endorsement of the mass
killings of Muslims by Hindi nationalists in a public
statement: “I believe that the reaction is that of restraint
compared to what the terrorists did in Godhra.”
In an interview with the BBC, Modi praised the response of the
authorities – that had stalled the deployment of army and
police effectively granting Hindu rioters a free reign in the
state – and further lauded police measures, although numerable
sources confirm that the police deliberately ignored the
violence or otherwise actively participated in it. Indeed, he
went so far as to describe “his government’s response as a
success story. He said that he was not happy about what had
happened in Gujarat but he was happy about the response of the
authorities and defended the police, saying they had done
excellent work.”
In the
aftermath of the violence, senior Indian police officials have
written and filed reports implicating government officials in
direct participation in the violence against members of the
Muslim minority community. Called “First Information Reports”
or FIRs, the documents are the first stage in an Indian
criminal investigation. The Associated Press records that:
“Police say a local leader of India’s governing party and
officials from a Hindu nationalist group linked to it led mobs
that burned to death 107 Muslims during religious riots...
“Police reports obtained by
The Associated Press on Tuesday named several important figures in two
attacks in the city of Ahmadabad... Police officers wrote and filed the
reports on Sunday in the neighborhood of Naroda, where 65 Muslims were
burned to death as they slept by Hindus who set the slum on fire Friday
morning; and in Meghaninagar, where thousands of Hindus burned to death
42 Muslims in their homes Thursday night.”
None of
the men accused in the reports could be contacted for comment
by the Associated Press. Deputy Police Commissioner P. B.
Gondya clarified that they had been avoiding police attempts to
question them. According to one report by Kirit Erda, senior
inspector-in-charge of the Meghaninagar police station, nine
people including local Bharatiya Janata Party leader Deepak
Patel headed Hindus who burned to death 42 people, including
former Parliament member Ahsan Jaffrey, in the Muslim
residential area known as Gulbarg Society in Meghaninagar.
“These persons, armed with weapons, led a mob of 20,000 to
22,000, which attacked Gulbarg Society and set it ablaze… They
first burned to death 18 residents and later burned 24 more
persons in the same place.” A separate report on the Naroda
killings, by N. T. Bala, an assistant police sub-inspector,
blamed members of the World Hindu Council, closely linked to
the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which leads the Indian and
Gujarat state governments. “The carnage at Naroda Patia was the
handiwork of a mob of 6,000, which was led by Babu Bajrangji,
Kishan Kosani, T.J. Rajput, Harish Rohit and Raju Goyal… These
people, possessing deadly weapons, led the mob of about 6,000,
all belonging to the Hindu community.” The report details how
the mob set fire to 24 homes, killing the 65 Muslims inside.
Further reports have surfaced corroborating
the above. Testimonials from Indian intelligence officials
confirm that both the central and local governments
deliberately stalled the deployment of army units to allow
Hindu rioters to escalate atrocities against the Muslim
minority. The small number that were deployed received
high-level instructions to avoid areas of rioting, to allow
Hindu mobs to carry out acts of violence, and to only display
themselves publicly in areas where members of the Muslim
community had already been forcefully expelled. The London
Telegraph reported that: “Intelligence officials [in India]
admitted, however, that there had been a deliberate delay by
federal and state governments in deploying the army to give
Hindu militants a free hand after a Muslim mob killed 58 Hindus
on a train…
“The air force had 13 transport aircraft fuelled and
ready at Jodhpur in neighbouring Rajasthan state to ferry troops to
Ahmedabad, early on Thursday evening, when the rioting was at its
height. ‘But for an inexplicable reason, even though it was apparent
that the state police were proving incapable, 1,000 troops were flown
out only the next morning,’ said a senior military officer.
“On arriving in Ahmedabad, scene of the worst
violence, the soldiers were not provided with transport, information on
communally sensitive areas or guides. ‘When the army was eventually
deployed on Friday evening it was not taken to the trouble spots, but
merely asked to display itself in areas from which the Muslims had
already fled,’ a security officer said. ‘It was a calculated decision by
the state’s Hindu nationalist government.’
“Intelligence officials admitted that a ‘systems
failure’, prompted by politicians, allowed the rioting to continue. They
said some police connived and, at times, even helped Hindu mobs.”
In light of the mounting evidence of
high-level state-complicity in the bloodshed, numerous
prominent Indian citizens - including politicians, religious
leaders, journalists and human rights activists - have spoken
out against the government, accusing it of sponsoring acts of
terrorism and genocide. According to the Times of India,
the Indian Congress charged the BJP government with resorting
to “state terrorism” during the period. A day later, prominent
Indian citizens accused the administration of “conniving with
fundmentalist forces of the majority community in brutalising
the minorities.” In a joint appeal to President
K. R. Narayanan and Prime Minister
Atal Bihari Vajpayee, prominent citizens including former Union
Minister Y. K. Alagh concluded that:
“The state
connived with fundamentalist forces of the majority community, that is
brutalising and vandalising the minority community... In fact, the state
took the view that the anger of the majority community was natural and
backlash was obvious... [The state] abdicated its most primary
responsibility of being objective protector of all citizens.”
The
appeal was drafted during a conference of at least 300 prominent
citizens at
Sabarmati Ashram.
Shamsul Islam, an Indian journalist and activist who has spent
his life bringing the Hindu and Muslim communities together through
street theatre projects, forwarded an email from the India Centre for
Human Rights and Law to Indian journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown of the
London Independent: “We have been in touch with friends in
Gujarat. The situation against minorities is completely out of control.
The police are actively involved in perpetrating violence against the
Muslims. At the moment there is a situation of state sponsored
genocide.”
Former
Indian Prime Minister H. D. Deve Gowda demanded the dismissal of the
local Gujarat government under Narendra Modi, and condemned the central
government, characterising the widespread violence as “state sponsored
terrorism”. Gowda, who returned to the city
after taking oath as a Lok Sabha member, following his victory in the
Kanakapura by-poll, criticised both local and central government,
asserting that “both have failed to protect communal harmony.”
A top
Hindu religious leader similarly described the anti-Muslim
riots as “state terrorism” and demanded that the organisation
behind the violence be banned. Shankaracharya Shri Aadhog
Shajananda of Shri Govardhan Math, issued a statement that:
“Whatever happened in Godhara on Wednesday is highly
condemnable and barbaric. Subsequent mob attacks all over
Gujarat on minorities and their properties with direct
assistance of VHP office-bearers and police on Thursday is
still more saddening as it could be termed as state terrorism.”
The Hindu pontiff expressed incredulity at the Gujarat
government’s failure to uphold the rule of law, noting that the
failure was a deliberate result of “political thinking” on the
part of the World Hindu Council (VHP) and its governmental
ally, the BJP:
“Provocative
actions of VHP in the pious name of tolerance-oriented Hindu religion is
the root cause of it. Should VHP be allowed to denigrate the world
renowned Vedic philosophy and Hindu culture just because their fraternal
political organ, BJP, has started loosing power in various states?…
Gujarat is burning in communal riots and if VHP and similar
organizations are not checked immediately the country would start
burning and unfortunately there is no good political leader whose advice
would be listened then. As such for the sake of unity and communal
harmony and in order to save Hindu religion from further denigration VHP
should be banned, like SIMI, and all their so-called leaders and
activists should be arrested forthwith under National Security Act.”
The
Hindu pontiff further referred to and condemned the BJP’s continuing
covert support of the World Hindu Council (VHP).
Testimonials from the survivors of the massacre and journalists
on the scene indicate that a fundamental objective of the
violence has been to drive out the entire Muslim minority from
India. Many of the Hindu rioters openly declared their intent
to force their Muslim neighbours to flee to Pakistan where they
should, it was suggested, permanently reside. Harding reports
that: “The violence in Gujarat - which has been encouraged by
the state’s Hindu nationalist government - amounts to nothing
less than religious cleansing.” A stream of homeless Muslims,
he notes, have been steadily pouring into the Muslim-dominated
village of Savala, which is relatively safe from the Hindu mobs
active throughout the surrounding countryside. “For centuries
Hindus and Muslims in the fertile western state of Gujarat have
lived alongside each other in the same villages. They have
shared land, water pumps - and cups of tea. But in areas where
Muslims are in a minority they are now leaving, moving to
communities such as Savala which are rapidly becoming Muslim
ghettoes…
“‘Our Hindu neighbours told
us we should go to Pakistan. But we are Indian. India is our country. It
is our motherland. We are faithful to our country and we don’t want to
leave’, SS Pathan, a teacher, explained… It is clear that Gujarat’s
ultra-rightwing chief minister, Narendra Modi, would like his Muslim
minority to disappear, though it is not clear where he expects them to
go. Last week Mr Modi instructed his police force to turn a blind eye to
the anti-Muslim violence that began in Ahmedabad, the state’s main city,
then rapidly spread to rural areas… In some places, including Savala,
the police even coordinated the destruction. A large group of local
Hindus advanced on Savala on Friday afternoon, accompanied by six police
officers. They set light to the village's outlying mustard fields, its
main source of income. The police prevented Savala’s farmers from
intervening by shooting at them, injuring a youth in the hand. Two
goatherds who made the mistake of taking their flock to the edge of the
village were seized and then stabbed to death.”
The reason for
the BJP’s sponsoring of the violence are depressingly familiar. The
party is attempting to consolidate its power in the wake of its flagging
popularity by revitalising its principal base of support in the neo-facist
distortions of Hindu nationalism: “… there are many within [the]
Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) who believe that communal violence is now
the only way of reviving the party’s flagging electoral fortunes,
following its comprehensive drubbing last month at the polls in the
northern state of Uttar Pradesh.”
Unsurprisingly, the government has attempted to ensure that its
own sordid role in the genocidal massacre and ethnic cleansing
of tens of thousands of members of the Muslim minority
community does not come to light through an official inquiry.
The Times of India candidly observes that: “The ruling
BJP government in Gujarat is in no mood to extend the terms of
reference of the proposed judicial inquiry commission into the
Godhra train incident to its bloody aftermath all over
Gujarat...
“At least
one of the judges approached by Modi is understood to have asked the
chief minister clearly whether the riots after the Godhra incident would
also be covered by the inquiry commission. The reply was in the
negative... Aspects like the BJP’s support to the VHP’s bandh on
Thursday, the soft approach towards the rioters on the first two days
and the slugging reaction of the entire administration were best probed
by the judiciary. And that’s precisely why the Modi government does not
want an all-encompassing judicial probe to open a can of worms which
will explode in its face.”
V. The Seeds of Hindu-Muslim Communal Conflict and Tension
It is
neither possible to fully comprehend the most recent crisis, nor to
offer solutions for the crisis, without taking into account its historic
roots. To understand the causes of the current conflict, it is essential
to take note of its wider religious and social context in the history of
communal tension between Hindus and Muslims in India. There are
approximately 112 million Muslims in India, comprising the country’s
largest minority and representing 11 percent of the country’s population
of 984 million. Hindus retain the majority, forming eighty-three percent
of India’s religious followers. The Muslim incursions into the Indian
subcontinent occurred during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, marking
the beginning of the dominance of Islam that continued until the
consolidation of British colonial rule in the eighteenth century. Under
the Mughal rulers, beginning in the sixteenth century, Islam became
particularly dominant in the traditional northern Hindu heartland. But
Mughal leaders generally did not seek to impose their religious beliefs
upon the Hindu population, and maintained freedom of religion.
According to the ‘Minorities at Risk’ Project of the Center for
International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM) at
the University of Maryland, Hindu-Muslim conflict and hostility
was introduced by the British Empire in an effort to
consolidate control over the subcontinent: “The imposition of
colonial rule on the subcontinent fuelled animosity and open
conflict between the Hindu and Muslim communities…
“Following
on the heels of the decline of Mughal power, the British often utilized
‘divide and rule’ tactics in order to maintain their governance over the
vast area. For example, the British largely employed Hindus as civil
servants. This meant that the Muslims were unable to effectively benefit
from educational or economic opportunities.”
In essence, the Hindu-Muslim conflict has
existed in earnest since this time. Indeed, the colonial
manufacture of religio-communal tension between Hindus and
Muslims in India, with the purpose of weakening indigenous
opposition to British rule, directly contributed to the
entrenchment of mistrust, hatred and fear between the two
communities. Lord Curzon, Governor General of India (1895-99)
and Viceroy (1899-1904) was told by the British Secretary of
State for India, George Francis Hamilton, that they “should so
plan the educational text books that the differences between
community and community are further strengthened.” Another
Viceroy, Lord Dufferin (1884-88), was advised by the Secretary
of State in London that the “division of religious feelings is
greatly to our advantage”, and that he expected “some good as a
result of your committee of inquiry on Indian education and on
teaching material.” Yet another Viceroy, Lord Elgin (1862-63),
was reminded by the Secretary of State for India that: “We have
maintained our power in India by playing-off one part against
the other, and we must continue to do so. Do all you can,
therefore, to prevent all having a common feeling.”
The history of Muslim rule in India, which
lasted for almost 1000 years, was falsified by British writers
in the colonial era with the view to deliberately provoke
antagonism between Hindus and Muslims. British historian Sir
Henry Elliot, for instance, had wondered why it was that Hindus
“had not left any account which could enable us to gauge the
traumatic impact the Muslim conquest and rule had on them.”
Since there was no such account, Elliot went on to produce his
own eight-volume History of India (1867), wherein Hindus
were allegedly slain for disputing with “Muhammedans”, largely
prohibited from worshipping and otherwise practicing their
faith, forced into conversions and marriages, their temples
destroyed, and massacred by Muslim tyrants. Scores of other
scholars writing on behalf of the consolidation of the British
Empire went on to produce a history of India in which Muslims
and Hindus were pitted against one another.
However, the noted Indian scholar and historian, Dr Bishambhar Nath
Pande, records that the history “originally compiled by European
writers” had as its main objective to serve the colonial policy of
divide and rule. In his famous Khuda Bakhsh Annual Lecture (1985), Dr.
Pande observed:
“Thus under a definite policy the
Indian history books text-books were so falsified and distorted as to
give an impression that the medieval [i.e. Muslim] period of Indian
history was full of atrocities committed by Muslim rulers on their Hindu
subjects and the Hindus had to suffer terrible indignities under Muslim
rule. And there were no common factors [between Hindus and Muslims] in
social, political and economic life.”
Dr.
Pande’s meticulous research was crucial in uncovering how the myth of
the mass persecution of Hindus under the sanction of Muslim rule was
propagated by British historians in the service of the colonial Empire
without justification, and subsequently repeated uncritically by Hindu
historians.
The growing Hindu-Muslim divide that
developed thereafter as the colonia era was ending, was
therefore a direct consequence of British policy during that
era. Early in the twentieth century, Muslims began to mobilise
to ensure their rights. By the 1930s, the idea of an
independent Muslim state began to gain wide currency. The upper
caste Hindu domination of the Congress Party was the main force
seeking independence from British colonial rule, and this
exacerbated Muslims fears of discrimination in a Hindu
post-colonial state. The Muslim League led by Mohammad Ali
Jinnah sought to ensure that Muslims would not be overwhelmed
in such a state. Growing tensions led many observers to believe
by the end of the Second World War, that the partition of the
Indian subcontinent was inevitable. Escalating Hindu-Muslim
violence continued until the independent states of India and
Pakistan were created in 1947. Over one million people died
during the period leading up to partition, during which one of
the largest population transfers in history occurred as many
Muslims left India to reside in Pakistan while Hindus moved to
India.
The
British government decided to dismantle the Raj because it feared
further attempts to hold India by force would be increasingly costly in
terms of both manpower and funds, and furthermore, increasingly
unviable. It had become clear that the Indian National Congress (INC),
the principal nationalist party propped up under British rule, was less
and less able to contain worker, peasant and student discontent.
Beginning with the Non-Co-operation movement of 1920-22 under the
charismatic leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, the Congress party mobilised
the poverty-stricken masses to pressure the British to grant home rule.
The 1942 movement for Indian independence had rapidly assumed an almost
semi-insurrectionary character. Post-war India was wracked by strikes,
peasant unrest and mass demonstrations against British rule.
British
responsibility for the chaos, violence and mass deaths that accompanied
the process of partition is thus unequivocal. The British had wanted to
move out of India as quickly as possible to avoid economic losses, being
fully aware that direct control over the subcontinent could not be
maintained for much longer without such losses. As a consequence, the
government did not take the care to ensure that partition - which itself
was the culmination of a Hindu-Muslim schism introduced by the British
Empire in the first place – occurred in a peaceful manner with full
agreement from both parties. Instead, the British colonial government
pressured both sides into agreeing to a hasty partition. At the end of
the Second World War, the United Kingdom moved with increasing urgency
to grant India independence as mass protests and opposition to British
rule grew with escalating fervour. However, the Congress Party and the
Muslim League, representing respectively the clashing Hindu and Muslim
communities, could not agree on the terms for a constitution or a
prospective interim government. In June 1947, the British Government
declared that it would bestow full dominion status upon two successor
states - India and Pakistan. The
overall result of this British escapade was a million dead, and several
million expelled from their homes. Professor of History Francis Robinson
of the University of London records:
“For the British it [i.e. partition] was a
regrettable necessity. They did not have the power to impose a solution
on their Indian empire which left it unified; partition came to be the
only way in which they could extract themselves from a commitment which
they could no longer afford… A Labour Government in Britain was keen to
leave india as fast as possible; every extra day that British troops
remained added to British debt. In February 1947 Mountbatten was sent
out as Viceroy with a brief to pressure the politicians into agreement.
Mountbatten quickly saw that Britain could only withdraw by transferring
power not to one government, but to two.”
As
partition was subsequently hastily imposed under British
eagerness to extract itself, millions of Muslims in India left
their homes to settle in Pakistan, and millions of Hindus and
Sikhs left Pakistan for new homes in India. A million Hindus,
Muslims and Sikhs perished in the consequent partition riots
and mass expulsions of 1947-48, while 14 million people were
uprooted from their homes. The wounds from partition are still
felt in both nations – India and Pakistan - and continue to
affect the political relations between and within them.
Within India,
distrust and hostility between the Hindu majority and Muslim minority
communities – the ongoing legacy of British imperialism – continues to
contribute to civil conflict. The CIDCM’s ‘Minorities at Risk’ Project
records that: “The Muslims that remained in India are in a precarious
position. Although many have resided in the area known as India for
centuries, they are often viewed with suspicion and considered as
‘anti-Indian’ by the majority Hindu community…
“Under the Constitution, Muslims are not provided
with reservations in political office, employment, and education as is
the case with other minorities like the Scheduled Tribes. In the early
1980s, Muslims only formed 1.5% of officers and 1% of the clerks in the
Indian civil service and under 2% of the army officer corps. Muslims
remain largely concentrated in small businesses, artisanship, fishing,
and unskilled work… During the 1980s, a number of conflicts between the
Hindu and Muslim communities increased communal tensions. In 1987, for
instance, several hundred Muslims were killed at Meerut by police
forces, raising charges of discriminatory police treatment.”
Indeed, in the latter half of the twentieth
century, the rise of Hindu fundamentalism and nationalism has
increased communal tensions, pitting the Hindu community in
confrontation not only with the Muslim minority, but also with
Christian and Sikh minorities.
VI. The BJP and the Rise of Informal “Hidden Apartheid”
Violence and communal strife have defined the
relationship between Hindus and Muslims since partition. The religious
conflict between the two communities has been perpetuated by numerous
occurrences and issues over the last decade in India. At the heart of
the present-day dispute is the 1992 demolition of the Babri mosque in
Ayodhya, in North-central India. Hindu fundamentalist parties such as
the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Shiv Sena contend – without
scriptural basis or historical evidence it should be noted - that the
mosque was located on the birthplace of Ram, who is an incarnation of a
Hindu god, and that a Ram temple was torn down in order to construct the
mosque on the same site a couple of centuries ago. Acting on their
beliefs, a mob of Hindu zealots stormed the mosque in 1992 and reduced
the eighteenth century building to a pile of rubble. The destruction
touched off Hindu-Muslim rioting across the country that resulted in the
killing of 3,000 civilians.
A 1998 judicial commission of inquiry found that
the Shiv Sena - a member party of India’s governing BJP-dominated
coalition and the dominant partner in the two-party alliance that rules
the state of Maharashtra - fomented and organised communal riots in
Bombay in January 1993 that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of
Muslims. According to the final report of commissioner Justice B. N.
Srikrishna, Shiv Sena members led attacks on Muslims and Muslim-owned
properties at the instigation of the party’s top leaders. Justice
Srikrishna concluded that the party’s leader Bal Thackeray acted “like a
veteran [military] commander.” He ordered Shiva Sena supporters “to
retaliate” for Muslim protests against the December 1992 demolition of
the Babri mosque in Ayodhya with “organized attacks against the
Muslims.”
Srikrishna’s report also lays most of the blame
for the Bombay riot of December 1992 on the Shiv Sena. He finds that the
party goaded Bombay’s Muslim minority into taking to the streets with
provocative “celebrations” of the razing of the Babri Masjid mosque by
Hindu nationalists. Justice Srikrishna also concluded that the December
riot “was anything other than a spontaneous reaction of leaderless and
incensed Muslim mobs, which commenced as peaceful, but soon
degenerated”. However, the January disturbances had followed weeks of
propaganda by the Shiv Sena leadership on the virtue of “retaliation”,
combined with exaggerated reports in its newspaper of Hindu casualties
in the December riots. The Shiv Sena (literally, the army of Shivaji, a
17th century Marathi warrior-king) is a pseudo-Hindu organisation
patterned after the fascist Rashtra Swayamsewak Sangh. For both
ideological and political reasons, the Shiv Sena is a close ally of the
BJP, the neo-facist pseudo-Hindu party which dominates India’s ruling
coalition.
The Srikrishna report indicts the Shiv Sena for
what is in effect an act of genocide –thousands, mostly Muslims, were
killed in the 1992-93 riots. The commission report also directly
condemns the BJP and the Congress, and finds that the Bombay police
systematically discriminated against Muslims. During the Bombay riots,
Maharashtra’s government, then controlled by the Congress Party,
provided “effete political leadership”, according to Justice Srikrishna.
For four days in January 1993, it failed to take determined action to
stop Shiv Sena-led mobs from rampaging through Muslim areas. On the
other hand, the BJP spearheaded, nationally, the agitation for a Hindu
temple to replace the Babri Masjid mosque, then joined with the Shiv
Sena in Bombay in celebrating its razing. The police used excessive
force against Muslims and systematically refused to register their
complaints against Hindu assailants. Justice Srikrishna’s damning
findings thus confirm that much of the political elite and security
forces in Maharashtra – India’s third largest and most industrialized
state -were complicit in the riots in December 1992 and January 1993.
The BJP played a direct and deliberate role in this complicity.
The BJP is therefore without doubt a party of
the extreme right. It espouses exclusivist mystical ideals of nationhood
couched in key principles of Hindu chauvinism and militarism. Indeed, at
the core of the BJP stands a mass, fascistic organisation associated
over many decades with communal violence - the Rashrtiya Swayamsevak
Sangh (RSS). It was a BJP-RSS campaign for the building of a Hindu
temple in Ayodhya that culminated in the 1992 razing of the Babri
mosque, in defiance of India’s Supreme Court, precipitating the most
extensive communal bloodletting in the post-colonial history of India.
Although the immediate overt objective of the Ayodhya campaign was the
erection of a temple to the Hindu god Ram, for the BJP, the RSS, an
extensive network of RSS-affiliated groups, and the Shiv Sena, the Ram
Rajya mobilization was part of the drive for a radical, but ill-defined
change in the Indian polity - the establishment of Hindu rashtra (or
Hindu rule). According to the Hindu nationalists, transforming India
into a “true Hindu state” will revive the alleged glory of India’s past
and raise her to the status of a superpower in the modern world.
The bond between the BJP and RSS goes beyond
shared objectives and ideology. RSS activists effectively control the
BJP party apparatus and dominate the party’s leading bodies. The two
most important BJP leaders and the two most powerful figures in the
current government, Atal Vajpayee and Home Minister L. K. Advani, are
RSS members and supporters. Advani’s replacement as party president,
Kushabhu Thakre, is a lifelong RSS member. Some 75 percent of the
current BJP executive have RSS roots. Throughout its more than 70-year
existence, the RSS has been associated with communal riots and virulent
pseudo-Hindu chauvinism. The organisation was founded in 1925,
ostensibly to defend the Hindus of Nagpur, one of many Indian cities
that were wracked by communal violence after the collapse of the first
mass mobilization against British rule (the 1920-22 Non-Cooperation
Movement). The RSS first emerged as a mass organisation during the
horrific communal violence surrounding the 1947 partition of the Indian
subcontinent. The group’s neo-facist ideology of Hindu rashtra - that
India is the nation of the Hindus and the Hindus alone comprise the
nation - was developed in opposition to the liberal-democratic program
elaborated by the Congress Party leadership, which maintained that all
Indians, irrespective of ethnicity, religion or caste, should enjoy
equal citizenship rights. The principal ideologues of Hindu rashtra -
the RSS-leader M.S. Golwalkar and V. D. Savarkar (head of a the Hindu
Mahasabha) have made clear in their writings and speeches that Muslims
and Christians are alien groups who in a Hindu nation will enjoy
citizenship rights only at the sufferance of the majority.
The history of the Indian republic has been
characterised by growing social inequality and the ever-increasing
communalisation, caste-ization and regionalisation of politics. Unable
to offer genuine solutions to the prevailing conditions of mass
unemployment, poverty, disease and illiteracy, these groups under the
public mantle of the BJP have dredged up the most retrograde ideologies
to deflect public attention from the failure of their political and
socio-economic programmes, while channeling public frustration in a
reactionary direction.
The principal neo-facist objectives of the BJP
can be discerned from the statements of its current leader, Indian Prime
Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. In a little known article published by
The Organiser, the official organ of the RSS, PM Vajpayee observes:
“The Muslim problem would best be solved by culturally cleansing the
members of the minority community.” Vajpayee cites the demolition of the
historic Babri Mosque in 1992 by Hindu nationalists as an example of
this “cleansing act”, justifying the atrocity by advocating the need for
“Hindu expansion”: “It is a question of self-preservation. If Hindu
society does not expand itself, it will face a crisis of survival.”
But the vehemently anti-Muslim policy of the
Indian government, rooted as it is in the fascisization of Indian
politics under the guise of Hinduism, is merely one prominent dimension
of an increasingly powerful system of discrimination against all
religious minority communities. For all intents and purposes, this
comprehensive albeit informal system of discrimination is a form of
religious, or perhaps more aptly, a pseudo-religious apartheid. As Human
Rights Watch reports:
“The increasing domination of
Hindu nationalism in India’s current political landscape has
dramatically undermined India’s constitutional commitment to secular
democracy. The policies espoused by India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
and its sister organizations, collectively known as the sangh parivar,
have already resulted in much violence against the country’s Christian,
Muslim, and Dalit (‘untouchable’) populations.”
Thus, it comes as no surprise to find that the
Christian minority community has been the victim of discrimination and
violence by Hindu nationalists for years, a situation that is maintained
with the complicity of the government: “Between January 1998 and
February 1999, the Indian Parliament reported a total of 116 incidents
of attacks on Christians across the country…
“Unofficial figures may be
higher. Gujarat topped the list of states with ninety-four such
incidents. Attacks have also been reported in Maharashtra, Kerala,
Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Tamil Nadu,
Karnataka, Manipur, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, and New Delhi. Attacks
on Christians have ranged from violence against the leadership of the
church, including the killing of priests and the raping of nuns, to the
physical destruction of Christian institutions, including schools,
churches, colleges, and cemeteries. Thousands of Christians have also
been forced to convert to Hinduism. A majority of the reported incidents
of violence against Christians in 1998, the same year that the BJP came
to power in the state, occurred in Gujarat.”
These recent attacks, HRW finds, “fall into a
pattern of persistent abuse against marginalised communities.”
Furthermore, they represent “a clear failure on the part of both the
federal and state governments to ensure that such communities enjoy the
full protection of their constitutional rights to freedom of religion
and equal protection under the law.”
But the federal and state
governments have not merely failed, they have actively promoted and
cultivated the rise of a neo-facist pseudo-Hindu ideology that calls for
the Hinduization of India. For instance, in its annual report for 2001,
HRW noted that: “The state governments of Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh
lifted a ban against civil servants joining the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh (National Volunteer Corps, RSS), a sangh parivar member…
“In Gujarat, Delhi, and Orissa, district
administrations conducted surveys to assess the activities and
whereabouts of minority community members and leaders. Meanwhile, the
BJP and its allies continued to implement their agenda for the
‘Hinduization’ of education, mandating Hindu prayers in certain
state-sponsored schools and revising history books to include what
amounted to propaganda against Islamic and Christian communities.”
The mass profusion of this
Hindu supremacist culture, in this manner, has directly created the sort
of climate that is conducive to frequent communal violence. Militant
training camps where the linkage between culture and violence is
institutionalised are tolerated, if not tacitly supported, by the
government. “Throughout the country, over 300,000 training camps, known
as shakhas, are dedicated to recruiting young boys and men and
providing them with extensive physical and ideological training for the
purpose of creating a group of volunteers full of ‘Hindu fervor’ with
military-like discipline.”
Accordingly, HRW explicitly
points out this linkage: “The Hindu nationalist policies espoused by
India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its affiliate
organizations undermined the country’s historical commitment to secular
democracy. Violence against Christian, Muslim, and Dalit, or
‘untouchable’, populations was one result.”
In this context, it is
hardly surprising that official BJP policy culminated directly in the
most recent outbreak of violence in Gujarat in the endorsement of the
call by Hindu nationalists to build a temple to the Hindu god Ram at the
site of the destroyed Babri mosque: “In the hopes of achieving a
comeback victory in elections in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh
scheduled for early next year, the BJP and its allies have amplified
calls to build a temple to the Hindu god Ram at the site of the Babri
Masjid, a mosque in the city of Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh.”
But Christians, Muslims and
other non-Hindu religious minorities are not the only victims of what
may be quite aptly described as a system of informal or hidden
pseudo-religious apartheid. Dalits throughout India, constituting some
160 million people, are denied their basic civil rights because of their
ranks as “untouchables” at the bottom of India’s caste system. The caste
system is once again rooted in the neo-facist strain of pseudo-Hinduism
espoused by the BJP and its allied organisations. Solely due to their
position of ancestry within the caste system, Dalits are discriminated
against, denied access to land, forced to work in degrading conditions,
and routinely abused at the hands of the police and of higher-caste
groups that enjoy the state’s protection. In what has been called
India’s “hidden apartheid” by human rights groups, entire villages in
many Indian states remain completely segregated by caste.
In an extensive 1999 report
on the subject, HRW documents in detail how: “The Indian government has
failed to prevent widespread violence and discrimination against more
than 160 million people at the bottom of the Hindu caste system…
“… [E]ntire villages in many
Indian states remain completely segregated by caste, in what has been
called ‘hidden apartheid’. Untouchables, or Dalits - the name literally
means ‘broken’ people - may not enter the higher-caste sections of
villages, may not use the same wells, wear shoes in the presence of
upper castes, visit the same temples, drink from the same cups in tea
stalls, or lay claim to land that is legally theirs. Dalit children are
frequently made to sit in the back of classrooms. Dalit villagers have
been the victims of many brutal massacres in recent years.
“‘Untouchability’ is not an
ancient cultural artifact, it is human rights abuse on a vast scale’,
said Smita Narula, researcher for the Asia division of Human Rights
Watch and author of the report. ‘The tools for change are in place -
what is lacking is the political will for their implementation.’
“... An estimated forty
million people in India, among them fifteen million children, are bonded
laborers, working in slave-like conditions in order to pay off debts.
The majority of them are Dalits. At least one million Dalits work as
manual scavengers, clearing feces from latrines and disposing of dead
animals with their bare hands. Dalits also comprise the majority of
agricultural laborers who work for a few kilograms of rice, or 15-35
rupees (less than US$1) a day. In India’s southern states, thousands of
Dalit girls are forced to become prostitutes for upper-caste patrons and
village priests before reaching the age of puberty. Landlords and the
police use sexual abuse and other forms of violence against women to
inflict political ‘lessons’ and crush dissent within the community.
Dalit women have been arrested and tortured in custody to punish their
male relatives who are hiding from the authorities...
“In Bihar, high-caste
landlords have organized private militias, or senas, which have killed
Dalit villagers with impunity. Extremist guerrilla groups have
retaliated by killing high-caste villagers, leading to an escalating
cycle of violence... One of the most prominent militias, the Ranvir Sena,
has been responsible for the massacre of more than 400 Dalit villagers
in Bihar between 1995 and 1999. Within a span of three weeks in January
and February 1999, sena members killed 34 Dalit villagers in two
separate attacks... The senas, which claim many politicians as members,
operate with impunity. In some cases, police have accompanied them
during their attacks and have stood by as they killed villagers in their
homes. In other cases, police raids have followed attacks by the senas.
The purpose of the raids is often to terrorize Dalits as a group,
whether or not they are members of guerilla organizations. During the
raids, the police have routinely beaten villagers, sexually assaulted
women, and destroyed property. Sena leaders and police officials have
never been prosecuted for such killings and abuses.
“Dalits throughout the
country also suffer from de facto disenfranchisement. During elections,
Dalits are routinely threatened and beaten by political party strongmen
in order to compel them to vote for certain candidates. Dalits who run
for political office in village councils and municipalities (through
seats that have been constitutionally ‘reserved’ for them) have been
threatened with physical abuse and even death to get them to withdraw
from the campaign... [N]o action has been taken against police officers
involved in violent raids or summary executions, or against those
accused of colluding with private actors to carry out attacks on Dalits.
In many instances, Dalits have repeatedly called for police protection
and been ignored. Even national government agencies concur that impunity
is rampant.”
In its annual Human Rights
Report the European Parliament called upon the European Union to
investigate the extent to which its policies “contribute to the
abolition of caste discrimination and the practice of untouchability in
India” and “to formulate strategies to counter the widespread practice
[of caste discrimination].” The European Parliament also called on the
EU and its member states to ensure that caste discrimination was
properly condemned in the final declaration of the United Nations World
Conference Against Racism that was held in Durban, 2001. Disgracefully,
the final declaration issued at the Conference by UN member states
failed to highlight caste discrimination, and accordingly a subsequent
European Parliamentary resolution expressed regret at this failure. The
reasons for this failure, which illustrates a reluctance on the part of
the leading members of the international community to properly highlight
and condemn India’s human rights abuses, are rooted in the strategic
and economic interests that these members have in the South Asian
republic under the leadership of the neo-facist BJP regime.
VI. India’s Open Door, ENRON-ization and International Support of Neo-Fascism
In 1991, the Indian
government headed by P. V. Narsimha Rao adopted the policy of “economic
liberalization” with the aim of bringing prosperity to the country.
Billions of U.S. dollars worth of foreign investment have subsequently
been inputted into India. The BJP regime in recent years has spearheaded
the process of “liberalization” to the delight of leading members of the
international community who have been eager to find opportunities to
invest in the country. Economic liberalization under the BJP has, in
fact, meant that virtually the entire country is up for grabs by foreign
corporations. Business Week reported in March 2000, for example,
that: “The ruling BJP is making good on its promises…
“The government has pledged for the
first time to allow foreigners to own 100% of local businesses in many
industries and to lift restrictions on venture capital... Officials
figure that just by allowing 100% foreign ownership, they will increase
investments to $10 billion per year, up from $3 billion now. New Delhi
is also considering opening the telecom sector to foreign interests.”
Consequently, Business
Week showered lavish praise on the BJP regime: “So is India’s ruling
Bharatiya Janata Party turning into India’s most progressive, reformist
government ever? Perhaps. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee is a
popular leader, and there’s little resistance from the enfeebled
opposition Congress Party.”
But increasing foreign investment to the neo-facist regime has only
served to consolidate its power and embolden its repressive policies.
While propping up the wealthy Indian elite tied to the BJP government
and associated organisations, it has steadily escalated the scale of
impoverishment and deprivation throughout the country while providing
lucrative profits for foreign investors. G. D. Jasuja, Managing Editor
of a monthly periodical published by Indian Industrial & Management
Services – who has 20 years experience in R&D, marketing and India’s
textile industry – records in an Editorial for the online Indian
magazine Our India that: “… foreign investment worth billions of US$ has
been made in the country but all this has only resulted into more
poverty. The rural poverty has increased from 32 percent to 40 percent,
and in States like Bihar, Maharashtra, Karnataka and UP, the poor have
become poorer…
“The
economic liberalisation policy has only helped the rich, who already had
the infrastructure and resources, to corner huge sums of money without
creating more job opportunities. The employment level has, therefore,
gone down during all these years of liberalisation. Thousands of
industrial units are lying closed, rendering millions of workers
jobless. The new ventures are all going for very high tech projects,
having a high degree of automation requiring minimal labour requirement.
Every entrepreneur wishes to work with least labour component. As a
result of all this the overall employment scenario has become very
grim... India has an annual GDP of $300 billion, vast natural resources,
and as many highly educated, skilled middle-class citizens as the total
U.S. population. For almost half a century, India’s GDP grew by an
average of less than 4 percent a year…
“In India,
the share of unemployed within the labour force is gradually on the
rise, from 4.3 percent in 1991 to 5.5 percent in 1995. In the last two
years, unemployment definitely must have gone up as the labour content
of production has been declining. With employment opportunities
stagnating and simultaneous growth in population, unemployment would
naturally rise steadily. The Planning Commission of India has estimated
that the labour force between the ages of 15 and 59 years would rise
from 294.6 million in 1992 to 393.02 million in 2007. Creating jobs for
them would really be a difficult task... The high rate of unemployment
is a direct consequence of the new path of economic liberalisation, or
the so-called, economic development. In the process of improving
productivity, updating equipment and upgrading technology for
modernisation, and of course for profit maximisation, they resort to
laying off workforce making industrialisation or the modernisation a
curse for these workers.”
But the increasing control
of India’s resources by giant Western-based transnational corporations
is not merely contributing to the repression of an entire population
through the systematic generation of poverty, but in many cases
contributing directly to government-sponsored discrimination and
violence. The case of the now collapsed U.S. energy giant ENRON provides
a little known example of how one Western government – the United States
– through the ENRON corporation, supported state-sanctioned acts of
discrimination, human rights abuses and violence in order to consolidate
its control over Indian resources.
The example of ENRON is
pertinent mainly because, as the BBC reports: “The Enron project is the
single largest foreign investment in India and was once seen as the
showpiece of India’s committment to globalisation and economic reforms.”
But in a 166-page report based on a year long investigation issued in
1999 the New York-based international rights monitor Human Rights Watch
documented how ENRON’s subsidiary company Dabhol Power Corporation,
“employs security forces who routinely beat and harass people
demonstrating peacefully against the power plant. The report charges
that Dabhol has indirectly benefitted from other repressive government
actions aimed at quelling opposition to the plant, which is the largest
single foreign investment in India and the largest private power project
in the world…
“The project is a joint-venture of
three U.S. companies - the Houston-based Enron Corporation which is the
principal shareholder and operator; General Electric; and Bechtel - and
the Maharashtra State Electricity Board. The report documents how Indian
authorities have misused Indian law to charge peaceful demonstrators
with serious crimes. Meanwhile, the U.S. government and its
Export-Import Bank, which have both vigorously promoted Enron’s
investment in India, have failed to address the human rights questions
that they are obliged to investigate.”
Local opposition to the
ENRON project began in 1992 over concerns about the lack of
transparency, the abundance of corruption, and the hasty negotiations
over the terms of ENRON’s investment. Since then, mass protests erupted
over local farmers’ complaints that the ENRON power plant had stolen
their land and diverted scarce water for its needs. Fishermen protested
over fears that when power generation began in March 1999, effluents
would cause a rise in seawater temperatures, killing off their fish
harvests. The BJP regime, with ENRON complicity, responded with brutal
repression in an effort to crackdown on growing indigenous opposition.
In one instance in June
1997, for instance, “Maharashtra police raided a fishing village where
many residents opposed the power plant…
“They arbitrarily beat and arrested
dozens of villagers, including Sadhana Bhalekar, the wife of a
well-known protester against the plant. They broke down the door and
window of Bhalekar’s bathroom and dragged her naked out into the street,
beating her with batons. Bhalekar was three months pregnant at the time.
In another instance in May 1997, police beat and arrested nearly 180
protesters who were demonstrating peacefully oustide the company gates.
In its investigation, Human Rights Watch documented thirty similar
incidents and heard allegations of many more.”
Among HRW’s damning
findings was the fact that Indian state security forces that had carried
out such acts of violence were on the ENRON payroll, through its Dabhol
subsidiary. “[C]ontractors for the Dabhol Power Corporation harassed and
attacked individuals opposed to the power plant,” observed the U.S.
rights group. “Police refused to investigate complaints, and in several
cases, actually arrested the victims on trumped-up charges…
“The Dabhol Power Corporation,
under provisions of law, paid the abusive state forces for the security
they provided to the company. These forces, located adjacent to the
project site, were stationed there largely for the purpose of dealing
with protests. While they report to local police, their expenses are
paid by the company.”
The U.S. government, it
appears, was well aware of ENRON’s activities in alliance with the neo-facist
BJP regime, but was also eager to follow through with the project in
light of massive prospective profits: “The U.S. government bears special
responsibility because of its aggressive lobbying on behalf of the three
U.S.-based companies developing the project, and because it extended
hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds for the project while
seemingly indifferent to human rights-related policies that apply to
such transactions.” Indeed, despite extensive coverage of the human
rights abuses around the power plant in the Indian press, U.S. officials
turned a blind eye. As if to reward the corporation for its policies,
ENRON managed to receive between $290 million and $300 million in U.S.
government loan guarantees for its investment in Dabhol. The State
Department’s entire assessment for one Export-Import Bank loan read:
“The State Department has no objection to this case on political grounds
or on the basis of human rights issues.” By U.S. law, an assessment of
relevant human rights connections is essential before loan guarantees
can be extended. Clearly, the human rights of the Indian people are an
irrelevance. Far more important are profits for U.S. corporate
investors.
This was particularly well
illustrated in the response of the U.S. ambassador to India in the
mid-1990s, Frank Wisner, in an interview with an HRW representative.
When asked about human rights abuses occurring with ENRON’s complicity,
U.S. Ambassador Wisner replied: “I have never seen any information on
human rights violations related to Dabhol.” A few months after he
resigned from his post in India, on 28th October 1997,
Ambassador Wisner joined the Board of Directors of Enron Oil and Gas, a
subsidiary of the Enron Corporation.
Thus, in the conclusions
of its report, The Enron Corporation: Corporate Complicity in Human
Rights Violations, HRW stated that: “… the Dabhol Power Corporation
and its parent company Enron are complicit in these human rights
violations. Enron’s local entity, the Dabhol Power Corporation,
benefited directly from an official policy of suppressing dissent
through misuse of the law, harassment of anti-Enron protest leaders and
prominent environmental activists, and police practices ranging from
arbitrary to brutal. The company did not speak out about human rights
violations and, when questioned about them, chose to dismiss them
altogether…
“But the Dabhol Power Corporation’s
responsibility, and by extension that of the consortium and principally
Enron, goes beyond a failure to speak out about human rights violations
by the state police. The company, under provisions of law, paid the
abusive state forces for the security they provided to the company.
These forces, located adjacent to the project site, were only stationed
there to deal with protests. In addition, contractors (for DPC) engaged
in a pattern of harassment, intimidation, and attacks on individuals
opposed to the Dabhol Power project... U.S. government agencies that
financed and lobbied for the project are complicit in the human rights
violations. In particular, the U.S. government bears special
responsibility because of its aggressive lobbying on behalf of the three
U.S.-based companies developing the project and because it extended
hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds for the project while
seemingly indifferent to human rights-related conditionalities that
apply to such transactions.”
Of particular note is the
fact that the example of ENRON is only one of out many cases of
corporate complicity in human rights violations around the world,
occurring with impunity and moreover with the sponsorship of both
Western governments and the regional government in receipt of
investment. In the introduction to its report, HRW takes note of the
fact that “in an interconnected world where very large and influential
transnational corporations compete for finite resources and new markets,
human rights and trade are increasingly intertwined…
“Companies that trade in essential commodities - oil,
gas, or electricity - exemplify this phenomenon. In recent years, the
energy industry has been embroiled in controversy because of its alleged
involvement in situations of human rights violations throughout the
world. Some high-profile examples are Royal Dutch/Shell’s operations in
Nigeria; British Petroleum’s development of the Cusiana-Cupiagua oil
fields in Colombia; and alleged human rights violations that occurred
during Total and Unocal’s construction of the Yadana gas pipeline in
Burma and Thailand.”
The case of ENRON is
therefore representative of a much wider Western foreign policy toward
the dependent countries of the Third World. The international
community’s shameless complicity in the consolidation of repression and
impoverishment in India under the neo-facist rule of the BJP government
poses an unrelenting indictment of the international community’s alleged
adherence to democratic and humanitarian norms. Moreover, this is not an
isolated case, but the manifestation of a deliberate, systematic global
policy of indifference to human rights, unimpeded access to regional
resources, and corporate hunger for profits at any human price. In
pursuing this policy, and in actively supporting regional human rights
abuses in the process, leading Western governments have cultivated a
climate of routine repression imposed to prop up regimes that suit
Western interests while simultaneously consolidating their power through
sponsoring acts of violence with impunity. What has happened, and is
happening in India, is thus representative of an entire tradition of
policy combining Western corporate profiteering with Third World facism.
Notes:
Dr. Bishambhar Nath
Pande was born on 23 December 1906 in the Madhya Pradesh of Umreth. He
was member UP Legislative Assembly (1952-53); member UP Legislative
Council (1972-74); twice member of the upper house, Rajya Sabha (1976
and 1982); Governor of Orissa state (1983-88); recipient of the
highest national award Padma Shri (1976); and author of several highly
acclaimned books, including The Spirit of India and The
Concise History of Congress. He died in New Delhi, 1 June 1998.
Mr. Nafeez Ahmed is a
political analyst and human rights activist based in London. He is
Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and a
Researcher at the Islamic Human Rights
Commission.
Source:
by courtesy & ©
2002
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
by the same author:
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