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Reflections From the Trip to Gujarat, Delhi, and Other State Capitals in India:
September 6-24, 2002
P.D. John, was invited to be a part of the delegation from the US to India, to visit the State of Gujarat, in western India where a devastating religious pogrom took place. The
delegation visited the state and other places from September 6 through 25th
2002. The interfaith delegation visited the state on a goodwill mission to try to bring peace and understanding between different religious communities in the affected region. P.D. John represented the US Indian Christian community along with two others, in the interfaith delegation.
Following is the partial report of the trip.
Some of the findings of the team are not included here, since the purpose of the team was not the fact-finding but rather to create understanding and peace between the religious communities.
Foreword:
We are a delegation of Non Resident Indians (NRIs), representing various religious backgrounds and organizations from the U.S.,
who went to India on a non-partisan humanitarian mission, to see for ourselves the aftermath of the Gujarat carnage. We went there to listen, and to learn about what we can do to support initiatives for communal
harmony. We met a wide cross section of civil society, including the victims of the unprecedented violence; NGOs who have been caring for them; and other citizen's groups, businessmen, religious leaders, politicians
and the media.
As ruling party officials in Gujarat and New Delhi declined to meet with us, we could only meet with the opposition parties. We conveyed to them our views on the desperate humanitarian
situation in Gujarat, and challenged them on how they would rule differently should they return to power. We presented our observations and recommendations in a memorandum to the President of India, A.P.J. Abdul
Kalam, at the Rashtrapathi Bhavan on September 12. We met leaders of many political parties and intellectuals. We met the Chief Minister of the state of Andhra Pradesh, Mr. Chandrababu Naidu, on September 23, and
urged him to use his influence in New Delhi to bring some hope to those who are still being victimized in Gujarat.
Most of us are now back in the U.S. to share our experiences with others; to raise awareness
in the American Indian community about the dangers of continued silence about the break-down of the rule of law in Gujarat; and to raise funds for the rehabilitation of the victims. Some of us plan to spend more
time in India to pursue individual actions in support of communal harmony.
We have prepared this write-up for our friends, and others who care about what is happening in Gujarat, to give them a sense of what
we saw and heard. Our observations are based on notes and recollections by some of us, and do not necessarily represent the collective view of this diverse delegation. Where possible, we have included a Q & A
format, representing the general thrust of our conversations with our hosts (not direct quotes).
The Victims:
"Five crore(50 Million) Gujaratis have been affected by the violence,"
declared our team leader in a press conference in Ahmedabad. Some of the journalists were incredulous--they were quite sure that he had his numbers wrong. He hastened to explain: "Yes, we think that every
Gujarati--Muslim, Hindu, Parsi and Christian--is a victim today."
Victims of the violence
We had heard of the severe strains that the economy of Gujarat was going through--especially in
foreign direct investment, the hospitality sector, transportation, and small businesses. We had heard of increasing unemployment, especially among youth--for example, thousands of Rabari youth losing their jobs as a
result of over a thousand Muslim-owned restaurants being burnt down. But more than all the economic losses, we could sense the fear in the air in cities like Ahmedabad and Vadodara, beneath a veneer of normalcy.
People seemed genuinely baffled that the Muslim community, which had been demonized for so long, had kept its peace, in spite of the scale of brutality inflicted upon them. There was apprehension everywhere that
this wasn't going to last long, especially in light of constant provocations by the likes of Mr. Modi, Mr. Singhal and Mr. Togadia of VHP-BJP-RSS. Some even speculated that the troika's inflammatory rhetoric was
designed to elicit some sort of violent reaction from the victims, which could then be used to justify further violence.
They may have been right. The reaction came just a few days after we departed
Gujarat…at Akshardham, a Hindu temple called the Swaminarayan temple situated between the cities of Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar, the state Capital. Was the deplorable terrorist attack on the Swaminarayan temple the
kind of response they were dreading? Are there more to come? Is the good sense that prevailed in Gujarat after Akshardham a harbinger of things to come? Or is there a risk that continuing communal killings in places
like Vadodara will be exploited once again by ruthless politicians for political ends?
We had tried to seek our own answers to such troubling questions during our week long travel in Gujarat,
during which we spoke to numerous victims and camp organizers to understand the ground reality. We visited Gulberg Society where over 15 houses were totally burnt down including the one of Mr. Jaffri, a Member of
Parliament who was killed along with hundreds of others, Naroda Patiya, Juhapura and Sanklit Nagar, and several chalis and unofficial camps in Ahmedabad. In the Panchmahals, we visited the Godhra relief camp, Kalol
camp, the village of Boru, Halol camp, and the village of Dehrol.
These visits lead us to the unfortunate and inescapable conclusion that there is an officially sanctioned and orchestrated campaign in
Gujarat to harass and punish the victims of the carnage, through every available means available to the state government lead by Mr. Modi of BJP party. The objective seems to be to drive the religious minorities in
the state to desperation, force them to permanently forsake their land and homes, and perhaps even leave the state altogether. In many cases, Hindu neighbors are setting humiliating conditions, including dropping of
criminal charges against the killers (belonging to Hindu community) amongst them, before allowing their Muslim neighbors back. But there are also instances of Hindu neighbors welcoming back their non-Hindu former
neighbors. (But for the interference and connivance by politicians and the police, we are sure that there would have been many more such healing initiatives by both communities.)
Here is a
summary of what we termed in our memorandum to the President of India, as the 'Third Carnage' underway in Gujarat:
·
Almost all the camps are officially closed, when many people still do not have a home to go to or feel safe enough to return. This is clearly designed to put pressure on the victims and their relatives, who are exhausting their own meager savings.
· Over 85,000 high school students are in a limbo after their exams were deliberately disrupted. Most can't afford private tuition. Many youth are reported to be absconding.
·
In comparison to the 20-40 billion Rupees (48 Rupees is 1 US dollar) in estimated damages (10,000 homes and 18,000 properties) only 2.5 billion Rupees of aid is in the pipeline, including 1.5 billion Rupees from the Prime Minister's Relief Fund.
·
On the average, victims have received less than 10% of their losses in compensation--and it's not unusual to see checks amounting to less than 1% of the reported loss (e.g. Rs. 500 and Rs. 2,000 for properties worth 100,000 Rupees)
·
Of the death compensation of Rs. 150,000, a significant portion is in Narmada Bonds. Also, there is no hope of compensation for the large number of missing persons, unless relatives can produce equivalent of Rs. 450,000 in collateral (this is under review, we were told).
·
The legal system is loaded with public prosecutors who are often acting more like defense attorneys for the BJP-VHP-RSS and the accused murderers. Some of them are also known to be office-bearers of VHP.
·
Original First Information Reports (FIR) have been doctored with, or superceded by cyclostyled 'omnibus' FIRs, which replace the names of the accused people with terms like 'unruly mobs,' ensuring that there will never be any prosecutions. (In one instance, our guide was personally at a police station with a victim to inquire about the status of her FIR. "The accused is absconding," the police asserted, even as the accused man was seated right next to them!)
These grim statistics make the point loud and clear: The elected government of Gujarat was happy to collude, encourage, or stand on the sidelines as mad men and women systematically destroyed human lives and
property. But it WILL NOT take any responsibility to rebuild people's lives, shifting that impossible burden to already over-stretched NGOs and private citizens.
In spite of these insurmountable odds,
however, we were amazed at the fortitude of the people affected. For example, we found Muslim legal assistance groups to be more optimistic about prosecutions than others who were quite sure that there would never
be any convictions. (Q: Is this because the minority community doesn't have the luxury of being cynical?) Wherever possible, people in urban areas are trying their best to return to their homes and businesses,
notwithstanding hostile neighbors. When asked why they don't leave the state to go to places like Bangalore or Hyderabad or Mumbai, victims in one camp responded unanimously: "Why should we? This is where the
jobs are."
After a week of heart-wrenching visit to Gujarat, we leave behind thousands of victims, Hindus and Muslims, carrying a few lasting impressions with us:
·
Community leaders fighting an impossible battle on multiple fronts--relief supplies, compensation, housing, rebuilding businesses, legal remedies, etc., while worrying endlessly about their children's education, and the possibility of their turning to violence.
·
People of Naroda Patiya, who point to the unscathed Hindu temple and Hindu Houses in their midst as symbols of communal amity that had existed, even as they live patiently on the streets for their modest homes to be rebuilt. (We were pained to hear that many of these people had to rush back to safe havens within hours of shootings at Akshardham temple, in anticipation of more violence which, mercifully, did not take place.)
· Muslim women, who would rather get on with their lives than pursue cases of indescribable violence against them (perhaps, to the consternation of women's groups).
·
The man who keeps a vigil in front of the locked home of Kausar Bano, the pregnant woman whose stomach was cut open, and the fetus pulled out and torched. "Aren’t you going to visit the spot?" he asks. We just don't have the energy.
·
A Hindu volunteer in the Sanklit Nagar camp, who had to take off her bindhi (a dot on the fore head between the eye brows) for a few days so that she didn’t scare the already traumatized children in the camp.
·
Hindu villagers in Panchmahal, whose minds have been so poisoned that our attempt to dialogue with one Sarpanch (elected village head man) leads to a not-so-veiled threat against our lives.
·
Dalits (outcasts in the Hindu system) and other poor Hindus, who may be slowly realizing that they too were manipulated by the politicians to turn against their non-Hindu neighbors and friends. (Some of them may have had the dubious distinction of being participants in the violence as well as its victims: When we toured Naroda Patiya (a badly affected area), we could see that the mob hadn't been able to make distinctions between Dalit and Muslim homes, which often shared a common wall. Many of these homes are now being rebuilt by the Islami Relief Committee, with some support from secular NGOs.)
·
Middle class Hindus, who are facing the fear of violence every day, and may be beginning to understand the scale of brutality that had occurred right under their noses. (The recent apology from a section of the Jain community may be one such indicator.)
·
Journalists who have been conditioned into believing that anyone who speaks up for a secular and plural India is an anti-Hindu, and found it hard to believe that we were ready and willing to meet with relatives of the Godhra train victims.
The Media:
The verdict is near-unanimous: the Indian media had, by and large, done an exemplary job of covering the Gujarat violence and its aftermath--not just the ugly side, but also the
humanitarian side, i.e. citizens from all communities reaching out to help one another. The exception to the rule, we had been told, was the Gujarati press, in particular Sandesh and Gujarat Samachar. We had very
much wanted to meet with those editors, and we finally got a chance to do so…with Gujarat Samachar. (Sandesh refused to meet with us.) We also met with Gujarat Today, which caters primarily to the Muslim community,
and had taken a lead role in relief work through its various charities. In Hyderabad, we got a chance to talk at length with the publishers of The Siasat Daily, the largest Urdu language daily in the city, which has
the reputation of being a progressive voice within the Muslim community. In addition, we were also able to hold press conferences in Ahmedabad, Vadodara, New Delhi and Hyderabad; and we were able to meet several
veteran journalists in New Delhi. Here are some of our impressions from these encounters:
Gujarat Samachar:
We are quite nervous as we are ushered into the publisher's office, after an
on-again, off-again appointment. Shri Shreyans Shah and his brother Bahubali are immaculately dressed. The office smells of sweet incense and is decorated with Hindu icons. We nervously exchange pleasantries. Our
leader is quick to state our purpose: "We have read reports of incitement and mis-reporting by your paper in the days following Godhra train incident where many Hindu devotees died. We are here to talk to you
and find out the truth for ourselves."
"What is the basis of your accusation? Where is your evidence? If we are anti-Muslim, would we dare step out of this office, which is in a Muslim-dominated
area? We have always been critical of the establishment, including Mr.Modi, the chief Minister of Gujarat. This is not a question of Hindu Vs Muslim, but a nexus between politicians and criminals. The central
problem is our judiciary, which is anti-Hindu--Why do they need years to reach a verdict on Ram Janambhoomi? English papers are totally biased. They deliberately reported that Ahsan Jafri's daughter was raped. They
print such lies and never retract them…"
Before they go any further, we introduce them to Nishrin Hussain, who has joined our delegation from Delaware--She is the daughter of ex-Member of Parliament.
Ahsan Jafri, who was brutally murdered by mobs in front of his home in Gulberg Society on February 28. The Publishers are taken aback for a moment...but continue their tirade. Nishrin asks them what they had done to
defend her father's work on communal harmony, instead of maligning him after his murder. (The Editor's Guild had reported that Gujarat Samachar had published an article after the Gulberg massacre implying that Ahsan
Jafri 'deserved it.') Shri Bahubali can't contain himself: "Did your father ever write about Kashmir? What about Pakistani terrorism? What about the Pandits?"
Nishrin snaps back, "Sir, my father was a Gujarati first and a patriot. He worked here in this state and wrote about his environs. Why should he carry any special burden to write about Kashmir?"
The Shahs claim that they have written in the past in support of their 'friend' Jafri saab. They attack the Editor's Guild as biased, and claim that they have received a written apology from them. We get the feeling
that they resent being clubbed with another daily Sandesh, which had clearly broken all norms of decency in its reporting. (We understand that competition between the two papers is fierce, which could partly explain
their race for sensationalism--throughout our conversation, they kept emphasizing their circulation figures.) We aren't quite prepared with original research in Gujarati to confront them with specifics of their
provocative reporting, as we hadn't really expected to meet them! So we ask, "If you are so sure about the nexus between politicians and criminals, then why didn’t you publish those details (instead of blaming
the minorities)?" Their response: "We can’t publish such things without 100% proof."
As we continue our exchange, there is less tension in the air, and we seem to be getting across to each
other at some level. They offered to print an article by Nishrin, unedited. They offered their library to us, should we choose to do our research and bring to their attention specifics of mis-reporting. We readily
accepted their offer. But do we have the bandwidth to follow up?
The discussion veers to America and their perception of our double standards: "You allow America to destroy another country because of
9/11, and you complain about what happened in Gujarat?" We assure them that we do not represent the US government or its policies in any form or shape in our visit to India. However, we pointed out, Bush had
addressed the nation within days of the 9/11, flanked by Muslim Americans, to proclaim that we shouldn't equate Islam with terrorism: "How come none of our leaders here in India did something similar to stop
the carnage in Gujarat?" Mr. Shah is visibly angry at what he perceives as our staunch defence of President Bush.
We decide to take their leave while we are still 'ahead.' But, somehow, we get the
feeling that both sides had come out of the meeting with a slight change in perception of each other. Nonetheless, a human gesture on their part to condole Nishrin for her tragic personal loss might have helped
their cause with us much more. But that never came.
Even though we didn't get a chance to meet the editors of Sandesh, we got a chance to recall an article they had published sometime prior to Godhra,
accusing Muslims of 'deceptively' naming their establishments with Hindu names. One of the reports we received in Ahmedabad contained a list of restaurants destroyed. Our curiosity was aroused, and we read on:
Citycorner, Sanflower, Signor, Supreme, Central, Tasty, Way Wait, Appicurian, A-one, Kabir, Alpha, Lakeview, Topaz, Sarvoday, etc. Some Hindu names!
Gujarat Today:
Gujarat Today seems to be
more than just a newspaper--it represents a proactive movement for education and health among the poor, especially Muslims. Their office is quite a contrast to that of Gujarat Samachar--just one big warehouse, with
a modest office in the corner. Mr. Tirmizi, the Publisher, is very focussed on relief and rehabilitation efforts, in which they have been quite active from day one, through their holding charities, Lok-Hit Prakashan
Sarvajanik Trust, Shah-e-alam and Al-Ameen Lok Hit Charitable Trust. He also talks about their support for ongoing legal work on behalf of the victims. As we narrate our Gujarat Samachar visit, he says with a smile:
"They are my friends." We find that he is not in such a charitable mood when it comes to Sandesh.
The Editor's Guild report had acknowledged this paper's balanced and wide coverage of the
Gujarat violence. After meeting the editorial staff, we too can sense their professionalism.
The Siasat Daily:
We had called Mr. Jahid Ali Khan, publisher of The Daily Siasat, an Urdu paper in
Hyderabad, barely 48 hours before our visit. So we are pleasantly surprised that he has arranged a private dinner, interviews with his reporters, and a well-attended public meeting at the Siasat offices. His entire
household has become vegetarian for the evening, as he openly discusses a wide range of issues affecting the Muslim community, and its relation with the Hindu majority community: dearth of enlightened leadership,
education, women's role, cow slaughter, uniform civil code, police-citizen relations, etc. Nothing seems off limits. A strong proponent of the Urdu language, he chides the community for clinging to the notion that
they should send their children only to Urdu medium schools, which according to him are ill-equipped, ill-maintained and ill-staffed. "We should be pragmatic," he says. "What's wrong in sending our
children to Telugu medium schools and benefiting from it, with Urdu still as the second language?"
He is proud of the strong tradition of communal harmony in Hyderabad, and the role his paper plays in
the community. Like everyone in Hyderabad, he is elated that the just concluded Ganpathi Visarjan (a Hindu festival) celebrations had gone off without any violence, for the first time. But how? He tells us how some
Muslim neighborhoods had welcomed the processions, and had even offered water to the Hindus; how the Hindus had invited the Iranian ambassador to officiate at one ceremony; and how the entire law and order bandobast
for the day had been lead by the second man in command of the police--a Muslim!
Did all of these represent a change in mindset and tactics by the Hyderabadis to maintain harmony? Or did they represent good
governance, something sadly missing in many states? Almost everyone we spoke to thinks that the two went hand-in-hand. And they applaud their CM for taking care of the needs of all the communities and for
maintaining harmony, in spite of the pressures he must face from NDA and from local units of BJP.
Muslims here do empathize strongly with the minorities in Gujarat, and have been providing a lot of succor to
the victims, both financial and emotional. The Daily Siasat alone had raised over Rs. 60 million, we are told, which is being disbursed through Jamiat-Ulama-i-Hind. We got a chance to speak to many of these donors
and supporters of Siasat at a public meeting. Among other themes, Najma, an NRI-SAHI delegate and a native of the city, talks eloquently about the need for her community to look inwards into issues of education and
women. Satinath, another NRI-SAHI delegate, focuses on the coming Gujarat elections, and talks about why it is important for every state in India to send contingents to Gujarat to defeat communal politics.
Notwithstanding their strong feelings about Gujarat, many Hyderabadi Muslims seem willing to 'forgive' Naidu for not making good on his threat to walk out of NDA.
Press Conferences:
Attendance
was quite good at all the venues, thanks to our coordinators, who had done a lot of groundwork in a very short time. We received extensive coverage in the print media, in English, Gujarati, Hindi, Urdu and Telugu.
Nishrin and Shrikumarji were on Star TV with Rajdeep Sardesai. And Aaaj Tak featured the entire Delhi press conference.
Why so much interest in this 'not-so-high-powered' NRI delegation, seven months after
Godhra? After all, we had brought no joint venture business proposals, no checks to be presented to politicians at public functions, and we did not represent any bilateral aid agencies or human rights organizations.
The only plausible answer we could think of was that this was the first time ever that an NRI delegation had come to India on a peace mission.
For the most part, the press corps was very supportive. At
times, the Delhi conference felt like a memorial service for Ahsan Jafri. But there were also many questions about the role of NRIs in funding right wing Hindu extremist organizations in India. The conferences in
Ahmedabad and Vadodara, however, were quite tension-filled. The questions were dominated by a few hard-liners, whose line of questioning, not surprisingly, went thus:
Q: "Why are you coming seven months
later? What about Godhra? Did you visit the Godhra victims? Where is the proof that Modi declined to meet with you? What about terrorism in Kashmir? Did you do anything for the pandits?"
A: "We
condemn terrorism of all sorts, anywhere. In fact, we are ready to meet the relatives of the Godhra killings, but no one even had a list of the victims until just two weeks back. Some of us will be happy to return
to Gujarat to meet them. As for Kashmir, yes, we have condemned terrorism there as well, but one must recognize that the Gujarat carnage was a clear case of state-supported terrorism, and the incitement is still
going at the highest levels…"
One reporter persists even after the end of the press conference: "Have you ever tried to enter Dariapur?" His view of Dariapur as a dangerous place (a
mini-Pakistan as some call it) appears to be shared by many otherwise reasonable Ahmedabadis. So we pop the question later to several people. One of them refers us to a Washington Post investigative report, which is
supposed to have debunked the myth of Dariapur. Others, some of whom are visibly orthodox Hindus, say that they walk around in Dariapur all the time and had never felt threatened in any way.
Perhaps the
reality is somewhere in-between. Perhaps, communities like Dariapur are well prepared to defend themselves, which might explain why they were largely left alone in the carnage. (The planners seem to have mainly
targeted areas where Muslims were a minority.) On the other hand, bad legends and paranoia have a way of taking hold in people's imaginations. In our view, only vigorous efforts by civil society to promote a
dialogue between the communities can possibly exorcise the 'ghost of Dariapur.'
Veteran Journalists and Jurists:
We met several seasoned journalists and former judges during our visit with Mr. I.K.
Gujral, the former Prime Minister of India. There seems to be a genuine sense of alarm among many of them that India is at a critical crossroad in her history: a choice between an explosive combination of fascism
and religious nationalism OR a pluralist secular, if imperfect, democracy. "If we lose Gujarat, that's the end of secular India," we heard some of them say. While agreeing with the feeling that the nation
is indeed at a critical juncture, Mr. Gujral gently chided the 'all or nothing' viewpoint. He reiterated his abiding confidence in the good sense of the people of India and described how, after Gujarat, many Islamic
groups had come forward to him with positions that would have hitherto been unthinkable. He also reminded everyone about how the people of India had surprised the world by throwing out the then Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi in 70s when found her governance was unacceptable.
Q: What are veteran Indian journalists doing about the new wave of Internet journalism by apologists for the Sangh Parivar (the group of VHP-RSS-BJP
combine), who seem to have become darlings of the Hindu right wing Indians living abroad--e.g. writers like Rajeev Srinivasan and Varsha Bhosle?
A: Rajeev who?
Clearly, some of them are out of touch
with the NRI Internet sites. Others agree that it is important to prevail upon certain internet portals to present a wider spectrum of opinions.
Gulberg Society (Chamanpura):
We end this report with
our solemn pilgrimage to the Gulberg Society compound in Chamanpura, in the city of Ahmedabad where former Member of Parliament Mr. Ahsan Jafri, and over 70 other men, women and children seeking shelter at his home,
were brutally hacked or burned to death by a mob supported by Mr. Modi and his State Government on February 28, 2002. (Over 10 women were gang raped and then burnt alive, according to eyewitnesses.) The so-called
mob was lead by people whom the victims knew well--neighbors and political activists belonging to the BJP-VHP-RSS combine from the neighborhood. Mr. Jafri had made over 200 desperate phone calls for help to the
police and to politicians in Gujarat and Delhi. But no help came to save the man who had worked all his life for communal harmony; only cruel comments at the other end of the phone such as, "Is he still
alive?"
This is the first time Ms. Nishrin is setting foot in her grotesquely charred home. She takes off her shoes, for she knows not where her abba’s ashes lie. As she tries to come to terms with
tell-tale signs of indescribable brutality at her childhood home, and surveys the kitchen where her mom had cooked and fed them, we see traces of chemicals all over the walls and ceiling. We see the destruction
wrought by their own propane cooking gas cylinders, which the mob had systematically exploded. We are told that the compound was littered with hundreds of vials of mysterious chemicals, some of which have been sent
to labs for analysis. There is also speculation that the 'mob' had used chemicals donated by other countries following the 2001 earthquake, to help 'melt' concrete and steel to reach survivors. How did they have
access to such potent chemicals, which are reportedly used to 'melt' human beings? Are we seriously expected to believe that all this was the result of spontaneous popular rage by Hindus?
Nishrin takes us
back to the open stairwell at the back of the house, which leads to the first floor. She points to the piles of bricks and stones still lying on the stairs: "They (her family members and neighbors who took
refuge in her home) were being stoned from the back to prevent them from going upstairs to relative safety(through the stair case built from the back door outside the home as per some customs)." Mrs. Jafri and
many other terror stricken neighbors were hiding upstairs, but many others couldn't join them. Had they known what was in store for them downstairs, would they have minded a few bricks to save their own lives? We
talk to Shareifbhai, Mr. Jafri's neighbor, who was among those fighting a losing battle with the surging mob outside, while his entire family was being hacked and burnt to death inside Mr.Jafri's house--wife and
daughters and all.
Shareifbhai narrates the fate of each and every resident of the compound to Nishrin. He points to the mound of earth in her backyard, where they had buried whatever remains they could find
of the people who were cut in pieces and burnt. Nishrin winces every so often, but keeps her composure. She is especially pained at the fate of her neighbor, Khan uncle, who had bravely stepped out of his home in
the middle of the mayhem to put out a fire. They never saw him again. No body…no death certificate…hence frozen bank accounts…and no financial support whatsoever for the family.
Tears swell up in
Shareifbhai's eyes as he admits that this is the first time he is about to breakdown. Teesta tells us that he is getting ready to start rebuilding the homes in the compound, and is already restocking his adjoining
electronics/furniture store, which had been destroyed by arsonists thrice in the last few years! What makes people like Shareifbhai go on?
Q: Why are you still clinging to this place?
A:
xxxbhai and others, who lead the massacre, were my friends. They are now going around the neighborhood whispering that they really should have 'taken care' of people like me. What have I got to loose at this point, except my life? Isn't it more important that we carry on Mr.Jafri's dream of proving that Hindus and Muslims can coexist?
As we get ready to depart, someone opens the lid to the underground water tank in the middle of the courtyard. We peer in disbelief at pieces of human bones at the bottom of the clear shallow water. The
tank, we are told, was full of body parts on February 28th, before the mobs returned to torch the evidence. We are reluctant to draw the rest of the group's attention to this horrific scene.
Earlier in the
day, Nishrin had asked Mr. Shankarsinh Vaghela with tough questions about the Indian National Congress party's inability to prevent the carnage in their own backyard, and to save her father. (There are reports that
the Indian National Congress party workers too were involved in the violence, which he doesn’t deny.) He promises that he would go to Gulberg Society on October 2nd, Gandhi Jayanthi (Birth anniversary), to pay his
homage to Mr. Ahsan Jafri: "I will do that for my friend, even if…" He doesn't quite say it, but we can sense the politician's antenna going up to the possibility of being labeled pro-Muslim or as an
anti-Hindu.
…Part 2 Coming Up: Our Meetings with NGOs, Politicians, and Religious Leaders
The report was compiled by Mr. Raju Rajagopal, a retired software business man of Indian
origin living in San Francisco bay area. He is a frequent guest writers in many Indian news papers on social, political and business matters
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