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THE PRICE PAID FOR SPONSORED GENOCIDE
Economic and social dimensions of anti Muslim violence in Gujarat 2002 – and their
implications for Western Governments and International Financial Organizations
DR. JOHN DAYAL
Secretary General, All India Christian Council
National Vice President, All India Catholic Union, India
Director, Centre for Policy Research and Communications, New Delhi
“I Only Gassed Them,” Erich Gnewuch testifies about gassings in Nazi-occupied
USSR, 1942-3 [Quoted in "Nazi Mass Murder: A Documentary History of the Use of Poison Gas", edited by E. Kogon, H. Langbein, and A. Rueckerl, Yale University Press, 1993, p. 57-9]. “I myself never shot a
single Jew; I only gassed them...”
"First they came for the Communists but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out;
Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists but I was not one
of them, so I did not speak out; Then they came for the Jews but I was not Jewish so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me."
-Martin Niemoller, 1892-1984
INTRODUCTION
Relativity has a new meaning in India. Do 2,000 dead in violence in the western State of Gujarat matter in a national population of more than
1.1 billion people, and more so when compared to the incidence of fatalities in ethnic strife or racist pogroms in the several continents? Does the rape of five nuns, or the demolition of a few hundred mosques
really make a difference, much less the demolition of about fifty churches in two phases in the same State of Gujarat? Does it matter that more than 120,000 human beings, a half of them children, live cramped in
four dozen refugee camps in the modern city of Ahmedabad, the capital of Gujarat and once the textile capital of the country, seeking a balance between the ever present threat of an epidemic and the other threat of
a bigoted police and an armed mob waiting at the turn of the road?
The official United States response to the tragedy in the Indian State of Gujarat has been disappointingly muted, and Indians are wondering
why it is so. Certain historians — some from the US, others from Israel — chide those who lightly use the word Holocaust for ethnic massacres elsewhere in the world. There have been, as they say,
…horrible
cases of genocide directed against innocent people: 10 to 20 million black Africans died during the 200 years of the international slave trade, nearly 12 million Native American Indians in North America were
decimated between 1600 and 1850, and the more recent events in Bosnia and Rwanda. However, there has been only one holocaust. The motivations for it were entirely racial. There was little, if any, economic net gain;
The victims presented no threat to the German nation, nor to the Nazi regime. The rational nature of its methodology -- its efficiency, calculability, predictability and control - are unparalleled in human history.
Its ferocious intensity. The slaughter of the Jews did not begin until late 1938 and ended in 1945.
No one has called the continuing violence against Muslims in India since 1947 a holocaust. The word Genocide
has been more frequently used, mostly by the Muslims themselves, and by those in Civil society, including those espousing a Left of the Centre ideology, and others moved entirely by Gandhian and humanitarian
emotions.
In sheer numbers, the Partition of India left more than a million men, women and children dead, killed in acts of individual and mass murders of singular barbarity during the world’s biggest
voluntary or forced exchange of populations – between the newly created Dominions of India and Pakistan which were granted Independence by the ruling colonial British government at midnight of 14th and 15th August
1947. Ironically British officers were still commanding the armies, and controlling the police forces of the two countries as Muslim and Hindus killed whoever they could encircle in a minority enclave, or find
trapped in the overcrowded trains and buses that crawled towards the border from the two sides. No one has the exact data, no one really wants to come to grips with the enormity of the crime, but there is general
agreement that the violence was from both sides equal intensity and the numbers of dead of the two communities also about equal — roughly 500,00 each. India and Pakistan have never come to terms with the events of
the Partition, and the abiding enmity between them arising out of a messy division of territory, assets and cultural ethos.
The military confrontation alone consumes almost a quarter of their national
budgets in direct and indirect spending on the military, and then some more in paramilitary forces and armed police who perform internal security duties of which keeping the peace between the two communities is an
important and significant part. In Pakistan, it has indirectly led to a continuing suppression of democracy in the imposition of a military dictatorship but rarely interrupted by civilian rule. In India, it has led
to the advent of the nuclear bomb — soon copied by Pakistan — and the emergence of a militarist doctrine of nationalism that has sponsored neo fascist political entities. And above all, it has fed a not so latent
divide between the religious communities in India where the hostility at the border, and the violent racial memories, keep alive a simmering confrontation that needs but an excuse to burst out in the open. And when
it does, there is an immediate harking back to the torching of trainings, the burning alive of men , women and children, the evacuation of entire populations. Perhaps an honest Truth and Reconciliation Commission
set up in the two countries at some time in the past half a century may have exorcised the demons of the past, and weakened the force of mnemonic hatred which borders on racism, and flirts with paranoia.
Muslims are a full 12% of the Indian population, Christians constitute about 2.4 %, and Sikhs just under 2 %. And India has had to face an embarrassing question from its own civil society: How secular is India? The
data is depressing:
Number of Communal (Hindu-Muslim) riots that have occurred in India since 1950: 13,000.
Percentage of Muslim victims in every communal riot: 87 percent.
Percentage of Muslims among those arrested in communal riots: 90 percent.
Percentage of Indian police officials who say they have noticed communal (anti-Muslim) bias in behaviour of
Indian policemen during a communal riot; 48 percent.
(Data: Courtesy Outlook, August 14, 2001 Volume XLI, Number 32 Compiled by Anoop Babani from data of Institute of Objective Studies, New Delhi and Former
Inspector General of Police Vibhuti Narain Rai, Indian Police Service.)
There is need for a detailed domestic discussion on the Police and the political and administrative structures of the State that lead to
the sort of violence that was seen in Gujarat in 2002, the second time in thirty two years after the massacres of 1969. There is perhaps greater need for an international spotlight on India’s sectarian and inter
religious record, as much as its human rights record, howsoever diplomatically inconvenient it may seem now in the light of the West’s own geo-political diplomatic, security and strategic interests and current
popular concerns, including the international war on terrorism and the spotlight on Islamic fundamentalism. I think it is in the interests of the West, and both its political and economic community, to take a clear
hard and focused look at the Indian situation in the post Gujarat era. It will be injurious to international interests if undivided attention given to the containing of Islamic fundamentalism somehow and somewhere
ignores Hindutva fundamentalism, seen at its blood-tinged worst in Gujarat.
What are its implications for the International community, for the economic departments of Western governments, and not just their
ministries of External affairs and Defence concerned at the Nuclearisation of the Indian subcontinent and the ever-present danger of yet another India-Pakistan War? How do they respond to revelations that many of
the political groups, including the ultra rightwing Hindu nationalist entity called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its daughter organizations, which are indicted in much of the anti-Muslim violence across the
country, are being funded by persons of Indian origin living in the United States and in Europe, through both legal as well as the gray channels for transfer of funds, using loopholes in the law? What meaning does
economic stagnation born of ethnic and religious strife in India have for welfare agencies of the United Nations, for the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the Brettonwoods institutions involved in
credit and finance? And above all, what signals does it send out to the vast investing public in the United States and Europe, which hopefully will assess India as a worthwhile potential investment area? It is
axiomatic that nations with ethnic, religious or similar strife lag behind in development, even if, like Ireland, they are in the middle of the prosperous West.
I think the West has a vested interest; a
vested economic and political interest, to ensure that there is no sectarian bloodshed in India, that the Muslim community is not targeted continuously and viciously, and particularly in its economic entrails. This
is a call for it to act.
In an economy which India’s Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, has committed himself to accelerate to an annual growth rate of more than eight percent from its present hesitant
five to six percent, the occurrence of a communal riot, or an episode as ghastly as that witnessed in Gujarat from February 28, 2002 onwards for more than four months, comes as more than a mere hiccup. It is a major
break in the economic continuum with far reaching repercussions, which include not just a flight of capital in the short turn, but a flight of labour, a polarization of society, an astronomical cost of rebuilding of
infrastructure. Most of all it involves rehabilitation and re-integration of an entire community that has been economically emasculated in a systematic State sponsored pogrom. Not to do so, or to cavil at the cost
of such rehabilitation and re-incorporation of the Muslim community into Gujarat’s economic fabric will open up a new Pandora’s box of future strife and bloodshed, accessing other sensitive States throughout the
federal space of India.
500,000 MILLION RUPEES ECONOMIC LOSS
The economic loss of the four months of violence has been variously estimated at between Rs 10,000 to 50,000 crores (a Crore is ten
million, and a US dollar fetches about Rupees 48.50, or a little over two cents to the rupee. The damage estimates are therefore from Rs 100,000 million to Rs 500,000 million. Henceforth in this paper all figures
will be in millions and not in the Indian system of counting.) This in a State which is just recovering from one of the most devastating earthquakes in Indian history, that of 2001 which devastated parts of the
capital Ahmedabad and wiped out entire districts in other regions of Gujarat. I have seen the earthquake damage. The victims, other than those living in condominium flats in Ahmedabad, were the poorest of the poor,
whose mud and stone houses crumbled under the tremors of the earth. A year later, the targets were Muslim businessmen, hoteliers, entrepreneurs big and small, artisans, anyone with the semblance of a job. There may
be occasion to describe, later, the extent of this.
Gujarat, the birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi, international peace icon and father of the Indian nation, has always been known for its entrepreneurial spirit
and its economic potential. The coastline with the Arabian Sea an across it the now oil rich Gulf nations has offered vistas of trade, raw materials and markets. The proximity to Mumbai (Bombay), India’s financial
and industrial capital, has generated synergy. Nearby oilfields and vast reserves of natural gas hold promise of an even brighter future, bright enough for son of the soil Dhirubhai Ambani to put up one of India’s
largest petrochemical complexes in Gujarat. Vikram Sarabhai, the real father of India’s space and nuclear programs, was another son of the soil whose Sarabhai industries was a pioneering effort. Another pioneering
effort was the cooperative movement that led to India’s so called white revolution, the Khera district milk cooperatives begun by V Kurien, a scientist from Kerala who made Gujarat his home. It is also possibly the
only State where the Muslim population is fully integrated into the economic activity. The Muslims speak Gujarati like their fellow citizens, and despite the proximity of the Pakistani border, have little or no
emotional attraction for the two-nation call given by Pakistani founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah (and echoed by the right wing Hindutva lobby). There is a black joke in Gujarat — Hindus and Muslims compete not just in
industry, business and trade, but also in smuggling, whether it is of liquor into the prohibition-bound State, or of other contraband made easy for Arab dhows beaching on the long coastline.
Compared to other
big States of the Union of India, statistics have hitherto spoken well of Gujarat, keeping it afloat well above most national economic markers, and many social quality of life parameters bottom lines. For the
record, (all data from Tata Services Limited data base Statistical Outline of India 2001) the State’s population has an 8.5 percent Muslim segment compared to the Hindu majority at 89.5 percent and a micro- minority
Christian population of 1.3 percent. The decennial population growth at 22.5 percent is marginally higher than the Indian average of 21.3 percent, although there is an alarm in that the ratio of females per 1000 men
at 921, which has come down from 934 in 1991; it now is in fact much lower than the national average of 933, which comments on social norms and sexual preferences of young couples and families in the rapidly
urbanizing and business communities, as much as in rural areas. This despite the fact that the literacy rate at 70 percent is much higher than India’s 65.4 percent. The percentage of urban population at 37.4 has
also come down from 42 (the national average is 27.8 percent, up from 25.7 percent), although the population density of 50,597 per 1000 km is half of national average. The workers constitute 34.1 percent, of which
47.7 percent are agricultural workers. The organized sector employs 6.2 percent of the total Indian work force. The Gross Industrial output per capita is Rs 4,001; four times the national average of national 1495.
In other indicators, the Gross irrigated area is 33.1 percent of total cropped area, the domestic electricity consumption per capita is 80.3 kilowatt hour, the per capita bank deposit is Rs 9,839 (the national
average if Rs. 8,236) twice that of Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest province. Bank credit averages at Rs. 4,905, higher than average, and the per capita income is Rs. 18,796, significantly higher than the country
average of Rs. 14,712. The State domestic product in 1998, the year for which data is available, was Rs. 88,822 crore (Rs 888,220 million), up in ten years from Rs. 24,180, making Gujarat one of the better
performers in the Indian economy. The per capita income in 1998 was Rs 187,920 million in 1998, up from Rs. 87,970 million in 1990-91. Government bank credit stood at Rs. 258,470 million, from Rs. 73,900 million in
eight years. Government’s investments at Rs. 130,490 million in 1999 made for a total for ten years at Rs. 843,490 million, the second highest in India after neighbouring Maharashtra, India’s industrial belt. The
total of 13,421 factories were a full 9.9 percent of the national figure. The State’s own investment grew from Rs 1,441,290 million in April 1999 to Rs. 1,717,760 million in October 2001, the highest in India,
remembering that its share in India’s food production was a measly 2.6 percent only. With a forest area 6.4 percent or 12,578 hectares of total area of 196,024, Gujarat was the country’s seventh most forested State,
a data that would be significant in understanding the attitude of Gujarat’s forest dwelling tribals to Muslim moneylenders and businessmen. Employment was about 653,000 (8.5 percent of the national number), the
capital invested stood at Rs 841,710 million (14.6 percent of total), the Gross output Rs. 1,108,940 million (13.3 percent of the national figure), the Value added good totalled Rs 192,350 million (11.6 percent),
Factory employment was 810,000 (10 percent), with minimum wages ranging between Rs 34 to Rs 92 a day in 53 official job categories also spoke of the State’s good position in the national perspective. People below
poverty line were 10.5 million (24.2 percent of population) of which the rural was 22.2 percent. Poverty projections by economists suggest decline from 17.07 percent in 1996 to 1.28 in 2011, among the better
performers in the country when compared with the national expectations of the figure declining from 29.18 to 4.37 percent).
Nonetheless, some economists and scholars fear economic problems, those that had
been foreseen and others that came as surprise, may have fuelled the communal passions. Gujarat's gross State in real terms has been falling over the last few years, primarily due to the bad performance by the
agricultural sector, which has been severely hit by poor rainfall. At the same time, as the influential Economic Times noted, growth in the industrial and services sector has not been fast enough to compensate for
the loss of output from agriculture. Nag says although in popular perception, Gujarat is a favoured investment decision, such an illusion has been created by aggregate figures. A few big projects like Reliance's 27
million tonne refinery command a lion's share of the total investment. The areas affected most by the erratic monsoons are north and central Gujarat and Saurashtra. It is these areas of north and central Gujarat
that have borne the brunt of the latest round of bloodshed. According to the Economic Times, field reports from north Gujarat and parts of central Gujarat now suggest that most of the trouble erupted in
Patel-dominated areas. Nearly 35 percent of Gujarat's population comprises Patels, originally tillers of land who came on their own after Independence after land ownership was conferred on them. Today the core of
the BJP's support in the State comes from Patels. When the BJP talks of a Hindu consolidation in the State after the communal riots, all the Party means is that the likelihood of the Patel vote deserting the party
has been reduced.
Economic Times makes an interesting inference of violence extending to tribal forested areas, a fact noted by others including this writer, that tribals played a big role in the March-April
2002 violence, their youth in the forefront of looting in north Gujarat districts like Sabarkantha and central Gujarat districts such as Dahod, Panchmahal (of which Godhra, the so called trigger of the violence, is
a part) and Vadodara.
Traditionally underprivileged, the fact that the Adivasi (tribal) aggression was due to economic reasons is clear from what happened in Chhota Udaipur sub-division of Vadodara district.
A day after some levelheaded local administrators decided to start government-sponsored employment programmes, the adivasi aggression stopped in that place. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a major recipient of dollar
charity has been busy for several years in Hinduising and militarizing the tribals through its Vanvasi Kalyan Kendra in tribal Gujarat. The Hindu identity taken on by these adivasis may also be responsible for their
targeting Muslims, spurred on undoubtedly by outside miscreants.
ATTACK ON ECONOMIC BACKBONE OF MUSLIMS
A point made by several of the enquiry committees set up by civil society has been
the systematic attack on the economic backbone of the Muslim community during the recent violence, leading Professor Kamal Mitra Chenoy, Mrs. Teesta Setalvad and many other Human rights activists to charge that the
organised mayhem, with the state police force actually conniving and the ruling elite in power openly encouraging the mobs with some Ministers actually supervising the action, so to say, fulfils international
criteria for being labeled as genocide. Other than the attack on the economic identity of the Muslims, the attacks also focused on the places of worship, with hundreds of mosques and sacred sites destroyed, some of
them several hundred years old, and finally a targetting of Muslim culture. The gang rape of women (a committee of eminent women which conducted an independent enquiry told the Media in New Delhi that the situation
was reminiscent of the rape camps organised in some countries during civil wars). Dr Syeda Hamid, a former member of India’s National Commission for Women said there was such brutality that the Muslim women of
Gujarat had now one ‘Meta experience,’ typified in the story of a full term pregnant woman who was attacked, her belly slit open with a sword, the unborn child taken out, slaughtered and thrown into the fire, before
the mother too was killed and burnt.
This is not the time to go into a sequential narrative of how the events unfolded after February 27, 2002 when 59 passengers of a train from the pilgrim city of Ayodhya
were burnt alive in the coach of their train at the railway station of the small town of Godhra in Gujarat, many of them volunteers of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (which demolished the Babri mosque and is now leading
the campaign to construct massive Hindu temple dedicated to Lord Rama at the site without waiting for a court decision on the controversial issue of its ownership). It was the trigger, but there is now growing
evidence that preparations had been going on in the state for quite some time to teach the Muslims a lesson, with special focus on their economic activity.
No bones were made about propaganda and calls to
boycott Muslims and to sever all economic links with them. A typical pamphlet distributed by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad throughout the state appears in the next section. (English translation from the original in
Gujarati, sent to me by Mallika Sarabhai, noted cultural figure and daughter of the late industrialist Vikram Sarabhai.)
POISON PAMPHLETS
VISHWA HINDU PARISHAD (Raanip)
SATYAM SHIVAM SUNDARAM
JAI SHRIRAM
WAKE UP! ARISE! THINK! ENFORCE! SAVE THE COUNTRY! SAVE THE RELIGION!
Economic boycott is the only solution! The anti-national elements use the money earned
from the Hindus to destroy us! They buy arms! They molest our sisters and daughters! The way to break the backbone of these elements is: An economic non-cooperation movement.
Let us resolve –
1. From now on I will not buy anything from a Muslim shopkeeper!
2. I will not sell anything from my shop to such elements!
3. Neither shall I use the hotels of these anti-nationals, nor their garages!
4. I shall give my vehicles only to Hindu garages! From a needle to gold, I shall not buy anything made by Muslims; neither shall we sell them things made by us!
5. Boycott whole-heartedly films in
which Muslim hero-heroines act! Throw out films produced by these anti-nationals!
6. Never work in offices of Muslims! Do not hire them!
7. Do not let them buy offices in our business premises, nor
sell or hire out houses to them in our housing societies, colonies or communities.
8. I shall certainly vote, but only for him who will protect the Hindu nation.
9. I shall be alert to ensure that our
sisters-daughters do not fall into the 'love-trap' of Muslim boys at school-college-workplace.
10. I shall not receive any education or training from a Muslim teacher.
Such a strict economic boycott
will throttle these elements! It will break their backbone! Then it will be difficult for them to live in any corner of this country. Friends, begin this economic boycott from today! Then no Muslim will raise his
head before us!
Did you read this leaflet? Then make ten photocopies of it, and distribute it to our brothers. The curse of Hanumanji be on him who does not implement this, and distribute it to others! The
curse of Ramchandraji also be on him!
Jai Shriram!
A true Hindu patriot.
N.B. The kites we use at Uttrayan (Kite flying day) are also made by them. The fire-works are also made by them. We
should boycott those too. Jai Shri Ram (Ranip)”
The pamphlet was backed with meticulous planning, admitted by leaders of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. In an interview with the Internet newspaper Rediff.com,
Professor Keshavram Kashiram Shastri, 96-year-old chairman of the Gujarat unit of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, told correspondent Sheela Bhatt that the list of shops owned by Muslims in Ahmedabad was prepared on the
morning of February 28 itself. A scholar of the Mahabharat and a highly respected literary figure of Gujarat, Shastri said on tape, "In the morning we sat down and prepared the list.’ Asked why they did it, he
responded, ‘it had to be done, it had to be done. We don't like it, but we were terribly angry. Lust and anger are blind.’ He admitted the rioters were well-bred Hindu boys. According to the good professor, there
were two reasons for the inactivity of the Ahmedabad police during the rioting. “They feared death,” he said simply. “And some of them were Hindus who thought, let the mob do whatever it wants.” He said the
situation could get aggravated and bigger riots were possible. “There will be a war. So much poison has spread that it is difficult to contain it now.”
The pamphlets — and the lists — had their effect. Human
Rights groups have estimated the damage, by April-end at 10,204 houses burnt, 10,429 shops burnt, 1,278 business establishments ransacked by looters, more than 1,500 hotels, some of them very big highway motels,
burnt down, Muslim owned trucking fleets torched, about 18 major factories destroyed, Rs 10,000 million damage to textile mills. On National Highway Number 8, which links Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s capital with New Delhi,
the national capital, through Jaipur, almost every single Muslim establishment, shop, factory, even small repair tall, was burnt, as I saw it on my own drive back home. Human rights NGO Communalism Combat’s
researchers estimated 90 per cent of the establishments, owned by Muslims, were destroyed along the highway. Factories were in fact attacked and destroyed in industrial estates established by the Gujarat government,
such was the ferocity.
India’s Industry and Business has reacted with horror. “If government can't protect lives, it should go. Which kind of government allows killings of women, children? Home Minister, even
the Prime Minister should take their share of blame,” said the chairman of India’s leading housing finance firm, HDFC, Deepak Parekh.
“What is a government elected for?” Parekh asked in an interview with the Indian Express, a multi edition newspaper that reported the violence extensively, and fearlessly. “If they can't protect innocent lives... then they should go,” Parekh said, and the nation agreed.”
Parekh, a highly respected business leader, said the federal government must be blamed equally for letting the situation go out of hand. “With due respect, I think the Home Minister and even the Prime
Minister should take their share of blame. It’s a national failure,” he said. “The State government should have investigated those involved instead of letting VHP go out of hand. They could have taken help from
international investigating agencies instead of killing innocent people,” he says. The carnage after Godhra has hit business sentiments badly, he admitted.
The Indian Express interview was an eye opener for
other business leaders as Parekh said he was witnessing first-person how badly the Gujarat riots have hit India’s largest business community — the Gujaratis. “Sales of many manufacturing companies collapsed in
Gujarat in the crucial fiscal-end month of March due to riots.”
Over the last 25 years Parekh made a financial powerhouse of HDFC offering home loans, to insurance and mutual funds and roped in international
partners like Standard Life. Today, he’s not sure what the future holds.
As very few people are coming out due to curfew, our home loan and other businesses are obviously hit. Riots have damaged India’s
reputation more in the international forum than what is happening in Pakistan. Do we need to always sabotage our own chances of growth and international goodwill?
CIVIL SOCIETY INDICTMENT
One of the more curious phenomenons in this phase has been the behaviour of civil society, especially of professionals and the middle class. In Gujarat, this powerful segment remained a passive bystander in criminal
silence. Elsewhere in the country, a significant section of it, which for ten years had watched, passively for the most, members of the Hindutva organisations dictate the political and social agenda from now Deputy
prime minister Lal Krishan Advani’s infamous Rath yatra (religious chariot march) from Gujarat to the North, and all that followed in its wake, suddenly came alive and vocally protested the massacre in Gujarat.
Civil groups sponsored high profile investigations — and legal aid — while others for four months kept up a high octane protest in New Delhi and other metropolitan areas, using extensive documentation from Gujarat
to expose the guilty, and to tar apart the conspiratorial cover-up launched simultaneously by the Central government and the state government ruled a one time RSS animator, Narendra Modi.
I mention two
organisations, both Christian, to illustrate that the civil society movement has been secular and multi religious in its expanse, itself a welcome development in a country where communities like to keep to their
watertight compartments lest they be misunderstood. Perhaps the Christian vocalness, whether it be from the catholic Bishops Conference, or from the All India Christian Council and the All India Catholic Union, the
last one India’s largest laity group, was also because Gujarat has been scene to somehow though most vicious anti Christina violence seen in India since Independence, other than in the states of Orissa and Arunachal
Pradesh. Christian Council president Dr. Joseph D’Souza, who is also the Executive Secretary of the Missions Commission of the Evangelical Fellowship of Asia, in a seminal statement said, The first area to
experience State sponsored terrorism of the Hindutva right is Gujarat. According to newspaper reports India can now boast of it's own Milosevic - Mr. Narendra Modi, Chief Minister of Gujarat. If the Hindutva Right
ever achieves full political power the experiment will be carried out nationally - first the minorities, next the Dalits and then all who dissent against their politics and ideology. Keep in mind that no RSS leader
has ever said that they have moved from the ideology of Savarkar and Hedgewar, the founders of the extremist Hindu Right movement. For four years, the All India Christian Council has pointed out that a clear-cut
fascist agenda was being carried by the Hindu Right in their persecution of Christians in India. The Council has defied the view that the burning of Australian leprosy missionary Graham Stuart Staines and his sons
in Orissa in January 1999 was an aberration. We have argued that the killings, rapes and the murders follow a pattern. The Council has consistently challenged the view of the Government spin-doctors that the attacks
against Christians were isolated events. We have argued that this was part of the larger design to create a right wing Hindu India. We pointed out that there were three clear steps in carrying out the plan: first,
an ongoing vicious hate campaign against the minorities and the Dalits, then actual physical assaults on the minorities and Dalits and their institutions. Finally a full-scale legislative violence through the
'saffronisation of education', taking away the religious freedom of the minorities and Dalits, and the enactment of anti-terrorism laws. The last step has become easy under the present international climate against
terrorism. The Christian Council and similar bodies have been warning the Christian world about the grave dangers that the Indian nation faces under the onslaught of the Hindu Right. It agrees with the common
conviction that both the unity and the future of the modern Indian nation as envisaged by Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Azad and Ambedkar is being threatened at the very core by the power, money, ideology and violence of
the Hindu Right.
The Christian Council, like many others, has called on the International community, which has a stake in India, to also play its crucial role. They need to act on the call for a full-fledged
enquiry and ban the organisations of the Hindu Right especially the VHP in the USA, which has established itself in the free world. They use civil liberties there to raise the finances (under the guise of ‘religious
charities’) in order to recruit, train and support an army of Hindu militants who wield the sword, the Trishul and the petrol bomb and terrorise people as demonstrated in Gujarat.
India’s leaders are
unanimous in their call for a national ban on the Bajrang Dal and the VHP. It is also time that the free world demanded reciprocal human rights from the Hindu Right in India. The campaign against terrorism has to be
applied impartially. It cannot be applied only to the Islamic extremist. The Hindu militant is as dangerous if not more to global peace. The dictum that there is no such thing as good terrorism and bad terrorism
should be followed regardless of political or economic expediency. Otherwise the West will stand accused of hypocrisy.
EUROPEAN COMMUNITY, UNITED KINGDOM SPEAK OUT
It is good to see that
many in the European community, and in particular the United Kingdom, have taken bold, if undiplomatic, positions. The European Union has rejected the Indian government's position that the Gujarat and has in a
demarche expressed concern over the incidents in the State. The EU made a number of fact-finding visits to Gujarat and went through material that indicated the response of the State had been violative of
international law.
The British have been equally forthright. The British High Commission in New Delhi reported to the British Foreign Office in London that the violence in Gujarat is aimed at removing Muslim
influence from parts of the State. The High Commission’s team to Gujarat was led by Peter Holland, First Secretary in the Mission’s Political Section. They were assigned the fact-finding task after a British
national of Indian origin was burned to death, and two of his family went missing. The report placed the death toll at around 2,000. Significantly, the report said the post-Godhra violence in Gujarat was pre-planned
and if the Sabarmati Express tragedy hadn’t happened, another flashpoint would have been created to justify pre-meditated violence as reaction, the report says. Extremely critical of the Sangh Parivar's role, the
report identifies the VHP and Bajrang Dal as the main instruments for realizing the ghettoisation of the Muslims. The team also observed that in some areas, the police had been specifically instructed not to act,
while in some others, the force was communally polarised and looked the other way without any prompting by political bosses. They noted that minority establishments and property were specially targeted by the
rioting mobs in most places.
The British came to the conclusion that the violence and the partisanship would affect foreign investment in India.
There are by now eight or nine reports by civil and NGO
groups of painstaking investigations into various facets of the conspiracy in Gujarat, and the extent of the damage — in human misery, economic devastation and, the worst, the injury to democracy. I would not like
to repeat it here.
All these reports deal with the violence against Muslims.
I would like to stress that the Hindutva agenda, as it unfolds in India, is directed against not just Muslims, but against
all minority groups who do not fall under the test of patriotism and “Indianness” (One nation, One People, One Culture) which the Hindutva group dictates for India. Christians continue to be major victims of this
rhetoric. Gujarat saw three dozen churches demolished or burnt during Christmas week in 1998 in the district of Dangs, apart from 400 Bibles burnt in another part of Gujarat. One such church was in Sanjeli, a
hundred kilometers off Ahmedabad city. The church was rebuilt. In March, it as demolished once again, one of about 20 churches and small chapels that too were razed as the cased Hindutva mobs, torch in hand, went
looking for Muslims and other aliens.
The death of the Catholic church of Sanjeli is best described in the first person by the priest, Father Chackochan, who had dared to build and run in church in that area.
In a letter from another church where he had taken refuge, the Catholic priest wrote, It was an agonizing experience but God was kind enough to save us from the violent crowd. We lost everything but we had a
miraculous escape. The attack on Sanjeli can be taken as an after effect of the burning of the Kar Sevaks in Godhra on the 27th of February. We did not know about it till late in the evening and we were unable to
move out to any safer places as VHP had declared a Bandh in Gujarat on the 8th and there was a national bandh on the 1st March. We did not expect an attack on us and we were peaceful till the afternoon of the 1st
March. We noticed an unusual movement of people with all types of crude weapons in the afternoon and we anticipated a robbery or an attack on the building. So we pushed our motorcycle right inside our house and
remained inside and our cook went to his room. There were more than five hundred people by two o'clock in the afternoon and they attacked our Muslim neighbour. He had to run away with his family leaving everything
behind. His house was set ablaze and the entire town anticipated a severe Hindu-Muslim fight. Then the mob turned on us and began throwing stones on the building. Some came inside and began breaking the frond door.
Some went and set ablaze the cook's cottage even when he was inside with his wife and child. The child cried in fear and someone in the crowd had pity on them and he ordered them to be released. They managed to get
out before the house collapsed. The miscreants managed to break open the front door and the second as well and set ablaze our motor cycle. We were hiding in our refectory expecting our end. Brother's room was
thoroughly looted and the irate crowd was trying to get inside my room. I was trying to convince them that we were Christians and not Muslims but my appeal was not heard. They were throwing lighted torches inside
the room and we had to struggle to put off the fire. We were running inside our house frantically and prayed fervently for our rescue. I gave some money to some of them when asked but they were not in a mood to
leave us. To our surprise, the crowd left us and went to the town to attack the Muslims in the town by four o'clock. So we got out from our house and began putting off the fire all around our house. The cook's
cottage had already fallen down. It took almost two hours to put off the fire. Then I took my transistor and went across the road to our Hindu neighbour's house listening the six o' clock news. Brother too came out
following me. As we were talking to him one man running with a sword towards me and I felt he will cut us to pieces. Luckily, he just kept the sword on my throat looking at me sternly. Brother pleaded for me and he
left us. We were told to leave the place at once. We came to the road not knowing where to go. At that time a wounded man, victim of a private firing, was brought to our hand pump. The mob became violent and ran
inside our compound for the second round of looting and destruction. I requested some sensible persons to prevent them from looting but one man came from behind and hit me on my hand with a long and solid stick. My
left hand was swollen and I could not bear the pain. Another man threw a stone on my chest and I fell out of the road almost unconscious and I asked Brother to forgive me and to run for his life. He went to a
Harijan's house and he was protected there by the people. He managed to get a man who came to save. One man had given the order to burn me alive and I saw my end as a person was ready to pour kerosene on me. The
Harijan came at this time and told others that I too am a Hindu. The stopped them from burning me and they gave me water to drink. I had never experienced such thirst and I was struggling to breathe even. Anyway, I
was carried to a Hindu's House and I remained there all night with Brother. We could not sleep as the whole town was burning. Hindus were shouting victoriously while the Muslims were running for life. So many lost
their lives in Sajeli. Our house was looted thoroughly and burnt at night. We left Sanjeli just with the clothes we worn on that day. We got a few books from the burnt house. Our chapel was desecrated with no sign
of the Blessed Sacrament or the chalice. We were made utterly poor; but God saved us from death though we had to undergo lot of pain and agony. This experience has increased my faith in God He has some plans for
each of us. Thank you very much for your prayers. I will be praying for you tomorrow in a special way. May God keep you all in his peace.
We pray, of course.
But there is more than all of us can do,
specially those Indians who are in the West, and the Governments and Human Rights groups in North America and Europe.
The Sangh Parivar — Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its frontal organizations — have
defied international covenants, they have targeted, in malice and in cold-blooded conspiracy, men, women and children identified by their religion, each one of them innocent of any crime.
We have considerable
amount of information that many of these organisations are collecting funds in the US and Europe in the name of, and under the guise of, doing charity work among orphans and among tribals.
It is time to take action under your laws to stop such activity.
Above all, it is time to subject the Sangh parivar, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak sangh, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Bajrang Dal, the Vanvasi
Kalyan Ashram and others of their ilk to an international scrutiny. India, and the world, cannot afford to let these latter day fascists and Neo-Nazis remain lose and aspiring for full political power in democratic
India.
It may, very soon, be too late.
BIOGRAPHY:
Dr. John Dayal, Secretary General, All India Christian Council, and National Vice President, All India Catholic Union, is
internationally recognized as the face and voice of the Christian Human Rights movement, not just in India, but also in South Asia. Equally important has been his role in the peace movement in the Subcontinent. His
was the first voice raised, in a joint statement signed with Bishops Karam Masih and Vincent Concessao in May 1998, against the nuclear weapon tests by India and Pakistan.
Monitoring closely the growth of
violent Hindutva fundamentalism, it was alarmingly clear to Dr. Dayal by the mid-Nineties that the next targets of violence would be Christians. His early distant warnings to the church and the government helped
formulate a united Christian response. By 1998 Dr. Dayal had mobilized an international network of human rights organizations and activists.
In the process, he has faced threats to his life and to his
family. Several government ministers in national and state levels have joined India’s Hindutva fundamentalist elements in targeting him in an aggressive, vicious and malicious hate campaign. Recipient of numerous
national awards for his journalism and Human Rights advocacy, John Dayal was awarded the first Graham Stuart Staines Award for Religious Freedom and Human Rights created in memory of the Australian missionary who
with his two sons was burnt alive by Hindutva fanatics in the Indian state of Orissa in January 1999.
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