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Muslims trapped by India's apartheid Gujarat's Hindu nationalist chief minister, Narendar Modi, holds the media responsible for the cycle of communal bloodletting, but the blame lies largely at his doorstep, writes Luke Harding The Guardian, London Tuesday April 23, 2002 When will the violence in Gujarat stop? Judging by the horrific events of this weekend, not yet. Nearly two months after communal rioting first broke out in India's most infamous state, there were more deaths in Gujarat. Some 17 people were killed and at least 100 injured in fresh Hindu-Muslim clashes. The state's main city Ahmedabad continues to burn. A group of Muslims dragged a police constable into a lane and stabbed him to death on Sunday. The police responded by going on a killing spree, shooting dead at least six Muslims in the Gomtipur area of the city. They included an 18-year-old girl, Nazimabanu Mehmood Hussain, and her 42-year-old father. She and the other victims of what is euphemistically known as "police firing" were shot in the head at point blank range. The depressing cycle of violence follows a now-familiar pattern in which Gujarat's partisan Hindu police force - instead of trying to stop the violence - trains its guns on India's minority community. The response of Gujarat's unrepentant Hindu nationalist chief minister, Narendar Modi, has been to blame the media. In full-page adverts in Sunday's Indian newspapers Mr Modi accuses his critics of "malicious propaganda". They have tarnished Gujarat's reputation by spreading "untruths", he says. Few people outside India's ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) - of which Mr Modi is a member - share this view. Last week a leaked report compiled by senior diplomats at the British high commission in New Delhi squarely pointed the finger of blame for the violence at Mr Modi and his administration. The report also suggested that the official death toll - 800 - was a gross underestimate. A truer figure was 2,000, with the vast majority of dead Muslims, the report noted. Extremist Hindu organisations began preparing an attack against the state's Muslim community well before the Godhra tragedy, in which a Muslim mob burned to death 56 Hindus on a train, the report added. In a declaration to be made public this week, the European Union compares events in Gujarat since February 27 with the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany. "The carnage in Gujarat was a kind of apartheid ... and has parallels with Germany of the 1930s", the declaration says. While secular Indians have been appalled by the epic scale of the retaliatory destruction in Gujarat, Mr Modi has become a hero among hardliners within the BJP and its Hindu revivalist allies. It is this, perhaps, which explains why India's BJP prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, had refused to give in to persistent demands from the opposition to sack the defiant Mr Modi. It seems that many in the BJP and its revanchist sister organisations feel that India's Muslims have finally got the beating they deserve. "The Muslims have to be taught a lesson, once and for all", Pravin Togadiya, the secretary general of the extremist Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), opined on Sunday. Mr Vajpayee clearly finds the violence embarrassing. India's reputation internationally has suffered badly. New Delhi's previously plausible argument that the problem of extremism was one that only affected its archrival Pakistan now seems hollow. But with the BJP in deep electoral trouble, many within the ruling party believe that continuing Hindu-Muslim unrest is the best way to consolidate its Hindu vote bank and bounce back to victory in a general election scheduled for 2004. India's ultra-nationalist home minister LK Advani - seen by many as a successor to Mr Vajpayee - has defended Mr Modi. The bodies have continued to pile up, but Mr Advani has maintained a sphinx-like silence, which appears to hint at approval. Several of the prime minister's secular coalition partners, meanwhile, have also demanded Mr Modi's dismissal. But they have refrained from pulling the plug on the government, realising that loss of office, which an early general election would bring, means loss of influence, power, and money. With more deaths every day Mr Modi's declaration in yesterday's Indian newspapers that "Peace is our collective responsibility" seems nothing more than a sick joke. --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
