Jesuit In India

Little hope for Indian Muslims as Gujarat heads to polls
By Elizabeth Roche

Opinion polls suggest Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party will cruise to victory MUSLIM victims of a pogrom that took place five years ago in the western Indian state of Gujarat say they have little hope for the future with Hindu hardliners blamed for the violence set for re-election. Gujarat witnessed a frenzy of destruction, rape and murder in 2002, with huge mobs targetting the Muslim community after Hindu pilgrims were killed in an alleged attack on a train. In all, at least 2,000 Muslims were massacred, and many survivors are still piecing together shattered lives - saying they remain marginalised and struggling to come to terms with the orchestrated killings. “We had good houses, a steady income, clean drinking water, electricity and cleaner surroundings where we were staying earlier,” said Khatoon Bibi, a woman in her mid-40s forced out of her neighbourhood after the bloodletting. “Now we have nothing. No source of livelihood, the (majority) Hindu community don’t want us to work with them or for them.“Our children don’t go to school any more and we live on a garbage dump,” she said, pointing to huge mounds of refuse, just metres from her house in the resettlement colony on the outskirts of Gujarat’s commercial capital Ahmedabad. Khatoon Bibi and her husband were among several thousand Muslims in Naroda Patiya neighbourhood when armed Hindu groups stormed the narrow lanes, hacking residents and torching their belongings on February 28, 2002.The riots in Naroda Patiya and other parts of Gujarat were triggered by the deaths of 59 Hindu pilgrims after their train carriage was set on fire - allegedly by a Muslim mob - in Godhra town the previous day. An inquiry by the state-run railway later said the blaze was accidental. Some 2,000 people were killed in what social rights activists said was a carefully planned and systematic massacre. The hardline chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, has been accused of turning a blind eye to the riots - a charge he has consistently denied. He is now campaigning for re-election in two phase elections on December 11 and 16, and opinion polls suggest Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party will cruise to victory. Modi has been playing up what he says are his skills as an efficient administrator whose policies have brought an economic boom in Gujarat, one of India’s wealthier states which has drawn heavy international investment.But for riot victims such as Shah Bano, “when Modi says he has brought prosperity to Gujarat and that 55 million Gujaratis are his family, it is not us he is talking about.”

Cedric Prakash, a Jesuit priest working with the riot victims, said Gujarat’s Muslims who make up around 10 percent of the state’s population - were still suffering five years on. “Today Muslims are confined to ghettos. The healing process can take place if there are suitable conditions created by the state, but the state government itself is hostile to creating those conditions of reconciliation,”

he told AFP. Muslims also said they even felt abandoned by the Congress party, which governs India on a federal level. “Politicians only remember you at the time of elections,” said Abdul Majid, a 55-year-old man who witnessed the rape and murder of his eldest daughter during the 2002 riots. “We have had a parade of people - presidents, politicians, film stars and journalists - come here, look at us, hear our stories and go back. It’s almost like we are animals in the zoo,” said Mohammed Salim, who heads a riot victims’ forum for justice.“When we asked the police for help (during the riots), they said they had orders not to intervene. The state was supposed to protect us,” he said, shaking his head. “Our faith in the system is shattered.” afp