Delhi responsible for Gujrat riots: HRW

[azeezulla]

In accordance with the Human Rights Watch 2003 report released on Tuesday the 14tyh January 2003, India witnessed its worst episode of communal violence in over a decade in 2002, demonstrating the increasingly volatile consequences of a broad and government supported Hindu nationalist agenda in the country. The report said that in February and March state supported anti-Muslim violence in Gujrat state claimed at least 2000 lives. As in Gujrat, attacks against historically discriminated groups in other parts of the country, including Christians, Dalits (or called un-touchables by other Hindus) and tribesmen were carried out with virtual impunity. Attack by militants continued to claim many civilian lives in the disputed region of Kashmir and in the northeast.

On Feb. 27, in the town of Godhra in Gujrat, a Muslim mob attached a train on which Hindu activists were traveling. Two train cars were st on fire, killing at least 58 people. In July results of an official investigation by the Ahmedabad based Forensic Science Laboratory stated that the fire could not have been set by the mob from the outside as had been alleged; the fire it said was set from inside the train.

The Godhra massacre was immediately followed by four day retaliatory killing spree in thwich over 2000 people mostly Muslims, fell victim to mobs that looted and burned their homes desetroyed placed of worship and Muslim owned businesses and gang raped and sexually mutilated Muslim women and girls.

The report said Human Rights Watch’s investigations and those of Indian human rights groups, revealed that much of the violence was planned well in advance of the Godhra attach and was carried out with state approval and orchestration. State officials and the police were directly involved in the violence. In many cases, the police led the charge, using gunfire to kill Muslims who got in the mobs; way. The groups most directly responsible for the violence against Muslims included the VHP, the Bajrang Dal (the militant youth wing of the VHP) and the Rashtriya Swayasmservak Sangh (National Volunteer Corps, RSS) collectively forming the sangh parivar (or “family of Hindu nationalist group”).

The HRW report observed that the violence in Gujrat underscored the volatile consequences of rising Hindu nationalist sentiment, propagated by the sang parivar. The revivalist campaign included the “Hinduization” of education, including the revision of history books to include hat propaganda against Islamic and Christian communities.

In Sept. 2002 the National Council of Educational Research and Training released new text books for Indian children in implementation of a new education framework following the lifting of stay by the Indian Supreme Court. The Supreme Court had rejected public interest litigation that argued the new framework would violate the constitutional requirement of secularism given the introduction of ”value education” into the curriculum seen by many as a means of injecting religious instruction into education, the report said.

Connections between the drafters of the new textbooks and Hindu nationalist organizations, revealed only once the stay had been lifted increased these concerns. Member organizations of the sangh parivar also continued to distribute hate literature, direct violent attacks and mount converstion efforts against other minority communities, most notably Christians and Tribesmen.

Attacks against Christians included violence against nuns, priests and missionaries and the destruction of religious. Sites. On Feb. 17, in the southern statte of Karnataka a church in the town of Hinkal was attacked during morning mass. A similar incident took place in the Koraput District of the eastern state of Orissa on April 29, when a church with 20 worshippers was torched by 50 assailants. Individuals were also the targets of religious violence.

Human Rights Watch continued to receive reports of Dalits falling victim to caste based violence, most often at the hands of upper castes Hindus where perpetrated these crimes with almost complete impunity. In May three Dalits in the southern state of Tamiul Nadu were tortured by a village leader: two were branded with a hot iron rod and forced to feed human feces to each other.

The incident occurred after the three victims publicly announced that the village president had yet to return money she owed one of them. One of the victims was subsequently strangled and beaten by the president’s husband and son.