Human Rights Watch Report
April 2002, Vol. 14, No. 3(C)

..VI. THE CONTEXT OF THE VIOLENCE IN GUJARAT

 Communal violence against Muslims in Gujarat is intimately connected to a rise of Hindu nationalism in the country and the state, a phenomenon that is also responsible for attacks against Christians over the last several years in the state and around the country. The following provides a brief overview of the rise of Hindu nationalism and related attacks on minorities in the state.  
 

Communal Violence and Attacks Against Christians in Gujarat 
Communal violence is not new to Gujarat. Successive episodes of Hindu-Muslim violence (in 1969, 1985, 1989, and 1992) have resulted in the increasing ghettoization of the state's Muslim community, a pattern that promises to reinforce itself as Muslim residents once again look for safety in numbers and refuse to return to what is left of their residences alongside Hindu neighbors. After the experience of earlier riots, many Muslim establishments had also taken Hindu names.213 Those too were selectively targeted for attacks using lists prepared in advance. The current climate also cannot be divorced from heightened conflict in Kashmir, India's deteriorating relations with Pakistan, and the VHP's ongoing temple construction campaign in Ayodhya.214  

Hindu nationalist groups were also directly responsible for the spate of violence against the state's Christian community in 1998 and 1999. As documented in the 1999 Human Rights Watch report, Politics By Other Means: Attacks Against Christians in India, anti-Christian violence in the state of Gujarat reached its peak during Christmas week 1998 when a local extremist Hindu group obtained permission to hold a rally on December 25 in Ahwa town in the state's southeastern Dangs district. Over 4,000 people participated in the rally, shouting anti-Christian slogans while the police stood by and watched. After the rally, Hindu groups began to attack Christian places of worship, schools run by missionaries, and shops owned by Christians and Muslims. Between December 25, 1998, and January 3, 1999, churches and prayer halls were damaged, attacked, or burned down in at least twenty-five villages in the state. Scores of individuals were physically assaulted, and in some cases tied up, beaten, and robbed of their belongings while angry mobs invaded and damaged their homes. Thousands of Christian tribal community members in the region were also forced to undergo conversions to Hinduism.215 

The current spate of attacks appears to be unparalleled in the history of the state since the independence partition, both because of the extent of state involvement in the violence and the participation of and impact on all classes of society:  

The underclass was supported in the looting by the middle and upper middle classes, including women. They not only indulged in pillaging but openly celebrated the destruction and mounting death toll.... New areas joined the sectarian frenzy. Implicit in this participation was an expectation of tacit, if not overt support, from the state Government. As Maheshbhai, an entrepreneur, says, "For the first time we have had a chief minister who has stood up. The Muslims have been the aggressors for the past 50 years. This time it was different."216
Muslims from all sections of the population were affected, "from slum dwellers to businessmen and white collar professionals and senior government bureaucrats."217 High court judges and Muslim police officers were also attacked.218 Muslim policemen have since sought special permission to be on duty without their name tags.219 

A history of communal violence has left its mark. Over one hundred areas in Gujarat have long been declared "sensitive" or violence-prone by state authorities, yet few, if any, of the state's many guidelines on preventive measures to address communal violence at the first sign of trouble were implemented following the Godhra attack.220 As a senior retired police officer commented in an article in the Hindu: "[T]he sky is the limit for taking preventive measures," though none were implemented "in the 24 hours it [the administration] had at its disposal between Godhra and the bandh [shutdown]."221  

213 Bose, "Ethnic Cleansing in Ahmedabad."  

214 V. Shankar Aiyar and Uday Mahurkar, "Gujarat: Losing Faith," India Today, March 18, 2002.  

215 See Human Rights Watch, "Politics By Other Means." More incidents of violence against India's Christian community were recorded in 1998 and 1999 than in all the years since independence. Attacks occurred primarily in the tribal regions of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Orissa, as well as the state of Maharashtra. Activists belonging to militant Hindu extremist groups, including the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad were often blamed for the violence. While the central government officially condemned the attacks, spokespersons for the BJP characterized the surge in violence as a reaction to a conversion campaign by Christian missionaries in the country. Sporadic violence continues to this day. 

216 Mahurkar, "Gujarat: Losing Faith," India Today. 

217 Bose, "Ethnic Cleansing in Ahmedabad."  

218 Justice M.H. Kadri, a sitting Gujarat High Court judge, for example, found himself having to retreat to an undisclosed location when large crowds began gathering near his house. Bhushan, "Thy Hand, Great Anarch."  

219 "Muslim policemen scared to wear name tags in Gujarat," Asian Age, March 24, 2002.  

220 Aiyar, "Gujarat: Losing Faith." 

221 "Callousness... after the carnage," Hindu, March 31, 2002.