..VI. THE CONTEXT OF THE VIOLENCE IN GUJARAT

A Campaign of Hate  
The rise of the BJP in Gujarat has paralleled and even been attributed to the increasing activity of the broader coalition of Hindu nationalist groups in the state. A campaign of hate against the state's minority Christian and Muslim communities began years before the 2002 attacks. A 1999 Human Rights Watch report documented the August 1998 distribution of fliers by RSS and Hindu Jagran Manch (HJM)-an offshoot of the sangh parivar consisting of people who belong to the Bajrang Dal-in Dangs district in southeastern Gujarat, site of a ten-day spate of violent and premeditated attacks on Christian communities and institutions between December 25, 1998, and January 3, 1999. 

The fliers proclaimed, "India is a country of Hindus.... Our religion of Rama and Krishna is pious. To convert [or] leave it is a sin." Another flier by the VHP in Bardoli, Gujarat, warned, "Caution Hindus! Beware of inhuman deeds of Muslims.... Muslims are destroying Hindu Community by slaughter houses, slaughtering cows and making Hindu girls elope. Crime, drugs, terrorism are Muslim's empire."²⁰² A flier produced by the Bajrang Dal and VHP in November 1998 described the Bajrang Dal as a "wide organisation of youth," "working under the Vishwa Hindu Parishad," with the objectives of "protect[ing] mother India," "rais[ing] a loud voice against people who ignore Hindu Sabha [assembly]," raising people's awareness against the "trapping of Hindu girls by Muslims and anti-national activities of Christian missionaries," and working for the "protection of religion and culture."²⁰³ A parallel anti-Christian campaign was supported by the Gujarati-language press that printed false reports of Hindu temples being destroyed, cited an increase in the percentage of Christians in the area, printed announcements for upcoming rallies, and repeatedly branded Christians as the main instigators of violence in December 1998 and January 1999.²⁰⁴ 

Several fact-finding missions to southeastern Gujarat by local and national human rights organizations attributed the increase in violence against Christians to the growing presence and activities of sangh parivar groups in these areas. According to an October 1998 joint report by the Committee to Protect Democratic Rights and the Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee: 

A well planned strategy is being operated by the Hinduvata forces in Gujarat and it aims at communalising society at the grass root level. Youngsters belonging to the age group of fifteen to twenty-five are being recruited as activists of the Bajrang Dal for this purpose. They are taught to carry out operations covertly and deny any knowledge of those incidents where communal flare-ups do take place.... The VHP has also intensified its activities all over Gujarat. Activities such as the distribution of the idols of Hindu Gods, revival of Hindu festivals, conducting of "Artis" [prayer ceremonies] etc., are on the increase in recent months.... A well planned program to "Hinduvise" the tribals is in full swing in the entire tribal belt of South Gujarat. The founding of the units of the VHP and the BD [Bajrang Dal] in each tribal locality, the regular visits and preaching of Swamis, the construction of temples for tribals, etc. are being pursued vigourously. The attack on Christian churches, disruption of prayer meetings, physical assaults on Christians, etc. are part [of] and the result of this programme.²⁰⁵

The pamphlet-the text of which is included in the appendix to this report-refers to Muslims as "anti-national elements" who molest Hindus' sisters and daughters and who use money earned from Hindus to buy arms. It calls on its readers to institute a complete boycott of goods and services proffered by Muslims, adding that Muslims should not be hired in Hindu establishments and should not be allowed to rent property. It also cautions Hindus to be "alert to ensure that [Hindus'] sisters-daughters do not fall into the `love-trap' of Muslim boys" and calls on Hindus to vote, but "only for him who will protect the Hindu nation."²⁰⁷  

Though the VHP has denied authorship of the pamphlet, it is already achieving its intended effect.²⁰⁸ According to an organizer of the Chartoda Kabristan camp in Ahmedabad: "The Hindus are not selling their wares to Muslims. A certain boycott is in effect."²⁰⁹ An article in the Washington Post also notes the difficulties relief camp residents in Ahmedabad are facing returning to their jobs for fear of attack, or because their employers have hired Hindus in their place.²¹⁰ A report issued by the Vadodara branch of the People's Union for Civil Liberties and Shanti Abhiyan also noted that pamphlets calling for an economic boycott against Muslims were being distributed in and around the city of Vadodara, Gujarat.²¹¹ The forced isolation of Muslim community members afraid to leave ghetto neighborhoods that have become affected, has also resulted in reports of acute food shortages and starvation in Ahmedabad.²¹² 

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

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  

²⁰² In towns outside of Dangs, members of the Muslim community also came under attack. In several districts, inter-religious marriages between Muslim men and Hindu women were being depicted as incidents of "the abduction of girls." The government of Gujarat has also announced that it would "probe into all such marriages, that too, only when the bridegrooms are Muslim." "Attacks on Religious Minorities in South Gujarat," A Report by the Combined Fact Finding Team of CPDR and APCLC, October 1998, p. 7.  

²⁰³ Citizens' Commission on persecution of Christians in Gujarat, Violence in Gujarat: test case for a larger fundamentalist agenda (National Alliance of Women, 1999), p. 45. In early September 1999, on the eve of national parliamentary elections in Gujarat, the VHP distributed inflammatory pamphlets in the slum areas of Ahmedabad. Among the many attacks on minorities contained in the pamphlets was the charge that Muslim men were trapping Hindu girls into marriage. The pamphlets also said that the populations of Christians and Muslims in the country since independence have increased at a far greater rate than the population of Hindus, and that voters should think twice before handing the country back to a Christian foreigner-namely Italian-born Congress Party president Sonia Gandhi. "VHP unleashes pamphlet attack on Sonia, minorities," Times of India , September 3, 1999. 

²⁰⁴ "Details of the incidents that have taken place on 25.12.98 (daytime) in Ahwa, Dangs District, S. Gujarat," A South Gujarat Tribal Christian Welfare Council Report, December 29, 1998. 

²⁰⁵ "Attacks on Religious Minorities in South Gujarat," A Report by the Combined Fact Finding Team of CPDR and APCLC, October 1998, p. 7.