Wounds refuse to heal in India's riot-scarred state
22 Feb 2007 06:37:19 GMT Source: Reuters
By Krittivas Mukherjee AHMEDABAD, India, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Five years ago, Abdul Razzak, an ageing Muslim shopkeeper, cheated death by hiding among the corpses of his daughter and three grandchildren slaughtered by a Hindu mob in one of India's worst religious riots. "It's a shame I tried to live while my family lay dead around me," Razzak said in Ahmedabad, the main city in the western state of Gujarat. "I have not been able to live down my cowardice." More than 2,500 people, mostly Muslims, were burned and hacked to death in month-long violence across Hindu-majority Gujarat five years ago, human rights groups say, although officials put the death toll at about 1,000. The reprisal attacks on Muslims erupted after a fire broke out on a train carrying Hindu pilgrims on Feb. 27, 2002, killing 59 people in Godhra town near Ahmedabad. Razzak, a sinewy, bespectacled man, says he now lives only to see if the rioters who killed his family are brought to justice. Most Muslim community leaders and riot victims interviewed by Reuters say that even now the wounds have not healed. Many feel they have neither received justice from a biased police nor succour from the state's Hindu-nationalist government, heightening their sense of alienation. India's Supreme Court has said the state government in Gujarat was complicit in the killings. In the country's long history of Hindu-Muslim tensions -- which have claimed more Muslim lives -- the Gujarat riots marked a watershed, as the sense of injustice turned it into a powerful recruitment tool for Islamic radicals, analysts say. Last year a bomb attack on the railway network in Mumbai that killed 186 people, including many businessmen from Gujarat, was blamed on Muslims acting perhaps in revenge for the 2002 riots. On Sunday two more bombs exploded on a train bound from India to Pakistan, killing 68 people, with local Muslims again the prime suspects. SIMMERING ANGER Rights activists say nothing has been done to assuage the feelings of Gujarat's Muslims. "From rehabilitation to compensation to conviction of the rioters, virtually nothing has happened," said Teesta Setalvad, head of civil rights group Citizens for Justice and Peace. While most victims appear reconciled to their long wait for justice, some like Inayat Rahim Sayeed, a 36-year-old unemployed man whose mother and two children were hacked to death, do not hide their anger. "Most Muslims you speak to are wearing a mask of quiet and fortitude," Sayeed said. "No one will tell you how angry he is because he knows he can do nothing." Chief Minister Narendra Modi is accused of ordering the riots with an eye on the Hindu votes in an election that year, and of subverting justice so that the rioters went unpunished. NGOs say only about a dozen people have been convicted from 3,200 cases filed. Some 5,000 Muslim families feel unable to go back to their homes because of threats from Hindus. Modi, whom enemies call a fascist and supporters the saviour of Hindus, says the riots were a spontaneous reaction to the killing of Hindus in the train fire. Still, the government said, millions of dollars had been spent to rehabilitate the riot-affected, giving them new dwellings or new livelihoods. "There is not a single complaint pending before us related to rehabilitation," said Purushottam Rupala, state chief of the Bharatiya Janata Party which rules Gujarat. Rubbish, say rights activists who claim every new shelter for riot victims was built by charities, mostly Islamic NGOs. Either way, the state's Muslims -- who form 12 percent of Gujarat's 50 million people -- feel scarred for life. "Today Muslims and Hindus avoid crossing each other's path," said Nisad Ahmed Ansari, a Persian studies scholar. "The two communities do not mingle any more."
