A blind eye to bigotry

Five years on, those behind the Gujarat anti-Muslim
pogrom are still running the state

Mike Marqusee
Thursday March 1, 2007
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2023837,00.html

Five years ago this week, across the Indian state of
Gujarat, the stormtroopers of the Hindu right, decked
in saffron sashes and armed with swords, tridents,
sledgehammers and liquid gas cylinders, launched a
pogrom against the local Muslim population. They
looted and torched Muslim-owned businesses, assaulted
and murdered Muslims, and gang-raped and mutilated
Muslim women. By the time the violence spluttered to a
halt, about 2,500 Muslims had been killed and about
200,000 driven from their homes.

The pogrom was distinguished not only by its ferocity
and sadism (foetuses were ripped from the bellies of
pregnant women, old men bludgeoned to death) but also
by its meticulous advance planning. The leaders used
mobile phones to coordinate the movement of an army of
thousands through densely populated areas, targeting
Muslim properties with the aid of computerised lists
and electoral rolls provided by state agencies.

Much of the violence unfolded with the full
collaboration of the police. In some cases, police
fired at Muslims seeking to flee the mobs. When asked
to help a group of girls being raped on the roof of a
building, police officers demurred, explaining: "They
have been given 24 hours to kill you." Subsequent
investigations confirmed that police knew in advance
of the pogrom and had been instructed not to interfere
with it.

Indian and global human rights organisations have
singled out Gujarat's chief minister, Narendra Modi,
of the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), as the principal
culprit. As a result of his alleged complicity in mass
murder, he was denied a visa to the US and cannot
visit Britain for fear of arrest.

Yet Modi remains chief minister and has become not
only the BJP's most popular figurehead, but also a
poster boy for big business, foreign and domestic.
Gujarat, which contains 5% of India's population, now
boasts 18% of its investment and 21% of its exports.
At this year's Vibrant Gujarat conclave, the showpiece
of the BJP regime, the great names of Indian
capitalism - Ambani, Birla, Tata - sang Modi's
praises, echoed by delegations from Singapore, Europe
and the US. Anxieties about dealing with a politician
accused of genocide have been allayed by the appeal of
Gujarat's corporation-friendly environment, not least
its labour laws, which give employers hire-and-fire
rights unique in India.

Five years on, Muslims in Gujarat still live in fear.
About 50,000 remain in refugee camps. Most of the
cases filed by victims of the violence have never been
investigated. Witnesses have been intimidated. No more
than a dozen low-level culprits have been convicted.
None of the major conspirators has been brought before
the courts.

The events of 2002 did not conform to the paradigm of
the war on terror, in which India was a prize ally, so
never achieved the infamy in the west they deserved.
An array of interests - in New Delhi, London and
Washington - is dedicated to ensuring the atrocity is
consigned to oblivion. For them, the release of
Parzania, a feature film centred on the violence, is
an uncomfortable development. Despite dramatic flaws,
it accurately depicts the savagery of the anti-Muslim
violence, its planned, coordinated character, and the
complicity of the police and the state government.
Cinemas in Gujarat, under pressure from the Hindu
right, are refusing to screen the film.

If and when Parzania reaches audiences here and in the
US, it will offer a necessary counter-tale to the
fashionable fable of the Indian neoliberal miracle,
exposing the brutality and bigotry that have gone hand
in hand with zooming growth rates and hi-tech
triumphalism.

· Mike Marqusee writes a column for the Hindu; his
most recent book is Wicked Messenger: Bob Dylan and
the 1960s.

www.mikemarqusee.com
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More on this at:
http://www.islamawareness.net/Persecution/Gujarat/