Re: 2 Muslims killed in pipe-bomb explosion in Indian Gujrat state
They were hunted down, raped, burned and butchered, as well as expelled in their hundreds of thousands, and now they are forgotten and shunned by Hindu’s. That is how secular India is treating it’s Muslim citizens.
http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/OpinionNF.asp?ArticleID=189162
**Muslims in Gujarat still await justice **
By Kuldip Nayar
One more court case failed last week in Baroda, Gujarat, to award punishment to those involved in the anti-Muslim carnage in the state in 2002. Once again the judge questioned the role of the police and indicted them for failing to prevent the violence. Lack of evidence has been the cause for the failure of cases in Gujarat where the BJP-led government had instigated the killing and looting of Muslim residents as a reprisal to the Godhara train burning incident. Roughly 45,000 cases were filed after the carnage. Half of these were closed within days of filing due to lack of evidence. Many have been dismissed since, like the one in Baroda. In fact, only 75 cases are being pursued vigorously. There are no funds or volunteers to take them up. Hindu lawyers are reluctant while most Muslim lawyers charge hefty fees. It is, therefore, difficult to imagine that the guilty in the Gujarat carnage will get the punishment they deserve.
It may well be a repeat of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots where a couple of persons have been convicted after 21 years. There is, however, one glaring difference: the Sikh victims have been given Rupees300,000 (Dh25,000) per family for rehabilitation but Muslims have not got a penny from the government. In the first case, the New Delhi government took no time to pay. In the case of Gujarat, the state government refuses to pay anything at all. Muslim victims await the generosity of individuals or non-governmental organisations. Both are fewer than before. As a matter of fact, no aid is coming to the Muslim victims. The government is hostile and the local population biased. International agencies wound up their last office some months ago. **The 200,000 Muslims, ousted nearly three years ago from their homes during the carnage, blink on nobody’s radar. The saffronised (communalised) state administration has turned its back on them. Over 100,000 people have migrated to other places. But the rest live in Ahmedabad on a strip of land stretching into graveyards. They want to return to their places but cannot do so. **
Miserable life
One such person, Ebrahim, went back to his village Marghi, near Anand. He even fulfilled the conditions laid down and withdrew his complaint to the police. Still, the people there made his life so miserable that he had to quit. They did not want a Muslim in their midst. Hundreds of villages in the state proudly display a board: Hindu village in the Hindu Rashtra [state]! There is hardly any protest against this. Social and economic boycott of Muslims continues. No Gujarati hires them. Bureaucrats are tainted, the police one-sided and liberals indifferent. The worst is that the intelligentsia has taken no time to get integrated into the communal segregation. It does not even talk about Muslims - as if they don’t exist. It looks as if Chief Minister Narendra Modi has changed the people. This has happened in dictatorships, but he has done it in a democracy. The fact is that nobody wants to recall the carnage because it probably weighs on the conscience one way or the other. Abnormal economic growth in Gujarat should give a message of peace. But the reality is different. Muslims have been written off. It is a growth for the Hindus and by the Hindus. Since the rest of India measures success on the scales of economics, it believes things are all right. That the Modi-led government is hostile is understandable. But the centre’s ambivalence is beyond comprehension.
The Atal Bihari Vajpayee government had its political compulsions because Gujarat was ruled by the BJP. But why has the Congress government led by Manmohan Singh remained so distant? True, law and order is a state subject. But the relief and rehabilitation of Indian citizens is New Delhi’s responsibility. Since the Gujarat government has refused to pay anything for rehabilitation, the centre has to bear the burden. Either it should bring in a law that forces the states to accept the responsibility of rehabilitation or it should foot the bill. What do the Muslims of Gujarat do? Whom do they turn to? Fear stalks the land. An average Gujarati wants reconciliation and feels sorry for the wrongs done to the Muslim community. But he is afraid to speak because of the “repercussions”. Leaders of civil society, the RSS and the BJP followers continue to preach separation as if Gujarat is a laboratory that will help them experiment with methods which they can apply elsewhere in the country. The Left and its trade unions are conspicuous by their silence. The Gandhians who were initially afraid have come in the field. But they are only a few and have very little resources to disburse. However, a ray of hope has emerged in an otherwise sombre environment. A few people, mostly Hindus, have constituted themselves into a group. Harish Mandir, a former bureaucrat, is one of them. They have drafted a one-year plan to help Muslims regain their confidence, if not property. Unfortunately, the Muslims in the state are entrapped in a situation from where they see no escape. The 1984 anti-Sikh riots have not gone into oblivion despite the efforts of the Congress to the contrary. India is a secular country. This is the reason why people defeated the BJP in the last general election and returned the Congress. They have pinned their hopes on the party to retrieve the nation from the creeping shadows of communalism. The failure of the Congress will be the biggest betrayal.