The 2002 riots of India’s Gujarat and their subsequent handling have shown that the country’s crumbling democracy under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in the danger of total collapse.
The Gujarat massacre, that took place on February 27, was one of the deadliest single incidents of religious riots that killed more than 2,000 Muslims since Independence.
Modi, the Chief Minister, had popularized the fake and factually incorrect assumption that Godhra train was burnt in a pre-planned manner by local Muslims.
Furious Hindu mobs rampaged through Muslim neighborhoods in several cities seeking reprisals during three days of bloodshed.
During the slaughter in Ahmedabad and in hundreds of other towns and villages, the Hindu mobs rounded up and raped hundreds of Muslim women. The BJP and RSS goons poured kerosene oil down their Muslims throats and threw lit matches at them.
The police directed rioters to Muslim homes and also turned fleeing victims back towards their killers. Hindu nationalist Modi was widely accused of turning a blind eye to the violence. Senior police officers even testified that CM Modi had ordered officers not to intervene as the killing spread.
The bloody riots tarred Modi’s international image, leading him to be blacklisted for a decade by the United States and European Union. An Indian court in 2011 found 31 Hindus guilty of murdering 33 Muslims who were seeking shelter in a single house.
Most of the perpetrators of violence have not only gone scot-free and many of them also had an upward political mobility. The efforts of the victims and human rights activists have yielded very few results and majority of the victims are grieving and living with the scars of their losses. The Human Rights Commission report (2002) pointed out that state machinery failed to protect the innocent people.
The Human Rights Watch say that the state and Law Enforcement Agencies’ officials still harass and intimidate the key witnesses, NGOs, social activists and lawyers who are fighting to seek justice for the riot victims.
