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Articles: My Thoughts | February 28, 2002 - Gujarat
- Mr. devrajgoud kodipyaka
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“There are many religions as there are individuals; but those who are conscious of the spirit of nationality do not interfere with one another’s religion. If Hindus believe that India should be peopled only by Hindus, they are living in a dreamland. The Hindus, the Mohammedans, the Parsis and the Christians who have made their country are fellow countrymen and they will have to live in unity if only for their own interest. In no part of the world are one nationality and one religion synonymous terms; nor has it ever been so in India.”
Mahatma Gandhi
What happened in Gujarat was not a spontaneous uprising, it was a carefully orchestrated attack against Muslims. The attacks were planned in advance and organized with extensive participation of the police and state government officials.'
The police were directly implicated in nearly all the attacks against Muslims that are documented in the 75-page report, 'We Have No Orders to Save You': State Participation and Complicity in Communal Violence in Gujarat. In some cases they were merely passive observers. But in many instances, police officials led the charge of murderous mobs, aiming and firing at Muslims who got in the way.
Starting February 28, 2002, a three-day retaliatory killing spree by Hindus left hundreds dead and tens of thousands homeless and dispossessed. The looting and burning of Muslim homes, businesses, and places of worship was also widespread. Muslim girls and women were brutally raped. Mass graves have been dug throughout the state. Gravediggers told Human Rights Watch that bodies keep arriving, burnt and mutilated beyond recognition.
Between February 28 and March 2, thousands of attackers descended on Muslim neighborhoods, clad in saffron scarves and khaki shorts, the signature uniform of Hindu nationalist groups, and armed with swords, sophisticated explosives, and gas cylinders. They were guided by voter lists and printouts of addresses of Muslim-owned properties-information obtained from the local municipality. In the weeks following the attacks, Hindu homes and businesses were also destroyed in retaliatory attacks by Muslims.
Since February 27, more than 600 people have been killed in Gujarat, most of them Muslims. The violence began after a Muslim mob in the town of Godhra, apparently angered by the hooliganism of Hindu activists, torched a train on which the latter were riding; more than sixty passengers were killed.
The activists were returning from Ayodhya where a campaign led by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad to construct a Hindu temple on the site of a mosque destroyed by Hindu militants in 1992 continues to raise the spectre of further violence. Riots in the city of Bombay in 1992 and 1993 following the destruction of the mosque claimed hundreds of lives
http://hrw.org/photos/2002/india/pages/7.htm(you can see some pictures by following above link.)
It must always be remembered that the carnage has given a terrible shock to India’s fair secular name. It was a national shame. There is no need to reiterate norms that media has to adhere to in such situation. However now there is a greater moral responsibility on the media to do their best to build up the national solidarity and to recement the communal harmony at all level remembering the noble role they had played during the pre independence days.
DEV.UK
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