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"I have never known a riot which has used the sexual subjugation of women so widely as an instrument of violence as
in the recent mass barbarity in Gujarat."
in the recent mass barbarity in Gujarat."
The Spark
Violence against the Muslim minority erupted in Gujarat after 27 February 2002 when 59 passengers, including many women and children, died in a fire in a compartment of the Sabarmati Express near Godhra station. Officials ascribed the fire to a planned attack by local Muslims on Hindu kar sevaks returning by train from Ayodhya. In the following days and weeks, Hindu mobs targeted members of the Muslim minority in the state. According to official sources 762 people were killed, whereas human rights groups believe that over 2,000 people, mostly Muslims were killed. A large number of the victims were women and children; local investigators have stated that between 250 and 330 women victims were amongst the dead, but exact numbers for all the incidents are not available.
The Victims Women have been raped and sexually humiliated the world over in clashes between communities as a mechanism of dishonouring their entire community which becomes impure and polluted by the rape of an outsider. Most observers agree that rape and other forms of sexual humiliation and assault were used in the Gujarat violence as an instrument of systematic ""subjugation and humiliation of [the Muslim] community"". The means and methods of assault bore a deliberate and open Hindu imprint. Women were raped while the rapists chanted Hindu slogans; the weapons with which women's wombs were cut open were trishuls and swords; the bodies of the victims were not left where they fell but burned in the way Hindus cremate their dead. Witnesses reported that in some cases, the syllable ""Om"" which has religious significance in Hinduism, was cut into the bodies and skulls of victims.
Evidence of the systematic sexual assault on Muslim girls and women is well documented and overwhelming. Girls' and women's bodies were subjected to ""almost inexhaustible violence, with infinitely plural and innovative forms of torture … their sexual and reproductive organs were attacked with special savagery"". A doctor who examined victims in a local hospital reported injuries inflicted with a brutality he had not seen before. Women working in a relief camp in Ahmedabad reported to the International Initiative for Justice in Gujarat: ""There were many women bleeding, injured, naked. Many women had bite marks on their breasts. Three women were raped with wooden rods inserted in their vaginas. They were bleeding. We cleaned these women's wounds after removing the objects inserted into their bodies"". Reports on the violence in Gujarat concur on the pattern of violence inflicted on women. It was not only deliberate but designed to inflict maximum suffering. It was long-drawn, intended to kill not outright but, almost identically everywhere, involving a prolonged gradually increasing pain and humiliation.
Several hundred Muslim girls and women were reportedly stripped and dragged naked before their own families and thousands of violent Hindu attackers who taunted and insulted them with obscene words and threatened them with rape and murder. They were then raped, often gang-raped, beaten with sticks or trishuls and swords, had breasts cut off and wombs slashed open by swords and rods violently pushed into their vaginas before a large number of them were cut into pieces or burned to death. The victims included young girls and old women, pregnant women and babies. According to local investigators, there were between 250 and 330 girls and women victims among the dead, the majority of whom had been raped or gang-raped before their deaths.
While some Muslim survivors reported that rapists had shouted that they intended to impregnate them with ""little Hindus"", the target of particular rage were pregnant women. Several eye-witnesses testified before human rights groups that a young woman, Kausar Bano of Naroda Patiya, Ahmedabad, who was nine months pregnant, was gang-raped and had her womb cut open with a sword; her foetus was ripped out, hacked to pieces and flung on the fire. The mother's body was thrown on the fire as well. Police in Vadodara were reported by several witnesses to have hit the bodies of pregnant women with rifles shouting ""kill them before they are born"".
Evidence of the systematic sexual assault on Muslim girls and women is well documented and overwhelming. Girls' and women's bodies were subjected to ""almost inexhaustible violence, with infinitely plural and innovative forms of torture … their sexual and reproductive organs were attacked with special savagery"". A doctor who examined victims in a local hospital reported injuries inflicted with a brutality he had not seen before. Women working in a relief camp in Ahmedabad reported to the International Initiative for Justice in Gujarat: ""There were many women bleeding, injured, naked. Many women had bite marks on their breasts. Three women were raped with wooden rods inserted in their vaginas. They were bleeding. We cleaned these women's wounds after removing the objects inserted into their bodies"". Reports on the violence in Gujarat concur on the pattern of violence inflicted on women. It was not only deliberate but designed to inflict maximum suffering. It was long-drawn, intended to kill not outright but, almost identically everywhere, involving a prolonged gradually increasing pain and humiliation.
Several hundred Muslim girls and women were reportedly stripped and dragged naked before their own families and thousands of violent Hindu attackers who taunted and insulted them with obscene words and threatened them with rape and murder. They were then raped, often gang-raped, beaten with sticks or trishuls and swords, had breasts cut off and wombs slashed open by swords and rods violently pushed into their vaginas before a large number of them were cut into pieces or burned to death. The victims included young girls and old women, pregnant women and babies. According to local investigators, there were between 250 and 330 girls and women victims among the dead, the majority of whom had been raped or gang-raped before their deaths.
While some Muslim survivors reported that rapists had shouted that they intended to impregnate them with ""little Hindus"", the target of particular rage were pregnant women. Several eye-witnesses testified before human rights groups that a young woman, Kausar Bano of Naroda Patiya, Ahmedabad, who was nine months pregnant, was gang-raped and had her womb cut open with a sword; her foetus was ripped out, hacked to pieces and flung on the fire. The mother's body was thrown on the fire as well. Police in Vadodara were reported by several witnesses to have hit the bodies of pregnant women with rifles shouting ""kill them before they are born"".
"… Numbed with disgust and horror, I return from Gujarat ten days after the terror and massacre that convulsed the state. ... As you walk through the camps of riot survivors in Ahmedabad, in which an estimated 53,000 women, men, and children are huddled in 29 temporary settlements, displays of overt grief are unusual. ... But once you sit anywhere in these camps, people begin to speak and their words are like masses of pus released by slitting large festering wounds. The horrors that they speak of are so macabre, that my pen falters... The pitiless brutality against women and small children by organised bands of armed young men is more savage than anything witnessed in the riots that have shamed this nation from time to time during the past century... 'What can you say about a woman eight months pregnant who begged to be spared. Her assailants instead slit open her stomach, pulled out her foetus and slaughtered it before her eyes. What can you say about a family of nineteen being killed by flooding their house with water and then electrocuting them with high-tension electricity? 'What can you say? A small boy of six in Juhapara camp described how his mother and six brothers and sisters were battered to death before his eyes. He survived only because he fell unconscious, and was taken for dead. A family escaping from Naroda-Patiya, one of the worst-hit settlements in Ahmedabad, spoke of losing a young woman and her three month old son, because a police constable directed her to "safety" and she found herself instead surrounded by a mob which doused her with kerosene and set her and her baby on fire. 'I have never known a riot which has used the sexual subjugation of women so widely as an instrument of violence as in the recent mass barbarity in Gujarat. There are reports every where of gangrape, of young girls and women, often in the presence of members of their families, followed by their murder by burning alive, or by bludgeoning with a hammer and in one case with a screw-driver."
Account by an officer in Indian Administrative Service (PDF format)
The Killing of Ehsan Jafri Account by an officer in Indian Administrative Service (PDF format)
Gulberg Society, the home of former Congress MP and trade unionist Ehsan Jafri, was surrounded by a mob of some 20,000 in the centre of Ahmedabad from 7.30am to 4.30pm on 28 February 2002. Many Muslims from surrounding areas had sought refuge there, expecting that an MP would not be exposed to violence. The Concerned Citizens Tribunal cites two eyewitnesses and two others as testifying that Ahmedabad Commissioner of Police, P.C. Pandey, visited Ehsan Jafri at 10.30am and assured him that police reinforcement would be dispatched forthwith and that he would be fully protected. His widow Zakiya Jafri later testified before the Nanavati Shah Commission, too, that the Police Commissioner had promised help when called. A few police officers from the local police post were insufficient to deal with the massive presence of aggressors; according to reports, after feeble attempts to shout at the mob that they constituted an unlawful assembly, they stood by as the brutal violence unfolded.
Around noon, stones, acid and petrol bombs were thrown at the building in which there were then some 80 people. Among the many phone calls reportedly made by Ehsan Jafri were calls to Chief Minister Narendra Modi, then Union Home Minister L.K. Advani, the mayor of Ahmedabad and other party and state officials, asking for protection. Around 2.30pm, the gate was broken open. When it became clear that no help was coming and that he was the specific target, Ehsan Jafri around 2.45pm gave himself up to the mob. In the following 45 minutes he was humiliated, stripped, paraded naked; his fingers, then his hands and feet were chopped off; still alive, he was dragged along the road and thrown into a fire. Mutilations and burning of other Muslims from the building continued as fires were lit on the road outside the building complex. From around 4pm, between 10 and 12 women were raped and gang-raped and cut into pieces before being thrown into the fire; only one woman survived the attack. Police arrived around 4.30pm and after initially being driven away by the mob, started rescuing survivors around 7pm.
The Police Around noon, stones, acid and petrol bombs were thrown at the building in which there were then some 80 people. Among the many phone calls reportedly made by Ehsan Jafri were calls to Chief Minister Narendra Modi, then Union Home Minister L.K. Advani, the mayor of Ahmedabad and other party and state officials, asking for protection. Around 2.30pm, the gate was broken open. When it became clear that no help was coming and that he was the specific target, Ehsan Jafri around 2.45pm gave himself up to the mob. In the following 45 minutes he was humiliated, stripped, paraded naked; his fingers, then his hands and feet were chopped off; still alive, he was dragged along the road and thrown into a fire. Mutilations and burning of other Muslims from the building continued as fires were lit on the road outside the building complex. From around 4pm, between 10 and 12 women were raped and gang-raped and cut into pieces before being thrown into the fire; only one woman survived the attack. Police arrived around 4.30pm and after initially being driven away by the mob, started rescuing survivors around 7pm.
In many cases police, rather than protecting Muslims under attack from Hindu crowds, fired at them, particularly if they resisted attacks. This was particularly reported from Naroda Patiya, Ahmedabad. Of altogether 40 people who were known to have died in police firings in Gujarat on 28 February alone, 36 were Muslim. In some cases police led terrified Muslims not to safety but towards violent Hindu mobs who then attacked them. In several places, police also took part in the attacks on Muslims, looting and burning houses along with the attackers. There are also numerous reports of police participating in sexual threats and innuendo to frighten and humiliate girls and women. The Concerned Citizens Tribunal concluded, ""The shocking levels of police complicity in the Gujarat carnage cannot be over-emphasised"".
Police inaction in preventing abuses and their inaction, connivance and participation in abuses appears to have had official endorsement at the highest level of police and state authorities. Many witnesses reported police saying that they did not have orders to save Muslim victims. Inspector of police, K.K. Mysorewalla is reported to have told victims seeking protection, ""today your time has come. We have been told not to help. These are orders from the top""
Police inaction in preventing abuses and their inaction, connivance and participation in abuses appears to have had official endorsement at the highest level of police and state authorities. Many witnesses reported police saying that they did not have orders to save Muslim victims. Inspector of police, K.K. Mysorewalla is reported to have told victims seeking protection, ""today your time has come. We have been told not to help. These are orders from the top""
The Origin - Hindutva
There is evidence that the crimes were pursuant to policies both of the government of Gujarat and of a number of organizations. Section 6 of this report outlines how the crimes were justified by Hindutva, the political ideology of an exclusively Hindu state which portrays Muslims and other non-Hindus as hostile to Hindu India, threatening Hindus and eroding their rights. It has been advanced by a group of organizations collectively called the Sangh Parivar (the collective Hindu family, which includes the BJP and other political and religious organizations). Proponents of Hindutva have consequently not only called for the elimination of Muslims from India but also defined women's bodies as the battleground on which the struggle to establish a Hindu state was to be carried out. Those motivated by Hindutva who instigated attacks by Hindu mobs in 2002 on Muslim girls and women did so specifically because women were seen as the biological and cultural reproducers and embodiments of the Muslim community which Hindu right wing activists saw as their duty to defile, violate and destroy.
The ideology of Hindutva ignores the wide variety of beliefs and practice loosely described as ""Hindu religion"". It conflates this reduced perception of otherwise varied and disparate religious practice with an equally simplified notion of ""Hindu culture"" and uses an emotionally charged and gendered notion of ""Mother India"" to unite otherwise diverse communities, including several tribal groups. Both as part of their effort to establish and project a singular Hindu national identity and in their effort to mobilize supporters, proponents of the Hindutva project have used Muslims as the ""other"" construed as ""the enemy"". A distorted history presented by proponents of Hindutva portrays both ""Mother India"" and vast numbers of chaste Hindu women as violated by the foreign Muslim invaders of the subcontinent. Relating to the present, Muslims are cast by proponents of Hindutva as deliberately ""over breeding"" in order to outnumber the majority community. Linked to this are projections of Muslim males as virile, violent, sexually insatiable, a threat to Hindu women and as such to the survival of the Hindu community. The US-led ""war on terror"" has further contributed to reinforcing the equation ""Muslim-terrorist-enemy"" used by Hindu right wing organisations to feed fears of the ""Muslim menace"".
The Hindutva project does not stop at the projection of this threat but calls for its active elimination. Hatred and fear of Muslim men fuels the aim to kill them or drive them out of Hindu society and indeed Hindustan, the nation of Hindus. This also drives the wish to avenge their supposed defilement of Hindu women by inflicting sexual violence on Muslim girls and women. It follows with frightening logic that in Gujarat in 2002, Muslim ""women's bodies [were] being used as battlegrounds in the struggle over defining India as a Hindu state"". Muslim girls and women were targeted in Gujarat in 2002 not only because they were members of the Muslim community but specifically because they were ""the biological and cultural reproducers of the communities and their bodies symbolize the body of the community … In fact, Hindu men [saw] it as their function and duty to violate the bodies of Muslim women"". This is also reflected in the fact that Hindu attackers wore their Hindu ""uniform"" of saffron underwear, headband and khaki shorts indicating that they saw themselves as performing a service to Hindutva. Many observers have also pointed to the ""festive, carnivalesque aspect of the rampaging crowds"".
The Planning The ideology of Hindutva ignores the wide variety of beliefs and practice loosely described as ""Hindu religion"". It conflates this reduced perception of otherwise varied and disparate religious practice with an equally simplified notion of ""Hindu culture"" and uses an emotionally charged and gendered notion of ""Mother India"" to unite otherwise diverse communities, including several tribal groups. Both as part of their effort to establish and project a singular Hindu national identity and in their effort to mobilize supporters, proponents of the Hindutva project have used Muslims as the ""other"" construed as ""the enemy"". A distorted history presented by proponents of Hindutva portrays both ""Mother India"" and vast numbers of chaste Hindu women as violated by the foreign Muslim invaders of the subcontinent. Relating to the present, Muslims are cast by proponents of Hindutva as deliberately ""over breeding"" in order to outnumber the majority community. Linked to this are projections of Muslim males as virile, violent, sexually insatiable, a threat to Hindu women and as such to the survival of the Hindu community. The US-led ""war on terror"" has further contributed to reinforcing the equation ""Muslim-terrorist-enemy"" used by Hindu right wing organisations to feed fears of the ""Muslim menace"".
The Hindutva project does not stop at the projection of this threat but calls for its active elimination. Hatred and fear of Muslim men fuels the aim to kill them or drive them out of Hindu society and indeed Hindustan, the nation of Hindus. This also drives the wish to avenge their supposed defilement of Hindu women by inflicting sexual violence on Muslim girls and women. It follows with frightening logic that in Gujarat in 2002, Muslim ""women's bodies [were] being used as battlegrounds in the struggle over defining India as a Hindu state"". Muslim girls and women were targeted in Gujarat in 2002 not only because they were members of the Muslim community but specifically because they were ""the biological and cultural reproducers of the communities and their bodies symbolize the body of the community … In fact, Hindu men [saw] it as their function and duty to violate the bodies of Muslim women"". This is also reflected in the fact that Hindu attackers wore their Hindu ""uniform"" of saffron underwear, headband and khaki shorts indicating that they saw themselves as performing a service to Hindutva. Many observers have also pointed to the ""festive, carnivalesque aspect of the rampaging crowds"".
Calls to rape Muslim girls and women were contained in pamphlets produced by the VHP and RSS and distributed in Ahmedabad months before the violence started. A VHP leaflet called Jihad (holy war), signed by VHP state general secretary Chinubhai Patel, calls on Hindus: ""We will cut them and their blood will flow like rivers. We will kill Muslims the way they destroyed Babri mosque"". It goes on to spell out the sexual nature of their communal hatred: ""The volcano which was inactive … has erupted, it has burned the arse of miyas [Muslim men] and made them dance nude. We have untied the penises which were tied till now. We have widened the tight vaginas of the bibis [women]""
People's Union for Democratic Rights (Pudr), a leading human rights organisation, on Saturday alleged that the Gujarat riots were not an outcome of the Godhra incident as the "planning" had begun much earlier and charged the state government with complicity in the violence.
"Planning for attacks against the minority community had begun much before February 27 (when Godhra incident occurred)," the Pudr said. "There had been a steady build-up of meetings, distribution of leaflets etc over the last two years, all propagating hatred and myths about the minority community," it added.
"After the Godhra incident, meetings were held in villages on February 27 and 28 to plan the details of the attacks. The use of similar methods across districts, such as swords of the same brand and gas cylinders, and the fact that the same mob went from place to place over a couple of days with impunity is further evidence of planning," it said. It said burning "seems to have been the preferred method (of rioters), so as not to leave evidence." "The fact that the Gujarat government supported the bandh of February 28 and March one despite its experience of large-scale violence against the minority community after a similar bandh in 2000, is evidence of its complicity in the violence right from the start," the Pudr alleged.
Gujarat violence planned
"Planning for attacks against the minority community had begun much before February 27 (when Godhra incident occurred)," the Pudr said. "There had been a steady build-up of meetings, distribution of leaflets etc over the last two years, all propagating hatred and myths about the minority community," it added.
"After the Godhra incident, meetings were held in villages on February 27 and 28 to plan the details of the attacks. The use of similar methods across districts, such as swords of the same brand and gas cylinders, and the fact that the same mob went from place to place over a couple of days with impunity is further evidence of planning," it said. It said burning "seems to have been the preferred method (of rioters), so as not to leave evidence." "The fact that the Gujarat government supported the bandh of February 28 and March one despite its experience of large-scale violence against the minority community after a similar bandh in 2000, is evidence of its complicity in the violence right from the start," the Pudr alleged.
Gujarat violence planned
Justice Not Done
More than one hundred Muslims have been charged under India's much-criticized Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) for their alleged involvement in the train massacre in Godhra. No Hindus have been charged under POTA in connection with the violence against Muslims, which the government continues to dismiss as spontaneous and unorganized.
Although the Indian government initially boasted of thousands of arrests following the attacks, most of those arrested have since been acquitted, released on bail with no further action taken, or simply let go. Police regularly downgrade serious charges to lesser crimes - from murder or rape to rioting, for example - and alter victims' statements to delete the names of the accused.
Even when cases reach trial, Muslim victims face biased prosecutors and judges. Hindu and Muslim lawyers representing Muslim victims, and doctors providing medical relief to them, have also faced harassment and threats.
Hundreds of women and girls were brutally raped, mutilated, and burnt to death in Gujarat. The police have refused to pursue these cases.
Human Rights Watch
The complete Amnesty International report can be read here.
Although the Indian government initially boasted of thousands of arrests following the attacks, most of those arrested have since been acquitted, released on bail with no further action taken, or simply let go. Police regularly downgrade serious charges to lesser crimes - from murder or rape to rioting, for example - and alter victims' statements to delete the names of the accused.
Even when cases reach trial, Muslim victims face biased prosecutors and judges. Hindu and Muslim lawyers representing Muslim victims, and doctors providing medical relief to them, have also faced harassment and threats.
Hundreds of women and girls were brutally raped, mutilated, and burnt to death in Gujarat. The police have refused to pursue these cases.
Human Rights Watch
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