[As Gujarat – and the nation – marks ten years of the horrific violence in Godhra and later across the state, and Modi completes his carefully-calibrated Sadbhavna mission in a bid to erase the 2002 blot, he finds the courts closing in on him and his government. Our senior colleague and IMO Gujarat Bureau Chief Abdul Hafiz Lakhani unplugs the episode. -- Danish Ahmad Khan, Founder-Editor, IndianMuslimObserver.com.]





By Abdul Hafiz Lakhani





Ahmedabad: On February 27, 2002, Gujarat changed for the worse. The S6 coach of the Sabarmati Express caught fire at Godhra, killing 59 people, mostly kar sevaks returning from Ayodhya. The communal riots that followed affected at least 16 of the state's 25 districts and claimed over 1,000 lives, mostly Muslims. Many were rendered homeless.





The commissions that probed the Godhra incident have arrived at different conclusions. While the U.C. Banerjee Commission, appointed by the Centre, said the fire in the S6 coach was accidental, the state-appointed Justice (retd) G.T. Nanavati and Justice (retd) Akshay Mehta Commission, in its part I report, said the carnage was pre-planned.





The violence created a gulf between Hindus and Muslims that, even a decade later, is yet to be bridged. Compensations can hardly undo the damage. Even today, families fear to return to their original villages. Widows continue to struggle to earn their livelihood. Rape victims are still counselled for trauma. The families of the convicted cry foul. Businesses struggle to survive.





Gulberg Society





The name is embedded in collective memory as a symbol of the Gujarat riots and, to many, of the administrative complicity behind it. In Gulberg Society, the past is never far even as those looking at the future have learnt to make peace with it.





The empty shells of its 29 bungalows and 10 apartments now serve as godowns for neighbouring Muslim bakers, who supply their wares to Hindu shopkeepers next door.The smell of these bakeries and shahi dawats once filled the society, a Muslim-dominated area that came up in 1965 in the predominantly Hindu Chamanpura.





Targeted during the riots, they had all left. The owners of all eight bakeries are now back with their shops, though they stay 7km away in Muslim-dominated Rakhial.Shamsul Haq Ansari’s Robin Bakery, adjoining Gulberg Society, was looted and torched.





He suffered losses of lakhs and claims not to have received any compensation. He chose to return and rebuild from his savings, and said not only has his business taken off again but that he is doing better than before.Ansari’s customers are all Hindus, including local provision stores, as there is no Muslim habitation around. For him or other bakers in the area, that hasn’t been a problem so far.Mubarak Ansari, owner of Mubarak Bakery, said there was some tension immediately after the riots. “But with time, things have improved. My entire business depends on local Hindus and they support me wholeheartedly.”However, none of them lives in the area.





Haseemuddin, working with Ashiana Bakery, said the owners as well as the workers live in Rakhial — which has been the case since they migrated from Bijnore. He cited “cultural and social reasons” for this. As such, they did not lose any near ones during the Chamanpura riots.Those who did have chosen not to continue in Gulberg Society, except Kasam Mansuri, 62, who lost 12 members. After his sons relocated, Mansuri stayed back and makes a living selling mattresses outside the society. “This is my society, where will I go?” he said.





Looking at the garbage dumped outside Gulberg Society, the Hindus, on the other hand, feel it is time to break free from the past, if only to bring Gujarat’s famed development to the area. Said Bhavanlal Jain, a moneylender whose customers are mostly Muslims: “The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation has been neglecting the locality since they do not want legal complications of property, etc.”The Citizens for Justice and Peace has come up with the idea of turning the society into a “holocaust museum”.





To people like Saed Khan, who moved to the Muslim-dominated Juhapura, that is better than selling the houses to strangers. “It would be like selling the graves of your beloved.”While Mansuri gets angry at times that the survivors of Gulberg moved away and set up a new life, Khan said: “Gas cylinders were busted in homes; when these caught fire, they threw acid bulbs on people hiding. Women were pulled out and raped in public. No one wants to go back there.”





The bakers are the only remnants of a life that was. The mosque that was destroyed now holds five prayers a day for them. On Fridays, it also draws a number of Muslims working in nearby areas.As days such as these become routine, Afroz Ansari, a salesman working with J-K Bakery, is hopeful. “The riots,” he said, “were an aberration.”





Naroda Patiya





A young boy gets down at the last stop of the Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) on the RTO-Naroda route and says, “Where is this Naroda Patiya, the riot spot, actually located?” Nobody knew Naroda Patiya till 2002.





Muslims who survived the biggest post-Godhra massacre are now called Patiyawala, a term they own up with pride. They lost their loved ones but their lives has since seen a sea of change, with the BRTS running right outside their homes and the surrounding development making their own abodes high on the demand list.





Inside the narrow bylanes of Naroda Patiya, life runs at a fast pace, and it’s tough.





As children rush out of a school in the afternoon, a woman walks past tugging at a toddler, his bag dragging on the road. “There is no water at home. The cooking and cleaning is yet to be done. The drainage choked up this morning,” she tells the accompanying woman. Her friend nods in agreement. “Nasirbhai scolded my son for not doing his maths homework. He was busy helping me clear drains since yesterday,” she says.





Nasir Khan Pathan, principal of a small school ‘Ikra’ inside Patiya, has been teaching maths and science to children for the last 20 years. He claims he saw it all, including eight rapes, during the riots.





Most of the Muslims settled in Naroda Gam and Patiya came from poor families in Karnataka and Konkan belt of Maharashtra 40 years ago. The magnet was textile-rich Ahmedabad. When the mills shut down, they joined other factories making tools, auto parts, chemicals, etc.

After the 2002 riots, they lost that too. They say factories dominated by Hindus closed their doors on them.





For the Muslims in Patiya, which housed around 5,000 Muslims in 10 major settlements of Husainnagar, Jawaharnagar, Masjid ki Chali, Kehmchand ki Chali, Panditji ki Chali and others, life was always all about earning their daily bread.





Farooq Qureshi, Nasir’s next door neighbour, says, “If one sees carefully, nothing has really changed. Earlier, we used to toil to earn our daily wages to manage two meals. After the riots, we are toiling much harder to streamline our small businesses that face threat from the majority community.”





After the loss of factory jobs, the men from the Muslim community took to cart pulling, driving autos and cabs and setting up small pan shops, tea stalls and local phone booths. Now, the fight is to keep them humming.





Life is not easy. Though some of the riot victims have got relief in the form of small bright-coloured houses built for them, it’s a daily struggle for two square meals.





Zannatbibi Sheikh, an old and feeble fruit vendor, shows her cash box and says, “I start in the morning and this is all I have earned, Rs 100. It has been the case for 10 years. Our businesses dropped and women were the worst sufferers — empty kitchens, several children to fend for, no money for school uniforms and books.”





Zannatbibi, who lost her young son in the 2002 riots, points to a nearby madrasa and says, “The children who come to study here often come to my shop to eat potato balls. I sell them for only one rupee. I feel as if Mushtaq (her dead son) has come home hungry.”

The madrasa is now closed most of the times. The aged Maulana, Abdul Rauf Khan, comes every day to teach but there are not enough children.





He says, “There was a time when 10-12 batches of children used to come to recite the Quran. I loved reading it out to them. Now, only 10 children come to madrasa, that too after much convincing. Parents fear the madrasa would be the first to be targeted if things go bad again.

Mariambi, who runs a chicken shop near the madrasa, says, “This home is the only piece of property we have. We had requested the relief committee to rebuild our houses at the same place. For us, the struggle for basic needs is more important than the incidents of the past.”





Both Mariambi and Zannatbibi are widows living in Patiya with their children.





Pesh Imam Abdul Salam Shamshuddin Sheikh, the custodian of Noorani Masjid across the road since 1984, says, “The mosque was empty. I had gone to a home for Daur (reading of the holy Quran). This was the best time for the attackers to start. They began with breaking the minaret of the mosque. They blasted gas cylinders inside. Not a single corner was left.”

Noorani Masjid has been since restored and painted and it now bears no mark of the February 28 violence.





Amina Behlim’s sons moved out of Ahmedabad after riots but she still lives there at Masjid ki Chali. She is stronger than the rest. She was a security guard at a printing press in Chiloda, but was sacked for sheltering for five years a girl who was raped during the riots.





She says, “She (the victim) stayed in Jawaharnagar alone after her parents kicked her out for not ‘adjusting’ with her alcoholic husband. I was hiding on a terrace and saw her being raped by 11 men.





Godhra Train Burning





Number of deaths 59; number of accused 94; convicted 31; acquitted 63





Gujarat Riots





Number of deaths: More than 2,000, including killings at Best Bakery, Sardarpura, Gulberg Society, Naroda Patiya and Naroda Gam





More than 4,500 houses destroyed, 18,500 damaged





Loss of property of Muslims pegged at approximately 0600 crore and that of Hindus at approximately 040 crore (based on former IPS officer R.B. Sreekumar's affidavit before the Justice Nanavati inquiry commission)





Special Investigation Team headed by former CBI director R.K. Raghavan re-investigating 10 major cases, including the Godhra carnage





Not a single FIR against Chief Minister Narendra Modi





Best Bakery killings: number of deaths 14; convicted 9; acquitted 8





Sardarpura killings: number of deaths 33; number of accused 73; convicted 31; acquitted 42





Gulberg Society killings: number of deaths 69; number of accused 67; number of accused out on bail 57; case has reached final stage in the trial court





Naroda Patiya massacre: number of deaths 95; number of accused 60; number of accused out on bail 49; case is in the trial court





Naroda Gam killings: number of deaths 11; number of accused 83; majority out on bail, case in trial court



