Parivar Pdf

[Jkobe Peoples]

Communalviolence against Muslims in Gujarat is intimately connected to a rise of Hindu nationalism in the country and the state, a phenomenon that is also responsible for attacks against Christians over the last several years in the state and around the country. The following provides a brief overview of the rise of Hindu nationalism and related attacks on minorities in the state.

The Sangh Parivar

The Hindu organizations considered most responsible for the violence in Gujarat are the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Bajrang Dal, and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which along with the Bharatiya Janata Party collectively form the sangh parivar. Portions of the following descriptions of the nature and missions of these organizations are taken from the September 1999 Human Rights Watch report Politics By Other Means: Attacks Against Christians in India.167

The VHP was formed in 1964 to cover the social aspects of RSS activities. The VHP organizes and communicates the RSS message to Hindus living outside India and holds conferences for Hindu religious leaders from all over the country. The most publicized of the VHP's activities was its campaign to build a temple to the Hindu god Ram at the site of the Babri Masjid, a mosque in the city of Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh. The VHP, along with the other sangh parivar organizations, claimed that the site of the mosque was actually the birthplace of Ram and that a temple at that site had been destroyed in order to build the mosque. On December 6, 1992, the mosque was demolished by members of the VHP, the Bajrang Dal, and RSS-trained cadres. The police did not intervene. The incident sparked violence around the country in which thousands were killed.171 Since then, the VHP has also organized a program to reconvert those who had converted from Hinduism to other faiths.

The Bajrang Dal is the militant youth wing of the VHP. It was formed in 1984 during the Babri Masjid conflict, in order to mobilize youth for the Ayodhya campaign.172 A young women's association, the Durga Vahini, was also founded at this time. Unlike other organizations affiliated to the RSS, the Bajrang Dal is not directly controlled by the sangh parivar. With its loose organizational structure, it initially operated under different names in different states. Its activists are believed to be involved in many acts of violence carried out by Hindutva organizations,173 including the spate of attacks against the Christian community in India that began in 1998.

The Jana Sangh Party was formed in 1951 as the political wing of the RSS. It was later replaced by the BJP in 1980. The BJP heads India's coalition government, along with twenty-one other parties that collectively form the National Democratic Alliance. The BJP recently suffered electoral setbacks at the state level. The BJP now only controls the state legislatures in Gujarat, Orissa, Himachal Pradesh, and Jharkand. The party was voted out of power during the February 2002 elections in Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal, and Punjab. The BJP also suffered a huge defeat in the Delhi municipal elections in March 2002, where they won only seventeen out of 134 seats.174

BJP president and home minister L. K. Advani and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan Singh were among the forty people accused by the Central Bureau of Investigation of the destruction of the mosque. Also on the list were Murli Manohar Joshi, the former chief minister of Maharashtra, and Bal Thackeray, the leader of the Shiv Sena. The CBI charged all of the accused with "criminal conspiracy, intentional destruction and defiling of a place of worship, criminal trespass and intimidation of public servants on duty."175 Advani and Joshi were present in Ayodhya when Hindu militants tore down the mosque.176

The Srikrishna Commission was established in response to the notorious 1992-1993 Bombay riots that claimed more than seven hundred lives, mostly Muslims, in the aftermath of the mosque's destruction. The report's findings were presented to the government of Maharashtra on February 16, 1998, more than five years after the riots took place. The report determined that the riots were the result of a deliberate and systematic effort to incite violence against Muslims and singled out Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray and Chief Minister Manohar Joshi as responsible. Despite widespread calls by the political opposition, human rights groups, women's rights groups, and other community groups, for the prosecution of the perpetrators, the-then Shiv Sena-BJP government refused to adopt the commission's recommendations, and instead labeled the report "anti-Hindu."177 On July 14, 2000, the Maharashtra state government announced its intention to prosecute Thackeray for his role in inciting the Bombay riots. On July 25, amid rioting by Shiv Sena supporters, Thackeray was arrested only to be released a few hours later, after a judge ordered the case closed on the grounds that the statute of limitations relating to the incitement charges had expired.178

The BJP and its allies continue at the national level and in various states to implement an agenda for the "Hinduization" of education, mandating Hindu prayers in certain state-sponsored schools and revising history books to include what amounted to propaganda against Islamic and Christian communities.179

The continuing campaign to construct a Ram temple on the site of the Babri Masjid that was destroyed in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh continues to raise the spectre of further violence in the country. The recent revival of the campaign, corresponding to BJP election losses in key states, centered on the March 15, 2002 deadline set by the VHP to bring stone pillars to the site in order to begin construction of the temple. In the weeks preceding the violence in Gujarat, Hindu activists had been traveling to and from Ayodha, including on the Sabarmati Express that was attacked in Godhra on February 27. A Supreme Court order issued two days before the March 15 deadline stopped the planned construction.180 Nevertheless, VHP activists held a "symbolic" religious ceremony outside the dispute area and stone pillars were handed over to and accepted by a representative of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.181

Gujarat: A Hindutva Laboratory

Gujarat, one of few remaining Indian states still led by the BJP, has earned the dubious reputation of being a laboratory for the Hindutva agenda. The National Human Rights Commission's recommendation that the state's worst incidents of violence be investigated by the CBI reveals the commission's lack of faith that the state is capable of conducting an impartial investigation into the attacks. The apprehension, widely shared by Indian human rights organizations, stems from the intricate nexus between the BJP and its social wing, the VHP in the state. Since first assuming power in 1995, the state has stacked its inner ranks with VHP and RSS members and others that shared and would actively promote sangh parivar's policies and programs.

Then-chief minister Keshubhai Patel, according to press reports, "disbanded most of the advisory committees in the districts and talukas, as well as the State-owned Boards and Corporations and packed the bodies with people from the Sangh Parivar."182 The process stalled under Chief Minister Suresh Mehta, considered a moderate, and was briefly reversed under Chief Minister Shankarsinh Waghela who stepped in with outside support from the Congress (I) party. Patel's return to power in 1998 revived in full swing what has been termed the state's "saffronisation" process:

Importance was given to the cadres from the Sangh Parivar to dominate the numerous advisory committees at the district and taluka levels, including the Police Advisory Committee, the Social Justice Committee and others wielding enormous powers in the appointment and transfer of Government officials. The recruitment of teachers at the village level, launched by the Waghela administration, was used by the Patel Government to "infiltrate" the villages. Most of the 20,000 "vidya sahayaks" recruited to man the schools in the villages were picked from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad was encouraged to open schools in remote villages. The syllabus in the schools was often subtly changed to suit the saffron ideology.183

A retired bureaucrat who worked under the Patel administration explained to the Hindu that, "it would be difficult to assess how many Government employees still keep in contact with the RSS to please their political bosses."184 The article adds, "It may not be a coincidence that barring one person, no District Collector or development officers come from the minority community. And among senior police officers, those belonging to the minority community have been mostly sidelined."185

The extent of police involvement in the attacks indeed raises key questions about police recruitment and training in Gujarat. Since retaking power in the state in 1998, Gujarat's BJP government has systematically been keeping minority community officers away from the field and bound to the desk. According to an article in the Telegraph, as a result:

not a single IPS [Indian Police Service] officer from the minority community is now on a "field posting".... All eight IPS officers in the state from the minority community... are working in insignificant "support systems" and not engaged in "active policing".... [Of] the 65 minority community officers of the rank of inspector in Gujarat, only two are handling field jobs. Most minority community officers below the rank of superintendent have been relegated to the CID [Crime Investigation Department]. According to norms, when an IPS officer is promoted, he is given a field posting. However, in Gujarat, when an IPS officer from the minority community is promoted, he is sent to the computer section or given charge of police housing.186

The article also asserts that "as many as 27 police officers who had taken action against rioters have been transferred."187 Gujarat Director General of Police A.K. Chakravarty's letter of protest at the transfer of senior police officers who had acted to halt the pogroms is discussed below.

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