Old scars yet to heal in Gujarat

Janata Nagar, a district on the outskirts of Ahmadabad in India's western state of Gujarat, is buzzing. Young and old, dressed in their best colourful clothes, are milling about in a huge tent erected on one side of the road.

They are here to attend Khushboo Rawal's wedding.

Five years ago, on 27 February 2002, Khushboo's grandmother was killed along with 58 other Hindus when their coach in the Sabarmati Express train was allegedly fire-bombed by Muslims in the town of Godhra.

The deaths sparked off some of the worst religious rioting India has seen since independence - more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed across Gujarat. Unofficial estimates put the number of dead far higher.

Among those killed in the riots was Khushboo's father - an activist of the hard-line Hindu organisation Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). Those few days changed Khushboo's mother Bela Ben's life forever. She remarried to Bharat Bhai Panchal, who also lost his wife in the Godhra inferno. Today, the couple are trying to leave behind the bitterness of the past and move on.

'Unjustified'

Eleven of those killed in the Godhra train fire came from Janata Nagar. Khushboo Rawal's groom was in the coach in which her grandmother and others perished. He too was injured but managed to escape. Khushboo's neighbour, Prakash Kumar, lost his wife but says he does not want to live with hatred.

Five years on, are others in Gujarat ready to do the same? There seems to be no overt communal tension and Gujarat's political leaders would have one believe all is well in the state. "The situation has improved a lot," says Purushottam Rupala, the president of the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which governs Gujarat.

"Relations between the two communities have been smooth. There's no tension. The economy is growing." A group of Hindu students in Ahmadabad, the state's main city, endorse the view. "Things are fine," is the often repeated statement one hears. But on closer scrutiny one can see that hatred against Muslims has become entrenched.

Mr Lakdawala says after Hindu hardliners distributed pamphlets across Ahmadabad which said the city's famous "Italian Bakery" was owned by a Muslim, its sales were affected. Also, no Hindu employs Muslims any more because of fear of reprisals from hard-line political elements.

Many say they would like to, but is it worth the trouble, they ask?

Five years after madness gripped the state, the scars are yet to heal.

Godhra's tragedy is not over yet. This is the first of two articles on life in Gujarat five years on from the riots. The second piece will run shortly and will feature Muslim women rebuilding their lives in the town of Godhra.

BBC