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Fear Reigns In Gujarat Alongside
Peaceful March
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| An Indian Muslim cries during a peace rally at the Kochrab Ashram in Ahmadabad. |
AHMEDABAD, India, March 5 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Muslims and moderate Hindu leaders marched side by side for peace Tuesday in India's Gujarat state, while the Indian government headed for a violent clash with an extremist Hindu group to which it is closely allied, news agencies reported.
As many as 800 people took part in the peaceful march, with a heavy police
escort which wound through Gujarat's commercial capital Ahmedabad and finished at the ashram of India's independence hero and apostle of peace, Mahatma Gandhi.
Ahmedabad bore the brunt of five days of state-wide communal clashes that claimed more than 580 lives, mostly Muslims.
"This is our city and we want it back," said one of the marchers, K. Stalin, who runs an NGO promoting literacy. "This city does not belong to Hindu extremists. It belongs to us citizens," he said.
Daytime curfew restrictions were lifted in Ahmedabad on Tuesday, although they remained in force in 20 other sensitive areas, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
"We are still getting reports of the odd incident of violence here and there," deputy inspector general of police K. Chakravarty said.
Police officials said the death toll was sure to rise as bodies were still being recovered from remote Muslim villages that had been attacked and
burnt by Hindu mobs. Some officials said the final figure could cross the 1,000 mark.
In another development, seen to represent an embarrassing challenge to the Indian cabinet, the World Hindu Council (VHP) vowed last night to
continue its plan to build a temple on a disputed next week, despite communal violence.
"The program will never be called off," VHP President Ashok Sighal said. The group announced defiantly that its karsevaks (militant extremists) would begin moving to the northern town of Ayodhya
to prepare for the building (Tuesday), two days earlier than planned, British daily newspaper, The Independent reported.
In Bombay, meanwhile, a group of Muslim organizations warned the VHP against
Continuing
with its plans. "The completion of Ram temple on the site of the Babri Masjid [mosque] will by no means be the end of the Muslim struggle.In fact it will be the beginning of an era of violence, turmoil, anarchy," a spokesman, Maulana Musannah Miyan said.
India's Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, has tried for weeks to reach a compromise on the issue, which excites violent emotion among both Hindus and Muslims. However, a gathering of militant Hindu priests and ascetics, in Delhi Monday, turned him down.
Ten years ago, Vajpayee's Party rode to prominence as supporters of the campaign to build the temple. Nevertheless, the demolition by a Hindu mob of the mosque
on the contested site provoked communal clashes all over the country that cost more than 2,000 lives.
Against the background of the communal violence in Gujarat over the past week, there are widespread fears that if the VHP is not halted, more blood will be spilt.
VHP extremists have been prefabricating pillars for the temple in workshops at Ayodhya for years. The VHP intends to begin moving these pillars to the site on 15 March. But the site is still the subject of litigation between Hindus and Muslims before the Supreme Court.
The site is elaborately guarded like no other spot in India, with access possible only through narrow winding passages between high steel fences topped with razor wire, with large numbers of soldiers to prevent mob activity. Any strenuous attempt to broach these defenses would quickly turn bloody.
In Gujarat, meanwhile, six more people died in fresh communal incidents overnight, but life was limping back to normal in the cities, with shops opening for the first time in five days and traffic back on the streets.
However, schools remained closed and Muslims were still too frightened to leave their homes or return to those they fled.
The Indian central government has been strongly criticized for not sending in the army sooner to help bring the violence under control.
In the Muslim old city of Ahmedabad, some 3,000 Muslims made homeless by the violence of the past week sleep under the stars, with only sacks or thin sheets to insulate their bodies from the flagstones of the mosque's courtyard. Most lost everything when Hindu extremists set fire to their homes; many also lost their closest relatives, reported The Independent.
The roots of the current violence can be traced back to the 1980s, culminating in 1992. During that period, extremist Hindus launched a campaign that led ultimately to the destruction of the Babri Mosque at Ayodhya in 1992. Current Indian Home Minister L.K. Advani took part, even reportedly supervised, the destruction of the 16th century mosque.
That was the real cause of the communal rioting. Following the destruction, some 2000 people were killed in communal riots in Ayodhya, Bombay and beyond.
Hindu hard-line parties, including VHP and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - used Ayodhya as a rallying call to Hindus throughout India.
They claimed Babri mosque at the site was located on the birthplace of the Hindu Lord Rama and that a temple had to be built there.
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