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deConstructing the Other:
Reflections on Gujurat
Ingrid Evjen-Elias

I don't know what it's like to be afraid, deathly afraid - paralyzed with numbing fear. I have no idea. Yet the slight brush I had with communalism, or violence targeting people on the basis of their religion, was enough to alert me of its lethal power.

One evening in March we gathered for a peace vigil on the Delhi University campus where I was studying. Several dozen of us walked from hostel to hostel, singing songs about religious harmony and carrying not placards but flowers and candles. The event had been called to mourn the Muslims who were at that time being brutally murdered in Gujurat, a state in Western India.

At one of the hostels, notorious for the activity of a prominent right-wing organization that falsely claims to represent Hindus, we suddenly found our entrance blocked by a small crowd of men. The leader was chanting "Traitors to India! Long live Bharat!" The louder they chanted, the louder we sang. Our hearts beat faster; the men loomed closer. I looked at the face of the leader; he wore a grimace of hate, his clenched fist raised in blind rage.

I was overcome with sadness. These men's need to bind themselves to an identity had warped into a jingoistic monstrosity.

Now imagine 15,000 of these same angry aggressors, armed with swords and kerosene bottles. Can you? The Muslims of Gujurat can. So can Afghans, Iraqis, and many Muslims in the U.S. They know what it's like to be the targets of vengeance, to be the constructed Other.

This is the deceptive quality of communal violence: it is constructed. Although the violence manifests itself as religious conflict, religion is more often a mobilizing tactic for politicians with their own strategic interests than a root cause of the clash.

This new Cold War, this so-called War against Terror that has in all but rhetoric become a war against Islam, is exacerbating existing right-wing conservative religious sentiments in the U.S and all over the world. Fundamentalism spouted by ideologues, be they George Bush or another leader, is deadly. In India, this threat is thinly veiled in the form of the Hindutva movement.

The same incendiary bravado with which the Bush administration goaded the American public to war was echoed in the Indian government's attempts to justify targeting Muslims and other 'dissidents.' The Vishnu Hindu Parishad (VHP), a radical right-wing group which for decades has called spouted venom against India's 20% Muslim population, boosted its extremist organizing tactics last winter by invoking religious history to whip up anti-terrorist sentiment.

"The jehadi mentality that led Babar to destroy the Ram temple at Ayodha more than 400 years ago was the same mentality that led to…the attack on the World Trade Center at New York on September 11 last year," spewed one prominent VHP member.

Meanwhile, POTO, the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance, mirrored the U.S. Patriot act in its domestic crackdowns on Muslims, student organizers, and journalists.

Although the U.S. War on Terror by no means caused the Gujurat massacre, it provided a useful international backdrop to catalyze these events. Backlashes from colonialism, the caste system, loss of identity, economic and political insecurity, have all led to latent tensions. The U.S., by trying to dominate the world in economics and political affairs, has been a factor in India's leaders turning to religious means to get votes when political-economic promises are futile.

We have seen the same thing here. Patriotism for votes can be a noxious yet effective weapon.

* * * *

On February 27, 2002, the Gujurat-bound Sabarmati Express train mysteriously caught fire. In one compartment Hindu devotees were returning from a pilgrimage to Ayodhya, a disputed temple site. These 57 Hindus were burned alive. Like a match in a gas-saturated room, the incident ignited one of the most unspeakable tragedies in recent Indian history.

While politicians attempted to excuse the violence as a natural reaction of Hindus against Muslims to avenge the Sabarmati Express incident, in fact the plans had been laid long before.

There was nothing spontaneous or riot-like about the horrendous massacre of Muslim families in their homes and businesses during March and April. This was a pre-planned, systematic murder orchestrated by the Vishnu Hindu Parishad, a right-wing fundamentalist organization - think Ku Klux Klan - that has absolutely nothing to do with Hinduism. The VHP is supported by the ruling party and its goons, the BJP and the RSS cadres. By procuring information about the whereabouts of each and every Muslim household in several cities of Gujurat, this cell-phone wielding, sword-carrying squadron incited this so-called "riot". Stockpiling canisters of kerosene and other weapons, the VHP aided by the police in some cases instigated or abetted Holocaust-type atrocities.

The human rights report Communalism Combat brought the horrific statistics to life:

The dead included innocents like 6-year old Imran, who had petrol poured into his mouth. When the mobs threw a lit match into his mouth the little boy exploded.

Or Ehsan Jaffri, stripped and paraded naked by a taunting crowd, later to have his fingers, hands and feet chopped off before being dragged down the road, into a fire. All this time he was asked to say, "Jai Shri Ram." The woman who walked into the camp naked after being raped and doused with acid, and urinated in the mouth. As she pulled her clothes off her skin started peeling off. Fetuses carved out of the stomachs of pregnant women.

The approaching mobs were screaming obscenities, overcome with insane rage. One little boy related how his 9-member family sat on the bed together, clutching each other, crying with terror, as they heard the approaching mobs come closer. And closer. And then the pounding begins, and then the bonfire burning. At that point they knew it was the end. His mother and most of his siblings were later slaughtered.

Children of horror. Some friends of mine went to the refugee camps and played with the children. One game was to create a play. The boys acted out a fighting scene. Both armed with swords, first one injured the other. Then vice versa. In the end, they both ended killing each other. The camp laughed while my friend sat, jaws agape in shock. Where did you learn this? From the mobs.

And these very same mobs have taught these children how to be killers - terrorists who may decide to bomb certain landmarks all over the globe. The same 8-year old boy whose entire family was hacked and killed said he wanted to grow up strong so he could do the same to Hindus. He wants to chop them up just like they killed his family.

Although the genocide that was perpetrated in Gujurat received little coverage here in the U.S., it holds tremendous significance for each of us as human beings. In honor of the more than 2,000 Muslims murdered, we must stop and look within ourselves as well as at the policies of our own government.

* * * *

The day after the Sabarmati Express train carnage, Gujurat's Chief Minister Narendra Modi commented that "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." In his view, revenge is natural and just - Hindu fundamentalists should be allowed to freely avenge the incident!

George Bush's statements maligning entire populations as an "axis of evil" to be necessarily eliminated resonate with Modi's opinions. These aggressive words, policies, and acts serve but the same purpose - to generate rash anger at entire communities in the name of revenge.

Violence of a less overt form is happening in the U.S. and is also state-sponsored. Consider the imprisonment of hundreds of foreigners, whose skin color, apparently, makes them potential terrorists; recall the hundreds of attacks on foreigners since September 11. The recent Homeland Security Act gives the U.S. unmitigated authority to silence critics and persecute foreigners with draconian measures.

* * * *

What frightens me is that as soon as communal violence has been inflamed, politics turns into religion. The political becomes the personal. When politicians invoke religion as a war cry, what could have been a peripheral aspect of one's identity becomes central.

Nafis was a friend of mine in Delhi. I knew her as a charming girl who disclosed to me her crushes and her attempts to balance her ambitions with those of her parents. Last December, while the bombing in Afghanistan was underway, she invited us to celebrate the conclusion of Ramadan with her.

To me, our friendship had acquired a new hue. Were her parents even kinder to us than before? Or was it just my imagination? I could not help thinking of our friendship as not only a relationship between two human beings, but as a political statement: we were Americans, invited to the home of a Muslim family. Meanwhile, my government was bombing a Muslim country.

Yet as these thoughts crept into my mind I was aware of their damaging nature. I was viewing Nafis not merely as a human being, but as a Muslim human being. I found myself attempting to compensate for events beyond my control with added friendliness. I had fallen into the same Us vs. the Other mentality put forward by the U.S. government.

When I saw Nafis again in May, the terrible onus of the Gujurat massacre drummed menacingly close to home. Her relatives, Gujurati merchants, had been forced to flee Ahmedabad with thousands of other Muslims. They had no idea how to earn their livelihood now that their stores were looted and they feared for their lives. Nafis's middle class family was sending them money.

Later, after discussing this distressing news, the conversation turned from politics to our personal lives. As we again shared our crushes and ambitions I felt the constructed walls breaking down.

* * * *

Deconstructing the Other is up to me.

As the plague of vengeance stalks Gujurat, Iraq and elsewhere, people all over the world are refusing to be suffocated by fundamentalism of any brand. Not only must we protest the Bush regime's devisive policies which could potentially lead to a worldwide spiralling of communal violence, but we must vigilantly condemn such attitudes on our campus, in our communities, and in our personal lives.

For more information visit:
Communalism Combat. March-April 2002 - www.sabrang.com
Association for India's Development - www.aidindia.org

Get involved:
The campus group Ahimsa has put on some awareness events about Gujurat. Their website is: www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~ahimsa
The MSA is also planning to put on a SE Asia Awareness week which includes Gujurat. Their website is www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~msu

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