Edward A Gargan, in a special report to the New York Times has documented the complicity of the state police in the nine day orgy of violence perpetuated by the Hindu fundamentalists on the hapless Muslims of the Bombay, He whites, “day after day for nine days and nights beginning Jan.6 mobs of Hindus rampaged through the city, killing and burning people, only because they were Muslims. No Muslim was safe not in the Slums, not in high rise apartments, not in the city’s bustling offices in an orgy of violence that left over 600 dead and 2000 injured,” Disclosing that it was a well-planned, systematic plan in which Muslims were singled out for destruction, he writes, “Now as quiet settles in the city, the full dimensions of violence are becoming increasingly clear, although many details, including transcripts of police radio transmission and other evidence showing that the police took part in the anti-Muslim violence have not been printed in the Indian newspapers or magazines,” This was a very cold blooded program. There were no concentration camps though, they just kill people.”
Organized killing & plunder; Interviews with victims, relief workers, politicians, civic leaders, police officers and journalists have suggested more over that the killings, arson and looting were far from random “they were Organized by Hindu gangs, abetted by the Bombay police and directed at Muslim families and business. The extent of police cooperation with the Hindu mobs appears to have spread through the entire police force, excluding only the most senior officers. Transcripts of conversations between the police control room and officers on the streets taken from the regular police radio band and made available to the New York.
Times by a Indian reporter, show that the officers at police headquarters reported that the constables in the front to allow Muslims homes to burn and prevent from reaching the victims.”
Throughout the nine days of riling, Witnesses said neither the Maharashira authorities nor the Central Government in Delhimade any effort to stop the flow of blood Muslim mothers watched as their sons were pulled from their homes, slain or burned alive while mobs of chanting cheering Hindus danced around the blazing bodies. Mosques and Muslim stores were fire bombed. Men on the streets were made to drop their trousers So Hindu mobs could see if they were circumcised, as all Muslim men are,” writes the New York Times.
Even the wealthiest residential areas of Bombay were not left alone, a well-known novelist Shoba De says “They went door to door asking who is Muslim. They would look on the name boards in the lobby and then go upstairs and throw the Muslim families out of their apartments and put padlocks on them.”
Police complicity is documented: While Muslim houses shops and business centers were pillaged, Hindu establishment were untouched. “They had business license registers from the city.” “With the registers they could find the Muslims eve those which were owned by Hindus but rented by Muslims businesses.” While this was going on Bombay’s police instead of helping the Muslim, “ignored the looting and firebombing and even encouraged it or took part.” Said a Hindu merchant, “A police inspector, I Saw his rank on his uniform came out of his truck with some constables, they broke the lock on the Muslim shoe shop and went inside. They came out with all the shoes and put them in the truck. Then they burned the shop.”
A transcript of conversation between a police post at Dogn, north Bombay the control room when the former asked what should be done with two military relief trucks filled milk sent to. a bummed down Muslims slum area, the control room asked, “why are you distributing milk to them? Do not distribute milk to the leady as, have you understood? “Seize that vehicle” ordered the control room, one of the social workers Faruda Lambay, interviewed by the New York Times said, “the police have become very communalized. People have lost faith in the police,”
Judicial Enquiry: The state government was on the defensive about negative role of the police and when confronted with reports of police complicity denied the charges. The State Home Minister could only say, “it is so difficult for the police, There are so many people in the mobs, it is so difficult for them.” Pressed further the minister said that a judicial enquiry had been instituted and “All these things will be revealed in the judicial inquiry. We are taking action and putting people behind bars.” It is a well-known fact that all judicial inquiries are a force; Their reports are vague and doctored to serve official views.
Ethnic Cleansing Legacy of Hatred: Bombay’s elite has been shaken up by the magnitude of the violence in Bombay and the wave of hatred against the Muslims. The fury of the mobs were not directed against the slum dwellers alone as earlier but the rich and post localities were also badly affected. Muslim elite is feeling guilty of being out of touch with problems. Most people feel that the nightmare of the monster mobs coming from slums to devour them is not all over. Though the worst of the violence has passed, there are no sighs of the hatred subsiding. Muslims workers are prevented from returning to work and the of ethnic cleansing is being methodically executed by the Trade Union Leaders. The railways have reported that 215,000 Muslims have fled the city and most of them will never return.
(Courtesy: New York Times Feb.4,93)
Article extracted from this publication >> February 12, 1993
