December 25th, 2007

Chennai, India

India received quite a Christmas present today when Narendra Modi was sworn in for a third term as the leader of the western Indian state of Gujarat. Some of you may remember Gujarat as the scene of communal violence in 2002. The violence was triggered after 58 Hindus were burned to death when their train car was set on fire. Blaming Muslim mobs, right wing Hindu nationalists responded by demolishing Muslim monuments, shrines, and mosques, burning down Muslim housing complexes, and killing and raping Muslim men, women and children. At the end of the massacre, 2,000 people, almost all Muslim, had been killed, countless were injured and tens of thousands displaced. The police response ranged from passivity, to telling Muslims “we have no orders to save you;” from engaging in the anti-Muslim violence to offering persecuted Muslims help, only to deliver them into the hands of their would-be executioners.The local government claimed that the Hindu response to the train attack was spontaneous. But it turns out the attack was coordinated, its planning preceded the tragic killing of the Hindus, and was supoprted by Gujarat’s police and local government. The state’s Chief Minister, the equivalent of Gujarat’s Governor, actually praised people for not attacking more Muslims, saying, the people of Gujarat have shown remarkable restraint under grave provocation.” This same Right Wing Hindu Nationalist governor showed his own remarkable restraint by tacitly supporting the anti-Muslim violence and telling the state police to wait for three days before quelling any attacks. The governor also helped, advised, and protected people like “Babu Patel, an anti-Muslim militant who bragged about cutting a pregnant Muslim woman’s womb open and removing the fetus:

There was this pregnant woman. I slit her open, sisterf**r, showed them what’s what, what kind of revenge we can take if our people are killed. I am not a feeble vegetarian. We didn’t spare anyone. They shouldn’t even be allowed to breed. I say that even today. Whoever they are”women, children, whoever”nothing to be done to them but cut them down, thrash them, slash them, burn the bastards.

This Governor by the way, was Narendra Modi, sworn in for the third time, today. Merry Christmas.