India's Lost Stature

A shocked foreign media led the sally, articulating their horror through a minuet of images. In London, journalists descended on India House demanding an explanation for the government’s perceived inaction. Indian High Commission spokesman Navdeep Suri said, "We pointed out that 77 rioters were killed in firing by the police and that is the extreme measure for the police to take. We have also said that the army was deployed within hours of the request by the state government."

But this didn’t satisfy the media. The Financial Times reported that Gujarat has become "a sort of laboratory for rightwing Hindu revivalism.... Gandhi’s philosophy is honoured more in the breach than in the observance". The New York Times, too, invoked Gandhi to say that the "violence makes clear that India has work to do to sustain the sectarian harmony that Mohandas K. Gandhi, the independence leader, championed in Gujarat more than 50 years ago".

Indeed, the US media’s coverage of the horrific events in Gujarat has been scathing. "And rightly so," says Prof Ashutosh Varshney, director of the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Varshney, whose new book Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life—a research on Hindus and Muslims in India—will hit the stands this month, says the Gujarat massacre should serve as a starting point for a debate on whether the VHP needs to be declared a terrorist organisation and banned. This debate has already started in the UK, where Lord Nazir Ahmed, of Pakistani origin, demanded in the House of Lords the VHP should be banned in Britain on the ground of being a terrorist organisation responsible for the murder of hundreds of Muslims in Gujarat.

But Shyam Tiwari, the Atlanta-based national coordinator of public relations and media for the World Hindu Council in America, dubs the American and English media coverage "completely biased". Accusing them of "dehumanising Hindus" by citing the provocation of kar sevaks as the cause for the attack on the train, Tiwari alleges, "They are using this incident to regain their credibility in the Islamic world, otherwise there is no reason for the lack of fairness and objectivity in the reports."

Indian Muslim and secular groups have been protesting where they can. A delegation of Indian Muslims and two MPs of Pakistani origin, Lord Patel and Khalid Mahmood, met UK foreign secretary Jack Straw to protest against the large-scale killing of Muslims. In the US, representatives of India’s minority and Dalit groups have already set the ball rolling to create an awareness about the atrocities they face back home. A delegation of Indian American Muslims plans to meet state department officials in Washington this week, and UN representatives in New York later, besides seeking a Congressional hearing into the violence in Gujarat.

For the moment, though, governments haven’t formally condemned New Delhi’s handling of the situation. After the Muslim delegation met Straw, the British foreign office issued this statement: "I’m greatly concerned and saddened at the deaths in both communities in Gujarat and hope calm can be restored as quickly as possible. I appreciate the efforts of the Government of India to this end."

Such endorsement of India can’t conceal the sharp rift in the Indian diaspora. For instance, the Gujarat riots have strained relations in Leicester city, about 100 miles north of London, which stands twinned with Rajkot under a plan to promote cultural exchanges between distant cities. But this relationship has been rocked. "We are now launching a petition to dissolve this relationship with Rajkot," says Abdul Karim Gheewala, a leading Indian Muslim in Leicester. "The twinning was based on principles of multi-culturalism, religious peace and harmony." And that stands shattered, though even now Rajkot didn’t witness violence on the same scale as other parts of the state did.

Not everyone supports the move, but it is some measure of the anxiety the tens of thousands of Gujarati Muslim families in Leicester had about relatives back in Gujarat through the week of rioting. "Just when we thought these things are a matter of the past, this had to happen," said Irfan Rehman, a motor parts dealer from Leicester. "Our trust in India as a safe land for Muslims was getting so strong, now it will not come back as long as I live."

In Dubai, there was a deafening silence about the Gujarat riots. Underlying it was the fear that there would be a subtle shift in the way Gulf employers would now look at their Hindu employees. There were also apprehensions of witnessing a repeat of the violence that had shook Dubai in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition.

Dubai may have remained quiet, yet the feeling of outrage at the carnage simmers among the wealthy Bohras. "The Hindu mobs, our neighbours came for our businesses, tore our factories and shops down, we’ve lost everything due to no fault of ours," laments Shabbir, requesting that only his first name be used. His family, like hundreds of other Bohras here, has extensive business interests in Ahmedabad and Surat. Shabbir had recently invested in a shopping mall that was completely vandalised.

There are other shifts. One Bohra community leader who worked tirelessly for the quake victims of Gujarat last year, without discriminating between Hindu and Muslim, is a changed man. "Any relief I collect now is only going to go to my people," he says. In a riposte to the Bohras, a Hindu-dominated Gujarati association says it too would think twice before sending relief to "anyone and everyone". Disenchantment and divide is palpable in America, too. Dr Aslam Abdallah, a Los Angeles-based board member of the Muslim Public Affairs Council and president of the American Federation of Muslims from India, voices it sharply: "India’s image as a secular nation has been tarnished. I think the Vajpayee government is not capable of giving any justice. It is not acting in the interest of India. Rather, it is acting in the best interest of upper-caste Hindus. Muslims of India don’t trust this government, the Muslims abroad don’t trust it either."

In contrast, Hindu organisations harp on the Godhra incident. Says Ajay Shah, the San Diego-based convenor of the Association of Hindus Against Defamation, "Everyone tried to rationalise the burning of the train and so went and minimised the worth of a Hindu life." Adds Dr Dinesh Agarwal, the Pennsylvania-based president of the Overseas Friends of the Bharatiya Janata Party, "Rather than blaming Hindus for provoking the violence, the media needs to investigate the possibility of this being an act of terrorism against Hindus."

But Gujarat, argues Dr Vijay K. Sazawal, international coordinator of the Maryland-based Indo-American Kashmir Forum, has severely affected the American public’s perception of India. "At the end of the day," says Sazawal, "the American public now feels Hindus and Muslims are two communities that just cannot coexist peacefully."All this has diminished India on the world stage and weakened its capacity to deal with Pakistan. As Prof Varshney points out, "You cannot attack Pakistan’s leniency towards militancy and then allow it to happen in your own country. There is a fundamental contradiction here." Ultimately, other than the victims of the riots, it is the image of India which appears to have taken a severe beating.

Sanjay Suri in London, A.K. Sen in Washington and Amir Ansari in Dubai