Falling under the category of things I didn't know as a Westerner...
https://www.dawn.com/news/1265474
QuoteAHMEDABAD: An Indian court jailed 24 Hindus Friday, 11 for life, over the massacre of dozens of Muslims in Gujarat state in 2002, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was chief minister.
The Gulbarg Society Massacre was one of the deadliest single incidents during religious riots that killed more than 1,000 people in some of the worst violence since Independence in 1947.
On February 27, 2002, a fire ripped through a train at Godhra station in Gujarat in western India, burning 59 Hindu pilgrims alive.
Blaming Muslims for the blaze, furious Hindu mobs rampaged through Muslim neighbourhoods in several cities seeking reprisals during three days of bloodshed.
The cause of the train fire remains a chief area of dispute between the two religious communities.
An angry Muslim crowd had gathered at Godhra station to protest against the taunting of Muslim porters by Hindu passengers, but they deny setting the train ablaze.
One inquiry concluded the fire was an accident, but other official probes said it was a conspiracy, and 31 Muslims were convicted over the blaze in 2011.
During the slaughter in Ahmedabad and hundreds of other towns and villages, Hindu mobs rounded up and raped Muslim women. They poured kerosene down their throats and those of their children and threw lit matches at them.
Many eyewitness reports suggested police directed rioters to Muslim homes and also turned fleeing victims back towards their killers.
According to official data, 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed, while 223 people went missing and 2,500 others were injured. Rights groups say the numbers were much higher.
Hindu nationalist Modi, then chief minister of Gujarat, was widely accused of turning a blind eye to the violence.
One senior policeman even testified Modi ordered officers not to intervene as the killing spread.
India's premier has always denied wrongdoing and has never been convicted over the violence.
However, the bloody riots tarred Modi's international image, leading him to be blacklisted for a decade by the United States and the European Union.
Official probes also absolved the state police and government of any collusion in the violence, which left 200,000 people homeless. Many Muslims never returned.
https://news.vice.com/article/narendra-modis-shame-muslim-survivors-of-the-gujarat-riots-are-still-suffering
QuoteSome 98,000 people were displaced in Gujarat by the 2002 riots. Sheikh and her family are among the 16,000 who remain in relief colonies, 83 of which are located across the state. Residents of the 15 camps in Ahmedabad overwhelmingly lack clinics, schools, proper roads, and adequate drinking water.
Sheikh has developed jaundice as well as blisters on her feet from the sewage water that floods her neighborhood. “But going back is out of the question,†she said. “I can still hear screams for help.†She returned to her old neighborhood only twice, to collect whatever was left from her burnt-out home.
Even as polls certify the popularity of Narendra Modi, Gujarat’s chief minister and the ascendant prime ministerial candidate of the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the riots remain a notable stain on his administration. Modi had taken office a few months before the riots broke out, and he’s been criticized for his government’s handling of the violence and accused of not acting quickly enough to stop it. Some have claimed that his government encouraged the retributive killings.
While Modi was never charged in connection with the riots, a former minister in his cabinet was convicted of inciting the bloodshed. A team of investigators appointed by the Supreme Court cleared Modi in 2010 of criminal liability in failing to intervene and stop the riots. Subsequent investigations also found no incriminating evidence against him â€" but questions have been raised about their thoroughness.
To put Modi into better perspective, he was banned from the United States and many Western Countries before his election to PM because of his affiliation with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh terrorist group, or the group most know for assassinating Gandhi.
And an assortment of cases...
https://bpr.berkeley.edu/2015/11/18/hindu-nationalist-violence-increasing-in-india/ (https://bpr.berkeley.edu/2015/11/18/hindu-nationalist-violence-increasing-in-india/)
Quoten late September, a Muslim man in New Delhi, India’s capital, was wrongly accused of eating beef, was murdered by a mob of 200 people, who hit him and his son repeatedly with bricks. After forensic testing was done on the meat, it was determined to be goat. There has also been reignited religious tension and protests in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir after the state’s court ordered a beef ban in the Muslim majority state. A truck driver mistakenly accused of killing three cows was burned to death. A Muslim politician in Kashmir also held a “beef party†in protest against the ban and was then beaten by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) politicians.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33241100 (http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33241100)
QuoteJust before Christmas the church of St Sebastian in Delhi was gutted by fire - one of five churches in the capital to have been attacked in the past year.
The pastor of St Sebastian's, Father Anthony Francis, didn't believe the police theory that the fire was caused by a short circuit so started gathering evidence himself. Only when he showed officers a film of oil on top of puddles of water in the wrecked church, did they start an arson investigation.
But no-one has been arrested in this case, or in relation to the four other church attacks.
QuoteIn the months leading up to last year's election, violence flared between Muslims and Hindus in the town of Muzzafarnagar, 100km (62 miles) north of Delhi, leaving more than 60 people dead.
While no riots on that scale have occurred since, smaller incidents are common.
In a bitterly ironic twist, it happened as protesters held a demonstration to demand police action to stop violence against Muslims.
"I stopped to watch and was hit by a bullet fired from inside a police car," says 18-year-old Deen Mohammad. "I felt numb, walked a few steps and then fell down. Then I started vomiting blood."
He fears he will never walk again.
...The previous month a Muslim labourer in the nearby village of Shamli was returning home from Delhi by train when a gang of about 10 Hindu men beat him brutally with rods in the groin, before stealing his money and pulling his beard from his face by the roots.
The point is this; this is what they are selling you when they tell you to fear your fellow human. Right now it is right-wing nationalists and xenophobes, tomorrow it may once again be far left communists and what have you. It is not about who is selling you the hate, it is that they are selling it.
This is the exact same radical ideology that is sweeping our own government. We look at India and say that could never happen here, that they are "different"... no, this is the exact same ideology that is sweeping the west. All it takes is a few sparks to have a fire like theirs. Fuck, this is the exact same radical ideology that a few posters here adhere to or excuse, just with a fancy coat of paint and a few changed names.
Any ideology that tells us to fear or hate our fellow man, no matter how "rational" that fear may be presented, must be outright and utterly rejected. Fear cannot build a bridge to a better, safer future... it can only burn it down and make the very thing we coward from a reality.
Modhi wants to be the maharaja of terrorism ;-( For him, ends justify means in dealing with 150 million Muslims inside India, plus Muslims E and W of India.