Indian ethnic cleansing of Bengali speaking Muslims

[bones20]

Yes, but the bitterness is initiated by the Indian politicians in India and by the Indian posters in this Forum. Indians are such a mean bunch of idiots that they would distort facts to score a point.

If the Hindus think there are illegal migrants from BD, then let the GoI catch and send them to where they belong. Problem is gone. But, here people with mean intentions are coming one after another to do some bickerings without any substance. Muslims of India are not going to rule over you again, then why are you bickering about us?

Technology and culture are not some country's exclusive property. When the Hindus did not know how to wear even a stitched clothing, we the Muslims taught them how to stitch. We Muslims taught you how to cook delicious foods, which you are selling now throughout the world. We built Taj Mahal. You are earning money by showing it to the visiting foreigners. You do not have any greatfulness. You are talking of your cultural supeririority.

When we Muslims built an empire in the entire Hindustan and ruled over the Hindus for more than 800 years, the Hindus could not resist it with their Artha Shastra culture. Our religion unites us and your religion divides you to Brahmin, Sudra and Dalits. If it is so, then what cultural superiority you are talking about here?

Buddy, there is this one thing which both Bangladesh and Pakistan are misoriented about India. Every Indian is an Indian first and then a Hindu, Muslim, Chritian etc. So in that vein, let me tell you sternly that indian Muslims are not your (or anybody's) property. They are my fellow Indians. You are not entitled to any relation with them when it comes to nationalism.

I refrain from using words like superiority which you have intruded in this discussion. I dont wish to compare my identity. We however do lookup to advanced and progressive ideas.

I am not sure what was your angle of attack on me.

 

[idune]

An Account of A Horrendous Massacre 67

By W A Laskar

‘Rabia Begum was feeding breast to her 17 month daughter sitting in a stool in the veranda of her road side house. Her other children were playing in the small courtyard. Her husband Chandeh Ali was busy with some work in the back side of the house. They did not even guess what was to come to them after a few minutes.


Suddenly the playing children rushed towards their mother in panic and grasped her. Already there were hue and cry around their house. Hearing desperate cries of his children when Chandeh Ali just entered the courtyard he saw a group of people around with swords, daggers, knives, tridents and petrol. Attackers got divided into three groups. One group chased running Chandeh Ali. Another group went to set fire on the house. And the other group started striking their weapons on children in their mother's lap. In minutes they were transformed into a heap of human limbs. The house was rendered into an ash-heap. And Chandeh Ali? A trident struck him from behind.


This is not a scene of a horror movie. These are the words from a chapter in the history of the independent secular socialist democratic republic of India which was written in some unknown villages in Nellie in the then district of Nogaon in Assam on Friday, 18 February, 1983, by workers of All Assam Students Union and All Assam Gono Sangram Parishad, the chauvinist groups of Assamese people, with the blood of more than 3000 Bengali speaking Muslims. Diganta Sharma depicted this and many other horrific scenes in his ‘Nellie, 1983: A Postmortem Report into the Most Barbaric Massacre of Assam Movement', the book under review".


http://img44.imageshack.us/i/148806f520.jpg/
24 hours after massacre of Muslims childrens in Assam, india: A small view of a part of a mass grave.

"Read. And be afraid". I read it and got afraid. Speaking frankly, I would not sleep in three consecutive nights after going through the book. The scenes haunt me like my oewn ghost. I am afraid, it will keep haunt me till I breath my last. I am terrified. Shaken to the core. I got somewhat disenchanted about the greatest animal. About human civilization. Indian civilization. When we show our such face as shown in Nellie and if we call ourselves beasts, it will be an insult to the beasts. Civilization gets sometimes wilder than the wildest. This is one of the situation where human beings are at their worst. It reminds one of Auschwitz. Birkenau. And such other hells in the earth. Nellie 1983 is one of the most horrendous genocide in the earth.


This book which can strike vigorously to the core of your concept of humanity was a result of painstaking investigation and an example of meticulous objectivity and bold journalism. The author Diganta Sharma, a young journalist with Guwahati based Assamese weekly Sadin killed many a myths surrounding the massacre.


He stripped off those who have kept exerting all of their energies to prove that the carnage was a handiwork of tribal groups such as Tiwa and Lalung and the Assamese had nothing to do with it. It was a severe slap on the faces of those who have been trying to get political mileage over each other making Assam a killing ground. The government claimed AASU and its allies are responsible for the blood bath. The president of AASU Nurul Hussain, as he was then, declared soon after the massacre that the violence was created by government agent." Mr. Hiteshwar Saikia, then chief minister of Assam claimed that workers of AASU and Gono Sangaram Parishad were directly involved in violence occurred in the state. Sharma reproduced a news item published in 17 April 1983 issue of Janakranti, which reads ‘detailed orders were given in papers bearing names of some regional branches of the students union to attack different minority inhabited areas, the Chief Minister stated in a press meet in last Sunday.'


On the other hand, Sharma has shown how police machinery was involved in facilitating the killers to carry out the program. He reproduced a message sent by Jahiruddin Ahmed, the officer-in charge of Nogaon Police Station to the Commandant of 5th Assam Police Battalion in Morigaon, Officer-in charge of Jagi Road Police Station and Sub-Divisional Police Officer on 15 February, 1983 the contents of which are:


INFORMATION RECEIVED THAT L/NIGHT ABOUT ONE THOUSAND ASSAMESE OF SURROUNDING VILLAGES OF NELLIE WITH DEADLY WEAPONS ASSEMBLED AT NELLIE BY BEATING OF DRUMS (,) MINORITY PEOPLES ARE IN PANIC AND APPREHENDING ATTACK AT ANY MOMENT (,) SUBMISSION FOR IMMEDIATE ACTION TO MAINTAIN PEACE (,)


The police did nothing towards maintaining peace. Rather "the police acted in favour of facilitating the carnage and enjoyed it", Sharma adds. He quoted a few lines from the National Police Commission's Sixth Report Dealing With Recent Communal Riots and Role of the Police which reads ".......The National Police Commission has found that there is a tendency among the police officers to shun responsibility for dealing with communal situations.

"They either avoid to go to the troubled spot or when they happen to be present there, they try not to resort to the use of force when the situation so demands or better still slip away from the scene leaving the force leaderless..."


There is also a chapter in the book which investigates exclusively into the government created myth that no eye witness could identify the attackers. The book unearths the existence of a charge sheet which charges 13 attackers under sections 147, 146, 326, 379, 436, 302 and 307 of the Indian Panel Code. The charge sheet was prepared on the basis of an FIR bearing Jagi Road Police Station Case No. 86/83 filed by one Nur Jamal Bhuiyan. Sharma Claims "Bhuiyan could identify the faces of 13 people who live in the vicinity of his village. He had seen them either in the market or in the field. These 13 people were among those who burnt down Bhuiyan's house and killed 12 members of his family."


A total of 688 cases were filed in Jagi Road Police Station in connection with the Nellie massacre from which 318 cases were closed after a final report stating that there was no evidence against the accused and charge sheet were filed in remaining 310 cases. However, the fate of the cases in which charge sheets were filed is not better. All cases were dropped when the Asom Gana Parishad, the political wing of the AASU came to power swimming over the flood of the blood of more than 3000 people of 14 villages in Neelie including Alichinga, Kholapothar, Bosundhari, Dugduba Bil, Borjula, Butoni Indurmari, Mati Parvat, Muladhari, Shielbheta, Borburi etc., other hundreds in other places of the state and 500 of its own workers. Thus in the book of Diganta Sarma the people who played gory games with the lives and sentiments of the people by promoting a myth of Assamese nationalism and transforming it into a blood thirsty chauvinism by presenting a bogey of foreigners assaulting on the culture, identity and livelihood of Assamese got unmarked and naked.


This so called Assamese nationalist movement was in its peak in the last part of seventies when Member of Parliament from Mongaldoi constituency Hiralal Patowari died. The election commission started the renewal of electoral roll in order to hold fresh election in the constituency. The exercise went on to the month of May, 1979 when allegation was hurled that many names of the doubtful citizens were also being included in the electoral roll. After examination of the specific allegations the Election Commission found some of them are to be true. AASU started to propagate that Mangaldoi proved that millions of Bangladeshis had been included in the electoral rolls of all the constituencies of Assam. They started a movement demanding expulsion of the so-called Bangladeshi people which in reality targeted those who speak Bengali and practise Islam. On 27 August in 1979 they formed an outfit named All Assam Gono Sangram Parishad in order to expel those whom they think are Bangladeshis.


The Election Commission declared the general election to be held in two phases in Assam on 14 and 17 February, 1983. This decision was challenged in the Supreme Court of India by a petition which was dismissed on 1 February, 1983. ASSU and its allies called for boycott of the election. They threatened the people who would cast their votes with dire consequences and prepared detailed maps of the areas where people belonging to religious and linguistic minority communities live. On the other hand, workers of the Congress (I) conducted a campaign in minority areas saying that if they did not cast their votes they would be proved foreigners and would be expelled.


In these circumstances "the nationalist groups got information that on 14 February many Bangladeshi people had cast votes in Nogaon (now Morigaon) district. Instantly a plan of attack was made in the villages where Assamese people live surrounding Neelie by the initiative of agitating peoples. Strategies were formed as to how, when and where attacks would be made on the "illegal Bangladeshis". The date was fixed on 18 February. Agenda was genocide to save the existence of mother Assam. Place of carrying out the plan was Nellie".


The result was genocide of the worst kind in the history where more than 3000 people died and 14 villages were burnt and smashed into smithereens in a mere 6/7 hours span of time. After the massacre the victims who survived were so traumatized that they could not think of getting justice, rehabilitation and compensation. No ex-gratia was paid to any body in connection with the massacre. All cases of 688 were dropped. A commission of inquiry was formed known as TD Tiwari commission to enquire into the massacre, the report of which was never made public.


The victims of Neelie are getting awake and thinking to seek justice. They ask now "why the nationalists could not prove us Bangadeshi within the period of 25 years since the massacre which was carried out to free Assam from forigners. Even if they can now prove it we will leave this country on our own".


Diganta Sharma was able to make the genocide to haunt its perpetrators once again. Victims and some other groups are contemplating to go to the Supreme Court and use the book as a piece of evidence. Dr. Debabrata Sharma, on behalf of Ekalabya, the publisher of the book in the introduction compared the Assamese chauvinist mind-set with that of Lady Macbeth when she says "A little water clears us of this deed" before the publication of the book. Now, after the publication they wonder "All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten these little hands" like Lady Macbeth.


‘Neelie, 1983' cries for actions to wash the hands. It needs justice. Nothing short of justice would do. Read it. Be ashamed. Be afraid. It was one of our great shames which came first of many such. Delhi, 1984. Mumbai, Gujarat. What is in stock for the next days who knows? So read it. Be haunted. And take actions. Take actions to get justice for the victims.

An Account of A Horrendous Massacre

 

[idune]

indians will commit mass massacre and will laugh and eat over dead bodies of innocent childrens. Indians did that through out history. I was kind when I called them fascist but indians have proved through out history their genocidal spree even beat hitler atrocity.

 

[toxic_pus]

indians will commit mass massacre and will laugh and eat over dead bodies of innocent childrens. Indians did that through out history. I was kind when I called them fascist but indians have proved through out history their genocidal spree even beat hitler atrocity.

Did you forget that your ancestors were very much a part of that Indian 'history'.

 

[idune]

Did you forget that your ancestors were very much a part of that Indian 'history'.

desperation setting in to get out of indian genocidal identity? Pitty.

This is indian accomplishment as genocidal nation

http://img44.imageshack.us/i/148806f520.jpg/
24 hours after massacre of Muslims children in Assam, india: A small view of a part of a mass grave.

 

[bones20]

Chill out Bangali bros, chill out please. Go get laid, drunk or whatever it takes. This kind of bitterness (or jihad as you say) is not going to take you any forward. Peace.

 

[idune]

http://img530.imageshack.us/i/117nellie.jpg/
Graphic proof of indian ethnic clensing and genocide against its Bengali Speaking Muslim Population

 

[idune]

http://img190.imageshack.us/i/nellie1983ds.jpg/
Indian genocide against Bengali speaking Muslim population
An indian soldier overseeing mass grave

 

[toxic_pus]

Nice. Have some more?

Apparently he thinks that only he knows how use google image search, and that, BD doesn't have any skeletons.

But let him have his moments of schadenfreude.

 

[toxic_pus]

Indian genocide against Bengali speaking Muslim population

Instead of typing those 4 words, you could type just 1 word - 'bangladeshis'.

 

[idune]

Nellie: India’s forgotten massacre

HARSH MANDER


[A weak and partisan State leaves each of its citizens weak and vulnerable, as the Mumbai attacks and the gruesome Nellie massacres demonstrate… ]

[And so the stories flowed, like a deluge of muddied waters of grief — long unaddressed and denied — gushing from a breached dam.]

http://img42.imageshack.us/i/2008121450100301.jpg/
The burden of memories: From left, Noon Nahar Begum, Alekjaan Biwi and Hazara Khatun.


A lifetime is much too short to forget.

It was November 26, 2008, the day that was to become etched in India’s history for the audacious and traumatic terrorist commando attack on the country’s commercial capital Mumbai. I happened to be on that day at a location as distant as possible from Mumbai — psychologically, politically and socially — at Nellie in Assam, the site of one of free India’s most brutal forgotten massacres in 1983. I had been invited by the survivors to sit with them as they recalled and commemorated the events that had unfolded in this distant impoverished corner of the country 25 years earlier.

Journey into the past

We gathered in the soft sunshine of early winter in an open courtyard. A crowd quickly gathered: the older men with checked lungis and beards could easily be distinguished as people of East Bengali Muslim origin. The women and younger men dressed like anyone from an Assamese village. There were the initial courtesies of traditional welcome, as they offered us customary white Assamese scarves with exquisite red embroidery.

Senior officials of the State government who accompanied me had gently dissuaded me from the visit, questioning the wisdom of re-opening wounds of painful events of such a distant past. People have moved on long ago, they assured me. What purpose then would our visit serve? It would only revive memories that have long been buried. The same advice came from many non-official friends who worked in development organisations in the State. They added that the visit would stir issues that were too bitterly contested in the region. But the survivors persisted in their resolve that they wanted to be heard. It was impossible for me to refuse them.

Enormous suffering

On February 18, 1983, in the genocidal massacre organised in Nellie, just 40 km from Guwahati , 2,191 Muslim settlers originally from Bangladesh were slaughtered, leaving 370 children orphaned and their homes in 16 villages destroyed. As the survivors spoke one by one before our gathering a quarter century later, all of us who heard them — including officials, academics, social workers — were completely stunned, and shamed, by the enormity and immediacy of their suffering today, which retained an urgency as though they had only very recently suffered the unspeakable cruelties that they gave words to, not 25 years earlier. The bodies of many were twisted and deformed by inadequately treated injuries from the assaults by machetes and daggers; others pulled back their clothes to expose frightening scars of the attacks of a generation earlier.

Hazara Khatun, with scars of a dagger attack on her face that she survived in 1983, sat on the ground before us and pointed to her empty lap. “I was cradling my child here”, she said in a low voice. “They chopped him into two, down the middle”. Another widow Alekjaan Biwi, was far less calm. Her body was twisted, and we could all see that she had lost her psychological equilibrium. Eleven members of her family were slaughtered in the massacre, and she acted out for us how the mob had attacked them, how she had cowered and hidden herself, how she was discovered and wounded, and how she survived even though scarred and deformed for life. “I have no one in the world,” she concluded quietly.

Deluge of grief


In his early thirties, Mohammed Monoruddin began to cry inconsolably as soon as he sat before us. “My brothers, sisters were all killed, hacked into pieces,” he recalled. “I was seven years old then. I saw my parents slaughtered in front of me. I saw another woman being killed and her child snatched from her hands and thrown in fire. I wept in terror all day. The CRPF came in the evening and rescued me. Later we came to know that our house was torched. Nothing was left. All our belongings and stores of rice were gone in the fire. My elder brother, who was in Nagaon, brought me up. But I feel so lonely.”

Many others spoke of their loneliness. Noon Nahar Begum was 10 years old, and when the killings started, she tried to run away but was attacked and badly wounded. She was hospitalised for two months, and her mother and four siblings were murdered. “They were butchered here in the place where we are standing today,” she said, adding: “I have found no peace of mind for the last 25 years. I need justice for my peace. Justice is important because it was such a terrible crime. I feel lonely and miss my family…” Babool Ahmad, a tailor, was two years old when he lost his parents. He was brought up by his grandparents, whereas his sisters were raised in an SOS village.

And so the stories flowed, like a deluge of muddied waters of grief — long unaddressed and denied — gushing from a breached dam. The forgotten massacre in Nellie in 1983 established a bloody trail of open State complicity in repeated traumatic bouts of ethnic cleansing and massacres both in Assam and in India. It was followed by similar State-enabled carnages, in Delhi in 1984, Bhagalpur in 1989, Mumbai in 1993 and climaxed in Gujarat in 2002.

Series of incidents

Assam in turn has seen a series of violent ethnic clashes between various oppressed communities, each bitterly and ferociously ranged against other ethnic groups which may be as dispossessed, if not more so. The accord brokered by government with militant Bodos in 1993 assured them autonomous control over regions where their population was in a majority. The government therefore itself laid the foundations for ethnic cleansing. Bengali Muslims were driven out of their settlements by murderous attacks and the torching of their homes in 1993, and this scenario was repeated for Santhal and Munda tribals (called Adivasis) — many of whom are descendants of tea garden labour imported by the British two centuries ago — in 1996. Thousands of them continue to languish today in camps, some for 15 years, as they are still terrified to return home. Assam remains a tinder box of ethnic hatred, with recent attacks on Bihari migrant labour, Jharkhand agitators in Guwahati, bomb explosions and recent clashes between Bodos and Bengali Muslims this year, which left many dead and thousands in camps seething with hate.


The worth of lives

The government gave the survivors of Nellie compensation for each death of as little as 5,000 rupees, contrasted for instance with Rs. 7 lakhs that have been paid to survivors of the Sikh carnage of a year later in 1984. Six hundred and eighty eight criminal cases were filed in connection with Nellie organised massacre and of these 310 cases were charge-sheeted. The remaining 378 cases were closed due to the police claim of “lack of evidence”. But all the 310 charge-sheeted cases were dropped by the AGP government as a part of Assam Accord; therefore not a single person has even had to face trial for the gruesome massacre. Some lives are clearly deemed by the State of being of little worth compared to others.

The Mumbai terrorist attack of 2008 has witnessed an upsurge of understandable public anger, because a partisan and weak State leaves each of us unsafe. But States have long failed abjectly and shamefully to protect ordinary citizens and uphold justice. The lives lost in Mumbai’s Taj Hotel are precious. But the lives extinguished in distant hamlets of Nellie — and indeed the streets of Delhi, Bhagalpur, Gujarat and Malegoan — are no less valuable. A day must come when our rage and our compassion responds equally to each of these tragedies. We can be safe only by standing — and caring — together.

The Hindu : Magazine / Columns : Nellie: India’s forgotten massacre

 

[afriend]

Assamese have real bad blood against bangladeshis, they have immigrated to the northern parts of india, have brought in a demographic change there. These guys detested it.

"Most of the victims were women and children belonging to the Muslim community from Bangladesh who had migrated to the region during Bangladesh war."

I do not know, how bangladesh want us to believe that Indian state was responsible for this massacre which don't have an ounce of truth in it, when they themselves can't accept the fact that there are large scale illegal migration from Bangladesh to india, aided or not aided by corrupt politicians. The massacre was highly condemnable, but blaming the entire india for that unfortunate incident is not right, coz unlike Bangladesh, india is diverse, so you cannot blame the WHOLE concept of india for any unfortunae incident in any part of the country, as the people are diverse and different from noth to east, south to west...!!!!

 

[idune]

Getting Away with Murder - Gujarat Muslim killings 1 of 3

 

[pmukherjee]

Nellie: India’s forgotten massacre

The massacre of Bangladeshi migrants at nellie was a very regrettable incident. Having said that, it is time to cut the bs going on in this thread and view the facts as they happened.

1. The massacre was perpetrated by the ULFA.

2. The ULFA and its mother organisation, the AGP have been agitating for decades against illegal migration from bangladesh which has upset the total demography of both Upper Assam and the Barak Valley.

3. The Indian Army has been carrying out COIN operations in Assam against ULFA. Many leaders of ULFA have been apprehended or killed.

4. The top heiarchy of ULFA and the Bodoland militants (also against bangladeshi migrants) are hiding in Bangladesh which has given them sanctuary.

Now from the above, the rubbish of ethnic clensing being propagated on this thread is totally exposed. So let us cut the crap now.

"As per the latest information available, top ULFA commander Paresh Baruah, who has been hiding in Bangladesh for many years now, is known to be in China................................"

ULFA commander Paresh Baruah moves to China

 

[eastwatch]

Gujarat Muslims the 'living dead'

Meraz Ahmad Jalaluddin Ansari lost everything in the riots.


Muslims in India's Gujarat state who bore the brunt of religious riots in 2002 say they have been abandoned by the political parties. The BBC's Soutik Biswas met some riot victims ahead of the general election in the state.

The acrid smell of burning oil singes your nose and eyes as you walk into Bombay Hotel, a sprawling ghetto of Muslim-owned homes on the eastern flank of Ahmedabad, the main city in western Gujarat state.

A pall of black factory smoke hangs over this untidy patchwork of squat, ugly houses. Residents pay 150 rupees ($3) a month to a private contractor who supplies yellow-coloured drinking water through dirty garden pipes. Sewage flows out into the street.

Bombay Hotel, which takes it name after a local roadside eatery, is one of the places where many Muslims displaced by the 2002 Gujarat riots moved to. Over the past seven years, it has transformed from a remote industrial colony to become a busy refugee settlement.

The anti-Muslim riots, sparked off by the death of Hindu pilgrims in the firebombing of a train, led to the death of 1,392 people in five districts, according to official records. NGOs say the toll is closer to 2,000.

Shambolic

The riots also left some 140,000 people homeless. They were put up in camps and given 2,500 rupees by the government - the majority of the displaced were in Ahmedabad city.

Thirty-six-year-old Meraz Ahmad Jalaluddin Ansari is one of them.

Bombay Hotel is a Muslim ghetto which lacks basic amenities

He was lucky that he did not lose any relatives in the riots. He and his family fled their home in the Chamanpura area after Hindu neighbours warned them that the rioters were closing in.

But he did lose his home and livelihood.

He had hired a dozen workers and owned 15 sewing machines. He would make, he says, 15,000 to 20,000 rupees a month from embroidery work.

After fleeing the riots and panic-selling his house to a local Hindu neighbour for 275,000 rupees, Mr Ansari moved into Bombay Hotel.

His living standards are shambolic, the markets where he can sell his wares are now 10-12km away, and his children are soon going to lose their neighbourhood municipal school. It will be scrapped to make way for a bus lane.

Mr Ansari has picked up the pieces again, built a new home and managed to buy about five sewing machines to start work.

He can no longer afford to employ people. The government, he says, gave him compensation of 300 rupees for the damage to his house in Chamanpura.

"Once I was fairly well to do. Now I work a lot more and just manage," he says. "Life can't come to a halt. But sometimes I feel we are the living dead."

Noor Banu and her husband are still trying to pay back a loan
The riots do not find any echo in the general elections in Gujarat.

Seven years after the incident, both the ruling BJP and Congress party remain silent on the shoddy rehabilitation of the victims or the delay in bringing the culprits to justice.

"We cannot vote for the BJP and the Congress almost has a fixed deposit on our votes. So it's a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea," says Mr Ansari.

There is little talk of the impending polls at Bombay Hotel. When you raise the subject, the residents turn their faces away in disgust.

"Before the 2002 riots, there were just a few houses here. Now there are 15,000 houses and 80,000 people. Muslims have moved in from all over. They feel relatively safe here," says Shabit Ali Ansari, 32, who owns a sweets shop.

"But no party does anything for Muslims. The authorities do nothing for people here unless we raise a storm," he says.

Cynical

Barber shops, groceries, sweets shops and even a photo studio that have sprung up in the grubby lanes do brisk business. But residents work on pitifully low wages.

Riot victims like Noor Banu, 45, and her husband, Ashik Ali Badar Ali, 50, who moved here after their house was attacked in the Saraspur area, are struggling to make ends meet.

The neighbourhood school is being demolished
Mr Ali used to drive an auto rickshaw and bring home up to 150 rupees a day. Now he earns barely 1,800 rupees a month working as a security guard.

Their three daughters chip in making lacquered bangles to help pay back a loan of 70,000 rupees the family borrowed for the two-room hovel in which they live.

Next door, Asiyana Ahmed Sheikh, 12, makes kites. And Zarin Aslambhai Ghanchi gets less than one US cent for cutting and stitching together a campaign banner for a political party.

"Even the political parties exploit us when giving us jobs. This is the state of affairs here," says Zarin.

Ashik Ali Badar Ali says he is going to vote for the Hindu nationalist BJP, which was blamed for inaction during the rioting.

"The BJP is an open enemy of the Muslims, and the Congress is a hidden enemy. I'd rather vote for the open enemy, so I can go to them for protection."

Muslims comprise barely 10% of the population in Gujarat.

"Despite the riots and the headlines, the political parties here feel that they can ignore them, because they don't comprise a decisive vote bank," says analyst Achyut Yagnik.