Old scars yet to heal in Gujarat
By Shakeel Akhtar
BBC News, Delhi
Janata Nagar, a district on the outskirts of Ahmadabad in India's western state of Gujarat, is buzzing.
Young and old, dressed in their best colourful clothes, are milling about in a huge tent erected on one side of the road.
They are here to attend Khushboo Rawal's wedding.
Five years ago, on 27 February 2002, Khushboo's grandmother was killed along with 58 other Hindus when their coach in the Sabarmati Express train was allegedly fire-bombed by Muslims in the town of Godhra.
The deaths sparked off some of the worst religious rioting India has seen since independence - more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed across Gujarat.
Unofficial estimates put the number of dead far higher.
Among those killed in the riots was Khushboo's father - an activist of the hard-line Hindu organisation Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).
Those few days changed Khushboo's mother Bela Ben's life forever.
She remarried to Bharat Bhai Panchal, who also lost his wife in the Godhra inferno. Today, the couple are trying to leave behind the bitterness of the past and move on.
"Earlier I had one family, today I have two. Today it is Khushboo's marriage," says Mr Panchal.
"One day I will celebrate my own son's marriage with the same gaiety and fervour. This is what I wish now."
'Unjustified'
Eleven of those killed in the Godhra train fire came from Janata Nagar. Khushboo Rawal's groom was in the coach in which her grandmother and others perished.
He too was injured but managed to escape.
Khushboo's neighbour, Prakash Kumar, lost his wife but says he does not want to live with hatred.
Five years on, are others in Gujarat ready to do the same?
There seems to be no overt communal tension and Gujarat's political leaders would have one believe all is well in the state.
"The situation has improved a lot," says Purushottam Rupala, the president of the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which governs Gujarat.
"Relations between the two communities have been smooth. There's no tension. The economy is growing."
Social scientist Ghanshyam Shah says Gujarat's reputation for religious hatred is unjustified.
"Society, by and large, does not approve of what happened in 2002. We did a survey and only
7% said it was right, 74% of those surveyed said they disapproved."
A group of Hindu students in Ahmadabad, the state's main city, endorse the view.
"Things are fine," is the often repeated statement one hears.
But
on closer scrutiny one can see that hatred against Muslims has become entrenched.
'Polarised'
Social activist Hanif Lakdawala articulates the fear in the community when he says the
situation post-Godhra has actually worsened.
"Children and the young generation are growing up with hatred. They are very conscious of their religious identity.
Here human relations are determined on the basis of religion," he says.
In the town of Baroda which witnessed days of violence after the train attack, Muslim intellectual JS Bandookwala says: "The
situation is so bad for Muslims that our only hope is that we must emphasise education and have a say in the state's economy."
His concern is justified when you consider the economic fallout of the riots. The
Muslim economy has been completely shattered in the past five years as the
two communities have become polarised.
Mr Lakdawala says after
Hindu hardliners distributed pamphlets across Ahmadabad which said the city's famous "Italian Bakery" was owned by a Muslim, its sales were affected.
Also,
no Hindu employs Muslims any more because of fear of reprisals from hard-line political elements.
Many say they would like to, but is it worth the trouble, they ask?
Five years after madness gripped the state,
the scars are yet to heal. Godhra's tragedy is not over yet.
