Godhra (Gujarat): “We did not leave our homes on January 22 [2024], and we could feel that the atmosphere would change for the worse,” says Zubedabibi, a survivor of the 2002 Gujarat Riots.
On February 27, 2002, a train with Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya stopped at Godhra, a small town in Gujarat’s Panchmahal district, approximately 150 kilometres from the state capital, Gandhinagar. After an alleged altercation occurred between the Muslim vendors working at the station and the passengers inside the Sabarmati Express, a fire is said to have erupted in one of the coaches of the train, killing 59 people.
Even after two decades have passed since the incident, the details of what happened before the fire remain unclear.
Consequently, on February 28, 2002, Hindu mobs set out blaming Muslims for the deaths of the pilgrims, resulting in waves of violence. Rapes, looting, and murders took place, with the Muslim community being the major target. The violence lasted for more than two months.
According to the state government, then headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, most of the dead were karsevaks who had gone to Ayodhya to campaign for the construction of the Ram Mandir.
Also read: Godhra, Where the Fall of India’s Democracy Began
“No peace for us”
For 22 years, Zubedabibi has been waiting for her husband to return. She has neither seen him nor his dead body. In Delol near Godhra, she lost 45 relatives to the carnage. Her relatives were murdered, maimed, and raped. Besides the pain of losing her family, her husband Mohammedbhai Ismailbhai and her eldest son Yaqub went missing.
But she didn’t know she had lost them forever until they never came back for years altogether. “I still beg to Allah for my husband and son to come back, though it has been 22 years,” she says.
Following the 2002 pogrom, the official death toll reached 952, but in 2009, 228 persons, who were still missing were presumed to be dead after seven years – the stipulated period for declaring missing persons as dead.
Zubedabibi and her brother look at death certificates of their family members killed in the Gujarat riots. Photo: Tarushi Aswani
After the government informed the affected people that their family members would never return, another struggle began for the victims’ families – to collect death certificates for those presumed dead.
Zubedabibi and those like her whom The Wire met in Godhra said that they have only received the death certificates as recently as 2019 and 2017.
Zubedabibi, who never remarried after losing her husband and son, says, “Even in death, there was no peace for them or for us.”
Now, after the Ayodhya Ram Mandir ceremony on January 22, 2024, Zubedabibi and many Muslims across Gujarat have confined themselves inside their homes, as this event has reopened old wounds.
Also read: Denied an Auto Ride, Told to ‘Go to Pakistan’: The Daily Injustices Against Young Muslim Indians
“Those who killed our families are roaming free”
Sultana Feroz Sheikh’s eyes never greet men who visit her home. Be it her own brothers or men from the family, her eyes are glued to the floor when they are around. Sheikh is generally anxious and doesn’t meet many people. For the past 22 years, she has limited herself to her home, in a corner, repeatedly reciting the Holy Quran, swaying back and forth.
Sultana Sheikh reading a holy book at her home in Godhra. Photo: Tarushi Aswani
Her anxious, severely apprehensive behaviour dates back to February 28, 2002 when she was raped for being Muslim.
The same day when Gujarat was burning with hate against Muslims, she heard hundreds of angry Hindus marching toward the Muslim colonies of her village Delol. “They were carrying swords and threatening that they would burn all of us Muslims,” Sheikh told The Wire.
To save themselves from the fanatic crowds entering the village, they fled to nearby fields, along with other Muslims who were hiding for the same reason. The next morning, the Muslim group hid in a milk van for safety, in the nearby town of Kalol.
But to their misfortune, the fanatic mob found the van and set all the men on fire – one by one, ensuring that the women would survive. Sheikh saw her husband and several relatives burned alive. Sheikh jumped out of the van with her son, running towards a nearby river. Eight men wearing saffron scarves around their necks, wielding swords, chased her.
But Sheikh couldn’t escape their hatred, they caught hold of her, dragging her by her hair to the nearby fields. As her four-year-old son cried and screeched, three men raped her and beat her for resisting murder.
“I don’t expect justice now, I don’t want it. It cannot bring back my dead husband,” she said in a stern voice.
To this day, her eyes scream of what she saw. She cannot narrate her ordeal without swelling with tears, taking pauses, and zoning out, as she tries to remember yet forgets at the same time.
Back in Ahmedabad’s Citizen Nagar, Maroof Pathan, a witness to the horrors of hate that unfolded in Ahmedabad’s Naroda Patiya, remembers pregnant women being killed in front of his eyes. Hindu mobs burned alive his relatives and neighbours, dousing them with kerosene to confirm their death. Pathan identified and testified in court on the involvement of Guddu Chara, Bhawani Sinh, Maya Kodnani and Babu Bajrangi in these crimes.
“There were many murders, rapes, which were never reported. Those who butchered our families are roaming free and there’s nothing we can do about it,” Pathan said.
Also read: On Hinduism, Hindutva and Hate
‘Muslims sit exiled in ghettos’
In Citizen Nagar, Syed Noor Bano wears a straight face while talking about her living conditions.
“Residents of the Citizen Nagar area regularly fall ill. Many have developed stomach and lung cancer over the years. Death from disease has sadly become all too common here,” she said.
Bano and many Muslims like her were left homeless after the riots. At least 50 Muslim families displaced in the 2002 riots have been living here for the past 22 years. The area, also popularly known as Bombay Hotel area, was donated by the Kerala Muslim League Relief Committee and set up as a temporary relief camp, but it has now become a permanent slum for the displaced Muslim families. Residents here live under the shadow of a 100-feet garbage mountain, they sit by open sewage flowing through the slum. They inhale the smoke from the adjoining chemical factory. Muslims are caged here because of hatred.”
Bano, 48, recalls how on the eve of Ram Mandir consecration, Gujarat’s temples, roads, and Hindu homes were wrapped in bright lights and saffron flags. Meanwhile, Muslim homes were tightly shut from inside. Mother to four, Bano believes that in today’s Gujarat, Muslims sit exiled in ghettos owing to the storm that happened 22 years back.
A cart selling Bhagwa flags ahead of Ram Mandir event in Ahmedabad. Photo: Tarushi Aswani
“We live here in these unhygienic conditions, mainly because we can’t afford to go elsewhere. But even if we are offered apartments in Hindu majority areas, our pain will not allow us to settle there. There has also been zero effort from the government’s side to shelter us in better spaces,” she told The Wire.
Khairun Pathan, another survivor, lives in Juhapura, one of the largest Muslim ghettos that emerged out of the fear of being killed in Gujarat after 2002.
In her youth, Pathan resided in Ahmedabad’s Chandkheda – a vibrant area with a mixed population, including migrants from other states. “We were used to celebrating Holi, Diwali, and Eid together. After the riots, we were scared to even visit the area,” she said. ‘Today, I can dream of buying a house in Canada but not in Chandkheda, which is 20 km from here. That is the height of fear.
Twenty-two years after the Gujarat riots, hundreds of Muslims are still internally displaced persons in their own land. According to a report by the Centre for Social Justice, 16,087 people in the state are still displaced.
