Thread by @_Shams11

The deadliest episode of communal violence after Independence was that of Ahmedabad in 1969, the Birth Centenary Year of Mahatma Gandhi.

This happened when Congress was in power at the Centre (Indira Gandhi), state (Hitendra Desai, CM) and in the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation.

From the 1960s, communal passions had already been simmering in Ahmedabad with numerous 'minor incidents' of rioting having been recorded.

With the decline of the textile mills of Gujarat, economic insecurity fuelled hostility against the Muslim textile workers.

Another part of the context was the anger left by the Indo-Pak war of 1965 and the accidental death of the state's Chief Minister during the war, which found expression against local Muslims.

Peaceful procession organized by Muslims against the damages to Al-Aqsa mosque was...

...resented by the Hindus and viewed as extra-territorial loyalty and unpatriotic, a feeling which was further exaggerated by the press.

In March, a policeman was asked to apologize after a copy of the Quran fell from a pushcart by him, which enraged the Hindus.

On 4 September 1969, the incident of a Mulsim police officer accidentally dropping a copy of the Ramayana whilst trying to disperse a Ramlila audience led to a communally charged situation with many interpreting the accident as a calculated Muslim affront to the Hindu religion.

Two days later, some religious leaders along with members of Hindu Mahasabha formed the Hindu Dharma Raksha Samiti (Committee for the Defense of the Hindu Religion), which organized several processions and distributed inflammatory pamphlets.

Local press added fuel to the fire.

For example, on 12 September 1969, Jai Hind, a Gujarati afternoon daily, demanded that the Muslim officer who had ‘insulted’ the Ramayana should be promptly expelled because, 'if this demand is not accepted, the offended feelings of the Hindu community will result in agitation...

...and the govt. alone will be responsible for its consequences.'

Together, these events led to high tension and just required a spark to set the whole city ablaze.

The Jagannath temple incident provided the spark that set whole Gujarat ablaze.

On 18th Sep, 1969 some Muslims and sadhus were reported to have clashed near the Jagannath temple.

As a part of Urs festival held every year, about a thousand Muslims had gathered at a dargah near the temple.

Also, as happened every day, at about 3 p.m. a herd of cows were...

...returning to the temple, led by two sadhus who were quite familiar with the Muslims of the area.

Suddenly, one of the cows, reacting to the crowd bolted, injuring a Muslim woman and her two children.

Meanwhile, some children were making fun of one of the sadhus who was a...

...dwarf, who in anger raised his stick to hit the boys, but accidentally hit a Muslim woman standing behind him.
Annoyed, the woman shouted at the sadhu.

In this atmosphere of tension and commotion, a scuffle developed between the Muslim young men and the sadhus.

The two sadhus, being in minority rushed into the temple upon which the crowd threw stones.

The two sadhus returned with a few others to retaliate.
But they were still too few against the crowd.

Due to stone-pelting, there was some damage to the temple,such as the breakage of..

..the glasses of photo-frames covering pictures of deities.

Meanwhile, the police arrived and brought an end to the fighting.

On the whole, it was an ordinary incident sparked off by a minor accident.

Later, after holding a meeting at 8 p.m., several Sadhus of the temple...

...began a fast to protest against the attack and demanded an inquiry

The HDRS called for a meeting the next evening.

Meanwhile, three Muslim-owned shops were torched during the night as a measure of retaliation.

Newspaper accounts the next morning implied, inaccurately....

..that the attack on the temple had been both serious and planned.

By afternoon, hundreds of handbils giving exaggerated accounts of the attack were circulating.

They gave false information:
a cow had been killed; a priest had been seriously injured, even killed; Muslims had...

...entered the temple and damaged the image of a God.

By noon most of the markets had closed and a grim atmosphere of suspense pervaded the city.

Meanwhile, the gov. declared an appointment of the inquiry committee.

Muslim leaders condemned the attack, went to the temple...

...priests to apologize on behalf of the community and offered to publish that apology formally in the vernacular press.

But the news of all these appeals and the Gov. decision was published only a day later.

Long before that, mob fury had taken hold of the situation.

Violence gathered pace as the day went on: crowds of upto 500 men, armed with sticks, daggers and spears, went on a rampage, looting or destroying shops, shrines and homes belonging to Muslims, and killing or injuring Muslim men and women.

On the night of 19th Sep,a curfew was..

...imposed in the city but barely implemented.

The Congress gov. doled out curfew passes like candy, which enabled several rioters to defy the curfew with ease.

Up to now incidents of killings were sporadic: they now became frequent and on a large and organized scale.

Transportation facilities were available to take rioters from one place to another.
Kerosene and petrol were freely available at the trouble spots.

Using voters' list and telephone directories, the rioters identified the targets.

Muslim shops were looted and set on fire.

Even in this, the mob showed a calculated sense of discrimination.

Muslim shops in Hindu owned building were plundered but not set on fire;shops run by Hindu and Muslim in partnership remained undisturbed.

Atrocities multiplied by 20th evening when several Muslims were either..

...burnt alive or murdered.
In some places they were thrown into fire.

Scythes, axes, knives and spears were used to kill people.

Women were raped or stripped bare and forced to walk naked on the road; children were beaten against stones, their legs were torn apart.

Limbs were cut out of dead bodies, women's breast were cut and genitals mutilated or torn apart.

Several trains on their way to Ahmedabad were stopped, the Muslim passengers pulled out, robbed and killed.

An account on the brutal forms of sexual violence that women endured:

By and large all sections of the Hindu community participated in the riots in one way or other.
Some were actual participants, some were observers providing facilities for the rioters if needed, and some were sympathisers and morale-boosters.

When the Muslim shops burnt,

...throngs of Hindu householders were out on streets as participants or simply to enjoy the fun, distributing 'prasad' to the onlookers.

The migrant workers and Dalits were at the forefront of looting and killing.

Here's a gruesome episode that exposes the depth of animosity:

There is no denying that the gov. had intentionally taken a passive role in thwarting the violence and was almost always late in taking decisions.

Indecision over whether the civil authority or military should intervene further worsened the situation.

Some members within the...

...party alleged that the gov. hesitated to push the police to take forceful action against the rioters- because had it come down heavily on the perpetrators, it would have lost Hindu votes to the Jan Sangh (precursor of BJP).

No Congress leader in Ahmedabad made any attempt...

..to stop the frenzy, perhaps because they themselves were not above communal prejudices.

Led by dominant-caste Hindu leaders, the political culture of Gujarat Congress was characterized by leaders who sympathized with, if not joined, the Sangh Parivar.

A few Congressmen even..

...took part in the riots, directly or indirectly.

A survivor, Ghulam Nizami claimed that some Congress leaders would ask the Muslims to sit in the bus under the pretext of taking them to safety but would give instructions to the driver to divert the bus to Hindu neighborhood.

Had it not been for a Muslim police officer who had been responsible for intercepting several buses, at least 500 people would have died.

Even the police was complicit in the violence.

Although they had been given "shoot at sight"orders, most officers did not patrol with arms.

Much of the rifle stock remained untouched, as the police ventured out with lathis.

Of the many Muslim religious places attacked, 39 had been near police posts.

On 21 Sep, after the local and state police had failed to contain the situation, the Army was called in.

Two days after the Army took over, the police lifted the curfew for three hours which proved to be disastrous.

Looting, lynching and arson reigned throughout the city in that small window and the little control that had been gained over the city was reversed.

It was only after the Army was given unequivocal authority over the city, and the curfew reinstated for over a month, that Ahmedabad began to inch towards recovery.

Officially, the massacare left a death toll of 660, of whom 430 were Muslims and 24 were Hindus;

...1,074 were grievously injured and over 48,000 were rendered homeless.

Unofficial death toll was b/w 1,000 and 2,000 with the proportions of Muslims to Hindus unchanged.

Property worth over four crore was destroyed, more than three quarters of which belonged to the Muslims.

According to the gov:
37 mosques, 57 dargahs, 6 Muslim graveyards and 3 Hindu temples were damaged.

It is widely speculated that the backdrop of the riot was the split in the Congress party between the supporters of Indira Gandhi and those of Morarji Desai.

Many in the Gujarat Congress viewed the riots as a political vendetta by the Centre to discredit the CM of Gujarat, who was a supporter of Mr. Desai.

Commentators on Gujarat often miss the role of Congress by privileging the later episodes of violence, notably 2002, whilst...

....dealing with Hindu-Muslim relations.

The 1969 massacare emerged as a beginning- of intense religious division, a culture of violence and should be studied as an essential entry point to the early rise of Hindutva in the state.

One remarkable feature of this massacare is that not a single person responsible for the violence has been prosecuted or punished.

India has a long history of violent events that slowly keep fading away from our public history and writing- the 1969 Ahmedabad massacare exists...

....as a footnote in the list of places where mass violence has taken place.

Its time we speak about each of these violent events, create a different language to express their implications- to understand, not to forget.

Refrence:
1. The 1969 Communal Riots in Ahmedabad: A Case Study by Ghanshyam Shah
2. Ahmedabad: Shock City of Twentieth Century India by Howard Spodek
3. Communalism and Sexual Violence in India: The Politics of Gender, Ethnicity and Conflict by Megha Kumar