May 19, 2002	Sunday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 6, 1423

AHMEDABAD: Salim Jamumiya Sindhi was a prosperous landowner and village head in India’s Gujarat state — until the savage religious riots that destroyed his life more than two months ago.

Sindhi, 42, whose wife and teenage son were hacked to death by a marauding Hindu mob, now lives in a relief camp in Modasa, a Muslim-majority town, and has no plans to return to the huge 100-acre farm he left behind.

“The Hindu villagers — who ate with me, who I lent money to and helped in every emergency — have deceived me,” said the distraught village chief, adding that he and Muslims from about 37 villages had decided to re-build their lives in Modasa.

Almost 55 years after the bloody partition of the subcontinent into Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-dominated India, hatred is creating deep rifts between Hindus and Muslims in Gujarat where some 950 people have been killed since the country’s worst religious violence in a decade erupted in late February.

“This is another partition. The Hindus want to drive us out of their areas,” said Ayub Qureshi, clutching a few wrapped photographs, all he has left of a five-year-old son and a seven-year-old daughter who were burnt before his eyes.

“There’s no question of ever living in a Hindu area again,” said Qureshi, who lives in a relief camp in Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s largest city which bore the brunt of the violence sparked by the torching of 59 Hindu activists in a train attack.

Fear and animosity are driving Muslims, who once lived in mixed neighbourhoods, to exclusively Muslim neighbourhoods. Tens of thousands are still living in crammed relief camps.

Many Muslims, who fled mobs in several villages, complain of Hindus setting impossible terms for their return — conversion to Hinduism, shaving of beards, dropping of rape complaints, not building mosques or broadcasting prayers from mosques.

HINDUS: Hindus displaced from their homes during the riots are equally vehement.

“Muslims want to create another Pakistan here. Now, we think if any Muslim enters a Hindu area we’ll cut him to pieces,” said Sanjay Vasphoda, 21, living in a Hindu relief camp in Ahmedabad.

The yawning divide brings back memories of the traumatic partition in 1947 that unleashed a bloodbath in which up to one million people were killed, and the flight of at least 10 million refugees in the greatest migration in human history.

Relations between Hindus and Muslims have always been tense in Gujarat, but residents say the animosity has reached levels never seen before. The fear and loathing is most evident in Ahmedabad’s teeming relief camps.

A group of Hindus who tried to return to their homes about 10 days ago was attacked and their houses burnt down.

The residents vow vengeance and their decision is unanimous: Live only in Hindu areas.

The Muslim residents of Naroda-Pattia — where nearly 100 people, including children, were brutally raped, hacked and burnt to death within a few hours by Hindu mobs — say there isn’t a shred of doubt in their minds either.

“The next time we may not be able to escape. It is safer to live with our own community. Even if army commandos are posted in the area, I will never return to Naroda,” said Qureshi, who had a flourishing mutton business in a Hindu area.

Muslims, the opposition and civil rights groups have accused the government of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party of turning a blind eye to the violence — charges it has denied. Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi said police took firm action and brought the riots under control in three days.

TALE OF TWO CITIES: Either way, the tension is still palpable.

Ahmedabad is a tale of two cities — bustling Hindu-dominated areas with restaurants and discotheques packed with smartly dressed youngsters, and Muslim quarters that wear a haunted look with shuttered shops and burnt shells of houses.

“Partition has already taken place in every respect. The only secure place for Muslims is a ghetto,” said Cedric Prakash, director of the Centre for Human Rights, Justice and Peace.

“The Gujarat government is following a fascist ideology. It is their policy to divide Hindus and Muslims down the line.”

A group of Muslim businessmen from Ahmedabad has bought a five-acre plot of land in a Muslim quarter and plans next week to start construction of houses for displaced Muslims.—Reuters