Desperate pleas of help to the police fell on deaf ears. According to reports in the Indian newspapers the Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, a hardcore member of the RSS/VHP who was instrumental in the BJP’s Ayodhya movement, had given the VHP cadre 24 hours to wreak havoc on the Muslim community, and told the police that they were not to answer any calls. The reports are given credence when the police simply stood by and watched as the Muslims pleaded for their lives and in some instances the police actively participated in the pogrom. The Police Commissioner P C Pande of Ahmedabad justified the police’s partisan inaction with “if something is happening in society you cannot expect the police to remain indifferent to it”. But the violence continued even beyond the 24 hours, and for three days both the State Government and the Federal Government at the Centre watched as Muslims continued to be massacred before sending the army in. The Gujarat Government’s tacit consent of the violence went one step further when eyewitnesses said they could recognize ministers leading mobs as they attacked Muslims.

symbol to his enduring faith in Indian secularism. He was burnt alive in the very colony he so lovingly created.

Even the most influential Muslims like judges, both sitting and retired, and senior police officers, had to run for cover from the marauders. Justice M H Kadri, a sitting judge of the Gujarat High Court had to flee his home when his calls for more armed guards to both the Director General of Police (the top police officer in the state) and the Additional Chief Secretary (home) were ignored. Another respected judge of the city, Justice Akbar N Divecha was also rendered homeless when his home in Kazmi apartments in the heart of the city was attacked and burnt down. Justice Divecha managed to escape just in the nick of time.

AI Saiyed, Special Inspector General of Police and one of the senior most officers in the state was saved by the presence of mind of his driver. He was doing his duty and driving around the city in full uniform, thinking that was protection enough when his car was stopped by a mob. The hoodlums spotted his nametag and turned .

The violence consumed both the rich and the poor alike. Even influential Muslims were not spared. Ehsan Jafri, a former member of the Indian Parliament was dragged out of his house with other members of his family and burnt alive. “He made more than 200 frantic calls to police, bureaucrats and politicians whom he knew so well. He banked upon them to save the life of 90 to 100 persons gathered at our residence from the neighborhood thinking they would be safe with us. But no one helped,” recalls his widow Zakia Nasim Jafri, who is now staying with her relatives.

Ehsan Jafri was the epitome of secularism. He had joined the Congress Party when he was in his teens and was first elected to Parliament in 1977. He had built the Gulmarg Housing Society where Hindus and Muslims lived together as a

on him, but his driver and bodyguard quickly bundled him back into his vehicle and sped away

If a police officer in uniform was not safe during the carnage then what hope did ordinary Muslims have? The modus operandi of the Gujarat pogrom follows similar massacres that took place in Bombay in 1992, just after the demolition of the Babri Mosque. Then too, gangs of Shiv Sena and VHP cadre had gone from one area to another burning down Muslim homes and businesses. In one incident, Indian cricketer Sunil Gavaskar had to come out on to the street to stop mobs from attacking Muslim homes in his block of apartments. 3,000 people were killed during the 1992 riots.

That the massacres were premeditated was admitted to by Kaushik Mehta, a joint General Secretary of the VHP in Gujarat when talking to the Indian newspaper The Telegraph. "It was decided there should be a model for reprisals. It was important to teach a lesson that could be emulated…," said Mehta. When asked if violence would not beget violence, he replied: “We hope not. We hope that after what has happened, a lesson will have been learnt."