Almost always Muslims.
These victims of police brutality and killings.
Mostly Muslims.
Almost always Muslims.
And yet at other times, the police throws itself actively and lustily in the carnage.
Killing…
Raping...
Burning...
Just like the rest of the rampaging mob.
In what some of us so comfortably, so glibly, so thoughtlessly call a communal riot.
Chapter 9
How Long the Carnage Lasts
It does not matter how long the carnage lasts.
For some, it lasts hours.
Or days.
Or weeks.
For others, it lasts forever...
Until eternity...
And for generations...
And never really ends.
With every healing scar coming back alive with every new carnage and conflagration.
Suffice it to say that it lasts for as long as it takes the mob...
And sometimes the police...
To kill.
To rape...
To burn...
To mutilate...
To rid that city, that town and that village of many of its inhabitants.
Those other people.
People with a creed, faith, religion or culture different from that professed or practiced by the mob.
Mostly Muslims.
Almost always Muslims.
The hapless victims of these so-called communal riots in India.
People who had lived there for countless generations.
And centuries.
Ordinary people.
People just like you and me and everyone else...
Babies, children, grandparents, husbands, wives, fathers and mothers.
Students, teachers, farmers and workers.
And, of course, the cripple, the sick, the elderly, the weak, the widows and the orphans.
And all sorts of others.
But who no longer live there because the merciless mob massacred and decimated them.
It butchered and burned them alive.
And because the police took many of the survivors away - only later to dispose of their dead and mangled bodies wherever and however it could.
Those the police could not kill and dispose of, it packed into prisons and state torture chambers and hospitals.
For no other fault or crime than the fact that they had a creed, faith, religion or culture different from the one professed by the mob.
And by the majority of the police.
And by members of the predominantly Hindu bureaucracy and state administration.
And by the majority of Indians in India.
Chapter 10
Police Returns to the Scene of the Massacres
And once the carnage cools...
And once the killing and the raping and the burning run their course...
The police returns.
One more time.
Once more, its bullets methodically pick out the people that protest the carnage.
People who desperately act to defend and protect their children, women and properties from the mob.
The police then breaks into the buildings that somehow survived the carnage and the orgy of arson.
It ravages the remainder of the life, dignity, honor and property of the terrified survivors of the first onslaught.
And it rounds up the men and hauls them off in trucks on charges of violence and lawlessness.
Mostly Muslims.
Almost always Muslims.
For the crime of not being among the dead...
And the injured...
And the maimed...
And the mutilated.
Some of its victims, the police shoots and tosses half-dead into convenient rivers and ravines.
Others, it beats up and throws in jail to rot without bail or trial.
Still others have acid poured in their eyes by police officers.
Or powdered hot pepper stuffed under their eyelids.
Police...
Guardian of law, life, liberty and property.
Police…
Servant and protector of the people.
Police...
The symbol of rectitude, power and authority that separates beasts from humans, the jungle from civilization.
Police...
The joy, comfort, pride and valued treasure of a free people.
Of a civilized society.
Police...
The internationally recognized instrument of justice...
The hope of individuals under attack by criminals, goons and gangsters.
But in India...
The same police...
An instrument of genocide and multiple crimes against humanity against India's defenseless Muslim minority...
In these so-called communal riots.
Chapter 11
How the Story Repeats Itself
Yes!
This is how it generally happens.
What some call a communal riot in India.
With some variations here and there.
But this is how it generally happens in a given city.
In a given town.
In a given village.
On a given day...
Any fateful, brutal, dark, merciless, inhuman, barbaric, apocalyptic day.
Almost every day.
And this is how it has been happening...
For decade after unending, barbaric, dark decade.
Each darker and deadlier than the other.
In city after city.
Town after town.
Village after village.
State after state.
Time after time.
Year after year.
The name does not matter.
The place does not matter.
Call it what you will.
Ahmedabad...
Aligarh...
Assam...
Bhagalpur...
Hyderabad...
Jabalpur...
Meerut...
Moradabad...
Rourkela...
Or even Bombay...
The crown jewel of India's cosmopolitan culture.
And commerce.
And now, at the time of writing in 2001-2002, Ahmedabad and the Indian state of Gujarat.
One more time.
With its latest consignment of individuals burned alive.
And thousands hacked to pieces.
With both the mob and the police doing their scripted part of death and destruction, burning and looting, raping and pillaging, to satanic perfection.
And demonic monotony.
Chapter 12
The Name Does Not Matter
Does the name really matter?
Why should the name matter?
Suffice it to say that they are all beautiful places...
In beautiful India.
Yet they were all rocked and ravaged and ripped, rent asunder and disfigured and desecrated by what some so innocently call communal riots.
Bathed in the blood and honor of untold, uncounted innocents and defenseless people.
People just like you, me and everyone else.
Babies, children, grandparents, husbands, wives, fathers and mothers.
Students, teachers, farmers, workers, business people, professionals and wage earners.
And, of course, the cripple, the sick, the elderly, the weak, the widows, the orphans.
Mostly Muslims.
Almost always Muslims.
At one time.
Or another.
And some of these places...
Over and over...
Again...
And again…
And again…
And again.
Beautiful places.
All of them...
In beautiful India.
In a beautiful part of God's most beautiful earth...
Where innocent, defenseless, voiceless children, women and men in droves were massacred...
And lynched...
And burned alive...
In some of the most ugly, inhuman, cold-blooded, heartless, barbaric, brutal, sadistic and shameless carnages and pogroms the earth has ever witnessed.
Nazi-style.
Following the footsteps of Germany's Nazi hordes.
For no other fault or crime than having a creed, faith, religion or culture different from the one professed by the mob...
By the police...
By the state bureaucracy...
And by the majority of India's Hindu population.
For the crime of being members of India's Muslim minority...
Under the domination of a Hindu majority...
In the grip of a fanatical revival fever.
Carnages and pogroms...
