When a Reporter Had to Pull Down His Pants in Riot-Torn Ahmedabad

With a verdict announced in the Gulbarg case, Chandan Nandy writes on identity tests conducted in Gujarat in 2002.

Family members wave to the Gulbarg Society massacre case convicts as they are taken away in van, after the verdict by a special SIT court in Ahmedabad on Thursday. (Photo: PTI)

It was a few minutes past 11 pm, 1 March 2002, when I landed in Ahmedabad. As I drove out of the airport, women in nighties and their menfolk in pyjamas and singlets sat on the pavements. A few others strolled casually. We were still a few kilometres from the city centre. I was to join Vinod Sharma, bureau chief at Hindustan Times (Delhi), who had reached Ahmedabad a day before in the midst of planned violence, arson, looting and rioting sparked by the death of 57 kar sevaks, returning from Ayodhya to Godhra in eastern Gujarat.

On reaching Hotel Narmada in the heart of Ahmedabad, I quickly passed a bottle of Diplomat whiskey – which I had carried into dry Gujarat in my checked-in baggage – to Sharma, who briefed me about the latest developments on mainly two fronts; the political and the murderous mob. In the morning, driving across Ahmedabad, Sharma and I watched, awe- and horror-struck, the tell-tale signs of the Hindu mob at work.

Hotel Tulsi (I don’t now remember the street it was located on) had been set on fire, its outer and inner walls charred. The hotel (a small restaurant, really) belonged to a Muslim and was perhaps given a “Hindu” name as a cover, for Ahmedabad’s residents were no strangers to communal riots. Several other buildings in which Muslims lived or ran businesses had been torched.

Horrific Test of Identity

The story was that Hindu mobs specifically targeted Muslim neighbourhoods, armed with electoral rolls. They knew the precise locations and addresses of the houses and residential societies where Muslims lived. Compared to the honeycombed sprawls such as Kalupur and Juhapura, Gulbarg Society was an urbane quarter occupied solely by Muslims.

A younger colleague from HT’s city reporting, Vinay Menon, had flown in to Ahmedabad from Delhi on February 27, the day the Sabarmati Express coach was torched. He narrated shocking stories of the loot and plunder of malls, of mobs manning road intersections.

But the most profoundly shocking was about a mob which, after stopping the car he was travelling in, was not happy to hear his name. ‘Menon’ sounded like ‘Memon’ to the men wielding an assortment of crude weapons – iron rods, cycle chains, knives. Vinay was then put through a horrifying test: the mob leader calmly asked him to pull down his pants so that they could check him. Satisfied that he was not circumcised, the men let him go.

Minorities Were Specifically Targeted

A day later, Vinay and I drove to the local Vishwa Hindu Parishad office where a corpulent man, dressed in a synthetic, off-white kurta-pyjama, introduced himself as a karyakarta. As he took a chair, the kurta parted at his waist to expose a revolver ensconced in a tanned leather holster.

He twirled his huge moustache, curved upwards at its edges, before sharing something chilling: the VHP had called for the economic boycott of Ahmedabad’s entire Muslim community, especially those living in the Kalupur ghetto. Once the narration ended, he produced posters which would be stuck across Ahmedabad to send the message to Muslims and Hindus alike.

In mostly-vegetarian Ahmedabad, the Kalupur and Juhapura Muslim ghettos serve non-vegetarian food. Two days in Ahmedabad and sick of eating vegetarian meals, Vinay and I had sudden pangs for some kebab, which a councillor friend in Kalupur, a Memon, organised for us by calling up a Muslim-owned restaurant that served meat. We drove through a narrow stretch of road to the restaurant where we had just polished off a couple of plates of kebabs, when we heard a not-so-distant rumble: a Hindu mob had entered Kalupur and was running amok.

Family members of the Gulbarg Society massacre case convicts react after the verdict in the case by a special SIT court in Ahmedabad on Thursday. (Photo: PTI)

Voice of Silence

We were about to pay up (Rs 160) when the restaurant proprietor implored us to leave. Money was no big deal; lives were. Aap nikliye yahan se, they pleaded. As Vinay and I, protected by a circle of Muslims from the restaurant, crept into the rear seat of the hired Ambassador, we watched the mob whizz past like a swarm of angry hornets.

The men, with saffron bands tied around their heads, had bloodthirsty eyes. Lips contorted, some of them barked obscenities at the Muslims hanging out on the pavement or gathered near small eateries, instructing the shops and restaurants owners to pull down the shutters or else face the full force of their anger.

Across the sprawling ghetto, police presence was thin. We saw the burnt remains of a warren of shops which were blown up by exploding cooking gas cylinders thrown into them. What remained were the charred detritus of concrete and clothing.

At the nearby Jami Masjid, a few Muslims huddled around the imam, too shell-shocked to even react to the mayhem across the city caused by the dhamal (rioting). Not too many had turned up to offer their maghrib prayers that evening. The public address system that would amplify the azan lay silent. The strains of Allah hu Akbar were not heard that evening.

Also read:

Bless Us, Abba: 2002 Gulbarg Victim Ehsan Jafri’s Daughter Writes

InfographiQ: All You Need to Know About Gulbarg Society Massacre