Bush ignores India's pogrom.

I VISITED GANDHI'S HOME STATE OF GUJARAT in mid-December for my brother-in-law's wedding. Coincidentally, it was the day of elections to decide the fate of a rightwing state government. According to Human Rights Watch, that government was complicit in the massacre of at least 2,000 Muslims early last year, the highest toll in Hindu-Muslim violence since India's independence.

The election results caused my stomach to churn. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government headed by Chief Minister Narendra Modi returned to power. It successfully capitalized on Hindu animosity toward Muslims and harped on local pride, claiming to defend the honor of the state against attacks by secularist outsiders. Gandhi wouldn't have been too happy.

The events in Gujarat are only the most obvious expression of how the growth of rightwing Hindu fundamentalism since the late 1980s has undermined Gandhi's legacy. This trend is not just confined to Gandhi's home state. A coalition headed by the BJP, the same party that governs Gujarat, currently governs all of India.

The United States has been, at best, equivocal in its response to the Gujarat anti-Muslim campaign. And it has been half-hearted in trying to stem the flow of funds from the United States to Hindu extremist groups in India.

The BJP's militant, hard-line attitude apparently does not trouble the Bush Administration, which has drawn closer since September 11 to the Indian government (even while maintaining an alliance with the BJP'S bugbear, General Pervez Musharraf's regime in Pakistan). The BJP has used the post-September 11 climate as a cover for harsh internal measures, such as passing stiff anti-terrorism laws and, as Gujarat shows, targeting Muslims. The Indian government has reciprocated U.S. friendship by strongly supporting the Bush Administration's campaign in Afghanistan and by being reticent about the Iraq War.

According to The New York Times, the only public remarks about Gujarat that the U.S. ambassador, Robert Blackwill, made in the aftermath of the violence was: "All our hearts go out to the people who were affected by this tragedy. I don't have anything more to say than that." In contrast, after terrorists killed twenty-four Kashmiris in late March this year, Blackwill was quick to issue a statement condemning "the ghastly murder of innocent men, women, and children." Blackwill did not even visit Gujarat subsequent to the pogrom.

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was asked by The Hindu, a leading national paper, about "why the United States has not been forthcoming in its criticism." She responded that the BJP "government is leading India well, and it will do the right thing."

Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Christina Rocca did term the events in Gujarat "really horrible," but she neglected to assign any blame.

When Secretary of State Colin Powell visited India last July, he made no mention of Gujarat, as Mira Kamdar pointed out in World Policy Journal. The furthest that the Bush Administration went was to raise the matter privately with the Indian government, warning that it was harming India's image, according to the Bombay-based Economic Times. By contrast, the European Union likened the Gujarat situation to apartheid and said that it had similarities with Nazi Germany of the 1930s.

Apparently, the U.S. government has deemed it more important to keep India on its side in the "war on terrorism" than to risk a row over even grotesque human rights violations.

The state-sponsored violence in Gujarat came in retaliation for the actions of a Muslim mob, which, on February 27 last year, burned alive nearly sixty Hindus on a train in the city of Godhra. The train was returning from Ayodhya in Northern India, where many of the train's occupants had gone as part of a mobilization to build a temple to Lord Ram, a Hindu deity, on the site of a mosque. The retaliation against Muslims started the next morning, with the worst incidents happening over the next three days. In addition to those killed, the violence forced more than 100,000 Muslims into becoming refugees and destroyed 360 Muslim places of worship. Numerous women were raped, sometimes gang-raped. "I have never known a riot which has used the sexual subjugation of women so widely as an instrument of violence as the recent barbarity in Gujarat," wrote Harsh Mander, a government official who resigned in disgust. "This was not a riot," one senior police official told The New York Times. "It was a state-sponsored pogrom."

India's National Human Rights Commission faulted the state government for "failure of intelligence and action." The commission named senior BJP officials as among the accused. "These are grave matters, indeed, that must not be allowed to be forgiven or forgotten," the commission said.

Human Rights Watch issued a report on the massacres, entitled "We Have No Orders to Save You." It detailed the extensive complicity of the authorities in the violence. "In many cases, the police led the charge, using gunfire to kill Muslims who got in the mobs' way," the report states. "A key BJP state minister is reported to have taken over police control rooms in Ahmedabad on the first day of the carnage, issuing orders to disregard pleas for assistance from Muslims." Police also "participated directly in the burning and looting of Muslim shops and homes and the killing and mutilation of Muslims. In many cases, under the guise of offering assistance, the police led the victims directly into the hands of their killers."

Ahsan Jafri, a former member of parliament, lived in the Gulmarg Society neighborhood in Ahmedabad, the largest city in Gujarat and the site of the worst violence. Jafri tried to use his home as a shelter for Muslims. But then a Hindu mob approached his house.

"On February 28, we went to Ahsan Jafri's home for safety," says Mehboob Mansoori, in testimony to Human Rights Watch. Jafri "was holding the door closed. Then the door broke down. They pulled him out and hit him with a sword across the forehead, then across the stomach, then on his legs.... They then took him on the road, poured kerosene on him, and burned him. There was no police at all."

Mansoori managed to survive. However, his family was all but wiped out. "Eighteen people from my family died," he told Human Rights Watch. "All the women died. My brother, my three sons, one girl, my wife's mother, they all died.... Other girls were raped, cut, and burned.... Sixty-five to seventy people were killed inside."

Jafri's daughter, Nishrin Hussain, who lives in Delaware, remains outraged.

"It was prepared and preplanned with government blessing all along," she says. "The police and the government connived with the rioters."

After the riots, Nishrin returned to Gujarat to see what happened. She was not welcome. During her visit, people circulated posters that contained veiled threats on her life, she says. And when she went to one village, a mob told her if she dared to come back, she'd be killed.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a body set up by Congress, denounced the violence in Gujarat and has even named India as a "country of particular concern," thus placing it in the company of such nations as China, Saudi Arabia, and Burma. Under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, the President is required to take diplomatic or economic actions against countries on the list.

Felice D. Gaer, chair of the commission, is critical of the Bush Administration's response to the Gujarat violence. "There's been no public comment by the Administration on Gujarat other than in response to a direct question," Gaer says. "The ambassador hasn't visited the region. Senior officials are not interested in holding anyone responsible for the violence."

Assistant Secretary of State Rocca claimed on March 22 at a Senate hearing on South Asia that "much action" has been taken by the Indian government. "The legal system in India is agonizingly slow and that gives the impression that nothing is happening," she said. "But the fact of the matter is that they did take action and they are continuing to take action," she said. The "United States has spoken out loudly and often on the terrible events of Gujarat, and it did not in any way get a pass from anywhere in the world, much less from the Bush Administration."

Sunil Lal, press officer at the Indian Embassy in Washington, is happy with the Bush Administration's approach to Gujarat. "The U.S. Administration is aware of the efforts made by the government of India, and you must have heard Christina Rocca's recent testimony on this subject," he says.

Others rebut the State Department's claims. As Smita Narula of Human Rights Watch pointed out in an op-ed in The Asian Wall Street Journal on the first anniversary of the pogrom, "There have been no convictions of those responsible." In contrast, the government charged 131 Muslims under the harsh Prevention of Terrorism Act for the train burning. Between July and October, the government closed the Muslim refugee camps.

The response in the U.S. Congress was also, for the most part, mild. Jim McDermott, a liberal Democrat from Washington, spoke very carefully about Gujarat last April before an audience of Indian Americans in an event co-sponsored by the Overseas Friends of Bharatiya Janata Party. He said that while some members of Congress were concerned about the situation, he appreciated the Indian government's response.

"Prime Minister Vajpayee has done a remarkable job in trying to balance the forces that make up a country as diverse as India," he said. McDermott was, however, more critical of the BJP in a phone interview, saying the party was "wrong to inject religion into politics" and that this "just won't work."

The lack of a stronger response may be due to the increasing visibility and financial clout of the prosperous Indian American community, currently 1.7 million in number, with Gujaratis comprising 40 percent of the total. "Intensive lobbying by members of the Indian American community prevented introduction of a resolution in the U.S. Congress condemning the violence," states Human Rights Watch. In the 2000 election cycle, Indian Americans contributed at least $13 million, according to Federal Election Commission data. Plus, growing U.S. business interests in India (notably in software, telemarketing, and the arms industry) have fostered a pro-India climate on the Hill. As a result, about 130 members of Congress are members of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans. McDermott is a past chair of the caucus. Congressmen Frank Pallone, Democrat of New Jersey, and Gary Ackerman, Democrat of New York, both founders of the caucus, were last year awarded the Padma Bhushan, a top Indian civilian honor.

Senator Joseph Biden, Democrat of Delaware, and Senator Thomas Carper, Democrat of Delaware, have been more outspoken. They called up family members of the murdered ex-parliamentarian, Ahsan Jafri, to express their sympathy. Biden also addressed the issue publicly, saying that the killings were "just plain wrong" and that "nothing justifies the slaughter of innocent women and children." "About 2,000 people have been slaughtered in mob violence there, often--whether you like to hear it or not--with the collusion of local officials," he said at a conference hosted by an Indian business group.

But Biden took some heat for his stance from members of the Indian American community. "The very next day, his office was bombarded with calls and e-mails saying, 'You stay out of this; this is an internal Indian matter.' He backed off," says Najid Hussain, Jafri's son-in-law.

Funds from charities in the United States flow to Hindu extremist groups in India, some of which may have been involved in the Gujarat violence. The Bush Administration has done little about this, in marked contrast to its vigorous attempts to investigate money allegedly going to Al Qaeda.

Vijay Prashad, author of The Karma of Brown Folk, a study of the Indian diaspora, estimates that Hindu extremist groups in this country raise at least $10 million a year, of which perhaps 10 percent goes to India.

One of the most notable Indian charitable organizations in the United States is the India Development and Relief Fund, which, according to The Financial Times, raised more than $10 million between 1997 and 2001 and sent $3.2 million to India between 1994 and 2000.

An ad hoc coalition of Indian Americans, the Campaign. to Stop Funding Hate, issued a report a few months ago alleging that the relief fund supports Hindu hate groups in India. One of these groups is the Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad (Tribals Welfare Organization), says Shalini Gera, a spokesperson for the campaign. The organization was involved in anti-Christian violence in the late 1990s in Gujarat, according to The Times of India, and in the anti-Muslim campaign, according to Frontline magazine. The Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad "directed violence against Muslims" during the Gujarat killings, reports Frontline. (Attempts to reach the organization for comment were unsuccessful.)

The Financial Times reports that the Justice Department may be investigating the fund. Vinod Prakash, the founder and president of the India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF), vehemently denies that his organization has received any sort of communication from the Bush Administration.

"It will prove to be an uphill battle for the U.S. to properly investigate and scrutinize these organizations because of their links to India's ruling party, the BJP," says Narula of Human Rights Watch in The Financial Times. "The U.S. needs India as an ally right now."

Prakash also says that his organization doesn't fund any Hindu rightwing groups, such as the Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad. (The website of the group does name Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad among the list of "IDRF-supported groups in Gujarat.") He does not, however, deny ideological affiliations. "I have every right as a person to be close to this or that organization," he says. "But the IDRF has never discriminated. As a proud Hindu, I will never discriminate in my humanitarian service."

By the time the Gujarat election results were announced, I had left the state. But I was appalled by the reaction I was hearing from Hindus in other parts of the country. While some opposed the Modi government, others were unabashedly supportive, and a whole lot of people were ambivalent. It is this reaction--both inside India and outside--that the BJP is counting on to forge ahead with its sectarian and violent agenda for the country.

"The Bush Administration and Congress should tell the Indian government that justice must be done," says Najid Hussain. "The propagation of such an ideology has to stop."

Amitabh Pal is Managing Editor of The Progressive.