Peace Building and Social Healing Efforts by the Victims of anti- Muslim Pogrom in Gujarat, India
Start Date
12-1-2012 10:30 AM
End Date
12-1-2012 12:00 PM
Description
Nine years since the carnage in Gujarat, the civil society, media, and S\state functionaries from Gujarat and elsewhere in the country are engaged in “Business as usual”. But for the thousands of survivors of the carnage, life continues to be a grim reality – and a painful remembrance of the time when they lost their loved ones and the perpetrators, their humanity. In the violence that raked Gujarat in February - March 2002 Muslim were targeted, more than 2000 persons were killed, about 150000 persons made homeless, several hundred severely injured, children orphaned, with brutal sexual assaults on women as police and the state administration actively connived with the perpetrators and refused to protect the lives and the properties of the Muslims. Since the Partition of India resulting in creation of Pakistan, this was the most widespread and bestial instance of anti-Muslim violence in Indian sub-continent.
Given the situation, the paper is an attempt to find the way forward. The paper aims at helping to address the crucial question of access to justice of the victims of the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom. It can, in a very modest way, help promote the cause of justice and communal harmony in deeply-polarized Gujarat.
The paper broadly will deal with the question of how to rebuild or reactivate the culture of communal harmony and trust. The paper will also attempt to suggest the ways forward in active resistance to communal violence and divisive ideology and how to enable social healing in Gujarat. Fieldwork will be undertaken in Ahmedabad, Vadodra, and Panch Mahals districts. This would entail interacting with victims of carnage in general, and widows and orphans in particular. The paper will also include extensive interviews with local community leaders, opinion makers, social activists, and NGOs etc.
Peace Building and Social Healing Efforts by the Victims of anti- Muslim Pogrom in Gujarat, India
Nine years since the carnage in Gujarat, the civil society, media, and S\state functionaries from Gujarat and elsewhere in the country are engaged in “Business as usual”. But for the thousands of survivors of the carnage, life continues to be a grim reality – and a painful remembrance of the time when they lost their loved ones and the perpetrators, their humanity. In the violence that raked Gujarat in February - March 2002 Muslim were targeted, more than 2000 persons were killed, about 150000 persons made homeless, several hundred severely injured, children orphaned, with brutal sexual assaults on women as police and the state administration actively connived with the perpetrators and refused to protect the lives and the properties of the Muslims. Since the Partition of India resulting in creation of Pakistan, this was the most widespread and bestial instance of anti-Muslim violence in Indian sub-continent.
Given the situation, the paper is an attempt to find the way forward. The paper aims at helping to address the crucial question of access to justice of the victims of the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom. It can, in a very modest way, help promote the cause of justice and communal harmony in deeply-polarized Gujarat.
The paper broadly will deal with the question of how to rebuild or reactivate the culture of communal harmony and trust. The paper will also attempt to suggest the ways forward in active resistance to communal violence and divisive ideology and how to enable social healing in Gujarat. Fieldwork will be undertaken in Ahmedabad, Vadodra, and Panch Mahals districts. This would entail interacting with victims of carnage in general, and widows and orphans in particular. The paper will also include extensive interviews with local community leaders, opinion makers, social activists, and NGOs etc.