Gujarat is a historical state located in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent and bordering Pakistan. It is the fifth largest Indian state. It was known as the most fanatical state for Hinduism, so for decades it was the scene of massacres, displacement and systematic persecution against those who adhere to Islam from its population.
In September and October 1969, the first major communal riots against Muslims since India's independence took place in Gujarat, killing more than 2,000 people and causing more than 50,000 people to lose their homes and property.
And blamed the "Reddy Commission" for justice - set up by the government - the responsibility for the violence on Hindu nationalist organizations, but the guilty were not punished, and none of the recommendations made by the commission to reduce the frequency of violence against Muslims were implemented.
Since that date, the level of tolerance in Gujarat has declined, and mass killings have continued to rise through a series of waves of religious violence in the region.
The most tragic was the religious riots that took place in 2002, known as the "Gujarat massacre", in which more than a thousand people were killed, most of them Muslims.
The National Volunteer Organization played a central role in those massacres, and in it the extremist Hindu leader Narendra Modi began his career, as he was the governor of Gujarat at the time.
Government statistics indicate that more than 98,000 people - the majority of whom are Muslims - reside in more than 100 relief camps across the state.
And classified "a committee of independent international experts," Muslims are the largest "oppressed minority" in India, with a Hindu majority estimated at 80%.
the site
Gujarat is a state located in northwestern India with the borders of Pakistan, overlooking the south of the Arabian Sea, and shares a small part of its southeastern borders with the Indian union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli.
Its capital is Gandhinagar, which was named after Mahatma Gandhi, and is located in the suburbs north of the city center of Ahmedabad, the former capital and largest city in the state and one of the most important textile centers in India, which had commercial and cultural links in the past with the Arab countries.
Gujarat is the fifth largest state in terms of an area of about 196,000 square kilometers and the ninth largest state in terms of a population of about 60 million people.
89.1% of the state's population profess Hinduism, Muslims represent 9.1%, Jains 1.0%, Sikhs 0.1%, and Christianity 0.01% of the population.
the date
Gujarat derives its name from the 'Ghajar-Ratra', a sub-tribe of the Hunas who ruled the region during the 8th and 9th centuries AD.
The state was one of the main centers of the ancient Indus Valley Civilization (today's Pakistan), and still includes major sites from it, as about 50 ancient settlement sites were discovered.
Then Gujarat became under Islamic rule for a period of 8 and a half centuries, and it was a separate kingdom since 1401 AD during the reign of Sultan Ahmed Shah, who established the city of Ahmedabad, which remained the capital of the state until 1970 when Gandhinagar was adopted as the capital instead.
In 1526 it was ruled by the Mongols, and their control over the region continued until the middle of the 18th century.
In 1818 it came under British control, and after 1857 it was considered a province of British India until its independence on August 15, 1947, and most of Gujarat was annexed to Bombay.
The state took its present form on May 1, 1960, when Bombay was divided on the basis of language into two states, Maharashtra and Gujarat.
Before the partition, Muslims represented a quarter of the total Indian population, according to the 1941 census in India, then it decreased to 10%, and in 2022 it reached 13.4%.
The worst sectarian violence
During the period between 1961 and 1971, sectarian violence took place in 16 districts of Gujarat, of which 685 were recorded within urban areas and 114 in rural areas, of which 578 incidents occurred in 1969 alone.
The sectarian violence during September and October 1969 in Gujarat was the bloodiest riot after India's independence in 1947, as Hindu extremists - most of them from outside the state - carried out attacks on Muslims in Ahmedabad, and then spread to other cities in the state, including Vadodara, Mahsana, Nadiad, Anand, and Gondal.
Official estimates indicated that 660 people were killed and 1,074 others injured as a result of the attacks, and the worst affected area was the city of Ahmedabad, which recorded 512 dead, the majority of whom were Muslims belonging to the working class.
It also destroyed property worth 42 million rupees, including property of Muslims amounting to 32 million rupees, 37 mosques, 50 mausoleums, 6 Muslim cemeteries and 3 temples were destroyed.
The most prominent facts
On the tenth of March 1969, Islamic protests broke out in Ahmedabad, in which a number of policemen were injured after a Hindu policeman insulted the Qur'an during a quarrel with a Muslim chauffeur.
On August 21, Muslims demonstrated against the Al-Aqsa Mosque fire in Jerusalem.
On September 4 a Muslim policeman allegedly kicked the Hindu scripture Ramayana while searching for a Hindu expert during a religious ceremony.
On September 5th and 6th, the Dharma Raksha Samiti Committee was formed to defend the Hindu religion.
On September 15, the Journalists Syndicate organized a victory parade to celebrate the punishment of the Muslim police officer.
On September 14 and 16, Bharatiya Jana Sangh leader Balraj Madhok delivered a series of inflammatory sermons called the Modak Lectures, and this was accompanied by an attack on some Muslim leaders and preachers who were trying to build a mosque in the village of Udhav near Ahmedabad.
On September 18, large Hindu mobs looted and set fire to Muslim property and religious sites, and the police refused to intervene.
On September 19, a 10-day curfew was imposed, which caused great financial losses.
On the afternoon of September 20, a young Muslim was burned to death for refusing to chant "Jai Jagannath" (a deity worshiped in the regional Hindu religion as part of a triad with his brother Balabhadra and sister Subhadra).
On September 22, the municipal by-election was postponed.
On September 23, the easing of the ban resulted in 30 deaths within the first three hours.
On September 26, the violence was brought under control.
Between 18 and 28 October more violent incidents took place, and the leader of the Indian National Congress and the then prime minister were present when the riots occurred.
Judicial committees
The Gujarat Home Affairs Department led by the then Chief Minister appointed a Commission of Inquiry into the bloody events headed by Judge Jag Mohan Reddy.
In 1971, the Reddy Commission announced the involvement of Hindu nationalist organizations, the Hindu General Assembly of India, and the Bharatiya Jana Sangh party, and the vengeful slogans in the streets chanted by the party described the violence as revenge for 1946.
The committee stated that in "Vadodara" the shops belonging to Muslims were identified and marked, and then destroyed in an organized manner, which indicates that the violence was pre-planned in this region.
The committee questioned the police's role during the riots, noting that they remained silent when Muslim religious sites were attacked.
Successive governments in power have shown no interest in punishing the guilty or even initiating recommended systemic changes to check the recurrence of systemic acts of violence.
In 1986, she appointed the "Dev Committee", which made recommendations to resolve the crisis, but the "first" Congress government headed by Chimanbai Patel found its recommendations politically inappropriate, and did not accept its findings.
The Kotwal Commission also investigated waves of sectarian violence in Ahmedabad, and again did not implement the report's findings.
In 1992, the "Chauhan Commission" was established after brutal violence in the city of Surat, in the west of the state, during which women were subjected to gang rape. It announces its results and its recommendations have not been implemented.
Massacres, displacement and persecution
The first major communal riots in 1969 marked a turning point in Hindu-Muslim relations in Gujarat, as many Muslims moved from the mixed quarters of the Walled City to minority-dominated areas in the industrial suburbs and areas on the southern fringes of Ahmedabad.
The events also led to a decrease in the level of tolerance and peaceful coexistence, and this was evident in the riots that occurred after that. In 1980, 2,500 people were killed in the city of Moradabad, 59 people were killed in 1986, and in 1989 more than a thousand people were killed in the city of Bhagalpur. , because of the forceful operations carried out by activists of the Hindu "VHP" movement to intimidate Muslim minorities.
Between 1987 and 1991, 106 incidents of sectarian violence took place, and in the period from 1950 to 1995, 244 incidents of violence took place, killing 1,601 people, including 1,071 in the city of Ahmedabad.
In late February 2002, the second largest act of sectarian violence took place, known as the "Gujarat massacre" a week after the "Godhra massacre" in which 59 Hindu pilgrims were killed in a train fire attributed to Muslims, although forensic laboratory evidence indicated that the fire originated in a cylinder. Mistakenly a gas or kerosene stove.
The Hindus responded by killing more than a thousand people, either by shooting, beating or burning, and 20 thousand became homeless in Ahmedabad alone, most of them Indian Muslims, and about 25 thousand of them are still languishing in relief camps, and many were considered missing.
Official estimates indicate the destruction of property worth about $60 million, including about 20,000 homes and shops, and about 360 places of worship.
Although it was officially classified as sectarian riots, many researchers described the events of 2002 as a "planned massacre" and considered it to meet the "legal definition of genocide", as it constituted a kind of ethnic cleansing, until it was said that the state government and law enforcement authorities were complicit in the actions of violence.
Sanjeev Bhatt, a former Gujarat police officer, filed a lawsuit with the Constitutional Court in 2011 accusing Modi, the then governor of Gujarat, of failing to hold those involved to account, before he was acquitted in 2012.
The state - which is still ruled by the Hindu nationalist party - chose to announce the release of the "Bannon" rapists, coinciding with the country's celebrations of the 75th anniversary of its independence.
Violence against Muslims has escalated since the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in 2014 under Modi's leadership.
And a Christian rights association announced in March 2016 that since Modi came to power, it had recorded at least 600 attacks, including 451 against Muslims instigated by extremist pressure groups, the most important of which is the National Volunteer Organization.
In 2019, a fact-checking website that counts "hate crimes" in India reported that more than 90% of victims in the past 10 years were Muslims.