Sectarian tension in India
The events that have been going on in India over the past few days once again remind us of how easy it is for violence to flare up in a land so sharply divided by allegiances of faith. Last Wednesday, a mob of Muslims attacked and set fire to a train carrying Hindus on their way home from Ayodhya, where thousands of Hindus had gathered to celebrate the planned beginning, on March 15, of the construction of a temple on the ruins of a 16th century mosque that Hindu militants demolished and razed in 1992.
Wednesday's incident occurred just outside the town of Godhra, in the western Indian state of Gujarat, some 160 kilometers from the state capital, Ahmedabad. Dozens of people on both sides were reported to have been killed in the violence, including more than a dozen children. By Thursday, in reprisal attacks carried out by angry Hindu nationalists in several towns and cities in Gujarat state, at least 58 more people were reported to have died as mobs of Hindus went on a spree of looting and destruction. In Ahmedabad alone, at least 38 people were burned to death when a Hindu mob numbering an estimated 2,000 people went on the rampage and attacked mosques and several homes in one of the city's affluent Muslim neighborhoods.
The spate of violence forced the state's chief minister, Narendra Modi, to call in the army to assist the state police. An indefinite curfew was imposed in Ahmedabad and 26 other towns and cities throughout the state. So far, police were reported to have rounded up some 80 people and formally arrested 51 in connection with the train attack. India's prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, who is under pressure to bar construction of the temple, called off plans to attend a Commonwealth summit in Australia and was scheduled to meet Hindu leaders in New Delhi to try to calm the situation.
To be sure, Gujarat is a known hotbed of sectarian strife in India. In this most recent case, however, the stubborn defiance of the radical Vishwa Hindu Parishad Hindu council of a court order barring the building of a Hindu temple on the ruins of the 16th century Babri mosque must be seen by most Muslims as an act of willful provocation. As one may recall, the destruction of the old Babri mosque 10 years ago sparked off one of the worst cases of sectarian violence India has seen in recent history, in which over 2,000 people were killed.
In the current climate of distrust and unease that hangs between India and Pakistan, however, a repeat of violence on such a scale, or even lesser, could well cause ripple effects whose destabilizing consequences for the South Asian region are difficult to foresee. For us in Indonesia, this case of sectarian violence in India provides a lesson that is well worth heeding. For this nation, too much is at stake for us to allow the Gujarat incidents to be repeated on Indonesian soil. Our only hope is that the people of India, too, will somehow come to the realization that a continuation of the tension can bring no good for anyone. Rather, it is the interest of all that stands to be harmed.