India Shining: Indian muslims riot victims preserve houses as relic

Indian Muslim riot victims preserve houses as relic

Thu Feb 28, 2008 12:04pm GMT

http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKB16540020080228?sp=true

By Rupam Jain Nair

AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters) - Muslim survivors of one of India's worst religious riots are planning to convert the burnt buildings where their relatives were killed into a museum.

More than 2,500 people, most of them Muslims, were burned and hacked to death in a month of violence in Gujarat in western India six years ago, according to human rights groups. Officials put the death toll at about 1,000.

Twenty-six deserted and charred houses standing in the Gulbarg Society, a Muslim-dominated housing project in Ahmedabad, Gujarat's main city, are a reminder of one of the riot's more infamous episodes.

On February 28, 2002, a mob of Hindu men killed at least 39 residents, according to official numbers. Another 20 residents have been missing ever since, including five children.

Some were locked inside their homes which were then set on fire. Others were stabbed with swords or pelted with stones, according to survivors' accounts of the day.

Blood-stained clothes, swords and victims' belongings will now be displayed in the buildings as a reminder of the day.

"Pain, tears and wounds cannot be exhibited but burnt homes, blood spots, swords, stones will narrate the story," said Javed Muhammed Sheikh, who lost his wife and two children in riots.

Javed says he watched as his wife was dragged out of the house and stabbed repeatedly. His sons, then aged seven and 10, were set on fire and left to die.

He, like other survivors, now lives permanently in a relief camp set up after the riots. The killers have never been caught.

"All I can do for my family is to share their story with the world in the museum by displaying toys and books of my children who loved life," he said.

A voluntary organisation called Citizens for Justice and Peace is helping the victims to design the museum, which will include exhibits about other religious riots since India's independence.

"There's no place for us to pay our respects to riot victims. We want people to come face-to-face with violence," said the organisation's Teesta Setalvad.

Wednesday marked the sixth anniversary of the deadly train fire in the town of Godhra which helped trigger the riots in the Hindu-dominated state.

Fifty-nine passengers, most of them Hindu pilgrims, died in the fire, which broke out shortly after a scuffle with Muslim tea and food vendors at the train station. Dozens of Muslim men have been jailed, accused of plotting to murder the Hindu passengers.

A central government committee ruled that the fire was an accident.

(Editing by Jonathan Allen and Sugita Katyal)