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http://www.bostonreview.net/BR29.3/nussbaum.html
Body of the Nation
Why women were mutilated in Gujarat
Martha C. Nussbaum
I. What Happened
8 On February 27, 2002, the Sabarmati express train arrived in the station of Godhra, in the western Indian state of Gujarat, packed with Hindu pilgrims who were returning from Ayodhya. Ayodhya, as the alleged birthplace of the god Rama, has been a focal point of Hindu anti-Muslim feeling for several decades. In 1992, Hindu zealots destroyed the 16th-century Babri mosque there, claiming that it covered the remains of a Hindu temple. The pilgrimage, like many others in recent times, aimed at forcibly constructing a temple over the disputed site, and the mood of the returning passengers, stymied by the government and the courts, was angry. When the train stopped at the station, passengers got into arguments with Muslim vendors and passengers. At least one Muslim vendor was beaten up when he refused to say “Jai Sri Ram” (“Hail Ram”), and a young Muslim girl narrowly escaped forcible abduction. As the train left the station, stones were thrown at it, apparently by Muslims.
Fifteen minutes later, one car of the train erupted in flames. Fifty-eight men, women, and children died in the fire. Most of the dead were Hindus. Attempts to determine what really happened by reconstructing the event have shown only that a large amount of a flammable substance must have been thrown from inside the train. Because the area adjacent to the tracks was an area of Muslim dwellings, and because a Muslim mob had gathered in the vicinity to protest the incident on the train platform, blame was immediately put on Muslims. (Later, a number of public figures argued that the blaze was set by Hindu nationalists attempting to provoke a rampage.)
In the days that followed, wave upon wave of violence swept through the state. The attackers were Hindus, many of them highly politicized, shouting Hindu-right slogans, such as “Hail Ram” (a religious invocation wrenched from its original devotional and peaceful meaning) and “Hail Hanuman” (a monkey god traditionally celebrated for loyalty, but portrayed by the Hindu right as highly aggressive), along with “Kill!,” “Destroy!,” “Slaughter!” There is copious evidence that the violence was planned before the precipitating event. The victims were almost all Muslims, with an occasional Christian or Parsi thrown in. There was no connection between the identity of the victims and the identity of alleged perpetrators: attacks took place, for the most part, far from the original site. In fact, many families of the original dead implored the mobs to stop. Nonetheless, more than 2,000 Muslims were killed in a few days, many by being burned alive in or near their homes. No one was spared: young children were burned along with their families.
Particularly striking were the mass rapes and mutilations of women. The typical tactic was first to rape or gang-rape the woman, then to torture her, and then to set her on fire and kill her. Although the fact that most of the dead were incinerated makes a precise sex count of the bodies impossible, one mass grave that was discovered contained more than half female bodies. Many victims of rape and torture are also among the survivors who have testified. The historian Tanika Sarkar, who played a leading role in investigating the events and interviewing witnesses, has argued in an important article that the evident preoccupation with destroying women’s sexual organs reveals “a dark sexual obsession about allegedly ultra-virile Muslim male bodies and overfertile Muslim female ones, that inspire[s] and sustain[s] the figures of paranoia and revenge.”1 This sexual obsession is evident in the hate literature circulated during the carnage, of which the following “poem” is a typical example:
Narendra Modi [Chief Minister of Gujarat] you have fucked the mother of [Muslims]
The volcano which was inactive for years has erupted
It has burnt the arse of [Muslims] and made them dance nude
We have untied the penises which were tied till now
Without castor oil in the arse we have made them cry. . .
Wake up Hindus, there are still [Muslims] alive around you
Learn from Panvad village where their mother was fucked
She was fucked standing while she kept shouting
She enjoyed the uncircumcised penis
With a Hindu government the Hindus have the power to annihilate [Muslims]
Kick them in the arse to drive them out of not only villages and cities but also the country.
[The word rendered “Muslims” (“miyas”) is a word meaning “mister” that is standardly used to refer to Muslims.]
As Sarkar says, the incitement to violence is suffused with anxiety about male sexuality, and the treatment of women that resulted seems to enact a fantasy of sexual sadism far darker than mere revenge. In an affidavit submitted to the Commission of Enquiry in June 2002, the leading feminist legal activist Flavia Agnes testified that although sexual crime is a common part of communal violence, the “scale and extent of atrocities perpetrated upon innocent Muslim women during the recent violence, far exceeds any reported sexual crime during any previous riots in the country in the post-independence period.”2
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