58 Killed as Hindus Riot in India

By ASHOK SHARMA
.c The Associated Press

AHMADABAD, India (Feb. 28) - A Hindu crowd set fire to a block of Muslim homes Thursday, killing at least 38 people, including a dozen children, amid riots across the Indian state of Gujarat sparked by a Muslim attack on a train full of Hindu nationalists.

The violence Thursday left at least 58 dead in the western state. The army was called out to help restore order in Ahmadabad, the commercial center, where outnumbered police firing tear gas and rifles were unable to stop Hindus from burning and looting shops and hotels.

Narendra Modi, the state's chief minister, said the army might also be deployed in some 26 other towns where a curfew was declared.

At least 50 buildings, most of them Muslim-owned, were torched in Ahmadabad, sending smoke billowing over the skyline. Hindu gangs went through neighborhoods, chanting, ''Hail, Rama,'' in honor of one of their chief gods.

The rioting erupted after Muslims in Godhra, a town southeast of Ahmadabad, attacked a train full of Hindu nationalists Wednesday, killing 58 people.

Muslim tea vendors and their neighbors stoned the train, then set it on fire when Hindus, chanting nationalist slogans, refused to pay for snacks during a five-minute halt, station chief J.K. Katija said. Fourteen children were among the dead. The Hindus were returning from the site of a mosque torn down in 1992 where they now want to build a Hindu temple.

The national government pleaded for restraint, fearful that sectarian violence could spread quickly in this nation of more than 1 billion, whose birth 54 years ago was marked by Hindu-Muslim-Sikh fighting that killed nearly a million people.

The single most deadly incident reported in Thursday's riots came when a crowd of some 2,000 rioters stoned six Muslim-owned bungalows in a mostly Hindu neighborhood of Ahmadabad. The crowd then poured kerosene on the homes and set them ablaze, said P.B. Gondya, the deputy commissioner of police.

''We have taken out 18 bodies,'' M.K. Tandon, one of Ahmadabad's two police commissioners, told The Associated Press. Police saw the bodies of eight to 10 adults and 12 children still lying inside the smoldering remains of the homes in the Meghaninagar neighborhood, he said.

Because of rioters' blockades set up in the streets, it took police two hours and fire fighters six hours to reach the scene in Meghaninagar after they were called by Ehsan Jefri, a former Parliament member who lived in one of the burning homes.

[i]Ban gasoline now! Do it for the children![rolleyes]-Armd[/i]

Jefri had fired a gun in the air, trying to disperse the crowd of around 200 Hindus who had gathered around the bungalows. Instead, the crowd swelled to more than 2,000 and attacked.

Gujarat Chief Minister Modi had earlier said 20 others were killed throughout the state, including two people shot by police who opened fire on rioters in the towns of Nadiad and Godhra. The circumstances of the other deaths was not clear.

Rioters blocked roads in Ahmadabad - in one instance, dragging a truck driver from his vehicle and killing him, police said. Police fired rifles at a crowd, injuring six people, hospital officials said. But elsewhere in the city, police stood watching for hours or occasionally fired tear gas as gangs burned hotels, gas stations, cars, restaurants and shops, making bonfires of looted goods.

On the highways elsewhere in the state, young men with sticks and iron rods stopped cars, looking for Muslims. Roadside tea and tobacco stalls owned by Muslims were burned to the ground.

In three towns, seven Muslims were stabbed to death overnight.

The nationalist World Hindu Council called for a strike that was in effect Thursday in Gujarat to be expanded nationwide Friday to protest the train attack. The state government, run by the Hindu nationalist party of Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, had supported the Thursday strike.

Police said 63 people, including two municipal councilors in Godhra, had been arrested on murder charges in the train attack.

Modi, a member of the prime minister's Bharatiya Janata Party, called the train burning an ''organized terrorist attack'' and said steps would be taken ''so that no one dare repeat such a thing in future.''

He insisted that, despite retaliation attacks, the reaction by Hindus ''is that of restraint compared to what the terrorists did in Godhra.''

Tension had been building for the past five days in Godhra and other towns in Gujarat, said police chief Raju Bhargava. Hindu nationalists travel by train across Gujarat to and from a religious site in Ayodhya, in northern India, where the World Hindu Council vows to build a temple to the Hindu god Rama on the ruins of the 16th century Muslim mosque. Hindus tore down the mosque in 1992, sparking nationwide riots that killed 2,000 people.

Bhargava said the Hindu activists often refused to pay for food taken from Muslim vendors at the stations, and brandished sticks as they shouted slogans, causing resentment and anger to build up.

The Hindu Council rejected Vajpayee's plea Wednesday to help keep peace by dropping the plan to erect the Rama temple, beginning March 15, in defiance of court orders. Vajpayee has strongly supported the temple construction, but said the government opposes it being done by force.

The passengers of the attacked train had been returning from a religious ceremony at Ayodhya, where about 20,000 Hindu activists have gathered, praying and preparing to begin building the temple.

Rajendra Singh, the police superintendent in Uttar Pradesh state, where Ayodhya is located, said 10,000 paramilitary troops would be on duty by Thursday night.

AP-NY-02-28-02 1144EST

These things happen...

And all the liberals want to ban guns...Shit, they ought to ban fire....and trains.....

Revenge is a bitch, or so they say.

Religious Strife in India Kills Nearly 300
Hindu-Muslim Violence in Its Third Day

By HARISH DESAI
.c The Associated Press

AHMADABAD, India (March 1) - Armed Hindus swept into a tiny village Friday, forced Muslims into their homes and then set fire to the houses, killing at least 30. Three days of Hindu-Muslim violence has left nearly 300 people dead.

The attackers in Pandarvada, a hamlet of 50 families in western India's Gujarat state, came from a neighboring district, officials said. An official in Gujarat, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press the victims were Muslim and the attackers Hindu.

''We know of 30 deaths so far, it could be higher than that,'' Jayanti Ravi, the district administrator.

Elsewhere in Gujarat, Hindus waving swords and sticks burned buildings and attacked Muslims in more than 30 towns in the second day of rioting after a deadly attack by Muslims on a train carrying Hindu nationalists.

Before dawn, several hundred Hindus set fire to homes in a Muslim shantytown in Ahmadabad, the state's commercial center, trapping residents asleep inside. Sixty-five people in the homes were killed, including eight children, Deputy Police Commissioner P.B. Gondya said.

The military deployed 900 soldiers in Ahmadabad, a city of 3.5 million, and police were ordered to shoot rioters and arsonists on sight. Police said 1,200 people had been arrested since Thursday.

However, journalists saw many soldiers sitting in trucks watching as Hindu crowds shouted death threats across streets to cowering Muslims, while a few policemen stood between them.

One Muslim woman clung to a news photographer's leg, begging him not to leave the scene for fear that she would be killed.

The train attack in Godhra killed 58 people, touching off rioting that has left 237 dead - the worst violence between Hindus and Muslims in a nearly decade in this country of 1 billion people. Officials said Friday that Muslims had begun some counterattacks, but they would not break down the death toll into Muslims and Hindus.

Fears that the violence would quickly spread elsewhere in the country, however, were eased. A nationwide strike called Friday by Hindu nationalists to protest the train attack saw little participation.

Despite a few incidents elsewhere, violence was mostly limited to Gujarat, the home state of Mahatma Gandhi, who struggled for Hindu-Muslim reconciliation amid riots that killed nearly 1 million people after independence in 1947.

Nine people were killed Friday when police opened fire on rioters, said State Minister I.K. Jadeja. Six of those died when police shot at Muslims and Hindus tossing homemade bombs at one another near a mosque in the suburb of Bapunagar. Seventy people were wounded in that shooting, and police did not specify the religion of the casualties.

''Since this morning, the retaliation (by Muslims against Hindus) has started,'' Deputy Police Commissioner R.J. Savani said. ''It has now turned to group clashes.''

One policeman was killed by rioters, Jadeja said. Press Trust of India said 16 people had been killed by police since rioting began.

Despite curfews, groups of young Hindu men blockaded roads, searched cars for Muslims and set fire to shops and homes. Survivors ventured out to collect their dead when the sun rose.

Some Muslim groups called for direct federal rule in the state. People streamed into hospitals, mostly for treatment of stab wounds, but also just for safety.

Gujarat's chief minister, Narendra Modi, who belongs to the ruling Hindu nationalist party, wouldn't answer questions at a news conference about why the army was not more active. He said only that the soldiers were doing what the police wanted.

His government had supported a call by Hindu nationalists for a strike on Thursday, the first day of rioting. In cities around India, few abided by the nationwide strike call Friday.

There was stone-throwing in Bombay, India's financial capital in a state bordering Gujarat. A train was derailed when Hindu activists placed concrete blocks across the tracks in a northeastern Bombay suburb. No injuries were reported.

Police stopped Hindu activists from forcing their way into a mosque in northern Amritsar and blocking trains in eastern Calcutta. Muslims attacked police vehicles and a Hindu shrine in southern Hyderabad.

Ahmadabad police commissioner, P.C. Pandey, said that after the army deployment in Ahmadabad, ''we hope the situation will improve now.''

Police said 63 people had been arrested on charges of murder and attempted murder for the train attack in the small town of Godhra.

Most of the victims of Wednesday's train attack were activists from the World Hindu Council, which plans build a temple to the god Rama on the site of a mosque destroyed in 1992 by Hindu nationalists in the northern town of Ayodhya.

Tensions had been growing between Muslims and the activists, who frequently used the train route to go back and forth between Ahmadabad and Ayodhya.

The World Hindu Council offered Friday to delay its March 15 deadline for building the temple if the government guarantees they can construct it later.

The destruction of the mosque by Hindus sparked nationwide riots that killed 2,000 people.

This week's violence is believed to be the worst Hindu-Muslim fighting since 1993 riots in Bombay - also related to the destruction of the mosque in Ayodhya - killed at least 800 people.

Rajendra Singh, the police superintendent in northern Uttar Pradesh, said 10,000 paramilitary troops had surrounded Ayodhya to prevent violence. Some 20,000 Hindu activists have gathered to pray for the temple construction.

Hmm, rattan canes, knives, gasoline. Guess we have to ban them too now hmm?

Do the people at HCI even watch the news or what?

This is also true..
I dont think that even if Pakistan and India went nuclear they would put a dent in their population growth.  The few nuclar weapons they posses are barely enough to equal the deaths incurred in the big riots of 1947 that killed at least a million in what is now India alone.