India: This Is All So Painful

Hindus and Muslims clash in bloody rioting around Bombay

The smell of fire and death was almost too much to bear, and an anguished Prime Minister Indira Gandhi pulled her sari over her mouth and nostrils. She stopped in Bombay and in town after town outside the city, comforting victims and listening to pleas for protection. "This is not the time to blame each other," she said. "This is all so painful. We must live in communal harmony. We must." The statistics of violence, following more than a week of fighting between Hindus and Muslims in the western state of Maharashtra, were stark reminders of how easily India's unity can be shaken. By the latest counts, 216 had died, 756 were injured, 13,000 were homeless, and 4,100 were under arrest.

Bombay, India's commercial and financial capital, looked like it was under siege as 6,000 army troops in full battle dress manned positions at key intersections in and around the city and guarded the airport and harbor. In the worst riot areas, a nighttime curfew was in effect, but it had come too late to halt the violence by roving bands of rioters, who had killed and maimed and burned. Hardest hit were the industrial towns of Bhiwandi, Thane and Kalyan, northeast of Bombay, where thousands of huts belonging to low-income workers lay in ashes. The government hastily set up temporary camps for the homeless and rushed in emergency food supplies. By week's end Major General Laxman Rawat, the army commander for western India, declared the situation under control, but assured nervous citizens that the troops would remain as long as necessary.

The violence began in Bhiwandi (pop. 300,000, two-thirds Muslim), a textile town 32 miles northeast of Bombay with a history of Hindu-Muslim enmity: bitter fighting between Hindu and Muslim extremists in 1970 left 150 people dead. Tensions began to rise again in Bhiwandi and other Maharashtra towns earlier this year. One specific incident came in late April when Bal Thackeray, leader of a militant, right-wing Hindu organization called Shiv Sena, gave a speech in which he reportedly maligned the Islamic faith. Muslims retaliated by garlanding a portrait of Thackeray with dirty sandals, an insult to Hindus. Next, roving gangs of Shiv Sena members armed with gasoline bombs, daggers, spears and a few guns ordered shops to close and observe a general strike. Muslims in Bhiwandi brought out the green flags of Islam, and the battle lines were drawn.

Within hours, stones and bottles began to fly, and the rioting quickly escalated into burning and killing. In Bhiwandi, some 50 Muslim workers and their families sought refuge at the textile factory and home of Ibrahim Ansari, 50, a prosperous Muslim industrialist. A Hindu mob brandishing knives, fire bombs and cans of kerosene descended on the compound. From their barricaded living room, Ansari and his son managed to hold off the attackers with a revolver and a shotgun until police finally arrived. But by that time 20 people had been massacred.