[Released August 12, 2013]

Modi Administration’s Dispossession of Farmers
Gujarat’s government has begun dispossessing non-Gujarati homesteaders who have owned and farmed small landholdings in the region for over 50 years. These dispossessions, which bear strong resemblance to “eminent domain” land seizures conducted by US government entities, are taking place to make way for centrally-planned “Special Investment Regions.” Although the government insists this is necessary for improving the economy, one must question the wisdom of destroying small businesses in the name of advancing economic well-being.

In 2003, the state froze minority-owned lands so they could not be sold, transferred, or financed. In 2010, it began stealing the land and expelling the landowners. To offer a brief background to the issue, we quote an article from The Hindustan Times, which stated:

When they came to the barren border areas of western Gujarat’s Kutch region after the 1965 war with Pakistan nearly five decades ago, the 100-odd Sikh families did so because then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri wanted people from this hardy and industrious community to settle alongside Pakistan.

Each family was given 48 acres and in the years to come they were joined by more and more Sikh farmers and others from Haryana, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. The barren land was soon turned into productive acres of cotton, wheat and oilseeds.

Today, 5,000 families — mostly Sikh — cultivate 100,000 acres in Kutch. But after having nurtured the land for generations, they were told by the Narendra Modi government in 2010 that they had no rights on their land.

Provisions of the Bombay Tenancy and Agricultural Lands (Vidarbha Region) Act of 1958 were invoked to deny these farmers any right to the lands in their possession for decades.

“Almost 50 years after my family settled here, I am now given the feeling that I am an outsider,” said 65-year-old Surinder Singh Bhullar, who owns 26 acres and an orchard in Mandvi tehsil, Kutch.

He went on to add: “This is our home. We will not go anywhere from here. We have given our blood and sweat to Kutch and turned barren lands fertile. How can anyone evict us from here?”

But the BJP government in Gujarat is bent upon getting the ‘outsiders’ to leave. After the high court upheld the farmers’ rights to their lands, the Modi regime approached the Supreme Court, where a hearing is due on August 27. [1]

Massive protests have taken place in response to this illegal, immoral, and totalitarian act of the Gujarat government led by Chief Minister Modi, as reported by The Hindu:

About 10,000 farmers from 44 villages on the Mandal-Becharaji corridor close to Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar gathered here in some 500 tractors and other vehicles to oppose a proposed auto hub called the special investment region. The government has already allotted land to Maruti Suzuki in this region. [2]

Even India’s Central Government, not frequently known for taking decisive action to protect the rights of the dispossessed, has spoken up through Ajaib Singh, a member of the National Commission for Minorities. After visiting with 500 affected Sikh farmers in Gujarat, Ajaib Singh reported: “Prima facie, there appeared to be a discrimination against the Sikh…. Mr. Modi, who had the habit of suppressing and terrorising the minorities, was targeting the Sikh farmers.” [3]

Disproportionately high farmer suicide rates are already a national epidemic in India and a pressing concern for which no solution has been presented. According to The Hindu:

Suicide rates among Indian farmers were a chilling 47 per cent higher than they were for the rest of the population in 2011. In some of the States worst hit by the agrarian crisis, they were well over 100 per cent higher.

Nationwide, the farmers’ suicide rate (FSR) was 16.3 per 100,000 farmers in 2011. That’s a lot higher than 11.1, which is the rate for the rest of the population. And slightly higher than the FSR of 15.8 in 2001.

At least 270,940 Indian farmers have taken their lives since 1995, NCRB records show. This occurred at an annual average of 14,462 in six years, from 1995 to 2000. And at a yearly average of 16,743 in 11 years between 2001 and 2011. That is around 46 farmers’ suicides each day, on average. Or nearly one every half-hour since 2001. [4]

The cause of farmer suicides is complex and involves multiple factors, such as riparian rights disputes between the central and state governments, lagging adoption of technological advances, crippling debt often resulting from loans used to purchase exorbitantly-priced genetically-modified (GM) seeds, increased water consumption of GM crops, and, according to many sources, the mass failure of those GM crops.

To this list we may now add the dispossession of rightfully-owned lands. The targets of this dispossession are “outsiders” — anyone who is different, who is an “other,” who is a minority, or who is disadvantaged, weak, and easily preyed upon.

Modi Administration’s Assault on Civil Liberties
Narendra Modi’s victimization of Sikh farmers is only the latest manifestation of his embrace of ethnic cleansing and a supremacist form of governance. Modi is the country’s most enthusiastic practitioner of every tyrannical method countenanced by the Indian state — including indefinite detention, torture, extrajudicial execution, targeting of political opponents, collusion of state security forces with religious extremists, and the mass murder of minority populations. Within just four months of first becoming Chief Minister, Modi proved his bonafides as the face of Hindu terrorism by sparking genocide in Gujarat.

Modi is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a wing of the family of militant Hindu nationalist groups known as Sangh Parivar. Adhering to an ideology termed Hindutva, the Sangh Parivar groups treat non-Hindus as foreign to India and profess India to be a Hindu nation. Modi first took office in October 2001 — he was not elected but instead appointed to replace his predecessor, who had fallen out of favor. In February 2002, he decided to flex his power with a multi-week genocidal attack on Gujarat’s Muslim population. The U.S. State Department, international human rights groups, and whistleblowers from Modi’s own administration universally agree this was a pre-planned event of which the Chief Minister was the chief architect.

Summary of Genocide in Gujarat
In one of the bloodiest massacres in the history of modern India, mobs armed with addresses of businesses and residences owned by Gujarat’s Muslim minority systematically eliminated Muslims. Human Rights Watch reported that nearly 2,000 Muslims were massacred by Hindu mobs and over 150,000 displaced. Modi ordered Gujarati police not to halt the bloodshed or aid the victims. The worst-affected area was Ahmedabad, the state’s largest city. Violence continued unabated for three days — February 27 to March 1 — and more sporadically throughout Gujarat for months.

The extent of Modi’s involvement in orchestrating the Gujarat Genocide is well-summarized in the documentation by Human Rights Watch of slogans used by the killers:

Yeh andar ki bat hai. Police hamarey saath hai. (This is inside information. The police are with us.)
Jaan se mar dengey (We will kill)
Bajrang Dal zindabad (Long live the Bajrang Dal)
Narendra Modi zindabad (Long live Narendra Modi) [5]

The U.S. State Department later concluded that Modi was complicit in the riots, that he ordered Gujarati police not to stop the violence or aid the victims, and that his police forces were directly involved in the bloodshed. Modi was never charged, however, but was instead reelected to a third term with a landslide vote. His use of state terrorism to inspire his core voting bloc continues, as reported by the Independent People’s Tribunal: “The use of encounter killings as a political tool was recently exemplified by [Modi], who sensationally declared responsibility for an encounter killing of a Muslim criminal as a means of gathering popular support on his election round.” [6]

U.S. State Department Implicates Modi in Gujarat Genocide
Based off its own investigations as well as those of international human rights groups, the U.S. State Department has, for the past 10 years, unflinchingly condemned Narendra Modi and his administration for direct involvement in the Gujarat Genocide. In 2005, when Modi applied for a visitor’s visa, the State Department took swift action in denying him entry to the US based on his involvement in the attacks.

In the India section of its 2002 “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices,” the State Department stated:

In February after an attack by Muslims on a train in Godhra that resulted in the deaths of 58 Hindus, an estimated 2,000 Muslims were killed in rioting in Gujarat. Beginning on February 28, Hindus attacked and looted Muslim homes, business, and places of worship. The rioting continued from March to mid-May. NGOs reported that police were implicated directly in many of the attacks against Muslims in Gujarat, and in some cases, NGOs contended, police officials encouraged the mob. The Gujarat state government and the police were criticized for failing to stop the violence and in some cases for participating in or encouraging it. Muslim women and girls were raped, and an estimated 850 to 2,000 Muslims were killed. Human rights activists reported that the Gujarat police received specific instructions not to take action to prevent a possible violent reaction to the February 27 attack by Muslims on a train in Godhra carrying Hindus. These observers asserted that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi personally told Ahmedabad police officials on February 27 to allow Hindus 2 days to react “peacefully” to the Godhra incident. The police reportedly told Muslim victims, “we don’t have orders to help you.” It was reported that assailants frequently chanted “the police are with us,” according to eyewitness accounts. [Human Rights Watch] reported that much of the violence was planned well in advance of the Godhra attack and was carried out with state approval and orchestration. [7]

In 2005, in response to Modi’s sponsorship of the Gujarat Genocide, the State Department took decisive action to block Modi from traveling to the US by denying him a visitor’s visa, as reported in a statement by David Mulford, then the US ambassador to India:

The Chief Minister of Gujarat state, Mr. Narendra Modi, applied for a diplomatic visa to visit the United States. On March 18, 2005, the United States Department of State denied Mr. Modi this visa under section 214 (b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act because he was not coming for a purpose that qualified for a diplomatic visa.

Mr. Modi’s existing tourist/business visa was also revoked under section 212 (a) (2) (g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Section 212 (a) (2) (g) makes any foreign government official who “was responsible for or directly carried out, at any time, particularly severe violations of religious freedom” ineligible for a visa to the United States….

This decision applies to Mr. Narendra Modi only. It is based on the fact that, as head of the State government in Gujarat between February 2002 and May 2002, he was responsible for the performance of state institutions at that time. The State Department’s detailed views on this matter are included in its annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices and the International Religious Freedom Report. Both reports document the violence in Gujarat from February 2002 to May 2002 and cite the Indian National Human Rights Commission report, which states there was “a comprehensive failure on the part of the state government to control the persistent violation of rights of life, liberty, equality, and dignity of the people of the state.” [8]

The State Department continues to implicate Modi in the massacre, most recently blaming him in its Commission on International Religious Freedom’s 2013 report:

In February 2002 the state of Gujarat erupted in communal violence. In response to a train fire reportedly set by Muslims, Hindu mobs killed 1,200-2,500 Muslims, forced 100,000 people to flee, and destroyed homes. Christians were also killed and injured, and many churches were destroyed. India’s National Human Rights Commission found evidence of premeditated killing by members of Hindu nationalist groups, complicity by state government officials, and police inaction.

… Last year, Mayaben Kodnani, the former Minister for Women and Child Welfare, was sentenced to 28 years in jail for her involvement in the Gujarat violence. However, it was widely reported in the media that many in the Muslim community believe she was the “fall guy” for Narendra Modi, the Chief Minister of Gujarat at the time of the riots (who still holds that position and was recently reelected). [9]

International Human Rights Groups Implicate Modi in Gujarat Genocide
Immediately after the Gujarat Genocide occurred in 2002, Human Rights Watch (HRW) investigated and concluded that the government had planned and orchestrated the attacks:

“What happened in Gujarat was not a spontaneous uprising, it was a carefully orchestrated attack against Muslims,” said Smita Narula, senior South Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch and author of the report. “The attacks were planned in advance and organized with extensive participation of the police and state government officials.”

The police were directly implicated in nearly all the attacks against Muslims that are documented in the 75-page report, ‘We Have No Orders to Save You’: State Participation and Complicity in Communal Violence in Gujarat. In some cases they were merely passive observers. But in many instances, police officials led the charge of murderous mobs, aiming and firing at Muslims who got in the way.

Under the guise of offering assistance, some police officers led the victims directly into the hands of their killers. Panicked phone calls made to the police, fire brigades, and even ambulance services generally proved futile. Several witnesses reported being told by police: “We have no orders to save you.” [10]

In another report on the issue, HRW noted how not only did Modi defend his state police forces’ use of indiscriminate firing to massacre Muslims, but that what was originally construed as “mowing people down” was, in reality, execution-style murders at point blank:

During the first two days of violence, Chief Minister Modi defended the actions of his police stating that they had “mowed down people” to quell the violence. According to the Indian Express, “one such incident he was referring to occurred on February 28 and March 1 near the Bapunagar police station, where 40 were killed in firing. Now, according to a batch of FIRs filed last week and post mortem reports, it has come to light that all 40 were Muslims, most of them shot in the head and the chest. And 36 of them were between 20 and 25 years old.” [11]

One of HRW’s most recent reports, released in 2012 to mark a decade of impunity for the Gujarat Genocide, noted recent revelations from whistleblowers in Modi’s administration who say the attacks followed direct orders from Modi. As HRW’s report makes obvious, no justice whatsoever has truly been served:

“The 2002 violence against Muslims in Gujarat persists as a dark blot on India’s reputation for religious equality,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Instead of prosecuting senior state and police officials implicated in the atrocities, the Gujarat authorities have engaged in denial and obstruction of justice.”

… Strong evidence links the Modi administration in Gujarat to the carefully orchestrated anti-Muslim attacks, Human Rights Watch said. Rioters had detailed lists of Muslim residents and businesses, and violence occurred within view of police stations. An independent media organization, Tehelka, used hidden cameras to capture some of the accused speaking openly of how the attacks had Modi’s blessings.

In August 2011 the Gujarat state government filed charges against a police officer, Rahul Sharma, for passing on Kodnani’s and Patel’s telephone records to the judicial commission inquiring into the violence.

In September, another senior police officer, Sanjiv Bhatt, was arrested after his former driver filed a complaint alleging that Bhatt had threatened him into signing a false affidavit that on February 27, 2002, after the Godhra attack, Chief Minister Modi had, in Bhatt’s presence, instructed the police to “allow the Hindus to vent their anger.” Bhatt alleges that this showed that Modi gave instructions to the police to allow the attacks on Muslims.

In 2005, a police officer, R. B. Sreekumar, was denied a promotion because he criticized the Modi government for its failure to order prompt action that could have prevented the riots.

In 2005, the US government denied Modi a visa to visit the United States.

“Modi has acted against whistleblowers while making no effort to prosecute those responsible for the anti-Muslim violence,” said Ganguly. “Where justice has been delivered in Gujarat, it has been in spite of the state government, not because of it.” [12]

Whistleblowers Implicate Modi in Gujarat Genocide
In 2010, Sanjiv Bhatt, a Gujarat Indian Police Service (IPS) officer spoke at the National Consultation on Human Rights Defenders, a conference in New Delhi, to expose Modi’s culpability in the attacks. In April 2011, Bhatt filed an affidavit with the Indian Supreme Court stating that he, along with other high-ranking officers, was present at a February 27, 2002 meeting at Modi’s home in which the Chief Minister ordered police to treat Hindu rioters with kid gloves.

The following September, Bhatt was arrested immediately after filing another affidavit implicating Modi in the murder of a fellow government official, as The Hindu reported:

Mr. Bhatt’s arrest comes within 48 hours of his having filed another affidavit, this time in the Gujarat High Court, alleging the indirect involvement of the Chief Minister and his former Minister of State for Home, Amit Shah, in the murder of another former Minister Haren Pandya. Mr. Bhatt had claimed that Mr. Modi and Mr. Shah had repeatedly asked him to destroy some “very important documentary evidence” regarding Mr. Pandya’s murder, but he refused to oblige them, following which he was transferred from the post of Superintendent of the Sabarmati Central Jail and kept without any posting for over two and half months in November 2003. [13]

Neither allegation has been disproven. Instead the government has responded by flinging whatever charges it can at Bhatt, hoping to intimidate him into silence.

Most of the rioters in 2002 were either members of Modi’s political party, the BJP, or else members of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a sociopolitical organization espousing the same Hindu supremacist ideology. The admissions of many top VHP and BJP officials that Modi openly assisted their bloody efforts were made public in 2007, as reported by CNN-IBN:

Important VHP and BJP functionaries admitted on hidden camera that Modi had told them to do whatever they wanted for three days. One of the main accused in the Naroda Patiya massacre, Babu Bajrangi, said Modi advised him to leave his Ahmedabad home and even arranged his refuge in Mount Abu.

Some of the Gujarat leaders who made significant confessions on hidden camera included Gujarat Shiv Sena President Babu Bajrangi, Godhra BJP MLA Haresh Bhatt, VHP convenor for Sabarkantha district Dhabal Patel and Gulbarg Society massacre accused Madan Dhanraj Chawal.

“We slit open her abdomen (Kauser Bano’s), ripped out the foetus and threw it out in Naroda Patiya. We showed them what we can do. I called up the then minister of Gordhan Zadafia and VHP General Secretary Jaideep Patel and informed them. Zadafia immediately told me to escape from Gujarat,” the tapes show Babu Bajrangi as saying.

Haresh Bhatt claims: “Modi told me I’ll give you three days. Do whatever you want, you will not be touched. No other CM could have done this.”

Dhabal Patel claims: “We made explosives with dynamite and we manufactured a very large number of them. The cops helped us.”

“We chopped off his hands, then his legs and put the limbs and the body on fire,” Madan Dhanraj Chawal spoke about the hacking of former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri. [14]

The government response to whistleblowers like Sanjiv Bhatt is to destroy them. Bhatt now believes he is being targeted by the BJP, saying: “I know I have a threat to my life, but it is not going to stop me. It is government’s responsibility to safeguard the life of every citizen of the country.” [15]

Conclusion: Refuse Normalization of Relations With Gujarat Until Modi is Removed
We are convinced the way we can most effectively act to empower marginalized peoples of South Asian descent, whether living abroad or here in the U.S., is to cut foreign aid to India and, in the specific issue of Narendra Modi, refuse to normalize relations with Gujarat until he is removed from office and faces charges in the international criminal court.

Gujarati Sikh farmers have been contributing to the state’s agricultural industry since settling in the arid land. Nothing can be crueler than evicting them from land transformed into fertile soil through their sweat and blood. It is terrorism and racism to alienate minorities and Moolnivasi from pluralistic India via such measures. The U.S. must not be party to escalating the genocidal hunger of chauvinists like Modi and his ilk. We request the U.S. Congress use all its good graces to seek restoration to Gujarat’s dispossessed farmers of the land stolen from them by the government.

As is obvious through the above evidence, minorities in Gujarat — including Sikhs, Muslims, and Moolnivasi — face an ongoing and systematic degradation. They are being tortured, murdered, treated with total disdain, and viewed as subhuman’s whose lives can be snatched away by Modi’s thugs (either uniformed police or religious extremists) at any moment. Architects of genocide have no right to cross the borders of the United States. We urge U.S. Congress to work for denial of a visitor’s visa for Narendra Modi and seek a permanent ban on his entry into this great nation.

We also urge U.S. Congress to make prosecution for genocide a priority above and beyond discussion of economic partnership. Partnering with terrorists like Narendra Modi is contrary to the principles on which the United States of America was founded. While we hope for the growth of India’s economy for the sake of her common people who will benefit from that growth, how can economic partnership with those responsible for ethnic cleansing in any way benefit the victims? We ask U.S. Congress to take the first step to combatting violent extremism in India by seeking removal and punishment of violent extremists like Modi who are currently sitting in the nation’s highest political offices.

Citations:
1. Nibber, Gurpreet Singh. “Sikh farmers ‘evicted’, Modi govt gets trouble.” Hindustan Times. August 7, 2013.
2. “Now, Gujarat farmers up in arms against road project.” The Hindu. July 4, 2013.
3. Pandher, Sarabjit. “Eviction of Sikh farmers in Gujarat stirs up Punjab politics.” The Hindu. August 6, 2013.
4. Sainath, P. “Farmers’ suicide rates soar above the rest.” The Hindu. May 18, 2013.
5. “We Have No Orders to Save You.” Human Rights Watch. April 2002. 22.
6. “State Terrorism: Torture, Extra-judicial Killings, and Forced Disappearances in India.” Independent People’s Tribunal. February 2008. 199.
7. “India: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.” Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. 2002.
8. “Issue of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s Visa Status.” Statement by David C. Mulford, U.S. Ambassador to India. U.S. Embassy New Delhi. March 21, 2005.
9. United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. “Annual Report 2013.” 3-4.
10. “India: Gujarat Officials Took Part in Anti-Muslim Violence.” Human Rights Watch. May 1, 2002.
11. “We Have No Orders to Save You.” Human Rights Watch. April 2002. 25.
12. “India: A Decade on, Gujarat Justice Incomplete.” Human Rights Watch. February 24, 2012.
13. Dasgupta, Manas. “Modi government arrests Sanjiv Bhatt.” The Hindu. September 30, 2011.
14. “Sting on BJP, VHP men links Modi to 2002 riots.” CNN-IBN. October 26, 2007.
15 “Threats won’t stop me, says Sanjiv Bhatt.” The Hindu. November 21, 2011.