Gujarat’s 2002 anti-Muslim violence was state-orchestrated and electorally rewarded
Evidence
[A]t least 58 people were killed when a fire broke out on a train carrying members of a Hindu extremist group. A Muslim mob was initially blamed for the fire, and in the anti-Muslim riots that followed throughout Gujarat, more than 1,000 people were killed and roughly 100,000 were left homeless and dispossessed. The violence was orchestrated by Hindu nationalist groups, who organized transportation and provisions for the mobs and provided printed records of Muslim-owned property. Evidence that the BJP-headed state government was complicit in the carnage led to calls for Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s dismissal, but the party leadership continued to support him. In state elections held in December in which Modi campaigned on an overtly nationalistic and anti-Muslim platform, the BJP won a landslide reelection victory. (Piano and Puddington 2004, 257) This vignette takes us back to an earlier violent incident described in chapter 3. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 696
Categorization
- ADDENDUM: Direct evidence for the reader’s test: within a democracy-capacity regime, a dominant-group (Hindu nationalist) mobilization WAS state-supported and electorally rewarded — ‘rights defense’ legitimation in action, precisely the asymmetry Tilly doesn’t test.
- XREF: Connects to a claimed Modi-India state-orchestrated pogrom template in Kumar’s The New Crusades work read previously. — connects to: State and police complicity marked the 2002 Gujarat anti-Muslim pogrom — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 521; State officials were granted free rein to kill Muslims in 2002 Gujarat — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 435; Modi incited violent mobs to massacre Muslims in 2002 Gujarat — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 430 (+9 more)
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 696
Broader Connections
- Modi’s political rise remains tied to the 2002 Gujarat pogrom against Muslims
#corroborates(0.92) — Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Global…, 183 - State officials were granted free rein to kill Muslims in 2002 Gujarat
#expands(0.90) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 435 - Modi incited violent mobs to massacre Muslims in 2002 Gujarat
#expands(0.88) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 430 - Modi rewarded rhetoric that incited mob violence against Indian Muslims
#corroborates(0.85) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 402 - The 2002 Gujarat violence became a template scaled nationally by 2020
#expands(0.82) - Modi personally incited the 2002 Gujarat massacre that killed at least 800 Muslims
#expands(0.80) - The 2002 Gujarat pogrom killed over 2,000 Muslims with arrests skewed overwhelmingly against Muslims
#expands(0.78) — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 431 - The 2002 Gujarat massacre killed at least 800 Muslims, likely more
#expands(0.78) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 431 - Modi’s Gujarat violence foreshadowed erasing India’s secularist commitment.
#expands(0.76) - Prior riots shaped Gujarat into a template of violence for later pogroms
#expands(0.75) - Elite political actors manufactured Hindu-Muslim religious identities to win electoral power.
#expands(0.74) — R. C. Tripathi, R. Kumar, and V. N. Tripathi, When the Advantaged Feel Victimised, 14