Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 11:15:11 CST
From: Shyamala Parameswaran <U15297@uicvm.uic.edu>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian
Subject:    Lawlessness and mob violence takes over!

Bombay:
An earlier UPI report said the violence was now seen as Hindus
upon Hindus, with the Shiv Sena suspected to be fomenting trouble
in a grapple with power. Tamil residents were reported to be
fleeing the city in and Jayalalitha has issued an urgent appeal.
Death tolls continue to mount. Thirteen fatalities were said
to be from the army firing on rioteers. Others reported as
deaths in civilian violence.

Ahmedabad:
Three persons were burned alive and houses set on fire in a
predominantly muslim area.

Given the urgency, the latest is posted without permission
from clarinews.


        BOMBAY, India (UPI) -- Army troops, ordered to stamp out a resurgence
of sectarian rioting, killed several rioters in India's business capital
Monday as fires raged in much of the city.
        Authorities reported 43 more fatalities in Bombay and the city of
Ahmedabad, in nearby Gujarat state, raising the weeklong toll to at
least 244.
        A group of eminent Bombay citizens demanded that the federal
government invoke special powers under the Indian Constitution, declare
a partial emergency and hand the city to the Army.
        ``The situation is totally out of hand in Bombay. Goons and
criminals, mobsters and beasts in the form of men, have taken over the
city,'' said the group, which included top industralists, elder
statesmen and movie idols.
        ``Bombay has witnessed scenes of violence and lawlessness to which
there has been no parallel during the 300-year history of the city,''
they said in a joint press statement.
        The latest outbreak of bloodletting followed a three-week lull. State
officials said at least 483 people have died in sectarian rioting and
arson since December in Bombay and Ahmedabad, western India's two main
cities.
        Bombay is India's Hollywood and largest city. Ahmedabad, 310 miles
north of Bombay, is the center of the country's large textile industry.
        Despite curfew orders, mobs armed with gasoline bombs, rocks and
bamboo staves continued to fight pitched battles with police in Bombay
and Ahmedabad, setting ablaze stores, homes and vehicles, city officials
said.
        With fires raging in 25 Bombay districts, a pall of black smoke hung
over the Arabian Sea port city.
        Thousands of additional Army and paramilitary troops were airlifted
to Bombay Monday to contain the spreading violence.
        The Indian home ministry announced in New Delhi it also was rushing
1,200 commandos of the newly-established Rapid Action Force to the city.
        The Army was deployed in large numbers in Bombay and Ahmedabad last
weekend after riot police and paramilitary troops failed to quell
widespread violence.
        ``Army troops have been ordered to take ruthless action against
rioters and arsonists,'' said Indian Defense Minister Sharad Pawar, who
was rushed to Bombay last weekend by Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao.
        The latest resurgence of communal violence, which has left 183 people
dead in Bombay, began with Muslim rioting in the city's south-central
districts. It spread from the shantytowns and middle-class neighborhoods
to downtown and fashionable beachside districts over the weekend.
        ``The city has been taken over by criminal gangs,'' said a police
officer, who asked not to be named. ``This is no longer Hindu-Muslim
fighting.''
        Chief Minister Sudhakarrao Naik of Maharashtra state, of which Bombay
is the capital, said: ``It is now Hindus killing Hindus.''
        State and city officials expressed alarm that sectarian fighting had
erupted among the Hindu majority, with militant Marathi-speaking natives
attacking settlers from southern India. Police blamed the Shiv Sena, a
radical Bombay-based political group, for the attacks on outside Hindu
settlers.
        India's autonomous Election Commission, meanwhile, indefinitely
postponed by-elections to three national Parliament and nine state
legislature vacancies spread across the country because of a federal
government request.
        The commission said federal authorities believed the current communal
disturbances and unrest in India made it difficult to hold peaceful and
fair balloting. The by-elections were scheduled for next month.
        Voicing concern over attacks on Tamil-speaking Hindus, Tamil Nadu
State Chief Minister Jayalalitha appealed to Naik to protect Bombay's
small Tamil community.
        ``A large number of Tamils have fled Bombay in panic and anguish,
leaving their properties and other belongings behind,'' Jayalalitha
said.
        India's Central Railways said it was adding extra cars to trains
departing from Bombay to meet the heavy rush of citizens fleeing the
riot-scarred city.
        ``Mob frenzy has reached unprecedented levels, and Army troops and
police are finding it difficult to control the situation,'' said C.
Subramaniam, 83, who resigned as Maharashtra governor last Thursday
after criticizing Rao's handling of the violent clashes.
        Army troops fired on rioters in three Bombay districts. The police
control room said several people were killed in the shootings but gave
no precise death toll.
        In Ahmedabad, three people were burned to death Sunday when their
house was set ablaze by a mob in the Muslim-majority old section of the
city, where much of the violence remained concentrated, the Gujarat
government said.
        At least four more people were reported fatally knifed in street
fights in Ahmedabad, Gujarat's biggest city.
        Authorities said more than 1,000 people have been wounded and
property worth millions of dollars wrecked in the latest round of Bombay
and Ahmedabad rioting.
        In recent years, India has been wracked by growing sectarian and
ethnic unrest. Several parts of the country remain torn by separatist
insurgencies or greater autonomy movements.
        Thousands of people have died in such unrest in the past year alone.
        Dozens of Indian cities were battered by a wave of sectarian violence
after Hindu radicals destroyed a mosque on Dec. 6 in Ayodhya, northern
India. More than 1,100 died in the December violence, with Bombay
accounting for the highest number of fatalities.
        The dispute over the Ayodhya holy site -- which Hindus believe is the
birthplace of one of their deities -- continues to charge sectarian
passions in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
        The demolished mosque had idols of Hindu deities inside since 1949
and was open only to Hindu devotees under court orders.
        Last Friday, the Indian government asked the Supreme Court to
arbitrate on Hindu claims that the mosque was built by a 16th-century
Mogul invader on the ruins of a temple he destroyed.
        The action was part of a government peace package to help resolve the
bitter, 450-year dispute over the holy locale. Hindu and Muslim groups,
however, have rejected the settlement plan.
        A Muslim fundamentalist group, meanwhile, appealed to the country's
120 million Muslims to boycott India's Jan. 26 Republic Day celebrations
to protest the settlement package.