null Naroda-Patiya, Gulmarg Society, Best Bakery, are today household names and speak of a barbaric violence having taken place in Gujarat’s cities. However, the ‘golden era’, when communal killings were confined to cities is long past. The killings in rural districts like Panchmahals, Dahod and Mehsana, have not been less gruesome than those that have occurred in Ahmedabad.

Just yesterday a college teacher was killed near Sarkhej police station, in Ahmedabad district. He had been identified by his beard. It took me back to the trip I made to Gujarat some days ago. Sporting a beard, I nervously alight at Godhra and was pleasantly surprised to encounter a large number of men with very ‘Muslim-looking beards’. People don’t give up their cultural identity easily. Rationality may demand the shaving of a beard to reduce the threat to life, but the drive to adopt cultural symbols runs deep.

We arrived at the relief camp in Kalol, Panchmahal district. Survivors from the villages of Boru, Dehlol, Malav, Eral, start recounting their tragic stories. Almost all the relief camps in the state are located in Muslim areas. There is safety only in numbers. Madina, who still bears sword cuts on her body, and Sultani, who was gang raped as her son Faizan fell and lay crying, relate how the path of their tempo packed with people fleeing from the attacking mobs in their village, Dehlol, was blocked by a Maruti. A mob of about 150 attacked them with swords, and trishuls, poured kerosene and burnt people. Altogether 14 persons were killed.

‘‘Respectable’’ people like the manager of a local bank, the owner of a local theatre have been clearly identified among the attackers by several eye-witnesses. The Kalol police station is ten steps from the relief camp, yet FIRs/statements with the names of the accused have not been recorded.

Some people from the relief camp are ready to visit their village Boru. The Hindu sarpanch of the village had sheltered some women at the time of the attack and this appears to influence the decision. The row upon row of burnt houses of Muslims present a searingly stark reality. A bit further, water is being filled from a hand pump, children play, as ‘normal’ life goes on in the Hindu pada of the village. The nearby ‘Kamal Pir ki Dargah’, which both Hindus and Muslims had visited from time immemorial, has been vandalised.

Like the exception proving the rule, numbers did not provide safety in Sanjeli village of Dahod district. Today, not a single one out of the 500 houses of Muslims here, remains. The village was attacked on March 2 by a mob of 25-30,000 with the a large scale participation of adivasis. The ‘credit’ for mobilising the adivasis goes to Dilsukhji Maharaj, himself a Bhil, who runs an asham with a hostel for schoolchildren. Dilsukhji asserted that Bhils are Hindus. The attack, he said, was spontaneous as the Bhils had been oppressed for ages and have now risen. Like a textbook case illustrating the power of propaganda, he declared that Muslims took ‘‘our’’ women and have ‘violated’ at least 100 Bhil women in Sanjeli alone.

In the low hills is nestled Anjanwa, a sprawling village in the Panchmahals. On March 3, the Muslims of the village were lured into a school with promises of safety and then attacked. Finally, those who had fled into the forests had to be rescued by the army. Today, the standard story of the Hindus here is that all the attackers were outsiders. However, survivors point out that the singling out of their homes was done by fellow villagers.

At present the administration is busy trying to broker a totally illegal deal of the withdrawal of complaints naming specific individuals by the victims in return for security to return to their old villages. Thus will ‘normalcy’ be ‘restored’ and the embarrassing relief camps closed down.