Gujarat riots

Anti-Pakistan and anti-Muslim sentiments had been building up in Gujarat long before the revival of the Ayodhya temple campaign. Godhra was not mere a spark but a bomb in itself. The fall-out has been both mammoth and horrifying. What is now happening in Gujarat is not heightened Ram Janmabhoomi stir, but a vigilante administration of 'justice' for whatever are considered historical wrongs. What happened in Gujarat may not be an aberration, and if similar developments are to be arrested elsewhere, the underlying reasons prompting such wide-ranging violence and moving the masses need to be genuinely understood.

Large-scale looting, arson and even mass burning are not new for Gujarat. But last fortnight, the violence took unbelievably brutal forms. The collapse of the state was evident - even the symbols of the institutions of the state were under attack . What kind of forces have generated this ugly metamorphosis in Gandhi's Gujarat? Perhaps more than anything else it is the changing self-perceptions of the modernising and rapidly growing middle classes, their search for a new identity and structures of domination and the lack of a significant radical challenge from below.