"In February 2002, following the burning of a train coach in which fifty-eight Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya were burned alive, the BJP government in Gujarat, led by Chief Minister Narendra Modi, presided over a carefully planned genocide of Muslims in the state. The Islamophobia generated all over the world by the 11 September 2001 attacks put the wind in their sails. The machinery of the state of Gujarat stood by and watched while more than two thousand people were massacred. Women were gang-raped and burned alive. One hundred and fifty thousand Muslims were driven from their homes. The community was, and continues to be, ghettoized, socially and economically ostracized. Gujarat has always been a communally tense state. There had been riots before. But this was not a riot. It was a genocidal massacre, and though the number of victims was insignificant compared to the horror of say Rwanda, Sudan or the Congo, the Gujarat carnage was designed as a public spectacle whose aims were unmistakable. It was a public warning to Muslim citizens from the government of the world's favourite democracy."
-- Arundhati Roy, "Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy"
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