Eyewitness: Gujarat's peaceful strike

The protestors disrupted traffic in many places

By Sanjeev Srivastava BBC reporter in Ahmedabad

It was a rare day of peace under provocation in Gujarat. For those uninitiated in the affairs of this western Indian state, reporting a rather uneventful day may appear bizarre.

But not to those who have tracked the bloody and mindless religious violence which has rocked Gujarat over the past few months.

It will require days, weeks and months - maybe even years - before peace makes a permanent return to this troubled state

Good news still makes for a story. Especially, from a region where its in short supply. It was a day everybody in India was dreading.

The country was still recovering from the shock of the killing of more than 30 people - most of them Hindu worshippers - at the hands of two militants who forced their way into a temple here on Tuesday.

A right-wing Hindu nationalist organisation, the World Hindu Council or Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), had called for a general strike in the country on Thursday to protest about the attack on the temple.

Tempers were running high. Everybody was nervous about the strike being used as an excuse by Hindu fundamentalists to whip up anti-Muslim sentiment which could have so easily turned into violence against the minority community.

And it was not just the most cautious who were fearing a wave of revenge violence against Muslims.

After all, anti-Muslim violence in the state had started in an almost identical fashion in March this year when strikers responding to a call from the VHP decided to go after innocent Muslims.

The strike call was issued in protest at the torching of a train carrying Hindu pilgrims.

In fact, such was the nervousness in the state about what could happen that several Muslim families living in riot-prone and Hindu-dominated areas - referred to as sensitive areas in local parlance - had moved to the safety of relief camps which were set up in the aftermath of the riots earlier this year.

Muslims insecure

Only recently, many of those living in these camps had started to return home.

But many Muslims came back to the safety of these camps - situated usually in Muslim-dominated areas - in the last two days.

Security was tight around religious places during the strike

"Who knows what might happen? I am worried about the safety of my children," said Ameena Bibi, a widow and mother of three small children.

She moved back to one of the relief camps in the Juhapura area on Wednesday from Narora Pati, a residential colony on the outskirts of Ahmedabad which witnessed perhaps the bloodiest anti-Muslim rioting.

"I don't know. Nobody threatened us. But we were just too nervous and frightened to stay on in an area where we saw so many of our near and dear ones die in the last round of rioting," she told me.

And hers is not an isolated case. At least a couple of thousand Muslims are reported to have left their homes in the last 36 hours to go back to the relative safety of relief camps.

Those like Ameena would surely take heart from the peace which prevailed in the state on Thursday and maybe muster enough courage to return to their homes soon.

Towards permanent peace

Though congratulations should hardly be in order for just a day of calm and peace, there is little doubt that just about every political party and organisation, including people of both the main Hindu and Muslim communities, as well as the security forces, played a role in making it an uneventful day.

Members of the World Hindu Council behaved. So did members of other right-wing Hindu nationalist parties.

Muslims were nervous during Thursday's strike

The Muslim leadership in the state also chipped in by roundly condemning the attack on the temple.

A number of Muslim youths even organised blood donation camps for those injured in the temple violence.

The presence of the army, which was deployed in all sensitive areas of Gujarat, also helped soothe matters as the local police do not have much credibility in the eyes of Gujarati Muslims.

But it would be premature and a gross exaggeration to suggest that a peaceful strike means the state is returning to normal.

It will require days, weeks and months - maybe even years - before peace makes a permanent return to this troubled state.

Maybe, and one sincerely hopes so, a first step in that direction has just been taken.