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On the Tenth Anniversary of the Bhopal Disaster
Bhopal Revisited: The View from Below
by Amrita Basu
Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars,
vol. 26, nos. 1-2, Jan.-June 1994
The night of 2-3 December 1994 will mark the tenth anniversary of the
world's largest industrial disaster. Over the years the attention Bhopal has
attracted has centered on the extended legal negotiations between the Union
Carbide Corporation (UCC) and the Indian government. What is less known is
that despite a settlement in 1989 and a review in 1991, the gas survivors
continue to suffer untold misery. Indeed their lives are more insecure today
than they were in 1984.
The forces that wreaked havoc on the lives of the poorest and most
vulnerable segments of the population have displayed callousness throughout
the nine years after the gas disaster. The Indian Council of Medical
Research has still failed to devise appropriate treatment for the ailments
of gas victims; UCC has refused to divulge information about the chemicals
that could assist with diagnoses. According to one estimate, over 300,000
people continue to suffer from breathlessness, impaired vision, fatigue,
body aches, loss of appetite, depression, and anxiety.1 Moreover, the
government has been slow and inept in distributing interim relief and has
created little employment for those injured in the disaster.
The survivors were further victimized in 1990, when many were evicted from
their homes to the outskirts of the city, where employment, food, and
medical facilities are scarce. A large number of survivors once again sought
shelter in the flimsy sheds of Bagh Farzat Afza, constructed years earlier
as shelters for gas victims when the government engaged in its
anti-encroachment drive. In December 1992, amidst a major "communal" riot in
Bhopal, slum dwellers-many of whom are gas survivors-were among the most
seriously affected groups.2 More people returned to the sheds to escape the
riot.
When the gas disaster occurred, attention focused on the irresponsibility of
multinational corporations and their collusion with postcolonial
governments.3 I would argue that in the 1990s it has become increasingly
clear that the suffering in Bhopal cannot be explained simply by the actions
of multinational corporations in a neocolonial context. Such an explanation
neglects the critical fact that the victims are predominantly Muslim. Events
in the 1990s have highlighted the critical role of the state, not so much in
pandering to multinational capital as in pandering to electoral
considerations, which have been associated in turn with a communal stance.
Focusing on the electoral compulsions underlying the state's actions and its
antipoor, anti-Muslim bias reveals some important continuities between the
events of 1984, 1991, and 1992.
In making this argument I do not mean to deny the influence on Indian
politics of India's relationship to foreign capital. However, I would
suggest that we not only devote greater attention to the role of the state,
as scholars have already pointed out, but also to patterns of class and
particularly communal stratification within India. UCC could locate its
plant within a thriving urban metropolis like Bhopal, despite the
government's knowledge that toxic chemicals were being produced there, not
only because India needed access to foreign exchange and technology.
Affluent Hindus lived in the elegant foot hills of Bhopal where they were
relatively protected from the toxic fumes. By contrast the slums that
mushroomed in the area adjoining the UCC plant were inhabited largely by
poor Muslims.
To rectify the disproportionate attention that most accounts devote to the
central government, I devote greater attention to the role of the state
government. While the central government's role was critical until 1990-in
authorizing a UCC plant in Bhopal, in its initial handling of the disaster,
and in its subsequent negotiations with UCC-the role of the Madhya Pradesh
(MP) state government has subsequently become critical. The right-wing Hindu
nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that came to power in MP in 1990
has further victimized the Muslim gas survivors. Electoral considerations
have prevented Congress, the major opposition party in Madhya Pradesh, from
seriously challenging the BJP.
The vantage point of my account is that of the victims of successive crises
in Bhopal. This "view from below" reveals continuities both in their
sufferings and in the struggles they have waged. The Bhopal Gas Peedit
Mahila Udyog Sangathana (the BGPMUS, the Organization of Bhopal Women-Worker
Victims), an organization predominantly of Muslim women, has been at the
forefront of struggles against UCC, the eviction of slum dwellers, and
communal violence.
The Emergence of the BGPMUS
In the wake of the 1984 crisis, numerous activists traveled to Bhopal from
other parts of India to work among the victims. Once the immediate crisis
passed, some left Bhopal, and others, like the Bhopal Gas and Information
Group, stopped organizing and devoted themselves exclusively to collecting
and disseminating information. Some, like the Zahreeli Gas Kand Sangarsh
Morcha, developed a more amicable relationship with the government.
As pressure on the government subsided and the media lost interest in
Bhopal, the government began to renege on its earlier assurances of relief
and rehabilitation. It never fulfilled its promise of reserving 50 percent
of all jobs in the Railroad Coach Factory for men who had suffered from the
gas leak. It also closed down some sewing centers that had provided
employment for gas-affected women. Three hundred women who had worked in one
of the centers galvanized others to protest the government's actions.
What subsequently became the BGPMUS (referred to interchangeably as the
Sangathana) organized a prolonged picket of government officers demanding
that they reopen one of these centers. Although the government was initially
unresponsive, each day women reestablished the picket line, until the
government reopened a sewing center that employed over 2,000 women. Their
average income from sewing, for which they were paid on a piece-work basis,
was about 340 rupees ($20.40*) a month.
Unlike other groups that had been active in Bhopal, the BGPMUS was a
grass-roots organization composed exclusively of gas survivors. Many members
still suffer from severe health problems. My interviews with them often were
interrupted because they were overcome with nausea, fatigue, and dizziness.
Despite poor health, these women participated in every aspect of the
BGPMUS's activities: demonstrating in the streets, providing testimony in
court, and working in riot-affected areas. Most Sangathana members are
mothers: some are widows, some have been deserted by husbands, and some are
married to unemployed men; many of the women are the principal income
earners in their families.
The women who attended the weekly Saturday meetings kept raising new
problems for the BGPMUS to address. In 1987 the women asked Abdul Jabbar
Khan, a man who had been committed to the cause of gas survivors since 1985,
to become the BGPMUS convener. Jabbar, as he is widely known, was from a
poor Muslim family. His father was killed by the gas leak; six remaining
family members were seriously affected; his wife's former husband was also
killed.
Jabbar quickly became the driving force behind the BGPMUS. He issued most
public statements on its behalf, served as the negotiator in talks with the
government, and made key decisions about the Sangathana's strategy and
goals. Perhaps partly because of his personalistic leadership style, some
activist groups have accused the BGPMUS of functioning in an undemocratic
fashion. Whatever the validity of these charges and the source of rivalries
among activists, the BGPMUS remains very closely involved in the lives of
the poor Muslim community. Supporting itself on a shoestring budget
consisting mainly of sympathizers' contributions and the 5 rupees ($.30)
monthly dues of its 17,900 members, it operates out of Jabbar's cramped
living room in old Bhopal.
The Sangathana has exploited whatever opportunities exist for political
struggle. Whereas many activists gave up on the courts in disgust after the
1989 Supreme Court verdict, the Sangathana has periodically filed appeals in
court without giving up on direct-action tactics. While the Sangathana is
deeply skeptical about working through the party system, it has skillfully
formed temporary alliances with political parties that support its demands.
The Legal Battle
In February 1989 the Indian Supreme Court announced that it was proposing a
final settlement in which the government would accept from UCC $470 million
on behalf of the victims and discharge it from all civil and criminal
liability for the disaster. The Indian government had initially sought $3
billion in damages from UCC. Many commentators considered the government's
capitulation an attempt to retain the good will of foreign investors.
Equally important, however, was the government's attempt to protect itself
against demands from the gas survivors and its refusal to let them represent
themselves. BGPMUS activists report that the government made no attempt to
solicit their views.
Within a week of the Supreme Court decision the BGPMUS mobilized 3,500
people to travel to Delhi where they ransacked the Union Carbide office.
Press reports highlighted women's militance: one woman reportedly snatched a
gun from an armed guard, while another chased a policeman until he jumped
onto a passing bus for safety.4
Over the next several months the BGPMUS continued to organize large-scale
protest. One of the most ingenious was a "Quit India" demonstration in
August 1989, on the forty-seventh anniversary of the 1942 Quit India
movement demanding immediate independence from the British. Three thousand
BGPMUS members demonstrated outside the UCC plant in opposition to the court
decision and demanded that UCC terminate all activities in India. Newspapers
reported police violence resulting in serious injuries to over 300 women;
over a thousand women courted arrest.5 The demonstration elicited widespread
support; a predominantly Muslim organization had exposed the way the
Congress Party had surrendered to foreign interests while claiming concern
for the most vulnerable and marginal groups.
The BGPMUS was responsible for many of the gains credited to the Janata Dal,
the coalition that became the national government after winning the election
in 1989. Since its criticisms of the Supreme Court settlement came just
before the 1989 parliamentary elections, the Janata Dal was receptive to
grievances against Congress. In November 1990 the newly elected government
initiated a rehearing of the settlement based on the review the BGPMUS had
filed. No government had addressed the question of how gas victims would
survive in the many years before they obtained a final settlement. In June
1988 the BGPMUS filed a petition in court demanding interim relief for the
gas victims. In March 1990 the Supreme Court ordered the MP government to
pay monthly sums of 200 rupees ($12.00) per month for three years to the
500,000 people it determined were in the vicinity of the gas disaster on the
night of 2-3 December 1984. But in March 1990, the Hindu nationalist BJP was
elected to head the MP state government. A BJP government would administer
relief and rehabilitation and determine policies for Bhopal's Muslim
population.
The Two Faces of the BJP
Prior to the 1989 parliamentary elections, the BJP was among the most
strident critics of the Congress Party. Indeed it had charged Congress of
accepting a low UCC settlement in return for a $666 million contribution
from UCC for its election campaign.6 As a supporter of the Janata Dal
coalition that assumed office in New Delhi, the BJP demanded a review of the
court settlement. Within MP, Babu Lal Gour, who became gas- relief minister
under the BJP government, threatened to launch massive agitations if the
victims' demands were not met.7 But Gour later became the architect of the
BJP's anti-encroachment drive targeting poor Muslims. And in the 1992 riots
some of the most serious violence against Muslims took place in his
Govindpura constituency.
The BJP's stance on the UCC tragedy provided it with additional ammunition
against the Congress Party during the election campaign; its populist stance
on relief for the gas victims helped broaden its appeal to include
disempowered groups. After coming to power, however, the situation changed.
There were more claimants on state resources, which in turn complicated the
BJP's decisions about how to use resources designed for relief. Moreover,
the BJP's traditional constituency of Hindu shopkeepers and traders had
nothing to gain from an activist stance with respect to the gas victims.
Contrary to its promises, the BJP government neglected to involve voluntary
organizations in the distribution of interim relief. Instead, it packed an
advisory committee on interim relief with members of Hindu communal groups.
Furthermore, the state government's distribution of interim relief was slow,
inefficient, and dishonest. Contrary to the government's promise that all
eligible people would receive interim relief within a month, three months
later only 42,000 claimants-less than 10 percent of those who were eligible-
were receiving interim relief. A year later, then chief minister Sunderlal
Patwa admitted that about 100,000 eligible victims were still not receiving
interim relief.8 According to Khan, one reason for this delay was that
public hospitals had not even examined hundreds of thousands of claimants.
And as government officials admitted, about half the people to whom they
sent notices never received them. Yet officials refused to disburse funds to
these claimants.
Numerous gas survivors complained of extensive corruption in the
distribution of interim relief. Rabiabia, a resident of a slum called JP
Nagar, said that middlemen charged 1,000-1,400 rupees ($60-$84) for papers
demonstrating her eligibility; the men who delivered notices to their homes
also demanded bribes. Atiyabia, a BGPMUS activist, complained that the
government refused to divulge the names of beneficiaries although this would
have checked corruption. Many people attributed the government's secrecy to
its use of relief designed for Muslims as a form of patronage of Hindus.
Recipients of interim relief also complained of difficulties in collecting
their monthly payments. They had to collect their checks from distant places
and spend hours waiting in line. One person was not authorized to collect
funds on behalf of the family, so every month each family member would spend
a day collecting a small payment. The government refused the BGPMUS's
request to either deposit checks directly in the recipients' bank accounts
or deliver the checks to their homes.
Given the way bureaucracies function, the corruption and delays that
characterized the distribution of interim relief might be considered
unavoidable. However, while the government effectively controlled the
bureaucracy in other situations, it seemed indifferent to the fate of poor
Muslims. Conversely, the lower ranking Hindu government officials who
benefited from the politicization of the relief distribution process were
important elements of the BJP's constituency.
The BGPMUS attracted several thousand people when it staged demonstrations
in 1990 and 1991 to protest the faulty distribution of relief and the
inadequacy of medical care for the victims. However, activists became
discouraged by several developments. The new Supreme Court judgment
announced on 3 October 1991 largely upheld the 1989 settlement. It declared
that if the settlement fell short of the amount to be paid to the victims,
the Indian government-rather than UCC-would pay the deficit. Although it
removed UCC's immunity from criminal prosecution, the judgment once again
denied victims the right to be heard. Rather than providing new guidelines
for evaluating the extent of injury and death, it relied upon the seriously
flawed estimates ordered by the state government years earlier.
The MP government arrived at ludicrously low assessments of the number of
gas-related injuries. Shortly before the 1989 elections, when Congress
realized that the Supreme Court decision would be reviewed, it ordered the
MP government to assess the medical conditions of gas survivors. The
doctors' conclusions were designed to exonerate the Congress government and
confirm the Supreme Court's decision. The MP government's medical report
stated that only 19 people had been permanently and totally disabled;
155,000 people whose records had been examined had suffered no injury at
all.
Consider these results in light of the evidence: 40 tons of deadly MIC were
sprayed on the city of Bhopal. Over 125,000 people lived within a 3
kilometer radius of the city; a dose of 0.02 ppm of MIC is considered
lethal. Although there was public outcry when the state government issued
the report and many doctors contested the findings, the Supreme Court cited
them in its 1991 judgment. UCC later justified the low settlement by
referring to the results of the government survey.9 The BJP government
defended these findings.
The "City Beautification" Campaign
It is impossible to understand the BJP's anti-encroachment campaign without
first examining the prior role of the Congress Party in encouraging the
proliferation of slums. Reminiscent of its stance on the UCC disaster,
Congress laid the groundwork for the BJP's subsequent actions. At the
national level, Congress had agreed to a low and unfavorable settlement from
UCC; a Congress government in MP filed the report underestimating the
injuries caused by the disaster. Similarly, it was a Congress government
that allowed slums to mushroom in Bhopal. Although the actions of Congress
appeared to be magnanimous while those of the BJP were cruel, an identical
electoral logic underlay both the creation and the removal of slums.
MN Buch, a senior government bureaucrat, enjoyed an excellent vantage point
from which to describe the Congress government's actions. In 1971-75 his
string of professional responsibilities included chair of the housing board,
commissioner of town and country planning, and chair of the development
authority. Buch blamed the ex-chief minister, Arjun Singh of MP's former
Congress government, for the rapid growth of slums in Bhopal.10
In 1984 Arjun Singh decided that one way to retain his seat was to liberally
distribute pattas (land titles). So he passed an act stating that any
officer who demolished a structure that had been built before 1983 would be
imprisoned. After this act was passed, people would put up shacks during
their lunch breaks. If you can imagine, 35,000 jhuggis [slum huts] came up
during Arjun Singh's time. I had cleared the upper lake area because it is
an important source of drinking water. He allowed 8,000 jhuggis to be built
around the upper lake area alone! By allowing these jhuggis to come up, he
effectively ruled out possibilities for any form of urban development.
Babu Lal Gour, another powerful government official, supported Buch's
analysis. Gour's political history was unusually varied: as a factory worker
he had become active in the trade unions affiliated with Congress, the
Communists, and the BJP. A fiery advocate of gas victims' rights when the
Congress Party was in power, he had become minister for gas relief under the
BJP government in 1990. Gour reported that Congress had distributed 12,000
to 13,000 land titles to slum dwellers.11 By the late 1980s Gour had
identified 160 locations in the city where over 50,000 people were living in
illegal slums. Congress's most reprehensible act, he said, was to encourage
settlements in JP Nagar, a slum bordering the UCC plant, when it knew that
highly toxic chemicals were being produced there.
Gour explained that Congress had created a large-scale patronage network for
electoral purposes. Within each of the slums, he said, there were middlemen
who received perks from Congress in return for guaranteeing votes from slum
dwellers. The bribes they collected allowed them to operate a vast
underworld. Similarly, Congress had achieved control of the municipal
corporation (city government) by allowing shops to encroach illegally on the
main road. With kickbacks of 20 rupees ($1.20) a day from each shop,
municipal-corporation officials had become strong Congress supporters.
Before describing the BJP government's eviction campaign, a brief
description of Bhopal's slums provides some sense of the quiet violence that
pervades slum dwellers' daily lives. According to the 1984 census, 20
percent of Bhopal's population lives in the slums. Since most slums are
located in the thirty-six wards that the government has designated as
gas-affected, few slum dwellers escaped the consequences of the gas leak.
Slum dwellers live in kutcha (mud) houses that toxic gas could penetrate,
leaving them no safe spaces, either within or outside their homes.
JP Nagar covers a territory about a quarter mile in length and fifty yards
in depth. Its population density is about 792 people and 152 huts per
hectare. Most people who live in JP Nagar are unskilled workers who earn
15-20 rupees ($.90-$1.20) a day.12 Families live in one or two room small,
dark, damp huts without electricity, running water, or bathrooms. The water
that runs from roadside taps is contaminated by effluents from a nearby
paper mill. Most of the unclaimed space around the slums is used either for
dumping the city's garbage or as latrines, since public toilets are almost
nonexistent. The filth of the surroundings, coupled with the weakness of
people's immune systems because of their exposure to toxic chemicals, means
that they are highly susceptible to disease. Women whose eyes and lungs have
been damaged by the chemicals experience terrible pain while cooking over
smoky wood stoves. While the evictions entailed a kind of suffering
different from their daily lives in the slums, insecurity and degradation
remain continuous.
In 1990 the BJP began an anti-encroachment drive, clearing the streets and
sidewalks of illegal shops. This met with little resistance since it was not
characterized by obvious communal bias. The BJP amply compensated
proprietors whose shops were removed, and it generally did not demolish
entire shops but merely the store fronts that protruded onto the streets.
However, shops with BJP flags and insignia were either untouched or
generously compensated. While patronage of party supporters is a staple of
Indian political life, the next phase of the government's campaign proved to
be more unusual and dangerous.
On the morning of 26 May 1991 about 200 armed policemen descended on a slum
at Retghat and demolished 75 jhuggis, some of which were a hundred years
old. For the next four days officials would accompany bulldozers to
different parts of the city to demolish more homes. Since the government had
not notified slum dwellers of its plans, residents were unprepared and
offered sporadic resistance. However, when a demolition squad reached
Fatehgarh on the morning of 31 May, it found 50 women holding kerosene cans
and threatening to immolate themselves if their homes were destroyed. Other
women refused to leave their huts. The government discontinued the
demolitions for three days. On 3 June officials returned, heavily armed, and
arrested 60 women. Four days later all the huts in Fategarh and many huts in
Sajda Nagar had been demolished, and 20,000 people had been evicted.
Once again Muslim slum women were at the forefront of largely spontaneous
protest. Two women committed suicide by drinking kerosene when the
government ignored their threats and demolished their huts. They had taken
refuge near the lake just after the gas leak, for the higher elevation and
proximity to water provided some relief from the discomfort they had
experienced at lower altitudes. Opposition to the demolitions did not seem
to generate comparable passion from the men with whom I spoke. According to
Gour, the government bribed some men to quell resistance.
The major organized opposition to the government's anti-encroachment drive
came from the BGPMUS, which obtained a stay order in court on the grounds
that the government's interference with housing patterns among gas-affected
people would complicate pending litigation. For some days the government
ignored the stay order and continued demolition work. Given its
responsibility for the proliferation of slums, Congress was clearly
uncomfortable about the entire issue, and middle-class support for the
evictions may have helped silence Congress.
Given the squalor slum dwellers lived in, was the BJP's eviction campaign
avoidable? The slums polluted Bhopal's principal source of drinking water,
and the illegal shops that protruded onto the streets were traffic hazards.
While relocation may have been necessary, the cruel manner in which it was
conducted suggests that both electoral opportunism and anti-Muslim sentiment
were at work. Even the BGPMUS stated that it would have accepted relocations
if conducted in a humane and timely fashion. It also emphasized that slum
demolitions affected many victims of the gas disaster.
Relocation had worked well before communalist electoral pandering
intensified. Buch reported that in 1971-75 he had ensured that the
inhabitants of 12,000 slums would all be relocated to homes within 2
kilometers of their work sites. Furthermore, he had successfully enlisted
the cooperation of slum dwellers by informing them of the government's plans
eighteen months in advance. He had also been careful to ensure that no
community was inordinately affected by the relocation.
The worst abuses in the BJP's anti-encroachment drive occurred in relocating
628 families, 228 to Badwai and 400 families about 13 kilometers from
downtown Bhopal to Gandhi Nagar, The bus stop nearest Gandhi Nagar is a mile
away. The first bus in the morning arrives in Bhopal long after people must
report to work. Commuters must take three wheelers (tempos), which cost half
of their daily wage.
When the government moved people to the large open field known as Gandhi
Nagar, it gave each family 1,000 rupees [$60.00] along with six bamboo
poles, five straw mats and a plastic sheet. Despite the abundance of land,
it allotted each family a plot of land that measured only twelve by
twenty-five feet. The move was imposed just before the monsoons. When I
visited Gandhi Nagar in June 1990, people told me that it had rained for
four consecutive days after they had moved, damaging their flimsy huts. A
number of children fell ill and their families had to travel back to Bhopal
for medications.
When I returned to Gandhi Nagar six months later, the government had
installed some electric poles and water pumps, dug drains, and constructed
kutcha [mud] roads. However, the improvements were still grossly inadequate.
A small market charged highly inflated prices so the residents were forced
to travel to Bhopal for food. Despite government assurances, transport was
erratic. In the four hours that I spent in Gandhi Nagar, not a single bus
passed. Many residents suffered health problems requiring them to visit
hospitals three times a week. Although a mobile van made daily trips to
Gandhi Nagar to dispense medications, people claimed that the van often
lacked the medications they needed.
Rajiv Lochan Sharma, a doctor who had worked closely with the victims of the
gas disaster, said that many of the people who had been evicted to Gandhi
Nagar had suffered lung damage requiring more elaborate treatment than they
were receiving.13 He feared that in many cases the move to Gandhi Nagar
would be fatal. A woman in Gandhi Nagar commented bitterly: "We understand
why they have brought us here. There is a kabristan [Muslim graveyard] on
one side and a shamstaan [Hindu cremation ground] on the other. In our
condition, we won't last long. And it will be cheaper to dispose of us this
way."
"Why shouldn't these people be moved?" Babu Lal Gour had asked rhetorically.
"After all, the accident took place seven years ago; at that time even I was
affected but I am living my life normally now. How long will they harp on
this issue?" In contrast, women spoke of their trauma at being rendered
homeless for a second time and of their children's recurrent nightmares. One
of the most tragic consequences of the relocation was that it destroyed the
sense of community that sustained victims of the disaster. Deep divisions
emerged between those who opposed the evictions and those who were bought
off, as well as between those people who lived in recently constructed
multistoried buildings as opposed to a much larger number who were moved to
Gandhi Nagar.14
What were the BJP's motivations in undertaking the slum evictions? Electoral
considerations cannot be overemphasized. In 1990 the upper lake area from
which families were relocated to Gandhi Nagar had elected Arif Aqueel, a
Muslim man, as member of the legislative assembly. I interviewed him in
Hamedia Hospital where he was recuperating after terminating a hunger strike
protesting the treatment of slum dwellers.15 Aqueel said that if the
evictions had succeeded in relocating all of the 60,000 slum dwellers who
had been targeted, that would have significantly shrunk the anti-BJP Muslim
constituency and enlarged the pool of Hindu voters. As it was, a BJP
candidate defeated Aqueel in the next round of legislative assembly
elections.
The links between the BJP's eviction campaign, its appeals to the middle
classes, and the gas disaster are deep and invidious. The gas disaster
enabled the government to undertake its "city beautification program," which
consisted of redecorating parks, installing new street lights, and
rehabilitating old monuments in areas cleared of illegal encroachments.
Jabbar Khan alleged that by August 1991 the state government had already
spent 13,350,000 rupees [$801,000] it had received from the central
government for disaster relief on "city beautification." When I asked Babu
Lal Gour how he could justify such expenditures he neither denied the
allegations nor expressed remorse. He claimed that gas victims would be the
major beneficiaries; for example, new streets lights would be soothing to
the visually impaired. In the name of city beautification, the state
government failed to provide gas victims with the most basic amenities and
deprived them of their houses.
The anti-encroachment drive also enabled the BJP to project itself as a
party of law and order that, unlike Congress, was willing to take decisive
action even at the risk of unpopularity. The strong-arm tactics it employed
in the demolitions were a warning to groups most likely to oppose its
policies-Muslims, women, and the poor.16
By removing 628 Muslim families to the outskirts of Bhopal, the BJP implied
that there is no place for Muslims in a BJP-ruled state, exemplifying what
it was capable of doing at the national level. Many Christians in Bhopal
felt that the BJP's message was also directed at them. Indira Iyengar, a
Christian woman, led a delegation to visit the chief minister to oppose the
government's anti-encroachment drive.17 She said he had implied that her
motivations were somehow subversive and unpatriotic.
The Riot
The riot in Bhopal beginning on 7 December was a direct consequence of the
BJP combine's destruction of the mosque in Ayodhya the preceding day.
Although Indore and other cities in MP had experienced riots in the past,
Bhopal had always been considered a model of communal harmony. On the
evening of 7 December, thousands of young Muslim men gathered on the large
thoroughfares of Bhopal to express their anger and grief at events in
Ayodhya. Some threw sticks, stones, and homemade bombs at Hindu-owned shops
as well as public vehicles and property; they did not attack people. I
returned to Bhopal to learn what had precipitated a major riot in which
official sources estimate that 143 people were killed; Jabbar placed the
figure closer to 250, the majority of whom were Muslims. About 30,000
people, predominantly Muslims, were displaced.
Given the likelihood that tensions would escalate once the destruction of
the mosque became known, it is curious that the government posted only a
small police force in troubled parts of the city. Anatulla Siddiqi,
president of Congress I in a locality called Kazi Camp, went to one of the
central shopping areas where violence had broken out. He said that the few
police posted there helplessly appealed to him to quell the violence.
Siddiqi estimated that 12 people were killed and 22 people injured that day;
shooting by the police rather than Hindu-Muslim clashes accounted for most
of the violence. By the next day another 12 people had been killed.18 "This
was not a Hindu-Muslim riot but a state-sponsored riot," commented N. Rajan,
the highly respected editor of the National Mail newspaper.19 The riots also
marked the culmination of the state's growing tendency to victimize the
Muslim community.
By 9 December mobs of Hindu men forcibly entered Muslim homes, ransacked
their belongings, and often killed or maimed a family member. Many of these
men were associated with the Bajrang Dal (the youth wing of the Hindu
religious organization that has spearheaded the campaign in Ayodhya), and
they were sometimes accompanied by "kar sevaks" (temple volunteers) who had
stopped in Bhopal while returning from Ayodhya. Shama Begum, a Kazi Camp
resident, said that some men had forced their way into her house and
shouted: "You have turned this place into a little Pakistan, now you will
pay for it!"20 They emptied trunks of clothes and containers of grain and
smashed whatever they could, and they threatened to return that night to
rape the family's young, unmarried daughter. As they were leaving they
caught sight of her husband. Almost as an afterthought they murdered him.
Shama Begum left her husband's body in the house and took her daughters to
spend the night with some Hindu neighbors.
The slums that suffered the greatest damage were new settlements like Arif
Nagar, which had not had time to develop a sense of community among Hindu
and Muslim residents since it had been formed only in 1987 at the impetus of
Arif Aqueel. When a mob of 2,000 Hindus arrived there on the afternoon of 8
May shouting "Jai Shri Ram" (Victory to Lord Ram!), most residents sought to
escape. Although they were spared by the mobs, Hindu families risked the
destruction of their huts in the event of arson. The mobs destroyed 300 of
the 795 huts in Arif Nagar, within several hours demolishing illegal
encroachments that the government had targeted.
Few areas of Bhopal were spared. Although violence in communal riots is
usually directed at poor slum dwellers, there were numerous middle-class
Muslim families in the Bharat Heavy Electrical Limited (BHEL) township of
Bhopal who also lost their homes and even their lives. However, as in the
past, slum dwellers suffered the most serious damage. The Madhya Pradesh
Vigyan Sabha, an independent voluntary organization, surveyed 7,684 people
who were living in makeshift refugee camps because their homes had been
destroyed, and she found that 47 percent of them were from the laboring
poor.21
The violence had particularly devastating consequences for the gas
survivors. The first items that mobs threw into the fire were handcarts,
bicycle rickshaws (bicycle-drawn vehicles), and sewing machines, which many
of the gas survivors used to earn their livelihood. Given the paltry
compensation that the government provided for such losses and the fact that
many of these people were already entangled in elaborate paper work filing
claims for relief, many would never be compensated. One woman from Sudama
Nagar commented: "The gas was better, at least it did not divide the
people."22
The state, political parties, and independent activists played out the roles
scripted for them in past tragedies. The state government was paralyzed
while Bhopal went up in flames. Some speculated that it deliberately
tolerated Muslim aggression in order to justify subsequent Hindu violence.
The state government made M.A. Khan, a weak and pliable administrator, the
collector of Bhopal. As a Muslim he was both a convenient token and a
scapegoat. Khan had executed the BJP's anti-encroachment drive. On 7
December he issued a report to the chief secretary stating that the
situation was under control. By contrast, preventive action by Vijay Singh,
the commissioner of Indore, had maintained peace in what was considered a
"riot prone" city.
After the evening of 7 December, numerous citizens had called members of the
administration, police, and government and pleaded with them for more
forceful intervention. "I met with Gour on the morning of the eighth and
begged him to call out the army," Jabbar reported. "He said, `How can I go
out when a curfew is in force?!'" Siddiqi said that the only way he could
get the police control room to respond to his calls was by pretending to be
a Hindu and reporting that Hindus were in danger. This was not a very useful
ploy, however, for when the police arrived, they offered protection
exclusively to Hindus. In many localities, Muslims said that police
demonstrated such obvious bias that Muslims ceased to appeal to the police
for help. In some areas Hindu gangs actually donned police uniforms. The
violence declined swiftly after the army was deployed on 12 December and
ended shortly after president's rule was declared on 15 December, tragic
testimony to how much sooner the violence could have been averted.
The task of challenging the state's complicity and lethargy and organizing
protection for the victims should have fallen to Congress, the major
opposition party in the state. However, while a few Congress leaders like
Digvijay Singh and a number of local party members tried to restore order,
the Congress Party seemed much more concerned with dismissing the BJP
government than with stopping Hindu violence. Even after the center
dismissed the state government and declared president's rule, the state
government established few camps to shelter those who had been rendered
destitute. Communal organizations stepped in by opening camps exclusively
for either Hindus or Muslims.
Independent citizen groups offered the only effective opposition to the
state and communal organizations. They formed committees to safeguard their
localities by fighting back the mobs. These committees sought to repair
mosques and temples before the damage provided a pretext for further
violence. They also played a critical role in organizing relief. The women
activists of the BGPMUS who had previously surveyed the gas-disaster victims
returned to the same families to assess the damage they had suffered in the
riots.
Conclusion
In the 1984-94 decade each tragedy Bhopal experienced built upon the
previous one. Union Carbide took advantage of high levels of unemployment
among Bhopal's population; the gas disaster then rendered this group poorer,
sicker, and more rootless, which contributed in turn to the government's
desire to rid the city of them. The riots in effect continued the
government's anti-encroachment scheme by destroying thousands of huts that
poor Muslim families were living in.
The logic of employing people to work for a plant that was known to produce
deadly chemicals, "city beautification," and the riots reflect callousness
toward poor, largely Muslim families. The Indian government seemed to assume
that factory workers were fortunate to work for UCC, and thus did not take
minimal precautions to prevent the remedy from killing the proverbial
patient. The BJP government's use of gas-relief funds to demolish slums and
provide urban facilities for the rich treated poor Muslim families as the
dirt to be cleared. With the riot, there were no longer any safe places for
Muslims in Bhopal.
The connections between each of these tragedies lies in the drift toward an
electorally-and by implication communally-driven party system. While the BJP
embraces an openly, violently anti-Muslim posture, Congress anticipated and
continues to employ a paler version of the BJP's approach. The easiest way
for political parties to make majoritarian appeals in India today is by
exploiting religious and caste divisions. The Congress Party's appeals to
Hindus at a time when its class-based appeals to the poor were becoming less
effective laid the groundwork for the BJP's subsequent ascendance.
In the mid-1980s, when Arjun Singh liberally distributed land titles,
Congress still relied heavily on minorities and the poor for electoral
support. By the early 1990s it had become more dependent upon Hindu votes
and refrained from risking unpopularity among urban middle-class Hindus by
opposing the BJP's slum-demolition program. In 1992 Congress was determined
to unseat the BJP government in MP and return to power at both the state and
national levels. But if denunciations of the BJP brought Congress electoral
dividends, it did nothing to stop the violence or help reorganize shattered
communities: "Arjun Singh has his eyes on the chair in New Delhi," I was
told by a senior bureaucrat who asked to remain anonymous, "so he is staying
clear of affairs in Bhopal." Deep factional divisions within Congress also
contributed to its ineffectiveness in responding to these crises.
Electoral considerations are equally important in explaining the BJP's
changing stance. It moved from espousing the cause of gas victims when in
opposition to underreporting their injuries when it came to power. Although
the BJP's inaction during the riots might appear to undermine its electoral
interests, N. Rajan of the National Mail concluded that the riots played a
vital role in consolidating its disintegrating Hindu constituency. However,
the midterm elections revealed a decline in the BJP's popularity in MP as a
result of its poor performance in office. The 1993 elections, after a period
in which communal violence had been absent, confirmed the decline in BJP
fortunes.
The vacuum created by the inaction of the state and political parties has
been filled by grass-roots activism. Muslim women, who had not participated
in any form of organized political activity, have been at the forefront of
struggles for employment, protest against the demolitions, and attempts to
repair the damage caused by the riots.
In different ways the events of both 1984 and 1991 had devastating
consequences for women. Numerous studies have shown that women's
reproductive capacities were seriously damaged by the disaster. The public
health minister of MP reported that 36 pregnant women spontaneously aborted
and 6 gave birth to deformed babies just after the gas leak.23 An Indian
Council of Medical Research study in 1990 found a high rate-24 percent-of
spontaneous abortion among gas-affected women. Subsequently the abortion
rate has tended to be 7.5 percent for women who have been exposed to the gas
as compared to 3 percent for unexposed groups.24
The gas disaster made it more difficult for women to mother and extended the
demands associated with this role. Men were often unable to serve as the
principal income earners in the family since their abilities to work full
time had often been impaired. Given the imperative for women to earn wages,
community restrictions that kept women homebound in the past began to
slacken. It became acceptable for Muslim women to hold jobs and to support
their families.
The catalyst to the formation of the BGPMUS was the state's tendency to
alternate between concessions and repression.25 Initially the government
supported women's employment through its creation of sewing centers. Just as
women had become reliant on this income, the government closed the centers
down. The successful outcome of women's struggles led them to continue
organizing. The government also decided to provide 836 widows with a monthly
pension of 200 rupees ($12.00). When the more authoritarian BJP government
came to power, women were already well organized. Given the high costs of
transportation and the difficulties of traveling with young children from
Gandhi Nagar to the city, many women had to give up their jobs. It is ironic
that the BJP, which has decried the seclusion of Muslim women, was
responsible for reprivatizing women's work.
With the family endangered, women sought to defend family integrity and
their own roles within the family. Muslim women's assertion of their
identities as mothers represents a powerful response to Hindu communalism.
The BJP is obsessed with questions of demographic balance between Hindu and
Muslim communities. Both its slum-demolition program and the riots aim to
reduce the Muslim population so that Hindus will enjoy unquestioned
numerical and political supremacy. The BJP's fear that Muslim population
growth rates would exceed those of Hindus particularly targets the fertility
of Muslim women. Women's anguish at the damage to their reproductive
capacities as a result of the disaster should be understood within this
context. Similarly, women's attempt to maintain the integrity of their
families and communities gains added urgency in the face of the BJP's
attempt to create a Hindu state in which the choices for Muslims are exile,
assimilation, or death. For women to assert themselves as individuals would
pose no challenge to the BJP; to assert their identities as part of a
visible, voluble, angry community of poor Muslim women offers the slender
hope of cultural survival.
Notes
*I learned a great deal from a number of people in Bhopal, above all about
the conviction and compassion that have been indespensable in confronting
the ongoing tragedy. I am especialy grateful in this respect to Lajja
Shankar Hardenia, Abdul Jabbar Khan, N. Rajan, and numerous Bhopal Gas
Peedit Mahila Udyog Sangathana (the BGPMUS) activists I spoke to. Thanks
also to Ajay Kant for research assistance and Mark Kesselman for his
comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
1. Claude Alvares, "Bhopal Revisited," Illustrated Weekly of India, 8-9
Dec. 1990.
2. The term "communal" is used in the Indian context to denote
sectarianism between members of different religious communities, most
often Hindus and Muslims. I have put "communal" in quotes to signify my
discomfort with the term, but still use it in the absence of a
preferable alternative.
3. See, for example, Arvind Rajagopal, "And the Poor Get Gassed:
Multinational Aided Development and the State: The Case of Bhopal,"
Berkeley Journal of Sociology, vol. 32 (1987), pp. 129-52; and Larry
Everest, Behind the Poison Cloud: Union Carbide's Bhopal Massacre
(Chicago: Banner Press, 1985).
4. Claude Alvares, "Bhopal's Fighting Mothers," Patriot Magazine, 20
August 1989.
5. Ibid.
6. Far Eastern Economic Review, 2 March 1989.
7. "Plans for Gas Victims Backfire," Free Press Journal, 29 November 1991,
p. 3
8. Sunday Observer, 24 August 1991.
9. When the results of its survey were greeted with derision and scorn,
the government admitted that its survey methods had been flawed and
agreed to reexamine its results. However, it did only a random check of
10 percent of the cases, and the figures it resubmitted to the court
would have a bearing on only 5,000 cases. Furthermore, in rehearing the
case the Supreme Court referred back to the findings of the unrevised
study.
10. MN Buch, interview with the author, 30 Dec. 1990, Bhopal.
11. Babu Lal Gour, 13 June 1990, Bhopal.
12. "Encroachment on Civil Rights: Report of an Investigation into the
`Anti-Encroachment' Drive in the Gas-Affected Slums of Bhopal" (Bhopal,
Madhya Pradesh: People's Union for Civil Liberties, June 1991), p. 2.
13. Rajiv Lochan Sharma, interview with the author, 28 Dec. 1990, Bhopal.
14. "A New Township for Bhopal Disaster Victims," New York Times
International, 12 Sept. 1990, p. A11.
15. Arif Aqueel, interview with the author, 13 June 1990, Hamedia Hospital,
Bhopal.
16. Sunderlal Patwa, then chief minister of MP, insisted that the slum
demolition had not been communal in character, though "some people want
to make it look that way to malign the BJP." He also denied that there
were many gas victims among those evicted and insisted that adequate
arrangements had been made for the families that had been relocated.
Sunderlal Patwa, interview with the author, 14 June 1990, at his
residence.
17. Indira Iyengar, interview with the author, 15 June 1990, Bhopal.
18. "Bhopal Riots: A Report" (Bhopal: Sanskritik Morcha; and Delhi: the
People's Union for Democratic Rights, April 1993), p. 5
19. N. Rajan, interview with the author, 2 Jan. 1993, Bhopal.
20. Shama Begum (pseudonym), interview with the author, 3 Jan. 1993, in
Bhopal.
21. "Bhopal Riots: A Report," p. 12
22. Cited in ibid., p. 18.
23. New York Times, 16 July 1985.
24. Times of India, 21 Nov. 1990.
25. The argument is best elaborated by Frances Fox Piven and Richard A.
Cloward in Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail
(New York: Vintage Books, 1979).
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