Contents Preface Acknowledgements Introduction Train Incident at Godhra Articles Editorials Opinion Reports Surveys Documentation & Interviews Open Letter Memoranda Total Pages: 467/- Price Rs. 425/-

On 27 February 2002, a coach of the Sabarmati Express was torched near Godhra railway station. Fifty-eight passengers, mainly Hindu pilgrims returning from a visit to Ayodhya in support of the temple movement, were burnt to death.

Within 24 hours, a conflagration of the most cruel and systematic violence against Muslims erupted and spread in a large number of cities, towns and villages in Gujarat. The action was unlike any previous communal violence in post-independence India. In the months it took for a semblance of normalcy to return to the state, apart form the natural outpouring of on-the-spot media reporting and analysis, several investigative teams rushed to Gujarat, conducted inquiries and published reports and other documents. Official bodies including the National Human Rights Commission (taking a direct interest for the first time, of its own accord, in communal violence) made important studies and presented them to the nation.

This book is a compilation of articles, editorials, investigative reports, surveys, memoranda and other significant material on the carnage. The final report of the National Human Rights Commission is included in it. Useful material and information will be found in it by future researches, academics and lay readers.

As the specific events of the grim year are blurred and glossed over by other issues and by time, it is important to have such a compilation that preserves the lessons learnt in one of the most horrifying and ominous periods in India's modern history.

Asghar Ali Engineer (b.1949) occupies a unique position among scholars of Islam and of Muslims in India, and among teachers and activists working for the cause of communal harmony in the nation. A civil engineer by qualification, he has trained in Islamic theology, Tafsir, Islamic Jurisprudence and the Hadith. He has more than 40 published books to his credit on Islam, the problems of Muslims, the rights of Muslim women, and on communal and ethical problems in India and South Asia. A large number of articles by him have appeared in leading Indian newspapers and journals, and he is the editor of the quarterly Indian Journal of Secularism. He has held office in key academic, Islamic and civil rights institutions and associations, and won a number of national awards for efforts in communal harmony.

Very significantly for this book, he has probably the longest and most extensive record of personal study and research into communal riots in India.

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