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home > News/Analysis  > Attack On The Akshardham Temple: The Aftermath
Attack On The Akshardham Temple: The Aftermath


Terrorists attack Jammu temples, 12 dead
The Times of India, November 25, 2002

Attack On The Akshardham Temple: The Aftermath


Related Material
Indian-American Muslims Condemn Attack On Hindu Temple
September 26, 2002

Analysis: Why is Gujarat so violent?
By Sanjeev Srivastava, September 25, 2002, BBC correspondent in Bombay

India: Keep Peace in Gujarat
Human Rights Watch, September 26, 2002

All Civilians in Gujarat Must Be Protected
Amnesty International, September 24, 2002

Joint Appeal for Peace
NGOs from U.S.A, September 24, 2002

'All should cooperate in maintaining law and order in Gujarat'
Natioanl Human Rights Commission, September 25, 2002

Muslim Law Board chief condemns Gujarat temple attack
LUCKNOW, PTI, SEPT 25, 2002

Muslim organisations extend support to bandh call
Times News Network, September 26, 2002

Non-resident Gujaratis shocked over temple attack
Times News Network, September 26, 2002

Imam condemns attack on temple
Kolkata, PTI, Sept 25, 2002

Muslims roundly condemn attack on Swaminarayan temple
Rediff.com, September 26, 2002

Christian Council condemns attack on temple
Deepika, September 26, 2002

Press Statement: The All India Democratic Women¹s Association
September 25, 2002

EKTA
Statement on Terrorist attack on Swaminarayan temple

September 25, 2002

Joint Statement from NGOs in Ahmedabad
September 26, 2002

  • The terror trail
    Akshardham, a post-mortem

    Dionne Bunsha in Gandhinagar Praveen Swami in New Delhi, Frontline, Volume 19 - Issue 21, October 12 - 25, 2002
    The siege and the subsequent storming of the Akshardham temple complex in Gandhinagar, which claimed 37 lives and left 81 persons injured, shocked, but did not surprise everyone. In some senses, the real surprise is that the tragedy did not happen sooner.

  • Temple puts past behind
    Meghdoot Sharon, Gandhinagar, The Indian Express, October 7, 2002
    On Monday, the Akshardham temple complex at Gandhinagar was a picture of serenity. Throughout the day, people kept filtering in through the main gate and almost all visited the main temple and exhibition halls.

  • Modi tries to woo minorities using Akshardham card
    Times News Network, October 06, 2002
    AHMEDABAD: Shifting from his earlier rhetoric, Gujarat CM Narendra Modi used the Akshardham incident to woo the minorities at Patdi and Shankheshwar by saying, "We (the BJP) insist that the terrorists were Pakistanis, but the Congress says that they were Gujarati Muslims."

  • South Asians in U.S. remember Gandhi
    By Vasantha Arora, Indo-Asian News Service
    Washington, Oct 2 (IANS) A group of South Asians held a vigil at Mahatma Gandhi's statue opposite the Indian embassy here to call for religious harmony in India.

  • Competitive bandhs
    By Dipankar Gupta, The Hindu, October 1, 2002
    Political demonstrations of grief are often a smokescreen to avoid performing public responsibilities.

  • Temple opens with healing touch - Modi Takes Cue, Issues Appeal for Brotherhood
    By Basant Rawat, Monday September 30, 2002
    Gandhinagar, Sept. 29: The walls still showed the scars of the bullets that ricocheted off them five days ago, but the message that came from within did not speak of the wound as Narendra Modi has been doing from a rath.

  • Muslim leaders decry temple attack
    Times News Network, September 30, 2002
    JUNAGADH: After Friday’s ‘namaaz’ at the Jama Masjid here, Muslim leaders condemned the terrorist attack on Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar and expressed sympathy with those killed and injured in the attack.

  • A query for the CM
    Thank heavens, September 26 was peaceful. So what happened on February 28?
    Editorial, The Indian Express, September 28, 2002

    The contrast is simply too stark to escape unremarked. Gujarat went up in flames during the VHP-sponsored bandh on February 28, the day after Godhra; on September 26, the bandh called by the VHP after the Akshardham Temple outrage passes off peacefully, except for a few relatively minor incidents. And the explanation won’t be fudged. It was not, as Modi has insisted, thanks to the ‘pseudo-secularists’ who ‘did not use a particular language to describe the event’.

  • Jamaat-e-Islami, Syedna condemn temple attack
    Times News Network, September 28, 2002
    AHMEDABAD: Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, Gujarat while condemning the terrorist attack on Akshardham Swaminarayan temple at Gandhinagar recently, has expressed shock and sorrow over the killings of innocent people. The Jamaat described the attack as an act of cowardice.

  • This time, PM, Advani laid down the law. Why they shouldn’t stop here
    Temple Complex

    Shekhar Gupta, The Indian Express, September 28, 2002
    If anything, this only confirms the old wisdom on communal carnage. If the state machinery is determined to prevent it then the mob can never rule the streets. Some of our recent riots either had the state looking the other way, or even being complicit to some extent.

  • VHP bandh peaceful, costs nation Rs 1,000 crore
    Times News Network & Agencies, September 27, 2002
    NEW DELHI: The VHP bandh in protest against the attack on Swaminarayan Temple ended peacefully on Thursday. But the protest, according to industry sources, caused a loss of Rs 1,000 crore.

  • Police rule out local hand in attack
    Times News Network, September 26, 2002
    AHMEDABAD: Officials pursuing investigations into the bloody storming of the Akshardham temple are almost ruling out the possibility of the two terrorists being Gujaratis, despite the letters found on their person proclaiming that they were out to avenge the killings during the riots.

  • Temple attack not to avenge Gujarat riots, says Modi
    Times News Network, September 27, 2002
    AHMEDABAD: Harping on the “conspiracy theory,” the state government on Thursday categorically refuted that the Akshardham siege was to avenge the mass killing of minorities in Gujarat after the Godhra massacre.

  • Read the riot act, Modi plays ball
    Milind Ghatwai, The Indian Express, Ahmedabad, September 26, 2002
    Told clearly that the Centre and the party could not afford a repeat of the carnage that followed Godhra, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, the police, the administration and the VHP worked in tandem to ensure that today’s bandh passed off peacefully.

  • Attack on human values
    By Habibullah Badsha, The Hindu, September 27, 2002
    It is sad that a country, which has been known for its tolerance, love and pluralism, has become the battleground of communalism, violence and hatred. The attack on the devotees of the Swaminarayan Temple at Gandhinagar is an attack on human values and the social fabric of the country.

  • Reprisal fear triggers exodus again
    Times News Network, September 26, 2002
    AHMEDABAD/VADODARA: It is back to relief camps on the eve of another VHP-sponsored bandh on Thursday.

    People from areas like Naroda-Patia, which witnessed a massacre during the last VHP-backed bandh on February 28, have started moving to camps fearing another round of reprisals.

  • VHP bandh begins, Army on standby
    Times News Network, September 26, 2002
    AHMEDABAD/VADODARA/SURAT/RAJKOT: As the VHP-sponsored Bharat bandh began on Thursday, the Modi government is taking no chances with the law and order situation in the state.

  • Living in fear: strike to bandh On knife-edge, courtesy VHP
    Anand Soondas And Basant Rawat, The Telegraph, September 26, 2002
    The VHP has refused to give any assurance that the Bharat bandh will be peaceful. “If their (people’s) resentment is not properly channelised, there will be widespread and large-scale violence,” warned secretary Surendra Jain, who is also the Bajrang Dal convener.

  • Modi's Gujarat: whose failure is this?
    Hari Jaisingh, The Tribune, September 26, 2002
    The indiscriminate killings of devotees in the Akshardham temple complex in Gandhinagar are too shocking for words and deserve worldwide condemnation. The gruesome incident once again brings to the fore the serious flaws and distortions not only in governance in Gujarat but also in political thinking and responses.

  • Religion didn’t do it
    Murderers in Gujarat belonged to no community
    T. V. R. Shenoy, The Indian Express, September 26, 2002

    There is no justification for the kind of murder committed at Akshardham. No speeches and no taunts, no matter how ‘provocative’, justify the wanton killing of innocents in a house of worship. It needs to be emphasised that the terrorist doesn’t belong to any community, he has placed himself outside civilised society.

  • In unity is our strength
    The crazed, diabolic attack in Gandhinagar demands an united nation and people
    Editorial, The Indian Express, September 26, 2002

    The terrorists who stormed the temple have been defeated physically. But that was the easy part. The far greater challenge lies in defeating their project of hatred and communal polarisation. If we fail to do this, those who masterminded Tuesday’s attack would have ultimately succeeded. The recent history of Gujarat is just too calamitous to risk a repetition.

  • Attack fallout: Cong, BJP may have to rework strategy
    Kingshuk Nag, Times News Network, September 26, 2002
    AHMEDABAD: When the news about the storming of Akshardham temple became public on Tuesday evening, a pall of gloom fell on the Congress headquarters in Ahmedabad. With great difficulty, in recent weeks, Shankarsinh Vaghela had managed to put up a semblance of a fight against the BJP, but in one stroke the terrorists seemed to have created conditions handing over the state on a platter to the saffron party. "We are gone," confessed a Congress leader to The Times of India at that time.

  • A heinous act
    Editorial, The Hindu, September 26, 2002
    THE HEINOUS TERRORIST attack on the Swaminarayan sect's Akshardham temple complex in Gandhinagar (Gujarat), which clearly ranks among the most dastardly of such assaults on innocent civilians outside Jammu and Kashmir, deserves to be condemned in the strongest of terms by everyone who has even a modicum of faith in basic human values and civilised behaviour.

  • Reflections on Gandhinagar Temple Attack
    Mukul Dube, September 25, 2002
    Terrorism has always been thought a bad thing. In this year since the WTC attack, though, it has achieved a prominence which it never had before: possibly because Mr. George W. Bush, Jr., the Ultimate Arbiter, declared it not just a bad thing but the worst.

  • BJP says protests against attack should not trigger tension
    New Delhi, PTI, September 25, 2002
    Anxious to prevent recurrence of post-Godhra communal violence in Gujarat in the wake of the terrorist attack on the Gandhinagar temple, the BJP today said protests against yesterday's incident should ensure no tensions are created and asserted Chief Minister Narender Modi's Gaurav Yatra did not trigger the attack.

  • Red alert India
    Editorial, The Hindustan Times, September 25, 2002
    To any adversary of India, it might seem that the easiest way to set Gujarat aflame again is to organise an attack on innocent devotees.

  • India Blames Pakistan for Attack
    By Rupak Sanyal, Associated Press Writer, September 25, 2002
    GANDHINAGAR, India (AP) - India deployed thousands of troops to prevent an eruption of Hindu-Muslim rioting Wednesday after attackers besieged a major Hindu temple complex in a raid that left 32 people dead, most of them worshippers.