Three years ago on this very day, fifty-seven Hindu pilgrims died in a fire on a train in Gujarat. The fire happened as the Sabarmati Express, bound for Ahmedabad, was pulling out of Godhra station. The train was returning hundreds of Hindu activists from a pilgrimage to the disputed holy site of Ayodhya, which is claimed by both Muslims and Hindus. A gang of Muslims were suspected of causing the fire.

The incident sparked days of rioting in Gujarat state in which at least 5,000 people, most of them Muslims, died. The Godhra train incident is what most reports about the violence in Gujarat point to as the starting point for the barbarism and massacre of Muslims that followed. This is why it is critical to understand exactly what happened there.

About 60 people died in the train attack. Most of them were Hindu. Later on Hindu mobs burned and looted Muslim properties for several days, resulting in about 5,000 deaths. Initial reports on February 27 presented the incident as a pre-planned Muslim mob attack on the Sabarmati Express train against "innocent" Hindu activists who had begun traveling from the city of Ayodhya. However, as the facts began to trickle out, a different picture has emerged.

While it is true that many of the passengers were women and children, others were militant Hindu activists who were involved in various forms of hooliganism. From the time these activists boarded the train on February 25 in Ayodhya until they reached Godhra on February 27, they unleashed a wave of mischief, terror and fear on their passengers, some of whom were also Muslim.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran, reporting in the March 6, 2002 edition of the Washington Post, details some of the "hooliganism" that took place: the militant activists exposed themselves to other passengers, pulled headscarves off Muslim women on the train, evicted a family of four in the middle of the night for refusing to join in chants, and refused to pay for tea and snacks they consumed at each train station.

These details are corroborated by eyewitness accounts. One of these comes from a group led by members of the Indian parliament, headed by Dr. Amar Singh, from the Samajwadi Party, who spoke with two of the Hindu victims of the train-burning incident in Godhra. They revealed that, "all along the journey these Ramsevaks were behaving like Gundas (thugs). They wouldn't pay for what they had bought from the vendors.

On stations they would chant anti-Muslim rhymes and slogans. There was teasing as well of both fellow passengers and women on the platforms." Events played out as expected. "When the train reached Godhra, they behaved with the same bad manners. They refused to pay one tea vendor and even after beating him up, they threw him off the train," noted the Hindu eyewitnesses.

But in response to this behavior, the karsevaks did not find passive tolerance. Instead, a number of young Muslims got on the train as it was pulling out of the station and pulled the emergency brake half a mile away from Godhra's station, right in the midst of a Muslim neighborhood. The fight began with rock throwing from both sides. While the stone-throwing was going on, some Muslims apparently threw a burning mattress below the compartment of these militants. The fire spread quickly, since the compartment was filled with kerosene and cooking gas carried by the passengers.

The above description is based upon several reports in the Indian press. However, locals in the area add another point to this incident. They say things got out of hand when the daughter of an old Muslim man with a small tea stall at the train station was kidnapped. The karsevaks argued with this old man, beat him up and pulled his beard. The 16-year-old daughter who was also present at the station came forward as her father was being beaten and tried to save him from the karsevaks. She kept pleading and begging to them to stop beating her father and leave him alone. But instead of listening to her woes, they lifted the young girl, took her inside their compartment and closed its door.

When the train started to move out of the platform of Godhra station, the old man banged the compartment doors, pleading for his daughter to be left alone. Two other vendors jumped into the last bogey and pulled the emergency brake to stop the train. By the time the train halted completely, it was about one kilometer away from the railway station.

These two men then came to the bogey in which the girl was and started to bang at the door asking the karsevaks to release the girl. Hearing the chaos, people in the vicinity near the tracks started to gather near the train. The mob (which included women) that had now gathered near the compartment became infuriated and they retaliated by pelting stones at the compartment.

The sections beside compartment S-6 on both sides contained VHP activists. They started attacking the mob which had gathered to save the girl with long bamboo sticks. This is when the mob fury became uncontrollable and some people in the crowd started using diesel and petrol from trucks and rickshaws nearby and burned down the compartment.

This story of the girl's kidnapping was not reported by any newspaper, although most of the other elements were widely reported by the media despite the BJP government's effort to tie the incident to Pakistan. Even the deputy police superintendent in Godhra, said that the investigation did not support the contention of Gujarat's chief minister, Narendra Modi, that the assault on the train was a "terrorist attack."

In January 2005 an inquiry, led by Supreme Court judge Umesh Chandra Banerjee, found the fire had not been started by Muslims at all but had started accidentally. The long and short of the interim report is that no "inflammable liquid" such as petrol or a chemical substance was used to ignite the S-6 coach of the Sabarmati Express on that fateful day - February 27, 2002 - at Godhra. It also rules out the possibility of an electrical fire or "miscreant activity from any external agency."

One can find fault with the timing of the release of the interim report of the Justice U. C. Banerjee Committee and the BJP can heap all the accusations it wishes on the Railway Minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal chief, Mr. Laloo Prasad, on why, how and when the report was released. But the interim report, which says that the Godhra tragedy was an accident and not a "conspiracy", hatched by the 75 people now in jail for the offence, raises several interesting points and makes some serious observations on railway safety.

What will certainly be controversial in a report that has already drawn protests from the BJP and other members of the Sangh Parivar is the observation of the panel that it is "unbelievable" that kar sevaks armed with trishuls would allow themselves to be "burnt without a murmur". The report notes that there was evidence of cooking inside the coach by the kar sevaks and the fire could have been sparked either by a stove or a cigarette butt.

According to their ideologies, political parties have either welcomed or slammed the panel report. While the irrepressible Mr. Prasad has accused the BJP, the Modi Government in Gujarat and the Sangh Parivar of "involvement in the post-Godhra riots", the Congress(I) and the Left parties have said that the panel's findings have nailed the "Modi government's lies" that a deliberate conspiracy was hatched to torch the kar sevaks traveling by the Sabarmati Express.

The BJP's chagrin can be understood given the accusations that the saffron party and the rest of the Sangh Parivar hurled at not only the Muslim community, in general, but also secularists - including Hindu liberals - for finding fault with its Hindutva ideology and its politics colored by communalism. Over the last three years, Godhra has become both a weapon and a shield for the Sangh Parivar outfits; a weapon to attack the Muslims by pointing out their belligerence and "terror tactics" and a shield to defend the worst communal carnage this country saw post-Independence.

As though the beleaguered BJP's woes were not enough, another panel of independent engineers, on the basis of scientific review of the physical evidence, testimony of the witnesses and medical records of the victims, has come out with findings that broadly support the Justice Banerjee Committee's interim findings. They find the pattern of the fire in the S-6 coach of the Sabarmati Express similar to other railway coaches that have had fire accidents.

But whatever the findings of the Justice Banerjee Committee, the timing of the release of the report is significant indeed. Coming as it does on the eve of the Bihar elections, and rapping as it does Laloo's bete noir and the former Union Railway Minister, Mr. Nitish Kumar, as well as the Railway administration, for failing to conduct a statutory inquiry into the incident, the report's findings will certainly add political mileage for Mr. Prasad as well as his allies vis-à-vis the Muslim vote in Bihar - a solid 16.5 per cent according to the 2001 Census.

With the Congress having decided to field 80 candidates in Bihar and there being an outside chance of about 30-40 of them making it, Laloo is apprehensive that its ally in the UPA Government will wean away a good percentage of his Muslim vote. With 30 seats or more, the Congress support would become absolutely necessary for installing an RJD government yet again if the party does manage to emerge as the single largest entity. And an RJD dependent on the Congress in Patna would mean a much more restrained Laloo Prasad at the Centre.

But the tragedy in the midst of these political games is that one is still left wondering what the truth is vis-à-vis Godhra. It is unfortunate that issues such as the safety of citizens and communal unity are tossed around at the whims and fancies of our political players, sometimes in Ahmedabad, sometimes in Patna, and all the time in New Delhi. The crime at Godhra has brought home the fact that the maintenance of 'rule of law' demands more than a legal framework. It demands a constant and alert commitment and watchfulness, from the government as well as its citizens.

Communal riots are an indicator of socio-cultural schism existing between communities. Every communal riot not only deepens this schism and hardens the socio-cultural divide, but new found factors and reasons get added to the divide. The identification and evaluation of these factors and reasons, and finding its remedy is necessary if we want to stop its recurrence and reverse the process of communalization of our society.