Since its inception, CC has focused on the failure of the Indian democratic establishment to deal with hate speech despite sections of the law that empower the state and its police to act when speech or writing incites violence. This is an appalling blemish on the record of Indian democracy. It is the failure not just of the executive and its police who do not act to prevent or prosecute offenders but also of Indian courts who have turned a blind eye to these crimes.

The breakdown of the rule of law and the impunity enjoyed by powerful offenders are issues that Indian democracy will be forced to confront sooner or later. Orissa and Gujarat, over and over again, are glaring examples of this. Last month’s cover story on Orissa was a searing reminder of both the breakdown of the rule of law and the impunity enjoyed by criminals acting in the name of Hinduism coupled with a deafening silence on events from the Indian establishment. No suo motu notice from the apex court or National Human Rights Commission has asked any questions of the Orissa government. Nor have any of our parliamentarians, from any political party, cared to visit the state and record the plight of Christians living in relief camps there.

Gujarat’s ancient capital of Patan was the scene of a gory scandal that erupted after a student, a Dalit girl, had the courage to speak out after being gang-raped by six professors of her college on 14 separate occasions over several months. Thanks to her courage and the support she received from a woman professor, Bharati Patel, what emerged was not just a crime limited to a single college but a serial racket of gender crimes at girls’ hostels in Patan and perhaps other districts in the state. A particularly shocking aspect of the Patan scandal has been the political connections that the accused enjoy. Patan, in North Gujarat, is the district from which former state education minister, Anandi Patel, hails. One of the accused, Atul Patel, who threatened the victim with death after raping her, led Anandi Patel’s election campaign in 2002. Another accused, Manish Parmar, who moves around the college campus armed with a knife, is a relative of current state education minister, Ramanlal Vora. Massive protests on the issue all over Gujarat, including a demonstration of 25,000 persons in Patan city, and demonstrations at various universities, including the Maharaja Sayajirao University in Vadodara, provide a ray of hope.

Kashmiri Pandits, forced to flee home and hearth in 1989-1990, remain a dispossessed minority in India. The circumstances behind their mass exodus remain shrouded in political doublespeak and CC carries an article voicing their demands for a high level inquiry into the circumstances behind their expulsion and their current plight along with the demand for central and state efforts to rehabilitate this minority in the valley.

Finally, our cover story of the month – the Gulberg Society Museum of Resistance – an idea that was born out of the darkness and despair in Gujarat and India after 2002, the attempts to obliterate all memory of the carnage coupled with the callous tardiness of the apex court in delivering justice to victims of mass crimes. In this space, where 25 families once lived in a housing society named and nurtured by an extraordinary individual, Ahsan Jaffri, we shall together memorialise not just the narratives (personal, social, political and cultural) of 2002 but of communal violence across the country. Communalism remains in the main a taboo for Indians and we need a space to reflect upon the phenomenon, even the courage to stare it in the face. We know and hope that readers of CC will be fellow travellers in the struggle to create this memorial.