Home Page

  Communalism Combat

  India Rights & Wrongs

  Khoj

  Aman

 

Subscribe for daily media monitor:   
Subscribe 
Unsubscribe  

 

  Feedback

 

  Action Alerts

 

  Campaigns

 

  Resources for

  Secularism

 

  About us

 

  Contact Us

 

  Sabrang Team

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

October 8, 2003

The Indian Express 

Gujarat’s gaurav

The state requires remorse and justice to be vibrant again

B. G. VERGHESE

Gujaratis are a vibrant people. Everybody favours a Vibrant Gujarat as part of a Vibrant India. But it does little service either to Gujaratis or Indians generally to describe the 2002 holocaust in Gujarat as a passing “aberration”.

According to Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani the “riots” were admittedly “sad and unfortunate”, even shameful. But “sustained propaganda” about what had happened was hurting the image of the state and the country.

Quite clearly, what the deputy prime minister and home minister is again saying is that the portrayal of the Gujarat episode has been grossly exaggerated. (By whom? By the traumatised victims still seeking justice? By the media, the Opposition, the NHRC, the Minorities Commission, the Supreme Court?) His lament is that a passing lapse at worst is not being allowed to rest. Set against the enormity of the tragedy, such a suggestion is incomprehensible. Coming from the home minister it is gravely disturbing. The unintended pun is apt. Some 800 innocent persons by official count and around 2000 by the more probable unofficial count — or their severed limbs and incinerated bones — were interred in graves or cremated.

India’s image is neither protected nor enhanced by covering up for Narendra Modi, Pravin Togadia and their ilk. All of them justified and virtually glorified the horrors enacted while continuing to spread venom and hatred in defiance of the law. Modi, broadcasting over AIR on (was it) Day Three, told the terrified victims that if they wanted peace they should not seek justice.

Nothing could be more brazen. Other Hindutva champions labelled the Gujarat happenings a “successful experiment” even as the pre-election Gaurav Yatra communicated a message of triumphalism.

All this while, the Centre was silent and supine while the home minister of India congratulated Modi for his unparalleled achievement in more or less restoring “normalcy” within 72 hours. What happened within those 72 hours? Murder, mayhem, arson, rape. Judges were attacked.

Ranking Muslim police officers were compelled to tear off their ID badges as they were unsafe, while others who stood their ground and did their duty were summarily transferred — on “promotion”! Two government offices in the Old Secretariat, the Gujarat State Wakf Board and the Gujarat Minorities Finance and Development Corporation, were attacked and set on fire.

Muslim shops and establishments were selectively targeted and a social and economic boycott of the community enjoined. A large number of Muslim shrines, graves and revered symbols of cultural fusion and communal harmony were systematically destroyed or desecrated.

The state government did not open a single relief camp — and later forced their premature closure — while senior ministers openly campaigned against establishing camps in their neighbourhoods as it might endanger their safety.

An aberration or calculated policy? There was a clear breakdown of governance. Rajdharma was preached only to be scorned and forgotten. The Centre was finally pushed into promising to issue directives to the state government under Article 355. It is not apparent that anything happened. The fire was left to burn out, though the embers of hate were kept alive. What else was the “Mian Musharraf” campaign of calumny against the Muslims? General Musharraf returned the compliment by referring to Gujarat in his address to the UN General Assembly. Every sensitive, decent, democratic Indian was filled with shame. Who has destroyed India’s image and who is trying to pass the buck?

The argument that the Gujarat killings were a response to Godhra is specious and abhorrent. Do innocents bear a vicarious liability for the alleged crimes of their co-religionists? And, in any event, what happened in Godhra awaits confirmation.

The Supreme Court’s stinging observations on the Best Bakery case serve as a clear reminder that things are still rotten in Gujarat. Were it that that was the sole case of investigative failure and mistrial. Not so.

FIRs have not been properly registered. Named criminals remain at large or are “absconding” even as they intimidate witnesses. POTA has been selectively used. The payment of compensation for loss of life, property and livelihood has been totally unsatisfactory in a large number of cases. There has been no recent accounting of what happened to the Rs 150 crore special compensation fund instituted by the prime minister. What has happened?

The commission of inquiry into the Godhra-Gujarat events continues to labour under Justice Nanavati who has incidentally been unable to complete his inquiry into the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, so long awaited. Meanwhile some, like the former IAS officer Harsh Mander, who continue to work dedicatedly to bring succour to the distressed in Gujarat and are striving to restore confidence, trust and harmony, are beginning to feel hounded. This is an ill omen.

Advani was discharged by a Rae Bareli court in the Ayodhya case early in September. On September 28 he delivered his homily on Gujarat in Ahmedabad. Three days earlier, it was reported that an IAF MI-8 helicopter made an emergency landing in a village field while on a sortie from Jamnagar to Somnath.

On board were eight media persons said to be accompanying the deputy prime minister and home minister on what the reporter described as Advani’s annual tryst with the Somnath Temple. This is where he launched his Rath Yatra in 1990, the progenitor of much ensuing grief. Are IAF aircraft to be commandeered for media witness of personal piety and/or party political commemorations?

The symbolism of the Somnath “tryst” will not be missed. Gujarat surely needs a healing touch to become whole and truly vibrant. This calls for remorse, justice and reconciliation, not exculpatory rhetoric or reluctant compliance with the law that betrays grudging regard for common humanity. 

http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=32969

 

 

 

 

TOP

Sabrang Communications & Publishing Pvt. Ltd.