Gujarat carnage: let the truth be told
http://www.samachar.com/features/090502-fpj.html
By M.V. Kamath
Source: Free Press Journal
May 9, 2002
Now, that the carnage in Gujarat has abated, if not
altogether stopped, the time has come to state some
truths, mostly unpleasant. But they have to be told in
the interests of future peace and a better social
order.
One, there would have been no Ahmedabad had there been
no Godhra, a point that need to be stressed again and
again. And nobody is seriously going to take the
finding of Star News that Godhra was not pre-planned;
there is every indication that it was well-planned and
equally - and diabolically - well-executed.
To say that the Muslims living by the railway track
did not appreciate the kar sevaks shouting Bharat Mata
ki jai is an astonishing bit of sophistry. Where is
that slogan to be shouted: in Pakistan?
And to insist that Godhra would not have taken place
if there was no Ayodhya is adding insult to injury.
Had the Muslim community been gracious - is it too
much to ask for that virtue? -and granted the right of
Hindus to dismantle the Babri masjid and set up a
temple to Sri Ram on the site, India would have been
applauded as a model state where all people lived in
peace and mutual understanding. The role of the
secularists in goading a minuscule Muslim population
to deny Hindus their straightforward request made over
centuries has contributed much to Hindu-Muslim
tensions.
The secular extremists - yes, there are such in the
country-must ask themselves whether they may not have
been responsible, howsoever indirectly, to the
spawning of the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu
Parisad. It is the steadfast role of the secularists
in denying the Hindus their self-respect in their own
country which has been responsible for the setting up
of the parallel Hindu organisation.
To demonise Narendra Modi and say that he deliberately
waited for a couple of days before summoning units of
the Armed Forces to control the rioters merely serves
to remind one of the killings in Delhi in 1984
following the assassination of Indira Gandhi. Then
there was just as much delay in summoning the Armed
Forces and just as much involvement of the police in
the killing of innocent Sikhs. And it may be well
worth reminding everyone that as many as 3,000 Sikhs,
men, women and children, were killed in the orgy
started by Congress hooligans, or almost three times
those killed in the Ahmedabad riots.
Communal violence has been endemic in Gujarat - and
especially in Ahmedabad - and it should not be
necessary to point out that in the 1992 riots, a local
conflict transmuted itself into a month-long carnage
that left some 1,500 people dead, 90 percent of them
Muslims. As Anuradha Kumar has pointed out in a
perceptive article in The Telegraph (1 May), "in this
and in conflagrations that would later follow, not
only did political and social leaders fail to contain
violence, some of them were the chief instigators of
such violence".
According to an impartial writer, Bharat Wariavwalla,
"the Hindu-Muslim divide in Gujarat is deeper than
perhaps anywhere else in the country and it cuts
across party lines". Says Wariavwalla, writing in The
Tribune (27 April): "The the Congress is secular and
the BJP is sectarian simply doesn't hold true in
Gujarat". This is a point that Sonia Gandhi may do
well to remember.
For a three-man committee appointed by the Press Guild
of Indira to say that the media can be absolved of
fanning the fires of killings, loot and murder is to
refuse to look facts in their face. The media,
especially the English print media, and, of course
certain Television channels, have much to answer for.
Whether the 2002 riots in Ahmedabad rank higher is
ferocity or bestiality than riots in the same city in
the past or riots elsewhere in the country is a moot
question. What needs to be asked is whether both
communities have learnt the simple lesson that in the
end violence just does not pay. One view is that the
just-concluded riots may at last bring sanity to
people in Gujarat and see the end of riots for all
times to come. Those who have followed events
elsewhere in the world point to the fact that after a
quarter century of bitter fighting, Christians and
Muslims in Lebanon have made peace with each other,
and there is no reason why Hindus and Muslims in
Ahmedabad and elsewhere in India should not follow the
Lebanon example.
The point must be emphasised that all Opposition
parties have cynically used the Ahmedabad riots for
self-serving purposes and as a way of catching
minority (namely Muslim) votes. That is the most
sickening aspect of the picture as it emerges. Worse
still is the deliberate manner in which parliamentary
proceedings were stalled by the Opposition for six
whole days at heavy cost to the national exchequer.
The manner in which the proceedings were carried on,
the foul language used, the theatricals and the
hysterics reflect no glory to the Opposition which, by
its behaviour, has demeaned itself. This calls for
public condemnation.
Another point to be noted is the angst shown by
tribals in the Chotte-Udepur area of the Vadodara
district when 7,000 of them, armed to the teeth,
sought to massacre Muslims in Bodeli town, complaining
that they have long been ill-treated by Muslim
merchants and middle-men. A Media inquiry would surely
find out - if an inquiry is pressed - that the tribals
of Gujarat blame local Muslims for their exploitation,
especially of tribal women.
According to another observer, Arvind Lavakare,
bullying by the minority over the years has largely
been responsible for the educated Hindu class to veer
to the conclusion that 'enough is enough'. It may not
bring back a single wasted life but it may explain to
some extent the ferocity of the riots this time.
Writes Lavakare: "The overt and covert appeasement of
Muslims by the political class and the media is
finally it appears, becoming too stifling, even for
the traditionally tolerant Hindu".
The religious guru and founder of the Art of Living
Foundation, Ravi Shankar has been quoted as saying
that in Karnataka, 40,000 Hindu temples have an annual
income of Rs. 400 million of which only Rs. 5 million
are spent on them, the rest going to the government.
Ravi Shankar is then quoted as saying that while the
income from minority religious institutions is just
about Rs. 5 million, they get government grants of Rs.
80 million.
Though the riots this time were confined strictly to
Gujarat and, that too, mainly in Ahmedabad their
repercussions have apparently been felt all over
India. It may well usher in aperiod of deep
introspection among both the Muslim and Hindu
communities as to how far they can go without damaging
their respective economies. It could also lead to
fresh thinking on what secularism is and what Hindutva
should be and how far both could be pressed without
inviting opprobrium.
Yet another phrase - jihad - that has frequently
reverberated in Muslim areas in large towns and cities
may now come to be re-defined. As practised by
Pakistan in Jammu & Kashmir, it has reflected badly on
Muslims in India and may be said to have substantially
contributed towards the raising of Hindu-Muslim
tensions in the country.
At the same time attention of secularists is being
drawn to the plight of the Pundits of Kashmir,
thousands of whom are living in the most miserable
conditions in Jammu and elsewhere. According to Ashok
Padit, spokesperson of Punum Kashmir, about 10,000
Kashmiri Pandits have been shot dead over the years
and some 3.5 lakhs have not only been dispossessed but
have been thrown out of the state without so much as a
protest from the secularists. While the Gujarat
Government is being condemned for not showing enough
sensitivity towards the plight of Muslim refugees, not
one word of sympathy, it is claimed, has been uttered
concerning the suffering of Kashmiri Pundits. The
insensitivity of secularists in this regard can only
be termed as sickening.
For the first time in Indian history foreign
intervention in India's affairs have been noted with
the European Union - represented in India by Spain and
Belgium - presenting a 'demarche'against Delhi for
violation of Human Rights. This is ironic considering
that in the middle ages the Spaniards drove out the
Moors from the entire Iberian peninsula and destroyed
every one of their mosques with a mindless ferocity
that would put to shame anything that has happened in
India in the last fifty years. As for the Belgians,
their record in the Congo would make any decent man
cry in shame. But apparently the Government of Spain
and Belgium think Indians either have no sense of
history or are short of memory.
What Muslims forget, but what M.J. Akbar has rightly
pointed out in his book: 'The Shade of Swords' is
this. To quote him: "The only Muslims in the world to
enjoy sustained democratic liberty are not in
Pakistan, but those who remained in India. Indian
Muslims have had more problems than anyone deserves,
paying the price for their ancestors, on the one hand
and the success of the Muslim League on the other, but
they remain the only Muslims - and there are now over
160 million of them - with guaranteed democratic
rights" which no party in India - and certainly not
the BJP - wants to or can take away from Muslims. And
when that is said, everything is said.