Arun Jaitley and the albatross of CTVB hanging from his neck

The Communal and Targeted Violence Bill of 2011 is the bird of good omens which the mariner of BJP has shot down.
The bill must be seen in the backdrop of the last two decades of India’s communal cauldron and the past beyond that should not be forgotten either. Only obsession with the highest powerful man in Gujarat and shielding him by sophistry will not do.
Arun Jaitley conveniently forgets that mass rape of Muslims in Gujarat 2002 was an act of communal violence and an act of terror. Terror and communal violence are the two sides of the same coin as far as India and the whole of Indian subcontinent is concerned. The most disastrous events of violence associated with the juggernaut of demolition of the mosque in Ayodhya in the late eighties and early nineties of the 20th century and building a temple there and the burning of the train compartment carrying karsevaks returning from Ayodhya in 2002.
It is history and fresh in mind that Muslim girls and women were paraded naked, gang raped and burnt alive. In many cases their fetus were also yanked out and stuck on spears. These heinous acts were perpetrated by extremist “groups” of the right wing Hindutva—Bajrang Dal, VHP, Chhara community which the RSS had co-opted into the attacking hordes. There is no doubt that they belong to the majority community, Hindu. But then all the Hindus in Gujarat did not think or act like the hordes. The same ‘groups’ or hordes who descended on the Muslims carried out the pogroms because it was well known from day one that the Chief Minister of the state of Gujarat had given instructions to that effect. On February 27, 2002 he had instructed the police not to intervene but let the Hindu crowds vent out their anger at the Muslims to teach them a lesson that they would never dare to react.
This is the most crucial example of ‘targetting’ Muslims as a ‘group’ by right wing groups of BJP, VHP, Bajrang Dal. That is, the threat held out. The Chief Minister said that VHP had declared strike on February 28 and his own party BJP had also accepted the call to strike and joined it. Therefore he and his party acted as ‘group’ made up of the Hindu who are in majority in the state. But by no stretch of imagination does this mean all the Hindus had subscribed to his and his party’s views. There were Hindus like RB Sreekumar, Sanjiv Bhatt, Rahul Sharma or many good Samaritans in scattered rural and urban places who did not either agree or carry out the instructions of Modi. But KK Mysorewalla in charge of Naroda Patia police did toe the line of the Home Minister who was also Chief Minister of the state. Mysorewalla did commit dereliction of duty to protect the Muslims who pleaded for shelter but he left them to the mercy of the bloodthirsty marauding crowd and did not protect them.
But there were other Hindu officers in the police force who did not allow any pogrom in their areas. The pogroms were limited to certain districts of Gujarat. Not the whole of Gujarat was affected as not all the Gujarati Hindus had turned blind to what was happening around in other parts of the state. Therefore it is false syllogism that the majority community will only bear the blame if the CTVB is passed and enacted and they alone will be punished. It stands out clearly that the police officers who were even handed in keeping law and order were penalized by the state. Were they not Hindus and members of the majority community in the state?
What Modi did is he committed the crime in the sense of Dostoevsky’s protagonist in his novel Crime and Punishment. The novelist and his hero have a theory that an extraordinary character like Napoleon or Mohammad was so powerful that he would break the law knowing that it was wrong. But he would do it when he is convinced that it serves the larger interest of the community. For example the hero kills a Jewess money lender for her exorbitant rate of interest. Usury was condemned by Christ for which the Jews nailed him on the crucifix. But then every breaking of law is a crime and must lead to punishment. The would-be heroine persuaded the hero to confess his homicide and undergo exile to the Siberian desert. The whole momentum of BJP is against this meting out of the judgment. Jaitley again: "The drafting of this bill appears to be the handiwork of those social entrepreneurs who have learnt from the Gujarat experience of how to fix senior leaders even when they are not liable for an offence." Therefore, according to the theory of Dostoevsky Modi stands with Napoleon and Mohammad.

Why does Jaitley appropriate the whole of the populace of India when he says “Even when minor communal or caste disturbances occur, there is a national mood of revulsion against them. The governments, media, the courts among other institutions rise to perform their duty. The perpetrators of communal trouble should certainly be punished.” He should better ask AB Vajpayee and Narendra Modi if they did their raj dharma or state duty. What was “shameful” to the former was not shared by the latter. They also belonged to the majority. And how far did the former share in the national mood of revulsion which the latter did not show an iota of it. Did the targeted killing of Sohrabuddin fill either of the two with remorse? So talking of the national mood is limited to the ‘group’ of the ‘cultural nationalists’ of the two who indulge in prevarication. Those who felt true revulsion were different Indians.
Perhaps Jaitley needs to be schooled in the phenomenal shift that terrorism has taken the place of communal riots and violence in India and hence they are interchangeable. This phenomenon has not transpired in the US. There were no communal riots as a result of 9/11. But what began as a traffic offence in Coimbatore in 1998 became a communal riot and ultimately terrorism. Hindus who quartered Muslims injured and hospitalized were as much terrorists as Muslims who bombed the same hospital. Both ‘groups’ practiced it, the Hindus and the Muslims. Terror is terror whether you wield a sword or detonate a bomb. In Kannur, Kerala, the turf war between the RSS and Muslims and Marxists is indistinguishable whether it is communal violence or terrorism. Who and what had “incentivized” who to do what?
Babu Bajrangi and his associates had collected arms from fellow Hindus and used them against the hapless Muslims. He boasted that they found better way of eliminating the Muslims by herding them with their guns into the dry well of Naroda Patia and took the petrol from the nearby ST bus workshop where KK Mysorewall was stationed and burnt the hundreds of Muslims alive. The commissioner of police PC Pande found the number of dead staggering and ordered the dispersion of the dead corpses to other parts. This was the work of an “association”, to use the word that Jaitley mentions in the following. “Clause 9 creates an offence for communal and targeted violence. Any person who singly or jointly or acting under the influence of an association engages in unlawful activity directed against a 'group' is guilty of organised communal and targeted violence.” Does not this description of Jaitley do justice to the offence and the offenders?
Furthermore, BJP, erstwhile Jan Sangh and the mother of all ‘groups,’ RSS, are familiar in the art of creating ‘groups’ to carry out the hidden agenda of the saffron affiliates. DR Goyal who was a member of RSS and wrote extensively about RSS has this to say: “In 1969, riots broke out in Ahmedabad. There was a separate organisation called “Support for Hindus” to lead the riot. Similarly, when there were riots in Jalgaon and Bhiwandi, a similar organisation was set up. However, if you look at their composition, all the members were also members of the RSS. The parent organisation of such groups that engineer such riots is always the RSS.”
On May 23 1969 the Jan Sangh leader and RSS hard core ‘volunteer’ Dr Bhagwan Prabhashanker Vyas created a ‘group’ in the town of Bhiwandi in Maharashtra. He christened it Rashtriya Utsav Mahasangh or National Festival Great Organization. The nineteen members of this group did not stomach the way the Shiv Jayanti committee celebrated the birth anniversary of the Maratha king. Vyas wanted them to linger longer before mosques and throw gulal or red powder at mosques to create tension and that is a sure recipe of communal violence and riots. In the past as in 1967 he did it at the Panjarpol Dargah but the police nipped the trouble in the bud. Thus the creation of the dissenting 19 under the name of a ‘group’ RUM came handy to create a riot in 1969. This is the way of the multi-headed Hydra of the sangh parivar thrives. Does Jaitley still pretend that he does not know the multiplication of the ‘groups’ created by the RSS? Such groups are from the majority community of Hindus who are in minority in Bhiwandi vis-à-vis Muslims who were 65% of the population according to Justice Madan.
Look at the lofty aims of RUM ala RSS: (1) to celebrate festivals according to Indian tradition; (2) to organize religious, social and cultural programmes; (3) to develop Indian culture consistent with the modern scientific age; (4) to foster nationalistic tendencies; (5) to curb anti–national activities ; and (6) to foster national integrity. All this proved ostentation of which the Jaitleys of such groups are always before the mike with their old legerdemain up in their sleeves. “In all matters likely to create communal tension the R.U.M. adopted a militant and aggressive attitude and set itself up as the champion of what it considered to be the rights of the Hindus against the Muslims and, so to say, to teach the Muslims their place and if they were not willing to learn their place, to teach them a lesson. It even went out of its way to create such occasions”

Some groups can be openly hostile and violent and attack Hurriyat leaders in Jammu and Kashmir irrespective of the fact whether they belong to the minority or majority. Such acts are potentially dangerous because they can create law and order situation and the local political set up in such a state may like to exercise political correctness and waive the laws of the land in dealing with the situation. That was what happened with the Shiv Sena in Jammu.
That is what Modi chose to do in Gujarat. And more, he instructed the police to do his dictate.
Thanks to the draft bill as it encompasses the whole of India and not just Gujarat or JK either
Be Indian and live Indian. Stand up, how many of you belong to this ‘group’!