The Gujarat Genocide and the Man who craftily wrought it

Chief Minster Narendra Modi of Gujarat fashioned everything since he contested election early in 2002. This includes manufacturing rumour for consumption by the people like saying that Ahsan Jafri had used his gun on the crowd. A man who campaigned against him for February 23 elections was the former Member of Parliament, Ahsan Jafri. He correctly feared and warned the people of the dangerous ideology of Hindutva that the RSS pracharak Modi had espoused and what it spelled for the state. Modi’s anger saw no limit as he was filled with hubris at the way the miyan (Muslim) was trying to oppose his election on February 23, 2002 and also showing pluck to consider himself equal to anyone howsoever high or low as a citizen of the country! Since then Modi took such a course of action as the head of the government after being sworn into power that he proved himself a desi Slobodan Milosevic of the Indian state of Gujarat bent on denying Muslims that they were equal to other fellow Indians. He and many others like him in the hardcore communal minded feel that the Muslims need to be taught a lesson which would show them their place.

There was a grand design hatched out and executed as Hindutva laboratory experiment. It was so systematically carried out that its very cunningness showed how well planned and diabolically and ruthlessly practiced it would be. It would be what many feared and most did not articulate in words and their deafening silence proved to be: genocide of Muslims.

The burning of the compartments of the Sabarmati express train was used to initiate that most violently inhuman course in the history of the state, nay, of India, that it would bring shame to the country but not the man who shrewdly worked behind the scene and controlled and factored everything into the grand design. In the meeting of February 27 late evening it was enough that he told his police and administration that the Hindus would get free hand in the murder and mayhem of Muslims for three days so that the history of the state of balancing Hindus and Muslims evenly in a political correctness of sorts would end forever in favour of the Hindus.
When the pogroms started, Modi was in contact with VHP chief Jaideep Patel and the fire brand minister in charge of children and women affairs, Maya Kodnani. His office phone record shows this. He also had talks with the Police Commissioner PC Pande as 15 phone calls made from his office establish it. As the phone records have been deliberately destroyed despite the gravity of the crimes committed during the pogroms it is high time that a grand jury should look into the role that such people that surrounded Modi as PC Pande, DGP K Chakravarti,, JCP MK Tandon, DCP PB Pondia, chief secretary Subha Rao, health minister Ashok Bhatt (deceased), urban development minister IK Jadejia, minister of state home Govardhan Jhadafiya have played. It is also relevant to go into the CD that IPS officer Rahul Sharma had submitted.
Modi had his administration yoked to one overwhelming task of not only conducting the pogroms of Muslims but also tackling and fixing the far reaching effect. After the arrest of Amit Shah minister of state for Home, it was not only his additional advocate general Tushar Mehta who was operating behind the scene but even an otherwise independent minded Ram Jethmalani offered his services in the juggernaut. It was he who settled the 89 page petition of Amit Shah where he ascribes motives to the two judges. The SC order of transferring the Sohrabuddin case to CBI dated January 12, 2010 had rubbed them on the wrong side. The petition says, “the order (is) a product of a tripartite understanding and arrangement to the effect that the CBI investigation would be ordered by Hon’ble Mr Justice Tarun Chatterjee (the lead judge who issued the January 12 order) as desired by the Central Government, the Central government will provide the Hon’ble Justice a post-retirement assignment, and the CBI will refrain from chargesheeting the Hon’ble Justice in the PF scam case.”

And, Justice Aftab “does not know whether the fact of the aforesaid pending and ongoing CBI investigation (on PF scam) against his brother Judge was known to Hon’ble Mr Justice Aftab Alam. He too should have offered to recuse if he did know.”

It seems that the basic strategy to cover up the genocide was to send probe reports of Special Investigation Team to the state additional advocate general Tushar Mehata. It was under secretary (home) Vijay Badekha who would forward the reports to Mehta. Mehta would find out in real time the vulnerable weak aspects of an accused in the atrocity committed on the Muslims. He would then write to Gurumurthy Swaminathan, the RSS ideologue. Gurumurthy in turn would gather crucial points to find out chink in the armour of the prosecution. So in the most developed state of the country the government exchequer was to pay an additional advocate general to prepare in advance to defend an accused that he should be in reality prosecuting. As the suborning of the judicial system in the state cannot come about at such higher echelon of the government without the nod of the chief executive officer of the state, the chief minister himself, at the wheel of the ship steering the course of the state and his active connivance, is amazing. If he had an iota of a sense of justice and responsibility he should have dismissed Mehta and ordered recovery of the salary drawn during the period the errant additional advocate general had infringed his constitutional duties.

Modi’s silence over this even after Sanjiv Bhatt and Tehelka brought it out in the public shows that he alone should be held responsible for the genocide and the forethought and calculated fall out of the cover up. And those who carried it out using the administrative machinery will be guilty violating the chain of command responsibility. The Nuremberg principles that all these guilty are individually responsible for the crimes of genocide, that, national laws of the land do not prevent criminal responsibility, that, head of the state or government and other government officials involved in genocide are not immune from prosecution, and, that, even being an accomplice to the crimes is enough to constitute an international crime clearly show the need to prosecute the guilty. Vajpayee government had rushed the chair person of the National Human Rights Commission, justice Verma and attorney general Soli Sorabji to Vienna to prevent the UNO human rights commissioner Mary Robinson from visiting India during the Gujarat genocide. The Nuremberg principles and India’s response to the visit make it obligatory that it should not be left to Gujarat government alone to come clean. India has to come clean on it lest we let the door open for anyone to take the matter of the genocide to the UNO under its optional protocol sometimes in the future as the Nero of Gujarat is still fiddling.

The suborning of the system is further borne out in the state setup singling out for dismissal and punishment those officers who chose to remain upright and speak against the genocide or provide evidence about the complicity of the state and its chief minister.
With more and more IPS officers coming out in the open and exposing the misdeeds of Modi it looks awkward what RK Raghvan said in his report which Tehelka reproduced: “As many as 32 allegations were probed into during this preliminary inquiry. These related to several acts of omission and commission by the state government and its functionaries, including the chief minister. A few of these alone were in fact substantiated… the substantiated allegations did not throw up material that would justify further action under the law”.
It is also becoming clear how location-al analysis confirms what many suspect. That PC Pande was raised to the post of DGP for his complicity in the genocide. Pande it was who had ordered the dispersal of the more than a hundred bodies of Muslims to different areas of Ahemdabad to dilute the crimes committed at Naroda Patia. He also visited Ahsan Jafri at 10.30 on February 28 but chose to ignore sending succor. His role in Sohrabuddin fake encounter case and also in the case of Tulsiram Prajapati is also damning. Rajnish Rai has said in a petition to the SC submitted on August 11 2011: "Pande's conduct is clearly and sufficiently establish his culpability in the conspiracy to kill Tulsiram Prajapati in fake encounter, destruction of evidence in Sohrabuddin fake encounter case and in causing willful obstruction in investigation of the fake encounter case by using his office as DGP of the state," Pande prevented police officers under him from visiting Tulsiram in Rajasthan jail so that the matter would be hushed up or remain out of focus of attention.

That Gujarat 2002 was a genocide of Muslims prepared well in advance is clear not only from the readily available print outs of the voter lists and the record of the Muslim commercial establishments to the marauders, etc., but also from the ground reality. On February 27, 2002 six officials of the chief ministers’ office were in Meghaninager. They were preparing for the intended wreaking of revenge on the Muslims the next day, the bandh day of February 28. It was hours before the chief minister declaring the Godhra train incident as a work of Lashkare Toiba or Jaishe Mohammad. Meghaninager was not known as communally sensitive place. No Hindu from the adjoining Bhagwatinager had taken part in the attacks on Gulberg society although it was a Hindu colony. The six officers of CMO turned it into a communal cauldron over night. In three hours they spent there from 2 pm to 5pm they over saw the preparation. For, the next day the pogroms started at the Gulberg society which is located in Meghaninager. Hundreds of bottles containing white powder which increased the intensity of burning were found in Gulberg society during the attack. This indicates how meticulously the preparation was made. Who had arranged for the supply of such incendiary substance in such a short time between the visit of the six and the onset of the violence at 7.30 the next day?
Even when the ghastly dance of rape, murder and arson and playing with the skulls of the victims was so overwhelming the cover up of it was even equally horrifying if suborning of the judicial system gives any indication. “Mehta prepared a reply affidavit to be filed before the apex court on behalf of the Gulbarg accused and forwarded a copy to the principal secretary to the chief minister on April 15, 2010.

“Mehta also forwarded a copy of the petition and the affidavit by the accused to Gurumurthy.” This ideologue of the RSS would then add crucial points for argument against the prosecution in defense of the accused.
Thus even the most horrendous crimes of the Gulberg society are taken as a matter of routine cover up giving one the feeling that the administrative set up was hell bend to show that it was the prerogative of the officials to carry on what they were doing. The life, dignity, rights to live, and the property of the hapless victims ceased to have any meaning in Gujarat of Modi.
Even more bizarre is a note to N Ram, editor of the Hindu. In this Gurmurthy has imputed motive to the SC judges as mentioned earlier in this paper. This is yet another case of cavalierly and even nonchalantly disregarding the all the norms of civilized society on account of their taking Muslims in the country as sub humans ala Aunt Polly in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. She did not consider Negroes reported dead in accident as humans. She counted only the dead white as human casualty!

The Parsi woman who lost her twelve year old son and a grown up daughter in Gulberg society had even recovered herself in her decency. When her powerful rescuer phoned her as to how many were trapped there, she said three and then looked at the others and corrected herself that there were forty! The police and others including the marauders there and the ones covering it all up do not have even this fig leaf to hide their guilt.

A strange sense of proprietorship prevailed where those tainted with genocide of Muslims and its cover up operation came to believe that they would deal with the President of India Pratibha Patil in the same callous manner. Gurumuthy had prepared a memorandum for her Excellency which the additional advocate general had asked him. Shushma Swaraj, LK Advani, Arun Jaitley and Nitin Gadkari were to present it to the President. Even to complain against the bête noir of Modi, Teesta Setalvad, the government officers meant for prosecuting the accused were employed to carry out a vendetta against civil rights activists thanks to the brazen way Modi had conducted the genocide.

There are many dimensions of genocide in the case of Gujarat 2002. One is the fake encounters carried out in the name of deshbhakti or patriotism and the other is the continued harassment of government servants who did not toe the dictate of the state run by Modi. What Modi and his hordes did was to stigmatize a whole community as terrorists and lawbreakers. Modi took the initiative when he dubbed the Ghansi Muslims of Signal Falia in Godhra as lawless. He blamed them to be responsible for the burning of the two compartments of the Sabarmati express on February 27. He went further and called them agents of Inter Services Intelligence of Pakistan. This set the agenda for the worked up outraged Hindus. They would naturally extract a heavy price in terms of human life and property in the stipulated three days the chief minister had given them. Then his lieutenants in the police force like DG Vanzara extended it to the fake encounters that took place one after another. When the Muslims were dubbed as treacherous to the country the inference was that it was patriotism to kill them. Modi carelessly taunted them as child producing factories and scoffed at them working by the roadsides repairing vehicles in their greasy attire. He would say a male Muslim marries four wives, the five then produce twenty five and then it goes on. His audience cheered him lustily and during the pogroms they aimed at causing maximum number of casualties. For example at Gulberg society there were more than a dozen children in the arms of their mothers and fathers. The attackers snatched them and killed them. In several other cases even the pregnant women had their womb slashed open and their fetus pierced with spears. This is the stuff of genocide. In the case of the fake encounters Muslims caught in Gujarat and outside like Maharashtra were taken to illegal private bungalows as detention centres and detained there and they were tortured and murdered. They would be brought to road turnings and dumped there. The police would give it to the press that they were agents of ISI or terrorists groups and were on way to kill Modi. Ishrat Jehan, Sohrabuddin, Sadiq Jamal Mehtar and a host of others were wiped out in this way. Modi government would reward the murderous cops with promotion in office and awards.

As a well orchestrated cover up operation is still underway its sheer brazenness will pale into insignificance other genocides of the recent history including what Pol Pot did in Cambodia. Pol Pot was a military man while Modi is elected repeatedly by his fellow Gujratis and hence a constitutionally elected head of government neck deep into the genocide of 2002. Neither the central government of BJP under Vajpayee and Advani had any qualms over it despite the President of India RK Narayanan remonstrating them nor has the mainstream media and intelligentsia done anything beyond token protest or rapping the knuckles. Rahul Sharma was a high ranking officer in charge of Bhavnager in Ahemdabad, a prime posting. He had opened fire at the mob baying for the blood of the Muslims on its way to a madrasa where 300 Muslim kids were housed. Had he not done his duty the kids would have met the fate like their fellow religionists elsewhere. For this he was demoted and sent to the police control room as deputy commissioner of police. He recorded on his official CD telephonic conversation of government officers, Hindu extremists of VHP and Bajrang Dal and the police who were involved in the genocide. He was instantaneously shunted to Surat and now charged with defaming the chief minister. The political configuration of the extremist Hindu groups is of course the political wing called BJP. Its leader Arun Jaitley in his sophistry calls it walking away with secret records. Such is the ever ready pugnacity of the Hindu party BJP that let alone feeling remorse over massacres of Muslims its leaders issue serious warnings to the Home Minister Chidambrum for daring to articulate the constitutional guarantee of safeguarding central government cadres in the police service in Gujarat state who are being harassed, penalized chargesheeted and suspended just because they refused dereliction of duty when the genocide was conducted.

Sanjiv Bhatt was second highest ranking police officer in charge of the security of not only the coastal areas, crucial installations but also the chief minister. He had maintained the official secret act for eight years until he submitted a part of the official record to the Supreme Court hearing one of the most traumatic cases of the genocide, Jakia Jafri’s petition on how her husband and others were gruesomely killed in the Gulberg society on account of the involvement of 62 ministers (Modi included), police officials and political leaders. Since then he has been chargesheeted and suspended from service. It is such a Machiavellian statecraft perfected by Modi that he sticks to his chair like limpet and loses no opportunity to score a point over his rivals or excoriate at them as if he is innocent like the lamb. Guinness book of world record must assure him a place for a government head that crafted the gruesome genocide in real time and conducted it in full steam for three days and can get away with it even in the twenty first century!