Mustafa Khan
Plot No.24, Sr No. 90
Jaffernager
Malegaon 423203
Maharashtra, India.
Mustafakhan1948@gmail.com
Phone-2554-236370
http://commonalty.blogspot.in/2012/02/gujarat-2002-1012-decade-of-demagogue.html
Preface
The perennial theme of the subcontinent is of course the relationship between India and Pakistan. Having decided to be secular vis-à-vis Pakistan’s indulgence in theocracy, India had birth pains of what it is to give birth to western concept with a name and a habitat in Asia that too in the second largest populated country in the world. Even more difficult to tackle was the hold of religion on the people who are generally emotionally attached to religion in all their diverse ways in belief. As the Hindus were having so many castes and thousands of gods and worshipped them in so many different ways, the Hindu right known as Hindutva started even before independence to have a Hindu nation or Hindu Rashtra despite the diversity. This proved to be the most daunting force because it would not like to share divided India with minorities, essentially the Muslims. Let alone partition violence, the history since then is marred by hundreds of riots culminating into the genocide in Gujarat 2002 in which Chief Minister Narendra Modi experimented with genocide as a way of making the largest minority bend on its knees and accept at the most a second class status with no voice, no right to vote and no complaints to make, not to speak of demand for any concession in any field of life. Live at the sufferance of the Hindu majority or perish! In communal riots there was always an effort made for letting the rule of law prevail in which there was one to one equation between the Hindus and the Muslims. Modi dared to end it, come what may. The pogroms of Muslim boil down to this hard fact. Deny it whoever may, it was just that
Live at the sufferance of Hindu majority or perish! Courtesy: The Week
The world felt the upheaval in the aftermath of 9/11. India also came under its influence. A misconception was churned out of the disaster that Muslims do not live in peace with their neighbours and they are thus terrorists in modern terminology. Prime Minister of India AB Vajpayee and Naredra Modi used it most opportunely to remind the Muslims what they were and then carry out the experiment known as Hindutva laboratory experiment in Gujarat. Although it
Hindutva experiment courtesy: The Week
was first tried as a dry run in more than two hundred villages around Malegaon and the main town itself in October 2001 it produced desired aimed havoc. The use of the white powder and gas cylinders, the police initiating the violence and then remaining indifferent spectators, the training and distribution of arms bear witness to this. Thus the common theme or leitmotif was Hindutva ideology and the terrain was Malegaon bordering on districts of Maharashtra bordering Gujarat. This in no way means minimizing the role of Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and UP from where the arms were imported into Gujarat much before the pogroms. It was an eerie silence on the part of the chief minister of UP and its home minister, Rajnath Singh, to have deliberately not alerted the Gujarat police of the unruly and criminal behavior of the kar sevaks who had assaulted Muslims when the Sabarmati express was passing through that state. It was also strange that there was no intimation at Godhra as to when the train would reach there!
Much of this went into the writing of my earlier book “First Hindutva Genocide of Muslims and its Architect” (November 2011), my first was “Aggressive Hindutva Terrorism and Malegaon” (June 2011). Thus in the thickness of the leitmotif I resumed writing a third book as a whole decade was coming to an end without justice given to the victims of the genocide.
As the events in Gujarat are still unfolding there is obviously the need to dateline the events of the day like the continuing fast jamboree of Modi or the court proceedings of what went before, the mass atrocities and also the fake encounters having the hue of the common design.
But this could not be viable without grasping the vision of Hindutva. If you don’t know what is the dream of the extremist Hindus you miss the point of the whole matter. Even in the medias res of the tragedy in Gujarat the Prime Minister of India was dispassionately musing over the events and came out with his reaffirmation of the Hindutva ideology. What kind of shame did he say he would face the world with?
His fellow party man was the chief minister in Gujarat who evinced the core fact of the ideology of the Hindutva. He said that BJP can be defeated but Hindutva cannot. They would do anything to win or get defeated but would not part from Hindutva ideology which does not allow coexistence with the Muslim minority as equal citizens of this country.
If this is how the Hindutva carried out the first genocide what is there for the fair minded citizens of the country to do. One, they could join hands to defeat the ideology. This could be done constitutionally through opposing it in election. Two, in the event of no other political group getting justice for all and fighting off the ideology, they could have coordination with other human rights organizations or civil liberty groups or foreign governments friendly to India to help through the remedies. This last is necessary because the dominant party is Congress at the present time. It has also miserably failed to stem the rot in the judicial inquiry of the genocide and the persecution of the morally upright police officers who opposed Modi. It did not sufficiently oppose with full force the continuing of the chief minister Narendra Modi who cocked snook at them and taunted them to show how impotent they were. Even the President of India KR Narayanan could not exercise his own right to put pressure on the state government for its continuing the heinous crimes that were committed in flagrant violation of the constitution of the country. The governor of the state was duty bound to check the pogroms but being a man from Hindutva he remained silent all through. The police officers and administrators had acquiesced in what Modi has been doing. He had abandoned the constitution of the country and his government adjusted to this change! India ceased to be a constitutional democracy! That is what the Hindutva group also wanted and this came as an opportunity in hand what with their own government at the state level and at the centre.
These books are freely available for download. I have taught books of others for 35 years so I can humbly pay back my debts to those whose books taught me certain good things of life.
http://www.commonalty.blogspot.com/2011/06/online-book-aggressive-hindutva-terror.html
http://www.commonalty.blogspot.com/2011/11/first-hindutva-genocide-of-muslims-and_26.html
A child victim of genocide now into early second decade of his life. What is his prospect after a decade of the rule of the demagogue?
Contents
Preface
Chapter 1 Decade of the demagogue and his demagoguery
Chapter 2 Nailing Modi’s lies
Chapter 3 Conspiracy
Chapter 4 2003 Hindutva debate
Chapter 5 Abandoning wife for motherland
Chapter 6 Foreign help in judicial resolution of genocide crimes
Chapter 7 Systematic murder of witnesses of genocide over the decade
Chapter 8 “Choking” the voice of Modi and “destruction of our democracy”
Chapter 9 Watch out
Chapter 10 RB Sreekumar and Sanjiv Bhatt
Chapter 11 Filibustering of Modi
Chapter 12 Modi’s Heart of Darkness
Chapter 13 Travesty of Justice
Chapter 14 Salman Rushdie and Narendra Modi
Chapter 15 The elimination of the ‘wicked’ and saving the motherland
Chapter 16 ‘mard aadmi hai’ and his manly work
Chapter 17 Wide spectrum of views
Chapter 18 Haren Pandya
Chapter 19 The gravamen of Hindutva
Chapter 20 Discrimination all the way
Chapter 21 Development as a ruse to kill
Chapter 22 Will the problem from hell end, ever
Chapter 23 Who is Sophiabano (Sophie)
Chapter 24 Lies nailed
Chapter 25 Periscope
Chapter 26 Common concerns and common pursuit
Chapter 1
Decade of the demagogue
On January 1, 2002 All India Muslim Unity Front (AIMUF) comprising of umbrella representation of dominant groups of Muslims vowed at the monument dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi in Delhi to root out terrorism. They clearly underlined that they were against cross border terrorism and wanted India to be firm in handling this menace. They “demanded stern action against those who were aiding and abetting terrorism in India.” Their avowal was fervently patriotic. They must have apprehended that since India had chosen to jump on the bandwagon of President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair in the war on terrorism that you are either with us or against us; that troubles were ahead for their community. Choosing to determine who was a terrorist, was not left to the victims but the victor. As if the Intelligence Bureau in Delhi and the Gujarat government did not want to eye the resurgence of patriotic warmth of the Muslims in any other way than cynically making a preemptive strike by arresting as many as 123 Muslims returning from a seminar in London. The cops called them members of Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). This collaboration of the two, IB and Gujarat government has proved most pernicious to the country as well as for Gujarat. However The Times of India on December 30, 2001 quoted a top police official that the police had found no perceptible link yet of the organization with the recent attack on parliament. What is significant to note is that as many as 123 Indians had gone to London where it would be impossible to hold a meeting of radicals that too in the aftermath of 9/11 or December 13, 2001attack on the parliament in Delhi, as far as India is concerned. Among the arrested were 44 from Maharashtra, followed by Gujarat 25, Madhya pradesh 13, Karnataka 11, UP 10, Rajasthan 9, West Bengal 4, Tamil Nadu 4, Bihar 2, Chhattisgarh 1. The central government had banned SIMI on the heels of 9/11 despite the fact that no Indian was involved in 9/11 attack on the US, a fact that even President George Bush averred. This confirms the suspicion that the government headed by the Prime Minister and deputy PM from Hindutva group used the anti-Muslim world view to piggy ride the US in victimizing the Muslims.
As the role of Rajendra Kumar, joint director of IB and Narendra Modi, his fellow Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh member and pal, would reveal later in the course of the decade more of their sinister design against the minority. Kumar was the one who fed wrong information to Modi that Inter Services Intelligence and Lashkar-e-Toiba were behind Godhra fire incident. He was the one again who fed false information to Commissioner of Police Ahmadabad KR Kaushik on Ishrat Jahan and hence complicit in genocide and fake encounters. But before the month was over the police struck again and arrested 8 suspected members of SIMI from Olpad area in Vadodra where SIMI documents were recovered from a canal (nullah) on January 29, 2002. What had the eight to do with it? Obviously like other such innumerable cases their names were found in the documents. This is similar to the fake encounters which mark years in succession when the police would kill Muslims and plant explosives and ID cards on them. They would say that they were out to kill Modi.
Years later a judge would ask the government of India to give just one real proof to continue the ban on SIMI and when the government lawyer would fail the judge would recommend to the central government to lift the ban. The next day the government would re-impose the ban all the same. The organization had decided to have a meeting in Rajeshree hall of Sagrampura in Surat, Gujarat. Indeed like George Bush and Dr Condoleezza Rice’s preemptive option the Gujarat government arrested the youths on December 28, 2001 in order to forestall the meeting scheduled on January 1, 2002. This set the stage for what would follow in gruesome details of the pogroms of Muslims. The seeds of the genocide were already sown. Rajendra Kumar had called the burning of the Sabarmati Express compartment S6 as the handiwork of Inter Services Intelligence of Pakistan. This within hours of the train fire incident at 8.30 on February 27, 2002 which would make chief minister Narendra Modi at once espouse this theory and call for bandh or strike.
No sooner did Modi take office as the chief minister of the state in October 2001 than he took an aggressive and reactionary approach to Muslims in his state and would thumb his nose at the center and the world. For example he ordered his chief secretary Subba Rao on February 19, 2002 to ask the foreign ministry of the central government to find out how President of Pakistan General Musharraf was handling madrassas in his country and how the CPM chief minister of West Bengal was cracking on madrassas in his. Two days before Godhra fire incident on Sabarmati Express VHP leader Jatin Vyas and other members of the hardcore Hindutva group were video-shooting on the slaughter of a cow. The police opened fire and killed a Muslim Ayub Musa Allalaria and injured others near a village called Tankarai. It is easy to call a violent crowd too amorphous and anonymous to name the guilty of crimes which the individuals and collective groups commit. As in this particular case and uncountable many others subsequently, it suited the Hindutva crowd and the government vowed to it as a strategy to use their ideology to fix the “Muslim problem.” They defended the fanatic Hindus who enforced the laws of the jungle like the burning of 33 Muslim farmhands of their own in Sardarpura. Of course the victim survivours identified the assailants who were their fellow villagers, neighbours and also their masters. If that was 2002, ten years on there is no change as the same “sultan of governance” still rules his sultanate. On Monday December 12, 2011the VHP mob chased and stopped a truck at Subhash Bridge that was carrying 6000 kg meat. They stripped the driver and cleaners and paraded them naked and in a procession took them to Ramol police station. On the way they brutally assaulted them intermittently. In a way this bears the signature of the demagogue of Gujarat and his demagoguery unrolling down the years of the decade. He filled the minds and hearts of the people with hatred against the Muslims by cavalierly targeting them as ‘the five and their twenty five’ out to obstruct the progress and development of Gujarat and as being worthless and at worst nothing but terrorists. This is how he would describe the killing of Sohrabuddin Shaikh and others and rhetorically ask his crowd what they would do. The crowd would chorus, “Kill him. Kill him.” In a flourish he would then ask, did he do anything wrong, then? They would lustily repeat that he did no wrong! Thus goes on the demagoguery down the years.
The populace in Gujarat with the exception of few was fed by the rumours that were making rounds in the state and this time it was the SMS that was proving disastrous. It roped in the middle class well to do people, too, in the loot and murder. They came in their cars to join the juggernaut. The Editors’ Guild of India pointed out this fact which was swept under the carpet as the government web site was giving scanty mention of the violence, if at all. It was full of news about conducting school examinations. To fuel their anger the rumours on the SMS was about intending rocket attack on the people and poisoning of the municipal drinking water. Of course Modi had already turned the anger of the populace against the Muslims when he blamed the shanty dwellers of Godhra without waiting for any proof of their complicity in the fire incident. In fact home minister LK Advani had called it preplanned when he spoke to the media in Port Blair on Friday May 3rd 2002 as a reaction to the report on a private TV channel. Later the reporters drew his attention to the media reports of investigation agencies which had not found any planning in the fire incident. The reporters quoted to him even the Gujarat police and the Railway Protection Force that the incident was not preplanned. He took shelter in “I am myself surprised. I cannot comment right now since the investigation is on.” Then he added that he would speak to Modi. Around the same time PM Vajpayee said that Modi government was doing well. But in a sudden U turn as he intervened in the Rajya Sabha and said what he had in mind when he was in Goa on April 13. “I had gone to Goa making up my mind on changing the rule in Gujarat. But according to my own assessment, I felt that the change in leadership will only worsen the situation.” (Lekin satta parivartan se stithi our bigadti, yeh hamara aakalan thato kyn hamein swantantr aakatan karne ka aadhikar nahim hai?) In Panjim, Goa, the PM had also clearly said that “Wherever there are Muslims, they do not want to live with others (who practice different faiths). Instead of living peacefully, they want to preach and propagate their religion by creating fear and terror in the minds of others.”
In a meeting with the terrorism expert super cop KPS Gill the Gujarat cops told him that they were given clear instructions to go soft on Bajrang Dal and VHP activists. The IPS officers also told him that the directive to this effect was given to them by Modi at the meeting of top officials on the night of February 27. Modi had thought that as he was in the wing and so he was not visible but the drama on the stage was scripted by him and those who took pains to see saw him gesturing and whispering saw that it was genocide!
It took a whole decade to pin point this and bring it on official record. He had told Sanjiv Bhatt, his intelligence officer in charge of the security of the CM himself on April 9, 2002 to pay ten lakh rupees to subvert justice vis-à-vis Naroda Patiya massacre case in which nearly 800 Muslims were burnt alive. Bhatt had waited full ten years to get it on record, the first ever that Modi had tried to bribe the defense lawyer of his bête noire Mallika Sarabhai. She had filed a petition against the massacre. Why should Modi bribe a lawyer Krishnakant Vakharia to undermine a petition on post Godhra carnage? The bribing of Zahira Sheikh, in the Best Bakery pogrom case too is a classic act of suborning and subverting justice that made her spend time in prison for turning hostile as a witness in a case in which her own relatives were killed. Similarly the High Court of Gujarat took a whole decade to declare that the police were thoroughly discredited and hence the fake encounter of Ishrat Jahan should be handed over to CBI. Fake encounters had begun right in the midst of the throes of the genocide. Another monumental case that waited a whole decade was Zakia Jafri’s ten years endeavour to register a case of pogrom in which her husband and scores of others sheltering in her house were brutally killed and the police and even the High Court had refused to entertain her petition to register First Information Report. A decade in the life of a nation is a miniscule period but a whole life in the case of a woman whose world was destroyed along with her near and dear ones including her husband and children. There were thousands of such women who saw how life had plunged them in the darkness of hell on earth just because the “problem from hell” traversed the space and reached their world.
The fact that Modi chose to wreak havoc on Muslims through the means of genocide was not something that impartial observers did not know. On the contrary they knew it from day first, February 27, 2002. But Modi enjoyed immunity from legal sanction against him because there was no FIR allowed to be lodged and he along with his administration had according to a senior journalist Ashish Nadny abandoned the Constitution. The hardcore Hindus were quite smug that he was too big for the law of the land for prosecution. This also lulled him in believing that he would never be caught. But then senior police officers in the intelligence wing like Sreekumar and Sanjive Bhatt had heard him giving instructions that Hindus should be allowed to take revenge on Muslims. It was that that was the top secret Modi had tried to hide. He went to the extent of asserting a deliberate tongue in cheek answer that no junior intelligence officer was present in the meeting at his official residence on February 27, 2002. That was a tell-tale statement from the chief executive and head of the government. Bhatt had represented his chief Raigar at the meeting because the chief was on leave. That lie of the chief minister has taken full ten years to hibernate and now has turned into Modi’s nemesis. The genocide and the fake encounters are interconnected and lead to many issues. The murder of Haren Pandya was the most daring early example which the police did not claim to be fake encounter. But it is now becoming clear that it was a political murder in which Modi may be certainly involved.
The genocide and fake encounters were woven with the same warp and woof. Modi had considered Muslims terrorists. When he invited the super cop KPS Gill to advise him on how to control the violence he told the press that as the violence was not subsiding he had especially inducted Gill as the expert on terrorism to handle it. If anyone it was the hardcore Hindu mobs and the police who were perpetrating terrorism. There is no proof that the hapless Muslims could dare to even think let alone actually terrorize anyone as the fanatic Hindus and police had done to the Muslims. Modi carried the same logic ad absurdum when the fake encounters came in vogue. There are twenty senior officers of the Crime Branch of Ahmadabad involved in it. So the nexus between these officers and their counter parts in the IB and elsewhere was very much there. They were following a well choreographed game of framing Muslims and killing them. This was an extension of the genocide and continuation of it in another garb. When such a huge staff of the police and intelligence bureau is involved in such clandestine manner what excuse is for Modi to say that he was not involved? His noting on files is visible proof. How could hundreds of the cops during the genocide and scores in the fake encounter pretend that they were conducting patriotic duty and not following orders from Modi, but acting on their own? Though so far they have not averred the fact except Bhatt expressing his conviction that Modi may be involved in the murder of Haren Pandya, but how could the CM be exempted from all the other cases?
An objective perspective at how the events unfolded then gives a clear indication of the larger role of Hindutva in what happened and how it was made to happen. There was a three day meeting of the RSS at Chennahalli, Bangalore. It passed a resolution on March 17, 2002 condemning Godhra fire incident but justified the reaction as natural and spontaneous.
Praveen Togadiya also justified what had happened in 2002: "The Indian state and (pseudo) secularism has failed to protect Hindus and control jihadi terrorism and hence people are fast making up their mind to defend themselves. What is happening in Gujarat is not communal riots but people's answer to Islamic jihad." He even went further and remarked, "But what is happening in Gujarat is an upsurge, a rebellion."
The RSS was at its most belligerent as it has always been at crucial times in the history of the country. Its chief had blamed the Muslims for the demolition of the Babri mosque and the massacres of Muslims before, during and after the demolition by remarking most arrogantly that the Muslims had it coming to them. In the case of Gujarat 2002 it was again RSS that came to the rescue of Modi even when the world knew that he was culpably involved in the genocide of Muslims. Modi did not undertake rehabilitation of the Muslim refugees because he was himself a former pracharak or provincial in charge of the RSS, and, second, the RSS came in between Modi and the Prime Minister Vajpayee. Vajpayee
RSS pracharak first and last
was under pressure from the world focus on Gujarat to be seen to be doing something to help the Muslim survivours of the holocaust. The RSS and VHP wanted to circumvent him even here. Modi truly basked in the support he got from the two most important organs of the sangh parivar of the Hindu right, RSS and VHP.
Thirty fourth consecutive day of genocide was April 3, 2002. The next day the PM Vajpayee was to visit Gujarat. A family of 5 was burnt alive. This was the only Muslim family in the village Abasan, 70 km from Ahmadabad. It is strangely ironic that the whole village had attended and feasted on the occasion of the marriage of a girl of the family only six weeks ago. The frightful death of the whole family underscores the fact that the control of extremists among Hindus had reached the highest point. When Vajpayee met Modi he expressed full confidence in the chief minister. However, on the same day pamphlets appeared in Gujarat asking people to drive out Muslims and unite to form a Hindu Rashtra. “Come, let's unite to form a Hindu Rashtra." Hardly had 48 hours passed the departure of Vajpayee when Modi ordered his bureaucrats to prepare list of judges who had been "known for regularly giving anti-government judgments." There was disturbance reported every day. This could not be spontaneous reaction to the burning of the train. For example on April 7 a mob of Hindutva people looted the dowry of a Muslim girl at Sabarmati Jawahar chowk .The army was again deployed in Ahmadabad when 25 Muslim houses were burnt down on April 13 in Danilimda area.
What happened in burning the entire family of Abasan, the pamphlets advocating Hindu rashtra, inquiring into judges etc., is a matter of a crafty plan to just exterminate the Muslims, to burn the ground under their feet or leave them with no succour and cause maximum harm to them so that they could not live at the time and have no chance of survival and hope of ever getting justice. Like father like son apothegm holds true for Modi too. He is proudly called chhote sardar, he was like Sardar Patel, the home minister of Pandit Nehru government after independence. Sardar Patel had told Hindus who were killing Muslims in Delhi and elsewhere: “Let the Muslims who are here, remain here. Why do you bother to kill them? The heat from the ground will eventually become unbearable and they will choose to leave on their own accord.”
In the midst of all these and the trouble within the NDA government over Modi, the Prime Minister chose to say this to the conclave of his party in Panjim, Goa: “Wherever there are Muslims, they do not want to live with others (who practice different faiths). Instead of living peacefully, they want to preach and propagate their religion by creating fear and terror in the minds of others."This according to Martha Nussbaum is “culpable indifference” of the Vajpayee government. It took an interesting turn when Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi moved a privilege motion against Vajpayee and accused the Prime Minister of deliberately inserting word “such” before the word Muslim in his Goa speech. There was a marathon debate in the parliament. Dasmunshi even produced the video copy to prove his point. In the words of Dasmnshi the PM had misled the Parliament on May 1, 2002
However, it was Naroda Patiya that was epicenter of the genocide. The most horrendous role was that of Babu Patel alias Babu Bajrangi. “In Naroda and Naroda Patiya, we didn’t spare a single Muslim shop; we set everything on fire and killed them…” Bajrangi adds: “Whichever house we entered, we just grabbed the cylinder and fired at it, and, thadak [bang], they exploded. We had guns in any case.” Full ten years have passed and only on Friday December 16, 2011 did the special trial court in Naroda Patiya case take his uninhibited boastful confession on record. Ashish Khaitan of Tehelka had conducted a sting operation in which he caught Bajrangi on audio video camera several years back and published it in 2007. The gravamen of the case is that the police commissioner of Ahmadabad, PC Pande, had issued shoot at sight order against Bajrangi but the man who had undertaken oath of office to protect the life of the people of the state had provided shelter to him at the Gujarat government guest house in Mount Abu for several months. The Chief Minister was thus directly involved in sheltering a runaway from law, an absconder from law. Finally Narendra Modi told him to surrender because there was uproar in the parliament. Lalu Prasad Yadav had criticized the government about it. A senior officer PP Pandey told Bajrangi that the surrender was a charade and nothing would happen to him. Bajrangi surrendered to Pandey; and Justice Akshay Mehta granted him bail. In the last ten years that Bajrangi was out on bail no inquiry was conducted against him even when he was accused of horrifying crimes of holocaust at Naroda Patiya. For example he had cut open the womb and stomach of a woman and yanked out her fetus and killed it with spear and burnt it in the midst of the cheering crowd! This he even confessed to have done to show that the vegetarian Hindus could also match the crimes of the carnivorous Muslims.
The last ten years also showed how Modi was dispensing justice through his judges. He had frequently changed judges to let Bajrangi out on bail. One of the judges who refused bail to him told one of the arch-accused in genocide that the crime he had committed deserved two full life terms in jail. This went on until Akshay Mehta came and facilely gave him bail and in return Modi appointed him through his recommendation on the Nanavati Shah Commission of inquiry in the Gujarat 2002 carnage. Shah had died in the course of 17 times the Commission was extended in the past ten years. Justice Shah was notorious for giving life sentences to Muslim criminals even when they deserved lesser sentences. Nanavati is allegedly one for lucre. The decade passed while judges were twiddling their thumbs and doing sycophancy flagrantly in full view of the camera. For example a judge hearing the case of Modi’s minister of state for home, Amit Shah virtually genuflected before the former minister and close aid of Modi.
Bajrangi has gone on record in giving clinching evidence of the direct involvement of Modi into the pogroms: “Narendrabhai had come to see that things didn’t stop the next day…He went all around Ahmadabad, to all the places where the miyas [Muslims] were, to the Hindu areas…told people they’d done well and should do more.” Bajrangi also reveals the preplanned genocide: “We had lots of material with us…we filled lots of jerrycans in advance. From the petrol pump, the night before…Petrol pump owners gave us petrol and diesel for free…” Such gruesome narration of macabre of death and destruction! And yet no judge or Prime Minister or any investigation officer read it and was afraid. The editor of Tehelka wanted people to read “the most important story of our time” and be afraid. But it seems the story did not dent the minds of anyone or impinge the collective consciousness, either; for Modi went on a winning spree at elections and became a laudable hero of development and industry. Conscience became a myth of the past.
Even the world could not read in fuller extent the story of the genocide because the Prime Minister of India had sent National Human Rights Commission chairman Justice JS Verma and Attorney General of India Soli Sorabji to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, and prevented her from tabling the report of the UN body on the genocide and press for a UN resolution. The Indian government considered the would-be UN resolution as a “disaster.” What hope is there for this “disaster” to make its full impact on the world? At this time it is not so easy to give the answer because the fuller extent of the enormity of the genocide is still coming out in drips and drops as the Naroda Patiya and the fake encounters are making headlines on daily basis. Moreover the cataclysmic change in a society takes longer time to manifest itself in terms of documentation of events that truly happened. The Armenian genocide of the Christians in 1915 took more than half a century to produce the deliberation and official recognition of the crimes in the UN. There is also the US angle to it. As the Americans were preoccupied with Iraq they did not heed to the gross violation of human rights in India. But with the departure of the Americans from Iraq nearly a decade later there is hope that the genocide in Gujarat will be at long last recognized. So the genocide of Muslims in Gujarat 2002 is not a closed story but an open ended and continuing saga of suffering of victims of crimes against humanity.
II
A report says that “Modi (is) in poll mode as Ahmadabad simmers.” The report truly mirrors the time but it goes on to say that the chief minister was casting his reviled image of a RSS pracharak and donning the suave image of a campaigner. This proved most erroneous; for, Modi was never suave at least to the minorities because he showed his prowess in having done what had happened as he harped on the Muslims as producing more children than the Hindus and of the threat of terrorism which of course was not there. The government was managing the affairs at national level in a way which showed it was flagrantly shielding Modi and the marauding mobs. The fanatic Hindu mobs had stopped ambulances carrying injured and dead Muslims to VS Hospital. They attacked and seriously injured a 22 year old youth. In two days 27 people were killed in Maninager area where a bomb had reportedly been exploded, 19 people were injured in the Kalupur locality. These areas were already under curfew and police were very much biased therefore it would mean that the violence was allowed to take place by the police.
III
Narendra Modi on the other hand has preferred to celebrate his tenth year in power by still playing with his demagoguery: "Power-hungry and anti-Gujarat troops have spared no opportunity to defame Gujarat during the last 10 years. Sadbhavna Mission is a satvic way of answering these people. The element of serenity in the Sadbhanva Mission is the reason behind the huge support it is receiving from the people." That is how he wound up the fast in Ahmadabad on December 20th 2011. He calls keeping sadhbhavna or fast for peace, harmony and unity as a pious (satvic) way of answering his critic and the liberals/pseudo secularists who have opposed the genocide he ushered in with his assuming power as chief minister. There has been no repentance, no atonement, and still he feels that he has redeemed himself and his people. This would be cogent only if there were no pogroms, no mass atrocities and no genocide. His performance would be alike the sentiment of the apothegm, sau sau chuhe khake billee haj ko chalee, that is, after having eaten hundreds of mice the cat is leaving for haj pilgrimage. In naturalistic sense the mice are the prey of the feline, in the case of Modi the Muslims have been his prey. He missed no opportunity to harm them. A circular of the right wing Hindutva party government says that the Ram devotees for building Ram temple if killed should be paid twice the amount of the compensation paid in other cases. The Ram devotees for temple had gone to Ayodhya in preparation for an all India movement on March 15, 2002 for building the temple at the site where had stood the erstwhile Babri mosque. There were fifty eight passengers who died in fire incident at Godhra on February 27, 2002. Not everyone was a pilgrim involved in the temple movement. For example, there was the wife of the railway station master. She was carrying a lunch box in her hand for her husband when the swift conflagration in the compartment S6 killed her with the lunch box still in her hand. The collector of Godhra Ms Jayanthi Ravi and the senior officers of railway as well as forensic experts saw the compartment first and said it was a fire accident. But much later in the day chief minister Modi called it sabotage, a terrorist attack by ISI. This is how the joint director of premier intelligence agency called Intelligence Bureau put it; Rajendra Kumar viewed it thus even before visiting the site and without any feedback from the local unit of IB known as State Intelligence Bureau. The top intelligence officers of Gujarat differed, RB Sreekumar and Sanjive Bhatt did not toe Modi’s line. The chief minister gave a call for bandh or strike for the next day and his party and VHP called for strike even the day after. The pogroms started right from the morning and continued in full swing not for just two days of the strike but also for the third day because Modi had had stipulated for three days and then cunningly let it continue. He had stipulated three days duration for it emulating the massacre of Sikhs in which the Congress government under Rajive Gandhi tacitly allowed it for three days from November 1st to November 3rd 1984. Modi was Machiavellian through and through and has been that till today. But he went beyond the insidious insinuation of a huge tree falling and leaving a chasm [the assassination of Mrs Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984] by literally telling his police to allow Hindus to take revenge. For the last ten years case after case of the genocide came up for investigation and trial and the steady shady and murky cover up of the genocide was practiced with the world media still focused on it and Modi brazenly carrying out the cover up as if nothing such had happened! In this latter sense his celebration of tenth year in office is justified for he was indifferent, remorseless and despicable of the victims of the wrath and fury he had unleashed on them in the night of February 27th 2002.
As Modi had been obviously in league with IB for his close coordination with Rajendra Kumar he toed their line and put the blame on the Muslims of Godhra shanty settlement of Signal Falia around the railway tracks. He never bothered to have a reality check on it. The Muslims of that neighbourhood had even helped the fire engines to collect water from their well. If they had started the fire they would not have given such timely help in such emergency. The Modi administration was aware of the track of conspiracy that could lead to IB and so of all the officers the administration was coercing the chief of Gujarat state Intelligence Bureau to toe the Hindutva line. The following talk reveals it in the conversation between the government advocate general and government secretary with SIB chief:
GC Murmu: What all questions will come up?
Arvind Pandya: Now, they will ask questions relating to IB, i.e., about the role of IB with Godhra incident, from that point further questions will come up.
Murmu: Let us ask questions which will come up.
Pandya: They will ask about functioning of IB in the entire case, so whatever duty given to IB will be asked, i.e., by the Police Manual.
RB Sreekumar: I will explain this as per Police Manual Rule 461.
This concern for the role of IB was a matter that Modi and his government wanted to hide as they had accepted the insinuation of Kumar as the truth and went ahead what they had already prepared, genocide of Muslims. Gujarat they had already changed into tinder box of communal inferno ready to blow up at the strike of a match around March 15, 2002. They had calculated it as rewarding for polls as the demolition of Babri mosque and the communal divide thereafter was for the BJP which rode to power on it. For ten years Modi reaped a bumper crop of the hatred he had sown.
The next concern was to cover up the evil deeds. The first test came when the administration found out that Haren Pandya, the revenue minister had told the retired judges of the citizens’ tribunal that there would be justice for Godhra. That surely meant according to Pandya that the chief minister had given Hindus time to take revenge. The revenue minister also had an audio recording of the meeting at the house of Modi in the night of February 27, 2002. He also feared for his life and had asked the tribunal not to reveal his name. The chief secretary of the government Dr PK Mishra gave Pandya’s phone number to Sreekumar to find out what transpired during the meeting with the retired judges, PB Sawant and Hospet Suresh. The political murder of Pandya in the words of his own father assumes sinister tones because according to the father it was Modi who was responsible for the killing of his son. Even Sanjiv Bhatt also confirmed that Modi may be involved in the murder of his own revenue minister. Thus the last ten years saw a humongous operation cover up on these two accounts, what Modi and his administration was worried about the link with IB and Modi’s instruction to the cops and the cover up of the murder of Pandya as well. For all public appearances Modi posed as Dr Jekylle while he dissolved himself in the murky surrounding of his role as Mr Hyde.
However, he left enough hints of what he brought about during the weeks and months after the Sabarmati Express fire incident. A glimpse of his thought and words would reveal as in the little saffron book of Hindutva:
"Hindus of Gujarat, unite and defeat the Mussalmaan Mullahs and all their four wives! Hindus of Gujarat, be courageous, and dare to fight, be brave, and defy decency and humanity; advance wave upon wave like Ravan's rakshasas. Then the whole Gujarat will belong to Hindus. Mussalmaans of all kinds shall be destroyed."
Statement Supporting the Municipality of the Vadodara City Against the Muslim Aggression (May 5, 2006).
"The richest source of power to wage war lies in the masses of Hindus. It is mainly because of the submissive state of the Hindus that Mussalmaans dare to bully us. When this defect is remedied, then the Mullah aggressor, like a mad bull crashing into a ring of flames, will be surrounded by hundreds of millions of our people standing upright, the mere sound of their voices will strike terror into him, and the Mullah will be burned to death."
On Planned Riots (May 2003), Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 186.
"What is a true bastion of Shakti? It is the Indian masses, the millions upon millions of people who genuinely and sincerely support Hindutva. That is the real Shakti, which is impossible for any force on earth to smash. The Aamir Khans of the world cannot smash us; on the contrary, we shall smash them. Rallying millions upon millions of people round my government and expanding our holy war, we shall wipe out all the pseudo-secularists and take over the whole of India."
Excerpt of a Speech Made on the Successful, Complete and Absolute Conclusion of a Ban on the Film Fanaa in the Theatres of Gujarat (May 28, 2006).
"The secularists are bullying us in such a way that we will have to deal with them seriously. Not only must we have a powerful, regular and a more violent Bajrang Dal, we must also organize contingents of the ladies-only Durga Vahini on a big scale. This will make it difficult for the secularists to move a single inch in our Gujarat in case of anti-Mussalmaan genocide, an event which is not very far."
Interview with the Saamna Newspaper (September 29, 2004).
"Without preparedness, a communal riot is not a real pogrom and there can be no final solution either. Having grasped this point, it is good to remember that while making a list of Mians and their Begums in their across-the-'border' Pakistani mohallas, care must be taken to accomplish the task without attracting much notice. The dogs must not be warned of their terrible ends."
Strategies for Genocides and Other Experiments in Rwanda (May 1938), Selected Works, Vol. II, pp. 165-66.
"The communal riot is a war of the Hindus; it can be successfully waged only after enlisting the support of the police force and relying on them to wage it."
Be Concerned with the Manipulation of the Masses, Pay Attention to Methods of Murder (January 27, 2002), Selected Works, Vol. I. p. 147.
"Democracy is one of the ways to be cleverly employed and manipulated to struggle for a just, absolute, pure Mussalmaan-less society."
Talk with Prabhu Chawala in Seedhi Baat, Aaj Tak TV Channel (August 2004).
"The Bhartiya Janata Party of Gujarat, having made a clear-headed appraisal of the national and state-level situation on the basis of the science of Nazism-Fascism, recognized that all attacks on the non-Hindus in Gujarat have to be launched in the shortest possible time. If some Mussalmaans still have guts to live here with their countless hordes, we only have to stop doing any dealings with them."
The Present Situation and Our Tasks (December 25, 1997), Selected Shakha Writings, 2nd ed., p. 347.
"If a single Mussalmaan attack us and if the conditions are favorable for battle, we will certainly we must win). We must never be cowed by the bluster of English-speaking secularists.."act in self-defense to wipe him off and all the people of his wretched community resolutely, thoroughly, wholly and completely (we do not strike rashly, but when we do strike,
On Peace Negotiations with Pakistan - Circular of the Central Committee of the Bhartiya Janata Party of Gujarat (August 26, 2001)
"As far as the massacre of Hindus by terrorists in Kashmir is concerned, those Islamic militants, in spite of belonging to the enemy civilization, are like our brothers-in-arms. They provide us an opportunity, reason, and excuse to kill the Maulavis of Ahmedabad."
Talk with the Harvard University Proffessor Samuel Phillips Huntington
(August 1946), Foreign Affairs Magazine
These amazing quotes of “Hindutva’s little saffron book” flies directly in the face of the man who was conducting the sadhbhavna fast and who pretended that it was a pious way of fighting the ‘troops’ who were engaged in defaming him and his Gujarat. After reading the above thoughts and words what piety would anyone find in him?
A diversionary tactic of the Hindutva groups is to focus on the inane to hide the horrible. In other words, to engage the attention of the people in the gaudy spectacular show of hypocritical piety to cover up the ghastly murders and mayhem. In the most widely orchestrated fast of September 17-19, 2011 the party of the right wing Hindutva, BJP, joined in the jamboree with such a gusto that it ran a parallel arrangement to make the fast successful by “involving” the corporate world to help the fast a big success this in addition to what Modi administration had already done. The Hindu party formed different management groups looking after the meeting hall, sanitation, parking, sound system, decoration. This would cost many millions by any count. The centrally heated exhibition hall of the Gujarat University would cost the public exchequer Rs 5 lakh every day as rent for the three day fasting. The state run buses would bring people from all over the state to attend the fast. The cost of such a huge transport would be Rs 6 crore every day. The fan fare for creating feeling of harmony and peace in 2011 contrasts with the abysmal condition of the relief camps of 2002 where Muslim refugees were denied food and medicine, where the condition was unspeakably wretched. Moreover even that was closed down by cutting off the ration and water supply. They were left to the mercy of the sky and then the heavy rains lashed them further rendering them even more miserable.
In the latest fast of December 2011 Modi claims that there were 11,111 people from the Jamnagar city and Dhrol-Jodiya and Kalawad taluka voluntarily sitting with him. This is a deception he is practicing in broad day light a full decade later.
There is no vehement denouncing of the kind of charade that is going on in the name of fasting for peace, harmony in Gujarat. There can be no harmony unless justice is allowed to prevail and reconciliation of the people, those who have suffered and those at whose hand they have suffered. Both of these harmony and peace are elusive because the perpetrators of crime against humanity still do not want justice done and the grieved are struggling for justice. The political leaders have turned to politicking as usual. Only some NGOs and fair minded lawyers and officials have the courage and integrity to fight against the system. Citizens for Justice and Peace and All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) among others are some. AIDWA has condemned the atrocities and flagrant harassment of officers and political leaders in its recent resolution:
“This convention expresses its strong protest against the actions of the Gujarat government in threatening and intimidating those, including senior officers, who dare to expose the role of the chief minister and his government in the Gujarat genocide. Almost 10 years after the genocide, a large number of victims are yet to get justice. Instead, activists fighting for peace and harmony are being targeted and harassed.
“This convention demands justice for the Gujarat victims. It expresses its solidarity with those who are being threatened by the Modi government. It demands that the central government take action to protect witnesses who have given evidence against Modi and his government.”
To understand Modi it is necessary to know his thoughts which are spring source of Hindutva ideology. According to Hindutva ideology the Muslims have no place in India, per se. He was so dauntless in executing the genocide and the fake encounters by subverting the rule of law in favour of the law of the jungle that he asserted four years later by thumbing his nose at the world and say: “Mussalmaans of all kinds shall be destroyed." That would be his aim for a better and prosperous Gujarat. This in itself shows that he had no remorse for what he had brought about, the enormous number of deaths and injuries he caused to fellow Indians albeit of a different faith. Their loss of property, houses, sources of livelihood and the disaffection he sowed in the society is not matter of importance before cleansing the land of Muslims. That exactly is the quintessence of Hindutva ideology. It was vividly seen in his order to the collectors to stop forthrightly the ration (whatever little he had grudgingly sanctioned) being sent to the relief camps of the Muslim refugees. His hard liner ally was the president of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad had told at Hindu pilgrimage centre Haridwar that Muslims refugees living in camps three months after their houses were destroyed and they were threatened direly by their fellow compatriots not to return to their homes, that they were seditious. According to Ashok Singhal they were not returning to their homes because they wanted to create another Pakistan. He even warned the Muslims that “if they continue to take the country towards partition they will have to stay in refugee camps like in Gujarat.” While Modi and Singhal were pouring vitriol on the Muslims, the condition in the camps became appalling. The heavy rains started on Wednesday June 26, 2002. Hunger gnawing their intestines and the rains making life impossible, the children in the camps collected earth to stop the camp from being inundated. There was no space left. The school class rooms were leaking with rain water and the compound was covered with pools of rain water.
Hardly had the rain water subsided than the threat of a victory march or Gaurau yatra to begin on July 12 appeared from the blue. It would be taken out all over the state and in each district. The Muslims were so scared of the recent events that they started migrating to safer places. On July 2 former Prime Minister IK Gujral met the premier and prevailed upon him to cancel the victory march for it would cause more violence as most of the state was very communally sensitive. Vajpayee called off the yatra after assessing the rehabilitation situation of the refugees. Modi had not done anything regarding rehabilitation and yet he started the “march of pride”.
Even here the government did not care for the fear of the minority Muslims in Gujarat and their concern for their security. The Jagannath temple trust wanted to avoid the traditional routes which pass through Muslim neighbourhoods as the wounds of the Muslims were still raw and bleeding. But Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the government of Modi forced the temple authorities to take the traditional routes that pass through the Muslim ghettoes in the eastern parts. This kind of hectic and aggressive stance of the Hindutva went on unabated while the refugees were still hungry and sleepless. The firewood was too wet to cook a meal and the ration too was stopped. Among the visitors to the relief camps some wept over the sorrowful conditions. Among them were the former PM Deve Gowda and the sister of PM Pandit Nehru, Lakshmi Sahgal. Such men and women who empathize with the grieved Muslims are of no consequence to the Hindu right in India. The extremists among Hindus dismiss them as pseudo secularists. They carry on their juggernaut against the minority as the opinions of the secular minded does not cut any ice with the hardliners of Hindutva. They are so fanatic about it that they club the Muslims and the secular as the same. “If a single Mussalmaan attack us and if the conditions are favorable for battle, we will certainly...must win. We must never be cowed by the bluster of English-speaking secularists…act in self-defense to wipe him off and all the people of his wretched community resolutely, thoroughly, wholly and completely (we do not strike rashly, but when we do strike,…”Those words of Modi amount to breathing down the neck of the minority implying more would come.
It did not take long to happen. Even relief from Canada based Human Concern International was denied to the Muslim refugees. The NGO is well established in such relief work and has record of doing it for a quarter of a century. It had sent a consignment containing medical aid, household utility items, clothes and footwear for the hapless victims. It was left in the shipyard to rot or for rat to eat. The government of Modi did not show any interest in allowing it to be distributed. “The government of Gujarat is doing absolutely nothing from its end to get the shipment released and is even dilly-dallying the issuance, of a registration certificate to the NGO to which the shipment was addressed.” Let alone releasing or clearing aids the government in Gandhinager ordered 8 more camps closed down. Behrampura camp with 250 families and Gangshohda Kabristan relief camp with 1500 people had no food from evening of June 24, 2002. There is an irrepressible tenet of Hindutva behind all this, that is, show no sign of pity for the Muslim let alone remorse. The situation parallels partition era strategy which Anis Kidwai in her book In Freedom’s Shadow describes how the Hindu extremists wanted to wipe out the Muslim refugees in Delhi in 1947. The Home Minister Sardar Patel reasoned with them thus: “Let the Muslims who are here, remain here. Why do you bother to kill them? The heat from the ground will eventually become unbearable and they will choose to leave on their own accord.” And yet Patel did nothing for the suffering of the refugees as can be seen in the horrible condition of them. In the two refugee camps of Purana Quila and Humayun Tomb there were 150,000 victims. They suffered in the riots and had sought refuge from the marauding crowds who wanted to kill them. They were left to fend for themselves like what Modi had brought about in the life of his fellow Gujratis in 2002. The refugees in Delhi were devoid of even ration and utensils to eat food from. They would eat off their hands or in pot-shards and leaves. They would clean their shit with bricks and use the brick as kitchen stoves. On the top of it there were 25 children born every day with no food or medicine to sustain life. Diseases played havocs. There were also snakes that would crawl into the camp at night and bite them. Anis puts it thus: “any shortfall in misery was made up by snakes, whose bites delivered scores from their tortured existence.” And anticipating what would happen in 2002 the refugees in Delhi had no shelter overhead and would be forced to huddle in the knee-deep mud and await death! Back in Gujarat with the onset of monsoon rains the condition worsened for the people who became alien in their own native land. Unmindful of them the chief minister was in post haste over preparations for the elections that would take place in less than six months now.
While Modi was busy in appointing public prosecutors who were Hindutva tainted and biased he had the audacity now to appoint gram mitras or rural friendly Hindutva activists on election duty. They would be posted in all the 18 000 villages of the state. They would be paid one thousand rupees a month from the government. Their one point agenda would be to propagate Hindutva for electioneering. Former Prime Minister Devi Gowda opposed the move: “The idea clearly is to further polarize the voters on communal basis and consolidate the Hindutva vote bank of the BJP.”
Among many more countercurrent in the state were two outstandingly alarming and fraught with danger. One, that the doctors were using drugs to make the Godhra accused confess whatever the police were asking them to confess and thus implicate them in the burning of the train. This was reported in Sunday Express of June 23, 2002. In fact the Medico Friends Circle in its report titled The Carnage in Gujarat: A Public Health Problem demanded the medical Council of Indi and Indian Medical Association to take strict action against the doctors who had participated in the genocide. Second, Modi was himself indoctrinating specifically his cops in Hindutva. The police were neck deep involved in the mass atrocities. On the top of it he chose to re-strengthen their bias against and hostility to the Muslims. He was acting like the principal of the police academy. Roll calls were taken the cops stood up and marked their presence by obsequiously bowing before him. It went on for eight hours. Among his exhortation was that the cops must avoid media and not leak serious matters. He even mentioned some crucial documents that were leaked out and warned them not to do it in future. His lecture session continued focusing on the policing, how to do it, and, the hypocrisy of the “pseudo secularists”, warning the 80 IPS officers against the bête noire of the Hindutva. He held on proving how Hindutva brand of secularism was superior to “JNU type of secularism.”
Thus there was no change either in the demagogue or his demagoguery as the decade petered out!
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Muslim outfits vow to stamp out terrorism. Pioneer January 1, 2002.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com//india/SIMI-men-in-Surat-had-US-UK-links/articleshow/867319468.cms
133 held in raids at Simi meet. Asian Age January 4, 2002.
8 suspected SIMI activists arrested in Vadodara. Times of India, January 30, 2002 Gujarat to crack down on madarsas. Times of India, February 19, 2002.
One killed Gujarat as police fires at mob. Asian Age, February 25, 2002.
Reports on Godhra shocks Advani. Times of India, May 5, 2002.
Modi Govt. doing well, says PM. Hindur May 5, 2002.
In Gujarat, hate spread on SMS, Net. Asian Age May 5, 2002.
We were told to go slow, Gujarat cops tell Gill. Hindustan Times, May 5, 2002.
Vajpayee hits out at jehadi Islam. Hindu, April 13, 2002.
Power, Samantha. The Problem from Hell.
Hindu goodwill key to Muslims’ safety: RSS Hindustan Times March 18, 2002.
Gujarat riots are an answer to Jihad: Asian Age April 2, 2002.
RSS guard Modi from PM, Asian Age April 3, 2002.
Gujarat family of five burnt alive. Asian Age 4-4-2002.
I have full faith in Modi: Vajpayee. Economic Times 4-4-2002.
Pamphlets used to provoke Hindus. Asian Age 4-4-2002.
Gujarat CM now targets judges. Asian Age 7-4-2002.
Casting aside the reviled image of an RSS pracharak,15th April 2002
Privilege motion against PM rejected. Hindu, May 17, 2002.
JS Verma stopped UN resolution on Gujarat. Asian Age May 8, 2002.
Opposition walks out of LS over Gujarat relief camps. Asian Age, May 8, 2002.
Mob attacks ambulances carrying riot victims. The Times of India May 8, 2002.
Violence unabated in Gujarat., 8 killed. Statesman, May 9, 2002.
Cop nails Gujarat lie. Tehelka March 12 2005.
http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_bjp-creates-parallel-management-system-for-narendra-modi-s-fast_1587677
Gujarat riots: Retired tribunal judges testify - India - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Gujarat-riots-Retired-tribunal-judges-testify/articleshow/6489436.cms#ixzz0yWvKkusF
Hindutva's Little Saffron Book ? (content from a Hindutva run site)
http://hindumuslimindia.blogspot.com/
PM calls off Gaurav Yatras, Modi buckles. Hindustan Times, July 3, 2002.
Ahmadabad rath yatra to follow usual route. The Hindu, July 1, 2002.
Rains multiply woes of relief camp inmates. Hindustan Times June 28, 2002.
Government apathy causes riot aid torot. Asian Age June 24, 2002.
Stop Modi from appointing gram mitras; Gowda. Asian Age June 24, 2002.
More relief camps orered closed. The Hindu June 18, 2002
Modi Government turns the screws on relief camps. Hindustan Times June 25, 2002.
Civil rights bodies release reports. Indian Express June 26, 2002.
Modi lectures Gujarat police. Times of India, June 27, 2002.
CM tutors Cops on “Hindu Secularism”. Hindustan Times June 27, 2002.
“In Freedom’s Shadow” by Anis Kidwai.
Chapter 2
Nailing Modi’s Lies
On the eve of the New Year 2012 lies of Narendra Modi are coming home to roost. He had pretended that he was not particularly informed of what exactly had happened at the house of Ahsan Jafri in Gulbarg Society. The fact is that he was informed about it. He knew the Member of Parliament and had a grudge against him. Jafri had opposed him in the election of the chief minister on the basis of his saffron Hindutva ideology. Jafri was qua secularist. Modi’s record of his words and deeds over the decade shows that he was not just another politician fighting an election. He was fighting to impose an ideological plan to reduce the minority to grueling second class citizenship at the sufferance of the Hindu majority, or at worst to exterminate them as much as possible. Modi has not succeeded in showing the minority their place as Quttubuddin refused to have a photography session during the sadhbhauvana programme. He has also remained untouched by any hard feelings which could permanently make him lose his faith in the fellow countrymen with whom he had good relations and has regained the same ten years later with full confidence. “Even Hindus didn't think that the riots would be this bad. When they heard that so many people had died and there had been so much destruction, they realised that this was bad and against humanity. Hopefully, it will never happen again.” This reinforces the fact that the Hindutva genocide has failed to divide the people on communal lines. It is a glitter of hope that all the Hindus could not be considered as bad or bloody as Modi and his hordes. Albeit, it also highlights how the extremists among them could destroy the country from within. Modi was and is and will continue to be the one who would never like to be classed with the former. There is a lesson for everyone in what Quttubuddin remarked: “Our Hindu bhais live across the street.” Division in society is a part of the system but then why fight because of it? That is what
Reducing the minority to grueling second class citizenship
Modi did. He exploited it for a heinous end of exterminating a whole segment of the society. Quttubuddin scored another and more important point over his chief minister. Modi always blamed the Muslims as hurdles in the path of progress of the state little realizing that he was himself a big hurdle by his stone hearted refusal to release the grants to Muslims which were due to them according to Sachar commission recommendations. He never tired of blaming them for all the evils in the world. With no children or perhaps a wife he was deprived of the blessings of being surrounding by a family for whom he would have really wished a secure future of coexistence sans fear. He also persistently insisted the untruth that the Ganchi Muslims were terrorists who had set fire to the train at Godhra. He was himself a Ganchi, although a Hindu, a vegetable supplier. The third Newtonian principle of equal and opposite reaction to an action justification of Modi, Quttubuddin does not blame anyone. “What is the point? Who can I blame? This is my life (showing his wife and children).” He has not even uttered the name of his chief minister. It is also understandable how Modi and his cronies must have tried to get Quttubuddin attend the sadhbhava show. Modi has proved that crafty in his design
.
In line with his ideology he would naturally use rumour and lies. He said that Jafri had used his gun on the crowd. There is no proof of this. Sanjive Bhatt was the deputy commissioner in the intelligence department and avers the veracity. He even kept the chief minister himself informed of the development at the house of Jafri. There was no occasion when the old man Jafri took such a drastic and suicidal step. Bhatt had sent a message to Modi and the minister of state for home Gordharn Zadaphia in which he reported: that “former MP Jafri and his family members residing at Gulbarg society have been surrounded and are being attacked by a Hindu mob…the lives of Jafri and other family members are in imminent danger and so the commissioner of police is requested take immediate effective action.” Why only that, Jafri spoke to Modi personally and got a rude shock of being abused by the chief minister that he was still alive. As a consequence he came out to negotiate the murderous crowd. He would surrender to them so that they spare the people who had sought refuge in his house. In the last few minutes Bhatt strove to bring home to the chief minister of the danger. He did it in addition to personally meeting and calling the Director General of Police of Gujarat Chakravorty that the threat to lives was real and needed action without loss of any time. Despite this no action was forthcoming although a striking force of police was very much within striking distance of the place, Gulbarg Society.
Bhatt was also seized of the dire consequences of taking the 58 dead bodies to Ahmadabad from Godhra. He not only anticipated the consequences but he had also analyzed it. The DGP had also voiced dissent over the move. Even the collector of Godhra Ms Jayanthi Ravi had also opposed the move of the chief minister. Modi over rode all their objections and he let, of all the people, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad head Dr Jaideep Patel to take the bodies under his aegis. The VHP was universally known as the most rabid and violent group of fanatic Hindus who had history of violent reaction ever since its inception. The railway authorities and the collector had said that it was an accident of fire. All this fell on deaf ears because the plan was meticulously prepared beforehand. The chief minister of UP Rajnath Singh was a votary of the Hindutva extremist ideology of cultural nationalism that excludes Muslims as citizens of India. He did not inform about the violent and unruly acts of the Hindutva brigade travelling through his state. Even the government was unaware when the train would reach Godhra. How could the Muslims sans any resources of information know when the train would be in the station? They could not have been waiting as there is no sign of it. Some of them suffered gross insult at the hands of the saffron clad Hindutva youths traveling in the train. They did struggle to free a Muslim girl waiting for the train to go to the next station Baroda. The extremists had tried to molest and probably pull her with them as they were surging towards the door. The Muslims on the platform belabored with them to save her.
How could this brawl involve Inter Service Intelligence of Pakistan or the Laskar-e-Toiba terrorists based there? The event was so quick and transparent. Even there were passengers on Sabarmati Express who tried to stop the fight and stone pelting because they knew on the spot that it what it was. Many of them knew quite well the disposition of the Hindutva extremists and feared a flare up and in the nick of time strove to let the truth prevail and no brawl take place. They were mainly Hindus with some sanity still left.
Lies as a ton of bricks
Lies and runours are most infectious in public life. The man who had the reign of power over the whole country was infected by the lies and rumour. The Prime Minister of India AB Vajpayee deliberately fell into the trap of lies. At 4.30 pm he told in the parliament that the burning of the train at Godhra was an accident and slogan shouting was there. That was also the view of the collector of Godhra and she maintained it till full four hours further until Modi turned it into a lie that it was a terrorist attack by LeT and ISI. In just over a month Vajpayee uttered lies that shocked many people. He blamed the Muslims in general for setting the train on fire. “Who started the fire first?” (“pehli aag kisne lagayi”) “How did the fire spread further?” (Aag faily kaise?) He even voiced the deliberate falsehood of the Hindutva right that Muslims have spread their religion on the strength of the sword. “Don’t spread faith on the strength of the sword.” (Talwar ke bal par mat ka prachar nahin karna chahiye.) .He spoke to the Hindutva party BJP convention in Goa on Friday April 12, 2002 and said that Muslims do not know how to live with others. In this generalized sense he gave the example of Indonesia and Malaysia. In addition to the obvious lie there was another. Vajpayee added “such” in a sentence which did not exist in the original speech in Goa. This led Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi move a privilege motion against Vajpayee in Parliament on May 16, 2002. Thus the prime minister adopted the lie that Modi mouthed at 8.30 pm of February 27, 2002. Vajpayee brazenly and rhetorically said later before the year was out that if there is another conflagration ala Godhra, his party would give the same fitting reply!!! All this confirms that the party and its leaders would now take cue from Modi. A confused deputy Prime Minister LK Advani told reporters in Port Blair on Friday May 3, 2002 he would ask Modi whether the fire on the train was planned by the Muslims. The reporters had drawn his attention to the finding of the investigation agencies which denied that it was planned at all.
Web of Lies
The web of lies that Modi began to weave is an example of impunity he enjoyed by the tacit support of the central government. On March 1, 2002 he had asserted that he would control the “riots resulting from the natural and justified anger of the people” within 72 hours. However 500 hours later Gujarat was still burning as the chief minister kept on weaving the web of lies on Saturday March 23, 2002: violence would abate when the Members of Parliament disperse from Delhi and return to their respective constituency. “The petrol was being sprinkled from Delhi to stoke the Gujarat fire. Every morning one former Prime Minister is making a statement, which is igniting the violence here These statements show that one lie automatically leads to more lies and that has continued till the beginning of the 2012 and shows no remorse on his part and no stopping of weaving the lies now or hereafter. On the part of the prime minister the manner of weaving the web of lies continues with Machiavellian manner. Even after Modi had insulted the parliament the prime minister dared to say “I have full faith in Modi” in just over a week. The deputy prime minister’s penchant to issue Modi as the best chief minister of Gujarat in 50 years also was belied by the ground reality when exam centres were under attack by violent mobs on March 16. These blatant lies disgusted the IAS officer Harsh Mander to resign from government job around this time.
His resignation naturally reflects the sham investigation and sketchy First Information Report which the police were preparing. In the case of the dreadful Babu Bajrangi he was arrested on May 28 even when his name was not in the FIR.
Mansion of Lies
Babu Bajrangi boasted that he was a rich man, thanks to the enormous amount he charges when he brings back a Hindu girl from her Christian/Muslim spouse by kidnapping and other illegal means. Aligned to this is another source of money, mercy money, that he has given so much for Hindutva and is so popular. “People gave us a lot of money after we were jailed…I’m rich, so I have no worries.” This is not surprising because Modi was taking care of him. He housed Bajrangi in the government of Gujarat guest house at Mount Abu. He a proclaimed offender with a shoot at sight order served against him was sheltered by the chief minister. Who could dare to arrest him? He would even call on high government officials including the senior police officer in charge of Naroda Patia, KK Mysorewall, minister of state for home Zadaphia and even the chief minister. The opposition leader Lalu Prasad Yadav would vehemently and melodramatically demand his arrest. This created a scene in the parliament. So Modi requested him to surrender to law. After more than four months of running away from law, this proclaimed offender surrendered in state to police officer PP Pandey. The cop knowing the status of the offender in the corridors of power in the government of Modi assured him that it was a farce and he would get out of the prison soon. That of course he did. All this was built up in a splendid mansion. He was the Hindutva knight in shining armour relaxing in a far away Xanadu palace of pleasure. Everything that the chief ministers and his lieutenants did was in style. The other accused in Naroda Patiya were treated to feast as if they were foreign dignitaries on a visit to a host country thanks to the courtesy of DG Vanzara. If they would be so lavishly treated to sumptuous dinners and housed in executive suites of government meant for dignitaries Modi also did not wish to be left behind. When he chose to keep fast for what had happened in 2002 he ordered a five star setting and a luxurious arrangements for his three day fast in the third week of September 2011. For his victims he came down literally as a ton of bricks but for those who brought about this he offered exotic miracles of rare device and opulence. The far cry of Vajpayee that the Muslims had problems with their neihgbours fell on the victims figuratively as a ton of bricks but to those who caused this cascade it was music to their ears. Lies have different ways of spinning out.
The luxurious sojourn of Bajranig continued for eight years and there seems no end to it as the high court in Gujarat rejected the application of the Supreme Court appointed Special Investigation Team for the cancellation of his bail. The application for cancellation took sixteen long months to come to the table of the judge. His lordship rejected the application on the ground of the defense lawyer’s argument that the intention of the SIT was mala fide. In contrast to this is the prevalent acceptance of the intention of Modi in his fasting that with all this in his background he is fasting for harmony, peace and unity!
Lies as Theater of the Absurd
On September 12, 2011 the SC gave its ruling in the case of Zakia Jafri petition. Modi took it as a victory for him. He declared a three day fast from September 17, 2011. He, of course, knew that we know that it is a gimmick. Why did he then go ahead for this jamboree? It may be for two reasons, one that it was a tactic to cover the murky record and stigma of 2002; two, to impose himself as still viable for the highest seat of power in contrast to his former mentor Advani. In either case his insolence is unmistakably there. Praful Bidwai calls him “an arrogant, duplicitous and hubris-driven politician bent on further humiliating Muslims” and his fasting “contrived sadbhavana mission” an “ outlandish three-day fast”, by “Narendra 'Milosevic' Modi staged” as “ a grotesquely fraudulent act in ugly political theatre.”
The kind of milieu that Modi surrounds himself in is that of the aristocrats who are prone to commit flaws and their victims are the weak whom they make the scapegoats of the fatal errors they commit. In this he is akin to the Latin dictators. His tragic fatal flaw is that he changed the Godhra incident from a fire in a train to a terrorist attack. This he did in collusion with the IB and in line with his Hindutva ideology. The tragedy unfortunately led to the bloodbath of the minority Muslims, mostly women and children and their poor breadwinners. The hubris is also self evident in what Bajrangi says: “Maza aata hai na, sahib[ I enjoy it]…I came back after I killed them, called up the home minister and went to sleep…I felt like Rana Pratap, that I had done something like Maharana Pratap…I’d heard stories about him, but that day I did what he did himself.” Modi in Mangrol, South Gujarat on December 4, 2007 asked the crowd what the people would do to the man (Sohrabuddin) who dealt in smuggling guns. They thundered “Kill him”. Modi: “Then if I have done anything wrong, let the government of Sonia Gandhi hang me.” During the fan fare fast Modi had again dared: “fasad ke liye kusurwar hun to phansi do” (“Hang me if found guilty of the riots”). Hubris precipitates fall in tragedy. But the tragedy wrought about in Gujarat 2002 is still not over. Modi had challenged Muslims to let their god produce rain as the Hindu gods had brought rain in sravan or the peak month of monsoon rains! Gujarat has not yet reached the denouement as far as the genocide of 2002 is concerned. So what if the self realization of the tragic error has not come to him. On occasions it did. As when he uttered the above sentiment in the three day fast.
The Monument of Lies
Modi has designed a monument to commemorate ten years of the Godhra carnage. It will be in the shape of a statue of the chief minister himself. It would be a fitting memorial inaugurated on February 27, 2012 marking ten years of the conflagration (and the genocide that followed). The parenthetical is not ironic as it was the result of the first, the supposed antecedent. But was it really so? A roll call of the events down the decade will leave the people to draw their inference. Apart from the massacres and other mass atrocities many other things also went into the making of history of the decade. On August 1, 2002, 150 people from the refugee camp at Quresh hall near Mirzapur were thrown out. There were many women and children among them. Their only fault was that they had complained to the authorities about the wretched condition in the camp. This happened when the nine member team of the Election Commission of India was visiting the state to study the situation whether it was suitable to hold election. The chief minister wanted the election to be held in October. Nearly 2500 refugees were housed in Dariya Khan in a municipal school. They were shifted to Quresh Hall where there were only two toilets for such a large number and they were infested with mosquitoes. Among them was Mumtaz who said that she had slept on the foot-path at Dariya Khan and that was better than Quresh hall. In Shah Alam camp the refugees complained to poll commissioner AN Jha not to hold election until they are rehabilitated. The camp had 3000 internally displaced people.
The miserable condition of the refugee camps and the unseemly closure of most of them were on account of the man at the helms of the affairs of the state of Gujarat. Modi played upon the popular prejudices against the Muslim minority. He intensified the popular prejudices like the Muslims marry four wives and produce twenty five children. This way he nurtured the popular prejudices of the majority community and heightened their fear against the Muslims. As a matter of fact the Muslims are so poor that they hardly have enough to maintain just a single wife and children. In the immediate context of the refugee camps he dubbed them as child producing factories. Despite the fact of the wretched condition of the camps and the bleak future for the refugees he did not care for the human regard for the suffering of the victims. He did not care for their rehabilitation. Full ten years later there is no change in him nor has the lot of the victims improved in anyway. This happened on account of the genocide he wrought craftily. As he ruled for ten years thereafter the unabated suffering of Muslims continued and is continuing because of him. This is the richest tribute the sufferers could pay to their chief minister! He had gifted it.
Their utter resignation to the kind of rule he has brought with him is a telling fact of the pathology of the minorities, especially the Muslims. Even Ansari Quttubuddin has been induced by the hostile atmosphere against the Muslims to ask for the ban on the publication of his own photo. That image of begging mercy was made popular to show the RSS ideology that the Muslims are at the mercy of the Hindu majority, quintessentially at the sufferance of the Bajrang Dal, VHP and the RSS. Quttubuddin’s photo has crowded out the truly horrifying corner edge of the picture. The burnt, blackened, scarred, blood smirched fingers and toes of the emaciated members of his family have gone unnoticed. That is more revealing than his begging mercy. What wrong has he done that he should be resigned to his misery in a vibrant Gujarat?
Falsehood and propagating systematically like the Nazis is the hall mark of the extremists of Hindutva. Modi being a pracharak is deftly and insouciantly propagating lies. His cardinal sin as far as the genocide is concerned centered upon his instructing his own police and administration to let the Hindus wreak havoc on the Muslims for three days. His administration and police knew it well and were terribly afraid that it would bounce upon them if they took any measure to counter the planned pogroms of the minority. A decade of conspiratorial and eerie silence has at long last lifted the shroud of secrecy a little. But it is the little enough that is eloquently more prolific than the ten years of unease over the long delay to justice. The additional director general of police in charge of intelligence of the state RB Sreekumar and the additional chief secretary Ashok Narayan knew that the chief minister has been lying down the decade. They have had the courage whatever little of it to now reveal what diabolic design the chief minister had hatched against the Muslims. Muslims arrested in the turmoil of 2002 had had to languish in prisons down the whole decade and more. In their hundreds! While the Hindus arrested for massacring them were immediately set free at the express order of the chief minister:
RBS (R. B. Shreekumar): One thing was that they have let off Hindus arrested under POTA or something. In short time they were released. Five/six Hindus were released within hours of their arrest.
AN (Ashok Narayan): CM said that. (means CM ordered it).
RBS: If CM said that you should testify it (to the Commission), that is my humble submission.
AN: CM may say where have he said that?
RBS: He may not admit that. That is word against word.
AN: It is very difficult to prove.
RBS: Can be proved in circumstantial way.
AN: How it be? How can I prove this?
RBS: It is not your duty to prove this. ACS should tell the truth and not worry about support of his truthful statement. That is what exactly happened.
AN: How can I depose also? What can I depose…..? Suppose the Vakils (lawyers) may ask how do you say the CM gave that sort of instruction? On what basis I can say that?
As Modi’s can of worms is opening up his lies are struggling to crawl out by the day in broad day light for the world to see. For example the murder of Haren Pandya his own revenue minister is very near full exposure of what Pandya’s father and other relatives including his wife always knew, that it was a political murder at the behest of the chief minister. The chief conspirator and supposed killer of Pandya was made out to be Asghar Ali. But the court has acquitted him of all charges. He was discharged in December 2011 and only now it is becoming certain that he had written a letter from the prison to the President of India in 2004 about the truth of the murder. BJP, the Hindutva political face, is staring in the face of the people that it can arrange meeting with the President of India on every sundry matter but for this mother letter of all letters against their poster boy must remain in abeyance. It speaks volumes how two types of presidents have occupied the highest post of the republic. KR Narayanan wrote to PM Vajpayee against the genocide of Muslims while President Abdul Kalam slept over the letter of Asghar Ali. It is a show piece of Hindutva power that has spread like cancer in the administration of the country. It also makes the fact more convincing now than before that India’s Right to Information Act is toothless when it comes to matters relating to the Muslim minority. When will these crucial letters see the light of day? Or, is the demagoguery of Gujarat’s chief minister so well received at all hand that it could help him through more victory in election and through more development of industry and commerce that too at the cost of the position of India in the world view? In what way is this piper of Gujarat leading differently than the piper of Hamlin? If Hamlin was reputed for probity and honesty of its officials and people in what way is Gujarat different from it in the context of 2002 and the decade since then? It is awesome to hear Modi continuing to pontificate the American delegation of the Republican Party over Pakistan sponsored terrorism while the terrorism he unleashed upon the Muslims made the Yankees enjoy a comfortable Rip Van Winkle slumber of ten years which is still continuing?
As there was intensification of the Hindutva forces in the immediate aftermath of 2003 the various conglomerates of the RSS were recouping as the Dharmasansad of Saints on January 22-25 neared. That was scheduled to take place in New Delhi against the backdrop of Goa conclave of the BJP where Vajpayee had also called the ideology of Hindutva as “narrow, rigid, and extremist manner”. This was a soft pedaling of Hindutva by the prime minister which was part of the game. The other wings of the Hindutva were relentlessly following the agenda despite this. For example Bajrang Dal declared at the Pune meeting on January 5, 2003 that it was distributing 3 lakh trishuls to youths and banners saying “Welcome to Hindu Rashtra.” Hindu Rashtra is the cherished dream of the extremists and Modi is an adherent of it. He had excused himself from espousing this because what he had done the previous years was a practical laboratory of the same experiment of establishing the Hindutva rashtra. VHP, Bajrang Dal and others were irked by the refusal of the prime minister not transferring Ramjanam Bhoomi to Ramjanambhoomi trust. They had expected that Vajpayee would have done by December 29. There was the familiar switchback tactic during this crucial week. On January 2, 2003 Bal Thackeray reacted what you could easily see as similar to his reaction to Modi during the three day fasting in mid September 2011. He had asserted that he was as constant as marble in his espousal of Hindutva: his party had never deviated from the concept of Hindutva "unlike the BJP, which had now and again modified its view on the subject"."Though the BJP and VHP had now and again spoke in different voices on the subject, the Sena's stand on its chosen path of Hindutva had always been constant." This was no less than twisting Vajpayee’s arm for even more conceding the ground which he found difficult for his coalition government to do. On January 5 Advani attended a celebration of the win in Gujarat election and asserted: “India has been a Hindu nation, hence it is secular." Thus the right wing Hindutva parties were having a hay day of gymnastic over gaining power through Hindutva and still saying that it was not that. The prevarication has always been a standard way of juggling over the issue and hiding the violence cruelty. Essentially it was Advani the patron of Modi who administered the threat: "People ask me whether we will make Hindutva a poll plank (in the forthcoming elections in Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharshtra and Madhya Pradesh, as also the Lok Sabha polls in 2004) . I think we should concentrate on good governance, security and development. But if the Opposition raises Hindutva, we will certainly make that an issue." Advani was so overwhelmed by the victory in Gujarat that his hubris saw no limit when he asserted that for the first time Hindutva had changed the course of the history of the country. "We should, however, understand what Hindutva or cultural nationalism means. Historically, whoever may have ruled different parts of the country, it is cultural nationalism alone that has united those living in India. Those living in the south visit the north, and vice versa, and this cultural nationalism needs to be understood." "If Nehru believed in his concept of secularism, those who followed him used religion for vote bank purposes. Congress chief Sonia Gandhi has no problem in going to Ambaji for attracting Hindu votes. Rajiv Gandhi opened the gates of the disputed site in Ajodhya, again for the same purpose.We, on the contrary, firmly believe in building a temple at Ram Janambhoomi."
Calling for repeating the "Gujarat experiment"
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http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_sanjiv-bhatt-refutes-gordhan-zadaphias-claims_1631839
Pandya quits Modi Govt HT 7-8-2 : quit on 6 a minister HT
Reports on Godhra shocks Advani. Times of India May 5, 2002.
“Opposition is keen on keeping the fire burning in Gujarat”. Times of India March 25, 2002.
‘I have full faith in Modi’ Vajpayee. Economic Times. April 4, 2002).
Mob attack school during examinations. Times of India April 16, 2002.
Cps finally pick up Bajang man. Indian Express May 29, 2002.
http://www.rediff.com/news/slide-show/slide-show-1-modis-nasty-fast-politics-shifting-the-bjp-rightwards/20110923.htm
Tehelka. November 3, 2007.
Refugees thrown out of camp, spend night on streets. Hindustan Times, August 2, 2002.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com//india/VHP-to-take-aggressive-stand-on-Hindutva/articleshow/33444539.cms
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/Face-of-Gujarat-riots-hates-celebrity-status/articleshow/11785150.cms
The invisible man. The Week, February 17, 2012. http://week.manoramaonline.com/cgi-bin/MMOnline.dll/portal/ep/theWeekContent.do?contentId=11049135&programId=1073755753&tabId=13&categoryId=-172201
Chapter 3
Conspiracy
Why do the Hindutva groups appropriate to them to choose what is precedent/cause/action and what should be its consequence/reaction? More pertinently, why do they choose what they choose when the communal tension between Hindus and Muslims has already been charged and a spark is enough to ignite an inferno? For example, there was a terrorist attack at the Gateway of India and Zaveri Bazaar in which scores of people died. The victims were from both the communities. This disaster took place on August 25, 2003, more than a year after Gujarat genocide. In just a week the police in Mumbai arrested some Muslims and accused them of the evil deed. This heightened the tension as many were made to believe that it was a blow back from Godhra, that because Muslims were massacred in Gujarat now they were resorting to avenge it. On September 7, within a week of the arrest of the Muslims accused in the terrorist attack, Raj Thackeray of Shiv Sena organized maha aarti puja emulating his uncle and chief of his party who performed such prayers which led to the massacres of Muslims in Mumbai. At one such prayer at Sidhivinayak temple of Prabhadevi in Mumbai on September 7 2003 Raj Thackeray said that if the Muslims burnt the train at Godhra as a reaction to the demolition of the Babri mosque in 1992, then the organizing of the maha aarti puja was Hindus’ response to what had happened in Mumbai on August 25, 2003. This also was inversely the case with the communally tainted police in Malegaon 2006. They wrote a report first that September 8, 2006 blasts were the works of Muslims who wanted to avenge the large number of Muslims killed in the riots of October 26, 2001.
Interestingly and relevantly in the context of the genocide, there were serial bomb attacks in local trains in Mumbai on July 11, 2006 which killed many Hindus and Muslims. The Muslims were again blamed and the police and the media as well as the Hindutva groups said that it was a revenge of Muslims for the genocide in Gujarat. More than five years have passed and yet the police have not been able to prove convincingly who carried out the attacks on the local trains. Thus it leads to the same question: why do the Hindutva groups have the freedom of choosing and reacting
S6 coach that was only burnt
The first decade of the twenty first century unraveled many conspiracies. There is no need to say that Hemant Karkare’s death was a result of conspiracy, although Rakesh Maria, an Indian born Jew in charge of the Crime Branch, directed him to reach Cama hospital-Mumbai special police office area; where he was killed. He also knew that the killers of Shahid Azmi were around and yet could not prevent the murder. What happened in Mumbai also happened in Delhi where Batla house encounter raised many doubts. The murder of Sunil Joshi involving Sadhvi Pragyasingh is a classic example of the same as is the attack on RSS headquarters in Nagpur. The attack on Samjhauta Express, Malegaon blasts of 2006 and 2008, etc are tips of ice bergs which will required many more years to solve. These were spread over the decade and have come to light with lapses in time. In contrast the pogroms of Muslims in Gujarat 2002 were more or less the focus of attention despite the defiance of the Modi administration. But they were so cunningly handled by Vajpayee-Modi-Advani-Togadia-Singhal that there is little chance of the full truth coming out.
One reason is that even more unsuspected personae have cropped up who claimed to have dramatized the genocide. On the last day of the fast farce Bal Thackeray of Shiv Sena wrote in his Saamna that it was Mahrashtra that had heralded the Hindutva laboratory experiment of Gujarat. What he meant perhaps was that he had soft-pedaled it through Maharashtra.
"Hindu ramsevaks were killed in Godhra riots (train burning) and that's why Hindus were inflamed. Do not kill them by giving them dose of the poison of secularism…"Modi's battle may be for the 'gaddi' (throne) of Delhi. But it is impossible without 'sadbhavana' (goodwill) of Hindus. It was the saffron flag which helped propel Modi to leadership position. It was due to Hindu vote bank that Modi reached the place where he is today…It cannot be forgotten that after Maharashtra, Gujarat is the laboratory of Hinduism."
So the obvious question that his tantrum churns up is where was the experiment of Hindutva sponsored violence conducted? Where was the exact location of the Hindutva laboratory in Maharashtra? The most immediate in time and in proximity to the land of Gujarat was, of course, Malegaon October 26, 2001. The bloody communal violence started when a police man tore the pamphlet titled “Be Indian Buy Indian”. This happened of all the days on Friday and also the day of Dassera, a perfect recipe for trouble. Shiv Sena MLA Dada Bhuse had been very proactive with his Janta Raja subgroup of Shiv Sena in distributing arms by using the ambulance of the JR. He supplied arms much before the riots had erupted and was directly involved in the murder of a Muslim corporator by inducing him to come out for a talk in the most communally charged tense area of Sangmeshwar. Even the mosque of the Diamond mill was burnt to ashes when Khalil was brutally murdered. His own brother witnessed the scene. More than two hundred villages and small towns came under the anti Muslim violence and discrimination. For the first time in history Muslims in those villages migrated to the main town of Malegaon. Their houses and shops were looted and burnt. Many women were raped.
There is obviously logistics behind what happened in Malegaon. It is contiguous to Gujarat. Modi speaks of two Pakistans, one that borders the state that he rules another is the ghettos of Muslims—he calls it the ghettos where Mullas live. He has often spoken about reaching out into such areas and wiping out the Mullas. There is need for immediate retaliation in the event of terrorist attack. He always blames Muslims whenever a terrorist attack takes place. Sadhvi Pragyasing rode a motor bike straight from Surat/Dangs to Malegaon. On the same straight road had Swami Aseemanand travelled to come to the sister city of Malegaon, Dhuia. It was in the rural areas of Malegaon taluka that VHP and Bajrang Dal had distributed trishul and arms and conducted martial trainings. But what really linked Gujarat to Malegaon among other things was the use of the deadly white powder thrown in shops, houses and mosques before firing the gas cylinders thrown into them. If there was a dry run it was in Malegaon.
It is also an established fact that Lt Co Shrikant Purohit also wanted to kill RSS’ most powerful office holder Mohan Bhagwat by the same white powder. So now the logical inference is: when did the RSS and its organizations graduate into advanced guerilla warfare to take on Muslims or even Hindus who go against them by means of such deadly chemicals?
With the professed aim of establishing Hindutva’s overall objective of Hindu Rashtra it is pertinent to remember the tactics used would follow the footsteps of Adold Hitler whom the Hindutva leaders unabashedly admire and even emulate. As Hitler had got the parliament burnt to arouse the passion of the nationalists the extremists Hindus could do just that. Even the attack on Indian Parliament smacks of eerie design. The Prime Minister Vajpayee had said a day before the attack that the Parliament would be a target and precisely that happened. All kinds of doubts have been discussed and analyzed over the event; attack on RSS headquarters was similarly preceded by the visit of the National Security Advisor to the chief of the RSS. When the Sabarmati Express fire burnt the S6 compartment, The Times of India of the day reported that unidentified attackers had done it. Advani asked the government to take firm action and shoot the miscreants at sight. The allegedly attackers were not even identified. There was no proof of people burning the train from outside whom the police could fire at. KS Subramanium has this to say nearly ten years later: “A Special Investigation Team (SIT), led by R.K. Raghavan, was tasked by the Supreme Court of India to supervise the Gujarat Police’s investigation of the case. While the SIT chief has expressed his ‘professional’ satisfaction over the ‘success’ of the prosecution case, his role has come in for criticism. He is alleged to have failed to take an objective and detached view of the evidence collected by the Gujarat Police with some in the IPS fraternity holding that he acted as the ‘B team’ of the Gujarat Police. Others say that he is involved in a clear case of conflict of interest: being a well-paid cyber security consultant for the Tatas who have massive investments in Gujarat, he has nevertheless associated himself with a major criminal investigation to help the controversial Gujarat Chief Minister win a crucial political battle against his opponents.” Subramanium is stating this with hindsight. As Raghvan also has opined that there is no sufficient ‘prosecutable’ evident against Modi in another stint of his as chief of another SIT. As a matter of fact the world believes otherwise. Hence there is need for outside investigators who are neither tainted by any ideology nor by material consideration.
India is a civilized country and has one of the oldest civilizations in the world. It becomes India to take help from outside because there are enough hardcore communalists of all sorts who strike at the source of Indian secularism. Students Islamic Movement of India has been banned during the whole decade. The activists of SIMI are accused of being terrorists. At the same time and during the same period Hindutva activists have been found to be involved in several cases, in one count nearly 12, and yet no Hindutva organization is banned. Whether it is intra or inter civilization clash is not as much important as this reveals utter open bias. Therefore there is a justified and legitimate need to have arbitration and intervention. If not this would lead to more misunderstanding and communal disharmony in the country. This is also reflected in the Nanavati-Mehta Commission vs UC Banerjee Commission findings of the truth of the Godhra train accident. Why are we fighting shy of appointing an internationally reputed human rights workers and jurists to help us out of the morass of dithering when the need is for quick and firm action?
There were many cases related to the genocide that have remained unsolved. Different inquiries by Special Task Force or Special Investigation Teams have not changed the situation on the ground. In hundreds of such cases if a couple of them have come to conviction stage it speaks volumes in support of justice delayed is justice denied. Take for example the fake encounter cases. After having inquired by diverse agencies on January 25, 2012 the Supreme Court of India asked Justice MB Shah to make inquiry to assess whether the fake encounter cases of 2003 to 2006 need inquiry by an independent agency! This is again unacceptable because there have been cases of fake encounters even before 2003. What guarantee is there that fake encounters would not have taken place after 2006 and would not happen now? Sameer Khan Pathan’s murder through fake encounter took place in October 2002. Was it any less a fake encounter?
The day the Godhra happened there was a good deal of clamour for building the temple at the place where the Babri mosque stood. A huge crowd of Hindus had gathered in Ajodhya. Such a huge gathering in 1992 had resulted in demolishing of the mosque and that was followed by riots across the country. That was also the result of conspiracy. The state government had given assurance to the court that the mosque would not be touched. Yet, well in advance all the preparation and training for demolishing it was already over. They waited for the day only. When it came there was exhortation by the Hindutva leaders for the demolition and the crowd did the work it had gone there to do. There was a jubilation and distribution of sweets on dias where Advani, Uma Bharti and others had been making speeches. Within hours the mosque came down in debris as the trained brigands of Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena systematically destroyed the mosque with special instruments of demolition. The huge number of military and semi military forces including the Rapid Action Force stood idly because the central government and the state government had tacitly decided not to stop it.
Twenty years later there was a concerted effort made by the Hindutva groups to start building the temple on March 15, 2002. Prior to it there was a ceremony of yagna or prayer for laying the foundation on February 27. This was in violation of the Supreme Court ruling. There was an uproar in the parliament because many feared that it would lead to great disturbance and riots all over the country. In the lower house of the parliament the opposition leaders and members of the parliament did not let any matter discussed. They wanted to first force the prime minister to order the cancellation of the prayer programme at Ajodhya. They insisted on the prime minister to order seizure of the building material and arrest of the volunteers who had gathered there. The prime minister Vajpayee tried to assure the parliament that the status quo at the site of the mosque would not be allowed to be disturbed. The opposition members could not trust it because this is what had happened in 1992, all the guarantees and assurances were thrown to the four winds then. They did not want history to repeat the same mistake. But the prime minister refused to call off the prayer. Nay he said that he did not see why the prayer should be stopped unless it leads to law and order problem. But the deputy opposition leader Shivraj Patil remained adamant and said: ''we consider this as one of the most important issues, because of what had happened in the past.” Congress spokesperson Jaipal Reddy demanded the prime minister to preempt the huge illegal assemblage at the site. Given this milieu in the country and the parliament was Godhra made to happen to distract attention?
There are some logical inferences that trouble the mind. The Muslims by no means were in their wildest dream could have stopped the train because of the violent crowd of the Hindutva volunteers. The saffron volunteers had occupied seats and available space in all the compartments and not just S6 where the fire accident happened. The train had the carrying capacity of 1100 while the actual estimate was 2000 abroad the train at that time. Had the Muslims wanted to burn the train they could have thrown burning material from outside in any compartments and not just one specific S6. The overcrowded train was nothing less than a Mazda complex for them. (Jews in ancient times were encircled and helpless and besieged they chose to jump down from a mountain peak to their death. This was a mass suicide.) Muslims would have committed such mass suicide had they dared to even reach the train full of violent and deadly armed Hindutva crowd!
Moreover they did not assault the Hindus who were getting down and escaping from the burning train in alarm. They even offered water from their well to the fire engines to extinguish the fire. This and many other such facts lead one to believe that the Godhra accident was made to happen for an ulterior design. As the rath yatr of Advani led to violence that led to the demolition of the mosque so this time around the same forces were out in action.
There is ample proof to show that the conspiracy was prepared much earlier and materials were collected. Food packages were packed, drinks were also filled in pouches, and this included not just water but alcohol, voter lists print outs were distributed to identify the victims and their religion, expert lawyers were enlisted and briefed what to do in defense of Hindu extremists who would be caught and tried in a court of law. The arms were imported into Gujarat from as far as Bihar, UP, Punjab and other place. Even during curfew hours the trucks carrying illegal arms were allowed safe and speedy passage. Arms were stocked in nearby place like Mehsana district to be easily available for the “action” or massacre. It was evinced by not just India human rights and civil liberty organizations but even foreign governments and foreign NGOs. For example the UK officials who had kept watch on the situation said that there were “all the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing and that reconciliation between Hindus and Muslims is impossible while the Chief Minister remains in power.”
As there was the conspiracy of the cultural nationalists whom Julio Ribeiro has called pseudo patriots of India there was also an international dimension of it. It involved both vernacular and mainstream newspapers here and abroad. One such paper was the Independent of English whose advise Salman Rushdie found to be queer but also conspiratorial nevertheless when the paper asked its writers "beware excess pessimism" (circa March 2002).
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Mainstream, Vol XLIX, No 16, April 9, 2011Truth Behind the Fire in Sabarmati Express (Godhra, February 27, 2002)K S Subramanium http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article2684.html
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com//india/Ayodhya-issue-rocks-Parliament/articleshow/2204500.cms
Truth Behind the Fire in Sabarmati Express (Godhra, February 27, 2002)K S Subramanium Mainstream, Vol XLIX, No 16, April 9, 2011
Violence was planned months in advance: UK officials. Hindu April 28, 2002
Chapter 4
2003 Debate on Hindutva
The beginning of the year 2003 marked an intense opposition against communal politics which artists found to be the need of the hour. A programme by artists portrayed the insane demolition of the grave of Wali Gujrati and desecration of the grave of Ustad Fayaz Ahmed Khan. Sahmat also focused on the other works of arts like releasing a book Saffronised and Substandard a critique of the school text books prepared by NCERT. Another book The Republic Besmirched a collection of reports and commentaries on post Babri demolition also exposed the threat from the extremists of Hindutva. There was an exhibition of Ways of Resisting of the same motive through the paintings of Arpana Caur, Akbar Padamsee.
After the artists the politicians took up the cudgel against the espousing of Hindutva by the government. And of all the people the so called moderate face of the Hindutva, the Prime Minister Mr Vajpayee. He carried his literary musing like the confession of an opium addict from the Goa conclave of his party to the capital of India. He said that Hindutva was tolerant and liberating. The world knew well what Hindutva was. It was the most objective observer in Mark Tully of BBC whose reaction is worth noting. He remarked that Vajpayee was now showing his true colour. The Congress spokesperson Anand Sharma spelled it out when he said: Hindutva was a "political maneuver that stokes ill-will, violence and hatred among different communities with the single aim of garnering votes". The man in the street knows that BJP rode to power by this means when it captured power at the centre in the aftermath of the 1992 demolition of the Ajodhya mosque. Vajpayee and Advani were direct beneficiaries of the ideological plank on which they fought the election. Narendra Modi followed them for a whole decade winning two general elections. Therefore there is no single demagogue but a gamut of demagogues and a range of demagoguery they practiced based on catching power through election fought on the great divide of the subcontinent. This also gave them a stick to beat the minority and blame them for all kinds of division while they themselves practiced exclusionary nationhood; they euphemistically called it cultural nationalism. All this distracted attention from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad playing an active and dominant role in the genocide of Muslims in Gujarat and now openly calling annulling of the Constitution of the Republic of India.
But there was a much larger one among all the demagogues; Modi had already thrown the Constitution of the country in the dust bin. As Ashish Nadndy also averred that the chief minister of Gujarat had not only abandoned the Constitution but his administration of centrally chosen staff in the police and civil administration had adjusted themselves to the new world order that Modi and Vajpayee had ushered in riding on the wave of Hindutva.
The Hindutva group on its part had two pronged attack, believing as always that offense is the best way of defense. LK Advani as the deputy PM in the central government and BJP opposition leader in Bihar Assembly SK Modi used diversionary tactics. Advani imported theocracy of Pakistan and its so called cross border terrorism to eclipse into insignificance the pogroms of Muslim in Gujarat. He thundered "If secularism is made a poll issue and BJP is made out to be a fundamental and communal party, then we will respond adequately…Hindutva's concept of a state has always been that it should be secular. Hindutva has never accepted theocracy." All this was in sharp contrast to the craftily choreographed genocide of Muslims in Gujarat by the RSS pracharak cum chief minister Narendra Modi. Many events, later in the decade, proved Advani’s (and even of his protégé Modi’s self delusionary standoff with the neighbouring country’s ruler) claim not to hold talk with Pakistan because of its cross border terrorism, hollow. The alleged terrorist attack by Pakistan Inter Services Intelligence on Samjhauta Express proved to be the work of Hindutva terrorists was one most disturbing revelation. Similarly Narendra Modi’s win against the Congress in assembly election in Gujarat was another. He had posed himself as fighting against the Pakistani president General Musharraf. It was, factually speaking, nowhere a fight against the general of another country. He was reaping the harvest of hatred he had sown against Muslims and their massacre earlier in the previous year.
The four demagogues of the Hindutva (Vajpayee, Modi, Advani and Giriraj Kishore) even surpassed and outdid VHP itself. Vajpayee equated Bhariyata or Indian ness with Hindutva and Advani was belligerently ready to fight election precisely on the Hindutva ideology. Vajpayee was worse in maneuvering (in the sense of Anand Sherma) because he was deft in prevarication thanks to his being a poet. He was more eloquent than the prosaic Advani and Modi. He was the perfect foil of Giriraj Kishore who was more candid. Thus the debate raged while the genocide of Muslims was papered over. Vajpayee and his government could have dismissed Modi and imposed central government rule in Gujarat but these maneuverings made the genocide look unimportant and not worthy of attention publicly.
In Bihar they had their surrogate in the leader of the opposition, SK Modi. He was most vocal in the matter of encounter death of three in Bihar during the Rubri Devi government rule. He called the rule of Rubri government as “Goonda raj and chaos.” What had happened in Gujarat then and after the genocide the fake encounters one upon another, were even worse than Bihar. Again the BJP leader in Bihar did the same; deflect attention from the enormity of the situation in Gujarat. When this hurly burly was going on the man who practically enforced the Hindutva experiment enjoyed reprieve after murder and mayhem.
From hindsight of almost a decade later neither Vajpayee nor anyone else from the Hindutva ever “betrayed” or “cheated” VHP as Giriraj Kishore voiced his misgivings on January 1, 2003. It is equally true from hindsight of the same that no one was “unnerved” by Vajpayee’s equation of Bhartiyata with Hindutva as Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi taunted on that same day.
As far as the fasting of Modi is concerned and as his fasting juggernaut reached Godhra in February 2012 it is accepted fact that the man who refuses to wear the skull cap even for a ceremoniously arranged photo session as a courtesy is made of much sterner stuff. The hypocrisy (circa 2012) also peeps through the show whether he dons the mantle of Sardar Patel or Swami Vivekanand. He does not want you to know that Swami Vivekanand had said that he wanted Indians to have a sturdy Muslim body with a vedantic mind in it. Let alone the object of the skull cap even the concept of the body and the mind is revolting to him and the Hindutva. Like the deities of Moloch and Beelzebub the demagogues are also well established and popularly adulated.
Swami Vivekanand is also lassoed in for the electioneering later in 2012. Getting power is the order of the day for Modi and Advani. What else is the meaning of demagogue than ‘a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and falsehoods and promises in order to gain power’? Modi’s falsehoods are uncountable. His right hand man and his minister of state for home Amit Shah allegedly employed Sohrabuddin to kill his own revenue minister. Then finally it was Tulsiram Prajapati who finished off Haren Pandya. The widow Jagruti beseeched Modi and Advani and the BJP to find out the murderers of her husband. She did this around the first round of the spate of fasting by Modi, neither has Modi nor has Advani done anything towards unearthing the cause and the real culprits of their own party man’s brutal murderers for which the Muslims were made scapegoat. Demagogues do not only use demagoguery to gain power but once they have it they are like the limpets who stick to their chair! Their deafening silence over the issue of Pandya murder speaks volumes. Such is the demagoguery that the father of Pandya fought election against Advani to get justice and go to the bottom of the political murder of his son! What hope for the widow and the bereaved sister of Pandya? The deceased father was not a demagogue but a commoner opposing a demagogue! Hindutva has no place for the commoner as its ideology is in itself all in all.
Hindutva also has no place for internal differences of opinion. On January 2, 2003 Bal Thackeray was very furious over the issue of Ram Jethmalani taking up the defense of the accused in Parliament December 13, 2001 attack. But he showed his fangs against the Muslims whom he suspected to be responsible for the attack on the Akshardham temple in September 2002 near the official residence of Modi. He was irked by no retaliation coming from the Hindus in Gujarat. They had gone soft while he wanted immediate reaction. He had Modi and Vajpayee in mind when he made the remark. He was also piqued that he was not invited to the felicitation of Modi on January 12 in Mumbai. Thackeray’s outburst assumes significance because he had initiated the Hindutva experiment in Maharashtra which was imported by Modi and yet did not go to the fullest extent when Akshardham was attacked. Thackeray’s reaction to events in Gujarat illustrates the close coordination that existed in the Hindutva groups across the country and shows how more demagogues than one were involved in the genocide.
It is not a by-product of the Moditva that the Lokayukta matter was pending for almost ten years. It was in effect one ruse that Modi used craftily to eclipse the fact that the choice of the high court chief justice was RA Mehta who was critical of Modi’s rehabilitation record of the 2002 internally displaced Muslims and the whole evil full ethos that surrounded that most ghoulish episode of carnage. In other words the matter of the refugees was the by product in the sense that it was created by genocide and the unseemly hurry to rush to election. This was done despite the plight persisting till present of the homeless, rendered homeless on account of Modi.
Modi’s hard core Hindutva extremist stance on Muslims is unflinching. On January 12, 2003 he told a rally at the Shivaji Park "You can defeat BJP but you cannot defeat Hindutva." There is no choice for the Hindutva leaders even when they at times consider adjustment when polls are around the corner. But the present occasion was not pre election rally. It was a celebration of election victory in December 2002 Gujarat assembly election. It was rarest of rare victory to gloat over since it was the first time in history that Hindutva ideology of “the last solution” of the Muslim problem was put to practical testing. It succeeded like anything because Modi felt elated that he came out of it not only successful but was still intact. There was complete impunity that he would ever be brought to book to face charges of crimes against humanity. His party’s élan was so high that it declared that he would take the place of Bal Thackeray now. Perhaps this rather piqued the Shiv Sena chief who not only did not attend the Shivaji Park rally but did not let anyone else from his family or party attend it, either. Thus a streak of megalomania runs through all these demagogues. The rally holding in the forte of Shiv Sena also assumed significance that the BJP with its prevarication had not only succeeded in using the Hindutva ideology to carry out the genocide and succeeded but had also discovered in Modi the alternative to Bal Thackeray. He could like the Sena chief defy the law of the land and rubbish the rule of law in favour of the thok shai or rule of the muscle man. The rule of the muscleman or rule based on brutal force disregards democracy and stands for annulling the constitution of India for a Hindu Rashtra. The BJP had now attained the status of Shiv Sena.
There was another strain of Hindutva visible at this time. Hindutva is innate and cannot brook foreigners or persons of foreign origin living in India as Indians. So when Sonia Gandhi feared that Hindutva would pose a challenge to the national integrity and harmony of the communities within the country Modi retorted: "hum kya Italy ke beti se hindutva sikhenge?" (should we learn Hindutva from the daughter of Italy).
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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com//entertainment/bollywood/news-interviews/Artists-express-concern-over-communal-divide-at-Sahmat-show/articleshow/33079091.cms
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com//india/Cong-criticises-PMs-Goa-musings/articleshow/33079380.cms
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com//india/BJP-not-shy-of-debating-Hindutva-Advani/articleshow/33086274.cms
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com//city/patna/BJP-calls-for-CBI-probe-into-encounter-case/articleshow/32774087.cms
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2003-01-02/india/27278434_1_shiv-sena-sena-supremo-bal-thackeray-hindutva
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com//india/BJP-can-be-defeated-not-Hindutva-Modi/articleshow/34197984.cms
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com//articleshow/34197575.cms
Chapter 5
Abandoning wife for the motherland
I made a mistake in my book “First Hindutva Genocide of Muslims and its Architect” by saying that Narendra Modi would know human suffering had he a daughter. The context was that so many Muslim girls and women had been raped and burnt alive and some of them were about to marry and their dowry was also stolen. How painful it is to collect your life time saving to marry a daughter. My fault was that I did not realize then as I do now that he had vowed to live a life of celibacy. The male hermits/ monks or saneyasis in Bankam Chader Chattopadhya’s novel Anandmath take the vow of mahavart or grand vow for the mother land that supersedes everything else that is earthly. I read the novel in Marathi in which vart stands for the vow. They were not like the English prophet-figure Thomas Carlyle who also had to ‘forebear’ his wife in order to devote himself to an intellectual life. After his death his wife had menopause and the doctor checked her and found her maidenhead intact! He was like Satyanand, Mahendra Singh, Jivanand, Bhavanand and their female counterpart Shanti, of the novel. After all Modi was a pracharak of RSS. Like Vajpayee and all the chiefs of that group lives a life of celibacy. Such people command great respect for having sacrificed matrimonial bliss for a life of forbearance, parsimony and devotion. Their self sacrifice for the motherland is looked upon with awe. Even those hard core ghouls who had families behaved no different. On August 28, 2003 Ratilal Rathod went before the Nanavati Commission to depose what he had done. He along with his daughter Gita was there. So was Babu Bajrangi. Rathod like the other murderer had opened up the wombs of eight/nine month pregnant Muslim women and taken out fetuses on his spear to the jubilation of the marauders whom he showed his feat in killing Muslims. They had lustily cheered. Sanyasis and non sanyasis alike did with primitive weapons what Swami Aseemannd Swami Dyanand Pandey would do with deadly bombs years later. They too were sanayasis.
Literature demands what Samuel Taylor Coleridge calls a willing suspension of disbelief. That adds to better understanding, be it Anandmath, Leonardo De Vinci Code, or The Satanic Verses. Literal reading leads to very serious problems vis-à-vis society. In the case of the first, Anandmath, the life of celibacy is for the Hindutva crucial tenet of exterminating Muslims and only then the land is pure. In other words it calls for ethnic cleansing. That is what is there in most of the chapters. The VHP president Ashok Singha mistakenly believes that the framing of charges against Sadhvi Pragyasingh is like hunting the descendants of Christ. Christ is believed to have married and left a wife as his successor. The pope started a hunt for and liquidating the descendant down the ages. This is a strange line to take for Singhal for it is not that the police are pursuing the Sadhvi. The Sadhvi has been behind most of the terrorist attacks including Malegaon2006, 2008, Samjhauta, murder of Sunil Joshi, etc. She was resplendently manifest. Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, LKAdvani hobnobbed with her. Similarly in Salman Rushdie’s novel Aeysha goes naked through the dusty paths of littoral areas of South India into the chasm which divided the ocean as a passage is created for her voyage to Mecca. This is magic realism as much as the naming of the barmaids after the women of the house of the prophet.
The patron of the math
Narendra Modi was a pracharak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. He is not dissimilar to Satyanand in the novel Aanandmath of Bankamchander Chatopadhya (Chatterjee). Bhavanand is a hermit cum rebel and dacoit who meets a well off farmer Mahender Singh and wants to attract him to the secret cult of the monks or snayasis. He tells Mahender that there are other provinces like Magadh, Mithla, Kashi, Delhi, Kashmir, etc have not suffered as much as Bengal under the rule of the Muslims. There is no place where the foetus is cut out of the womb of the mother as in Bangal. The king should protect the subject. “But does our Muslim ruler (Mir Jafer) do it? Our religion is gone, our caste is lost, our respect is taken away, our family is destroyed and now our life is endangered. But without destroying the drunkard ruler the Hindu fundamentalism (or Hindutva)of the Hindus cannot be saved.” Satyanand was also a pracharak or group leader and guide. He had forsaken family and the worldly life for a cause. Before initiating Mahender into the secret group of sanatan snayasis or Hindu hermits he says “the actual mark of vaishnav religion is the elimination of the ‘wicked’ and the rescue of the mother land (from the wicked). Vishnu is the patron of the world. He has taken ten avatars or shapes in order to rescue the world. Keshi, Hinraaykeshap, Madhukaytabh, Moor, Narak, etc.” Satyanand, Jeevanand and Bhavanand were the three who had taken to celibacy for the cause of rescuing the mother land. They had taken vow to live a life of renunciation and celibacy although Jeevanand had a wife (Shanti)but had not consummated his marriage. Once they were counting the treasure they had looted from the English revenue officer in the service of the nawab of Bengal. Satyanand had asked the other two to keep Mahender under watch. If Mahendra came into the secret sect he would bring lot of wealth of his ancestors. “It is the bounden duty of the sanatan Hindus to punish the ‘wicked’ and in the same way to protect the disciplined is also their duty.”
In the course of the genocide the killers would make Muslims shout Jai Sri Ram and make them say Vande Matrum. The latter phrase was printed on the banner as can be seen later in the photo of the Bajrang Dal activist in the chapter on eliminating the ‘wicked’ and saving the motherland. So, the vow of celibacy, the killing of the ‘wicked’, the chanting of ‘vande matrum’ has the aura of the myth transformed into a modern day hate ideology and is the continuing source of the common design against the Muslims.
Chapter 6
Foreign help in judicial resolution of genocide
Gujarat 2002 genocide of Muslims was as much a heinous crime as any other genocide in the world and hence foreign judicial help is absolutely necessary. No genocide in the world saw justice done for the simple reason that the government and the hostile organization committing genocide would not let justice prevail and the victims being helpless could not get justice on their own. In the case of Gujarat the state itself is perhaps the richest in the country. And the astronomical amount of fund obtained from Gujarati migrants to the United States of America like Sonal Shah of Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America and a powerful person with access to Obama administration is enough to bribe the process of investigation and the functioning of the courts. More than two dozen killers of Muslim in just one incident of Sardarpura countermanded the bail legal bindings and got shelter in the US. The Indian government was in the hands of the Hindu extremist organization and it did nothing to seek extradition of the absconders from the US. It was governed by jingoistic conception of nationalism which excludes Muslims as the legitimate citizens of this country. The RSS infiltration in the government never spares any moment to practice “cultural nationalism” against Muslims, nay it calls for their expulsion from the land of their birth or their decimation or their down grading as second class citizens sans voting right. Moreover the funds to conduct and sustain the genocide were collected from America and Britain and ended up in the hands of the killers. India alone is not responsible to get justice or conduct full inquiry. The European Union recognized this fact and declared that such mass atrocities and crime against humanity constitutes a threat to international order. Despite this recognition of the facts in Gujarat events on the part of the EU as early as April 2002 the EU also did not undertake any follow up action. This is another cogent reason that foreign NGOs or even governments make humanitarian intervention to get delayed justice for the victims.
The perpetrators of the genocide crimes come from organizations which are awfully more powerful than even the government of the day and make the unlawful use of their awesome power. It is dreadful. As it was perpetrated by the multiheaded-hydera of the Sangh parivar or the RSS with its more than fifty subgroups foreign help is a must. They have continued to subvert the judiciary and rule of law every now and then. The Supreme Court cannot spare time. Full ten years, therefore, have passed and nothing has changed in majority cases of the pogroms. What with the dithering of the governance of the state itself, justice is just a mirage.
Even more disturbing was how the genocide was covered up by rushing to conduct elections in Gujarat within six months of the genocide. The victims were in the refugee camps. Those camps were stealthily closed and the Muslims victims of murder and mayhem were left to fend for themselves. A huge majority of them lost their voting rights due to the hostile atmosphere where threat to their life was really there. They were not allowed to enter their villages and neighbourhoods that were either destroyed or the police did not help them. The police always sided with the extremist Hindus bent on ethnic cleansing. After a decade the elections in Gujarat are due in 2012 the condition has not changed.
It is also a part of the nightmare in Gujarat that when any NGO tries to help the victims the members of the NGO or even fair minded police officials in favour of objective inquiry are treated most inhumanly. They are either penalized by opening up old cases wherein they may not be involved in order to stall judicial process and scuttle police investigation into the genocide crimes. Or, they are put in prison outright and denied legal aid while in prison. Many senior and honest police officers are recruited through the central government quota and inducted for service in Gujarat. They are subjected to very inimical and intimidating treatment at the behest of the Chief Minister Narendra Modi and that too so openly while the central government does nothing to help its recruited staff. No month passes without this hampering of the investigation surfacing in case after case. The rest of India is held captive and passive spectator of the suborning and subversion of justice. Why should not then foreign help be urgently necessary?
Indians are proud of their courts goes without saying. That they care for justice also is self evident. But the right wing Hindutva extremists do not leave any space for the obviously secular or even minded Indians from bringing to book those who are hard core extremists and criminals involved in communal riots and the genocide.
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Carnage in Gujarat not an internal issue, says EU. Times of India April 24, 2002.
Violence was planned months in advance: UK officials.Hindu April 28, 2002.—“all the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing and that reconciliation between Hindus and Muslims is impossible while the Chief Minister remains in power.”
Chapter 7
Systematic murder of witnesses of genocide over the decade
Nowhere is the saying of Martin Niemöller as thought provoking as in the Gujarat of today (of course, since the induction of Modi): “They came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist; And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist; And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew; And then... they came for me... And by that time there was no one left to speak up.” They came for the Muslims (Sohabuddin) and I did not care, they came for Sylvester Daniel (Christian) and I did not care. The logic goes to Haren Pandya and Tulsiram Prajapati and continues. Would, should Modi continue to rule.
Pandya’s murder was the most prominent. Even so the series that went on till the end of the whole decade needs scrutiny. The murder of Sameer Khan Sarfraz Khan Pathan begins the series and comes to Nadeem Ahmad Saiyed. But others are also in the offing as there is no change either in the demagogue or the demagoguery. Nadeem was killed on November 5, 2002. It was a crucial time because it was most likely that he was anxious to give witness which had a bearing on Zakia Jafri’s appeal to expedite the case. As Zakia and Tessta Setalvad have written to the court that: “One of the key witnesses in a connected trial [Naroda Patiya] was recently murdered and the petitioners apprehend it was in connection with the present complaint, as he would in all likelihood have been a key witness in the present case and the SIT has recorded his statement as well. Following the suspicious circumstances under which he was killed, the applicants have assisted eyewitnesses/survivors — anxious about the status of evidence in Naroda Patiya and related cases, as also their own safety to make specific applications, vis-à-vis protection, to the SIT.” It reflects very poorly on the state government as well as the central that even a whole decade later the attitude of the state government and also its police and administrative officers continue to flagrantly play tricks with the laws. Even when a police officer raises a legitimate question of being violated the government uses other officers to find out whatever offense could be attributed to that complaining officer. Thus a whole vicious circle is created. This delays the prosecution process, delays justice to the victims and what is even more shows the callous attitude of the Modi administration. The rest of the country cannot put any moral pressure on the ruler of Gujarat that his maneuvering with the laws and judicial processes is deepening the divide between the minority and the majority. This is not to say that all the Hindus have turned or are turning against the Muslim minority either in the state or the rest of the country. But the result is that Muslims are not only sliding into their resigned fate of being pushed into the ghettos they are now made to live in but their prospect for getting justice is also diminishing. The mockery of the law of the land is still going on so what hope would remain for the victims that they would one day be free from this kind of entrapment in the future. The same Hindutva party BJP or Shiv Sena is also opposing the communally targeted violence bill is also an anathema to them. That those who have perpetrated mass atrocities upon them in the genocide are also unabashed clamouring for the rejection of the proposed bill.
There are also officers chairing Special Investigation Agencies/Teams like RK Raghvan who refuse to consider all the aspects of the genocide. His not looking into the involvement of Modi raises serious doubts when more disclosures of the involvement of the chief minister come up by the day. And yet no action is taken against the kind of negligence Raghvan and others like him show. Mere procedural wrangling also hampers truth from being fully exposed. It was one such thing that made the apex court observe when it asked MB Shah to do a thorough job in a holistic manner. “Having regard to the fact that a monitoring authority has been put in place and a former judge of this court is its chairman, we desire the chairman to look into all instances of the alleged fake encounters mentioned in the two writ petitions. We want the investigation to be thorough so that the truth in each case is revealed.” The two writ petitions were submitted by Javed Akhtar, Shabnam Hashmi and BG Verghese and the concerned monitoring authority is justice MB Shah. Modi had appointed him as head of the Special Task Force last year to monitor the cases of fake encounters.
Another very notable feature of the apex court ruling is that the monitoring authority under Shah should source information from human rights organizations as well as earlier police officers who have information on the fake encounter cases. It is a good sign that however slow in coming, such improvement mechanism will check the investigation. It may take more time but the truth would be found. There is more to it than meets the eye when you recall that the additional advocate general of Gujarat government Tushar Mehta had objected to the petitions in 2007 when the court heard them. He sarcastically questioned why the three petitioners from Maharashtra state complain against fake encounters in Gujarat while Maharashtra itself has so many of its own. From hindsight of today there are two new aspects for consideration. One that Mehta was himself engaged in cover up of crimes that he should have in fact investigated. His duty as advocate general was to get punishment to the guilty and not to get the guilty acquitted. He would send the complaints of the victims to RSS tainted legal authority Gurumurthy to prepare for the defense of the accused for whatever the accused had given in complaint. Second, the Maharashtra police was also involved in the conduct of the fake encounters. Encounter specialist Daya Naik belonged to Maharashtra police. He had handed over Jamal Sadik to the Gujarat police who killed him in fake encounter.
A decade is almost over and now comes the news that Modi had planned to order fake encounters. That surely ranks him with Ariel Sharon who conducted the genocide of Palestinians in their refugee camps in Lebanon when he was the defense minister. He rose to become the Prime Minister of Israel despite this. In what way is India better than Israel? Do we Indians also want Modi to become our prime minister for having ordered fake encounters? If this contains truth then it indicates the direction in which the wind is blowing. It would also send signal that tectonic shifts are underway of the same hateful thesis of Samuel Huntington of the clash of civilization. And that India is doomed!
There is no doubt to suspect the veracity of this. It was no other than ADGP RB Sreekumar who went on record of having talked with the chief secretary of the chief minister Modi, GB Subbarao. The chief secretary told Sreekumar that Modi wanted a few encounters carried out. Sreekumar refused and gave this in an affidavit: “I told him the moment we decide to carry out an encounter it becomes a conspiracy and for that we can both be arrested. He tried to persuade me, but I refused and told him that if any are carried out I will uncover the truth behind that.” For having refused to be involved in such heinous crimes at the behest of the chief minister, Sreekumar was transferred from intelligence department to police reform section that is he was made ADGP Police Reform.
Chief Minister Modi had planned to order a few fake encounters
Sreekumar to Subbarao:“the moment we decide to carry out an encounter it becomes a conspiracy and for that we can both be arrested”
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http://daily.bhaskar.com/article/GUJ-AHD-all-gujarat-encounter-cases-under-sc-scanner-2791757.html
http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/20120309290401600.htm
Chapter 8
“Choking” the voice of Modi, hell-bent on “destruction of our democracy”
The way the High Court came down upon the Chief Minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi on January 18, 2012 is rare to come from a chief justice of the HC of Gujarat in ten long years. The case was ‘rarest of the rare’ involving a ‘spiteful’ chief minister and his ‘irrational’ council of ministers. The judge who upheld the appointment of the Lokayukta RA Mehta used more connotative language than otherwise is the case of phraseology of a court. “Extraordinary situations demand extraordinary remedies” must sound the knell of the parting day for Modi. Modi has been opposing Mehta because he had participated in a public hearing against the measures that Modi had taken in the matter of the rehabilitation of the victims of the genocide. The judge, VM Sahai, goes further and hints what smacks no less than sedition when he says the “open resistance of the council of ministers headed by the chief minister in not accepting the primacy of the opinion of the Chief Justice of the Gujarat High Court in the matter of the appointment of the Lokayukta has created crisis situation.”
There are two reasons why Modi came under fire primarily in this case but has been under observation for uncountable others. His behavior is “questionable” and second he is bent on “destruction of our democracy”. The word “our” excludes Modi from being benign to democracy, as a demagogue he is the antithesis of democracy. As a residually intact pracharak of the RSS he is a danger to democracy. He had already thrown the Constitution of the country in the dustbin as he vociferously justified the genocide and blocked rehabilitation of the genocide victims and their legitimate entitlement of the concession to them as well as to their community that accrue from Sachar commission recommendations.
The government’s advocate EC Agarwala translates in the petition against the HC ruling what is in substance Modi’s own case as a person and not just the government he heads. The petition pinpoints what is the larger threat to Modi than the Lokayukta. Modi’s bête noir is the “specific mindset” of the NGO (TJP, Human Rights groups and other NGOs), social activists (Mallika Sarabhai, etc).
Most of what Modi and his government have been doing is to surreptitiously fight off the accusations against his role in the genocide. Advani and Jaitley were again hypocritical when they went to the president of India protesting that there was murder of democracy. Yes, there was murder of democracy no doubt. But it was not by the governor but the demagogue who de facto has been ruling Gujarat over the last ten years. The chief minister had prematurely and very hurriedly closed eight relief camps without bothering to rehabilitate the victims. He did not care for the concern that his own party’s senior leader and also the Prime Minister of the country was at least in public showing dislike in the way the rehabilitation work was taking place. Modi did all these to have the election in October 2002 in order to reap the harvest of hatred he had sown against the Muslims over Godhra train burning. The fallout of these traumatic events in the history of the state and also the country has long shadow cast all across the years of the decade and have come to haunt him.
In contrast to RA Mehta appointment confirmed by the court is the case of Judge Akshay Mehta who gave bail to Babu Bajrangi and secured a safe lucrative job on the commission headed by Justice Nanavati.
It would be in the fitness of things if the Lokayukta Mehta orders probe not only in the overtly corruption charges involving kickbacks but also attempt to cover up the genocide. One Mehta should confront another Mehta to get justice to the victims and find out the real person or persons ultimately responsible for the violence in Gujarat.
However, what is even more terrifying is the fact that Modi’s Hindutva is very obviously testing water for its ideology that the Constitution of the Republic of India should be rescinded for the sake of establishing a Hindu Rashtra. His opposition to governor Kamla Benewal and justice RA Mehta boils down to his anti federal structure of the country and its Constitution.
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Gujarat goes to SC: State given ‘total go-bye’ on Lokayukta (Indian Express, January 20, 2012)
Chapter 9
Watch out
The record of the Gujarat government including its police is abysmal as far as the security of the witnesses and lawyers of victims are concerned. There is needed a tab on the unfolding of events in the next few years. Whoever is crucial for solving the case is killed in broad day light so much so the credit deficit is rising for the government of the state. Among lawyers is IH Syed whom the Central Bureau of Investigation has appointed as its counsel. The Hindutva groups include those who are ever on their toes to punish Muslims and their lawyers who bring charges against the Hindutva leaders and plead against charges leveled against innocent Muslims framed in terrorism. During the genocide two sitting judges had to leave their houses and seek safety in Muslim majority areas. Even Muslim police officers had to remove their name badges from their uniform. The situation did not change even years after the violence. Narendra Modi is on record in corrupting the defense lawyer of Mallika Sarabhai.
This is true of other states as well. There have been attacks on Muslim lawyers who offered to defend the victims. Even Jethmalani’s office was ransacked and vandalized because he had taken the case of Muslims caught in the parliament attack. Shiv Sena never feels shy of issuing threats to lawyers taking the case of Muslims alleged to have taken part in terrorism. In most cases the victims were innocent and yet they were left to fend for themselves in the court of law. Allahabad, Lucknow, Delhi are some places where lawyers have been beaten up for defending Muslim accused. Shahid Azmi successfully defended Faheem Ansari in the 26/11 attack in Mumbai. The young and promising lawyer had to pay with his life for this unearthing truth that the hand drawn map that Ansari was alleged to have supplied to Kasab was a white lie.
Gujarat is far worse than other places because the state is a party to the crimes related to genocide. The chief minister is directly involved in it and he does not spare a moment in taking revenge against his own state employed police officers and even judges. So it is quite likely or probable that Syed could become a sitting duck as he has successfully got protection for Rahul Sharma and Kuldeep Sharma. His thorough gasp of facts in Ishrat Jehan case has led to the CBI ultimately taking the case from the Gujarat police. The stake against him has risen high as he is fully informed about the fake encounter cases. He calls a spade a spade and recently told the SC that the state government had thrice tried to present its side in a case in order to prevent it from going to a court outside Gujarat.
Chapter 10
RB Sreekumar and Sanjiv Bhatt
Sanjiv Bhatt, some pages of his important evidence were missing, who to blame Raghvan or Nanavati or Modi?
The two most dynamic police officers in the phalanx of officers ranged against Narendra Modi are Sreekumar and Sanjiv Bhatt. Both of them belong to the intelligence set up of the state and have had crucial postings in the state when the genocide was on. Had they joined hands right at the time of the genocide and fought with the help of other like-minded police officers the intervening ten years between 2002 and their clash in 2011 would not have been lost. Perhaps the chief minister would have been in prison. They had their legal restriction imposed on them due to the onus of their position and the burden of taking on the chief minister who was in the thick of the murkiest days of Gujarat communal violence and lawlessness. Even so the work in getting back the laws of the land to replace the law of the jungle is showing signs of resolution sooner than later now.
Towards the end of the decade of misrule of Modi, Sanjive Bhatt wrote a letter to Sreekumar purportedly trying to reach an understanding with him in renewed fighting against the chief minister united. This is what “the larger interest of justice” demands. “Sir, , it is my firm belief and conviction that internecine fratricide will not only provide much needed succor to the diabolical ghouls in power but will also irreparably subvert the cause of justice in Gujarat…a lofty cause that is indubitably very dear to many of us.” The use of the terminology in the letter shows utter depravity of Modi whom Sonia Gandhi had dubbed as the ‘merchant of death’ in 2007. Modi in the words of Bhatt is the nocturnal spirit that visits the graves and robs the dead buried there by feeding on them. The demagogue has been doing just that. “It would be entirely appropriate and prudent to remind ourselves of the sheer enormity and importance of Herculean responsibility that providence has placed upon us.”
If there was clash of interest which prevented Bhatt to keep silence for nearly nine years requires finding out if there was any clash of interest. What were the “ulterior motives” of Bhatt? It would take some more times to unearth the full disclosure of the two. Still there is a chance of coming to guess what it could be and whether they sound true. What exactly is the ‘manipulation’ and ‘suppressing of information’ that Bhatt allegedly undertook? These of course must be revealed even if it takes longer time and may not be possible right at this time as the drama is still not over. But much of the acts being known can lead to the really chain of command in the murder of Haren Pandya and the mystery that still shrouds the meeting at the residence of Modi in the night of February 27, 2002.
There were two occasions when Bhatt was supposed to have exposed then what went unexposed for nine years. One was the red robin that Sreekumar issued in 2002 and the DGP in 2004 to all the officers in the intelligence to submit affidavit on the genocide crimes. Why did Bhatt not submit then rather than much after the filing of the appeal of Zakia Jafri in 2006? Bhatt on his part alleges that Sreekumar did not convey the full extent of information that he had as the chief of the state intelligence branch, SBI.Sreekumar wrote to Bhatt “You claimed you were (then) ADGP DG Raigar’s staff officer you were duty bound to file an affidavit… but you deliberated avoided. In my view, you have taken the stand for avoiding any clash of interests with the government.” This parley of accusation misses the point that these may be procedural details which could have been sorted out mutually before their splashing in newspapers.
Ten years on there is a renewal of hope that there would be after all justice for the victims. This is what comes out of the belated but quite insistent move by Bhatt for justice and resolution of the multiple cases as he wrote that there was “substantial direct evidence as well as overwhelming circumstantial evidence” against Modi for the prosecution. In his fourth letter within January 2012 this letter of January 24 shows the insistence and rekindles hope that justice would at long last prevail. He reasserts that he was fully aware of the closing in of the marauders on the Gulbarg society and hence personally met Modi to prevent “the imminent carnage at Gulberg Society.” That the chief minister even then chose to remain indifferent to the fast developing scenario there proves his cussedness as a pracharak of the RSS and a staunch Hindutva demagogue hell bent on carrying out the Hindutva experiment in the Gujarat laboratory that was now underway in full swing for the first time. In all the previous communal violence there was no chief minister who had sponsored such mass scale massacre to the hilt. This is borne out by what Bhatt writes further: “by the time of the second meeting… the carnage at Gulberg Society had begun in full view of the police personnel who were deployed there... The Chief Minister was accordingly briefed about the complete police inaction and complicity. The Chief Minister was also explicitly informed about the imminent threat to the lives of ex-MP Ehsan Jafri and his family members.” Had he chosen to even call up his police officers on the site even at the second meeting of Bhatt with him and given order to disperse the crowd his sponsorship could have any fig leaf still left for doubt. His act of not doing even in the last moments of the life of more than 70 citizens of his state under imminent threat of extinction constitutes rarest of the rare crimes of history. He not only sealed their fate but put his signature on the evil deeds being fait accompli.
But thanks to the perseverance of Zakia Jafri and Teesta Setalvad and other members of the Citizens for Justice and Peace as well as honest police men like Bhatt and Sreekumar among others the chapter is still not written to the end of the story. For now the courts and commission or SIT will have to refer to the numerous Situation Reports and Alert Messages that the intelligence department had been sending to Modi for they corroborate the crimes of failing to fulfill his constitutional duty of protecting the life of his people he had sworn to do at the time of taking office of the highest government executive in the state of Gujarat. Bhatt’s meeting the chief minister, in accordance to the urgency on the scene and the contemporaneous filing of the reports nail Modi as culpable. This would also prove the fact that he did ask the police to let Hindus take revenge on Muslims for three days.
To support his circumstantial and corroborative and direct involvement of the chief minister Bhatt also refers to the fax message he had sent on February 28, 2002 : “As informed telephonically to the Hon'ble CM, ex-MP Ehsan Jafri and his family members residing at Gulmarg Society [Mr. Bhatt told The Hindu the alert had erroneously referred to Gulberg as Gulmarg because that is the first time he had heard of the housing society], Chamanpura, Meghaninagar have been summoned and are being attacked by a Hindu mob in the presence of police bundobust [deployment]. The lives of Ehsan Jafri and other family members are in imminent danger….” The last meeting with Modi is the most damning for what I have called Modi as the real time avenger in my book “First Hindutva Genocide of Muslims and its Architect”. This is how the chief minister as the architect of the genocide proved himself what he was. He was preparing in the heat of the butchering a justification and false hood as he told Bhatt to find out ‘past instances wherein Mr. Jafri had supposedly opened fire on Hindus during earlier communal riots in Ahmedabad.” Mr. Bhatt said that as he emerged from the meeting, he got the information that Mr. Modi was “independently getting real-time information updates on the developments that were taking place at Gulberg Society.”
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Sanjiv Bhatt proposes peace with former DGP Sreekumar. Indian Express December 30, 2011.
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2832220.ece
“Substantial evidence” to prosecute Modi: Sanjiv Bhatt to SIT.The Hindu EW DELHI, January 25, 2012
Sreekumar has so far submitted eight different affidavits to SIT, some of which were already submitted to Nanavati-Shah Commission. He submitted the copies of his affidavits on July 15, 2002, October 16, 2004, April 9, 2005, October 27, 2005, September 15, 2011, while the last affidavit submitted was on January 12, 2012.
Chapter 11
Filibustering of Modi
Modi is more or less like the Israeli leaders. He never yielded an inch and would not do so. But as a filibuster he resembles Ariel Sharon. As Sharon took his soldiers in Sabrila and Shatila refugee camps and committed mass atrocities so did Modi. As a filibuster he was an adventurer taking part in unlawful military expedition. The only difference between the two is that whereas Sharon was an adventurer when he raided Sinai Peninsula and the refugee camps, Modi did the same through his police and kept the military at bay when the Muslims were slaughtered for three days and more.
The other roles of filibuster include delaying tactics by making long speeches or obstructing legislation. In the present context of the case of CBI inquiry into Sadiq Jamal case Modi has delayed providing infrastructure to the CBI so that it would delay the inquiry reaching to its logical conclusion. Jamal was killed in January 2003. Full nine years after that the CBI says it would take at least six months to complete investigation. The situation on the ground is far from satisfying even this extension. There is no infrastructure available. Even the high court judge has chided the government in Gandhinager for delaying the matter of the office so inordinately. This is a repeat performance as he has obstructed justice to the victims through his wily ways in which his administration is running the state, of course, according to his dictate. He refused to provide security to the parliamentary committee that was obstructed from visiting the sensitive areas on the pretext that there visit would exacerbate the situation. He warned the media to report Gujarat at their own risk because they might face the situation of Daniel Pearl’s fate in Pakistan.
Taking the sadhbhavna rally to Godhra and the construction of a place for a statue of the chief minister there is also the work of an adventurer who is taking his supporters into an area which he had devastated and now wanted that the people of that area also pay homage to him. They were so resigned to their miserable condition that they paid it up. Like the Israelis he forced himself upon his victim.
Chapter 12
Modi’s Heart of Darkness
Zakia Jafri in her ruined house
The worst corruption cannot be anything more than the corruption of the moral character of man. Even Aristotle verified this truth when he said man sans civil laws is worse than animals. Narendra Modi had deliberately broken all the civil and criminal laws when he let loose the law of the jungle in 2002. This was the worst corruption to which he abysmally descended. In the drive against corruption undertaken by Anna Hazare and the gusto for inducting Lokayukta unfortunately this was sidelined. Modi was so brazenly shameless and remorseless that when he reached Godhra on January 20, 2012 he taunted in his habitual manner. “These days people are abusing me. I know by venting their anger they are getting relieved. This is my Sadhbhavna (good will).”(NDTV20-1-12) He revels in his evil full nature sarcastically as he thinks that he is cutting a joke against the dressing down of him at the hands of the judge in the case of the Lokayukta matter. But people also discern in it that the Sadhabhavna or fast rallies in fact are organized in the aftermath of his misconceived understanding that the September 12, 2011 ruling of the Supreme Court has exonerated him from the crimes of genocide that he committed. Regretfully his moral corruption went unnoticed by and large because he prided in his being uncorrupt as far as money matters are concerned. He rushed to publicize that the American embassy staff had sent reports that he was uncorrupt. Little did he care that the report also mentioned his role in the genocide of Muslims.
Even so there are numerous cases of corruption; the Congress party has listed 17 grave charges in this regard which also belie his claims of being uncorrupt. But in the context of the appointment of the Lokpal or ombudsman Modi, Jaitley and Advani lied. The previous three ombudsmen in Gujarat were appointed on the recommendation of the chief justice and the other members of the panel. Modi tried to change the panel by a handpicked member and deny the chief justice his role. This of course is corruption but the moral corruption was worst in the matter of 2002 genocide. When justice Shah died Modi picked up Justice Akshay Mehta to join justice Nanavati on the inquiry commission into Godhra train burning and its aftermath. Akshay Mehta had granted bail to the dreadful killer of all the pogroms of Muslims, Babu Patel, aka Babu Bajrangi. There is a double hypocrisy involved here. Why should the people of Gujarat and the intelligentsia in the rest of the country be so captivated by Modi’s opposing the procedural matter of the appointment of the Lokbal by the governor? Why have the people and intelligentsia not bothered by the much larger issue of Modi subverting the laws of the land in allowing the pogroms and covering them up all through the ten years of his being in the office? Almost ten years after the fake encounter of Sadik Jamal his government is still not cooperating with the CBI. Full ten years have also passed when the highest numbers of Muslims were butchered in Naroda Patiya. Modi’s proven attempt to corrupt the defense lawyer of Mallika Sarabhai who appealed to the court against the massacre. Modi ordered his chief intelligence officers to pay ten lakh rupee from secret fund to scuttle the case of Mallika Sarabhai. Full ten years have also passed the political murder of Haren Pandya and the situation on the ground has not changed. This is as if no pogroms had taken place and business is as usual! Fourth election of his assembly is due this year and yet there is little awareness in what the judge calls Modi’s ‘destruction of our democracy’?
On the top of it all is the ideology of the Hindutva on the strength of which Modi summons his whole party to do his dirty work. There was a full dress rehearsal at the office of the President led by Advani and the ranks and files of the party in September 2011. Arun Jaitely said that the appointment of the Lokpl by the governor was the murder of democracy. Behind all this is the duplicity of the Hindutva hearted emperor Modi and other such demagogues who have deflected attention from the genocide by raising issues which surreptitiously eclipse the crimes against humanity in which Modi as well as Advani and Vajpayee are directly or indirectly involved in varying roles.
The star performance of Modi himself is that of cavalierly carrying on tit for tat game with the Congress party leaders and ministers in the central government. He has been taking tit for tat action against his own police officials and administrators who have struggled to maintain their integrity and official decorum and professionalism. The sparing game that he is playing with Sanjiv Bhatt and Rahul Sherma and others is still going on full steam. To deflect public focus partly from this he has occasions to dump his caustic remarks like the Pandora throwing golden apples in her wake. Those following her and others naturally pick up quarrels without noting that the goddess of strife has not been hampered anyway. For example on reaching Godhra he was felicitated by the collector of Godhra in Panchmahal district. He on behalf of the post master general of the state Ms Humera Ahmed was presented a commemorative letter addressed to him. That it praises his fasting in order to create peace, harmony and unity among the people misses the point altogether that the people know that it is just a show. Many from minority community have joined BJP and are present on the scene because they have been provided with roads, water connection and electricity ahead the 2012 assembly elections. Of course the code of conduct forbids such gimmicks and so it is advanced in time to circumvent the codes of conduct. Moreover the other party is Congress which has already been under pressure from the majority not to concede any concession to the minority. Thus their lot has been wretchedness through and through. They have some concession squeezed out to them without the snare of the appeasement policy with which the BJP always looks at such gestures. So Modi had another opportunity to indulge in sarcasm and wondered what would be the fate of such officials who issue this way of honoring him. He also had the temerity to say that there was one such officer who praised him but when he reached Delhi he was welcomed by a letter of transfer to another place.
Since Modi took over, the cases of corruption have increased particularly land sale to industrial and corporate houses of repute like the big ones Ratan Tata, Gautam Adani, Sudhir Mehta of Torrent have benefited the most. That these have been going on for such a long time of a whole decade that there was never any feeling in anyone that it would end in a whimper. The first sign of it is that the president of BJP Nitin Gadkari has been finally forced to include Advani, Shushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley as well as Modi for the potential candidates of BJP hopefuls for the chair of the next Prime Minister. Such an announcement reported exclusively in Asian Age of January 27 should not come as a surprise because Sanjiv Bhatt’s interview exclusive printed in The Hindu of January 24 has surely reached the point home that Modi will face court proceedings. If BJP saved him for a whole decade and allowed him hectoring will it now save him for the highest post for another decade? How long will his face hide the depth of darkness that he must see in his own heart? The Horror! The Horror!
And when will this dawn upon those who were carried away by his economic despotism and the mantras of development he has been snaring gullible within and without the country! As the Economic Times writer notes the moral turpitude in the case of the fake encounters of the chief minister that is simply shocking: “Such encounters by personnel supposed to uphold the law mean thorough vitiation of that law itself. Recognising that, the highest court in the land has actually called for harsher-than normal punishment for such wrongdoing by agents of the state. There is, thus, a pressing need for perpetrators of such acts to be punished, not just in Gujarat but right across the country - given that this culture of fake encounters is prevalent in many states. But doing so in Gujarat becomes all the more important given the wide perception that complicity in such unlawful activities extended right across the board.”
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http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/fresh-setback-for-narendra-modi-probe-in-more-fake-gunbattles-ordered/articleshow/11627221.cms
Chapter 13
Travesty of Justice
After Modi the worst offender is Babu Bajrangi. He was most active with collecting guns from the Hindus by force and wanted the crowds to use the guns on the Muslims. But this was not necessary for the Muslims were so scared that they meekly resigned to their fate as they were not only outnumbered and unarmed but the police was initiating the action. This had undone them. Bajrangi boasted this and more that they had a hay time at the open field and the well where they butchered the Muslims and felt as virile as Rana Pratap. He was so dreadful in his record of the murder and mayhem that the police commissioner had issued shoot at sight order against him. But no other than home minister Gordhan Zadaphia told him to go hiding. The police officer KK Mysorewalla in charge of Naroda Patia personally told him to go underground. When the railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav raised the issue in Parliament, Modi asked Bajrangi to surrender. PP Pande, the senior officer to whom he surrendered, assured him that it was only a farce. Till then Bajrangi had enjoyed a stately pleasure stay as state guest in the Gujarat guest house at the health resort of Mount Abu. This is what happened after his ‘surrender’: "Narendrabhai got me out of jail. He kept on changing judges. He set it up so as to ensure my release; otherwise I wouldn't have been out yet. ... Next he posted a judge named Akshay Mehta. He never even looked at the file or anything. He just said [bail was] granted. And we were all out. We were free." The most important clause here is “And we were all out.” What Bajrangi told Tehelka years ago is now corroborated by what Sreekumar and another senior officer additional chief secretary Ashok Narayanan talked! They said that it was Modi who had given oral order to release all the Hindus arrested for their active participating in the pogroms of the Muslims. This disclosure coming in 2011 mocks at the kind of investigation that is going on at snail speed adding to the widespread belief that Moditva was a judicial travesty of the law of the land.
Even the courts have been dispensing justice strangely. There are those who have grave crimes like minister of state for home Amit Shah, the right hand of Modi. He is released on bail while those who are crucial witnesses are languishing in prison. There is Babu Bajrangi a self confessed killer and conspirator of the genocide. He has directly named Modi who sheltered him from law and a standing shoot at sight order of the police commissioner. Modi not only got him released from jail but saw to it that he was not rearrested after having confession on camera that he killed hundreds of Muslims and had a desire to kill thousands more before he is convicted and hanged! There is Maya Kodnani, health and child and family minister who took direct and active part in instigating the extremist Hindus to rape Muslim women and kill them. She is out of jail even when there are eye witnesses who testified against her. One of them was the rickshaw driver Salim Mohammad Shaikh.
“Then I saw Mayaben Kodnani emerging from a private car. She had a word with the police and the BJP workers. The attack began soon after she left,” says Salim.
Maya Kodnani was seen leading the crowds and herself shouting rape and kill the Muslims. First she absconded from the police and then she surrendered and was given bail. This whole decade she has been mostly out of prison. Such is the sorry situation of subversion of justice that no big ones have been convicted for any crime. They are moving around with impunity as if law and order is not for them. They are above the law like their chief minister.
Chapter 14
Salman Rushdie and Narendra Modi
Writing in the Independent Boyd Tonkin has this to say: “Formal enquiries have cleared Modi of active incitement. Last year, though, it emerged that a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of India's Supreme Court had in a report laid out a dozen counts against him of failing to halt the killings or to recognise their gravity. So Rushdie has to stay away from Rajasthan on the trumped-up grounds that his presence will inflame Muslims; while, over the border in Gujarat, a demagogue turns a blind eye – with impunity, so it seems - to the real mass murder of Muslims.” Of course this is not the end of the inquiries and Tonkin refers to what was the fact some twelve months back and compares it with what the SIT found. But there is a further dimension that is still waiting for others to digest and discuss in international forums as far as the genocide in Gujarat is concerned. For immediate concern is did the Rajasthan government deliberately lie to get Rushdie cancel his visit and even his video conference? If the Congress government did secretly encourage a bogus report on the security situation as the cause its immediate relevance as far as Modi and his Gujarat are concerned is nil. A more noteworthy fact is that Modi had moved heaven and earth to hasten the election of December 2002. He even tried to have it in October itself. That did not “inflame Muslims”?
Although we cannot say that for the Rajasthan government where there was a communal riot recently at Gopalgarh. Half a dozen Muslims were killed and some burnt and thrown into a well. If this is really the fact of relevance of inflaming Muslims it is damnable. At least in the case of Gujarat and Rajasthan Muslims in India including the two states were in sorrow and anguish and were truly worried over how they have been visited upon by such calamity. The murder and rape and burning alive in Gujarat of Muslims in 2002 was on what account? Was it visited upon them because of the sins of their forefathers or supposedly some Muslims burning the compartment of a train? In either of the two, the genocide is not justifiable. In what way then the police in Rajasthan are better than neighbouring Gujarat? They actively took part in executing the acts of the genocide in both the states and try to cover it up. In neither of the two places the situation is not basically different. Even so Gujarat was altogether a class by itself. Gujarat was a systemic failure all over at all levels. It was destined to fail that too not only by humans and not heaven, but fellow countrymen. Rajasthan had never been like Gujarat.
However the 12 Muslims did receive direct bullets shot at their breasts when they protested against The Satanic Verses in Mumbai. That could be called inflaming Muslims. Their outrage was that their revered prophet’s wife Aeysha was caricatured and shown to walk down the dusty farms and paths of Tamil Nadu and Kerala and go to the sea shore. The sea opening up a path for her to go to Mecca! Or, Salman Rushdied through his narrator naming the family members of the prophet as barmaids came as a shock. The police were trigger happy to shoot. However I had the opportunity to teach magic realism to my mixed class and even non Muslims were dismayed over what had happened. They felt that making the family members of the prophet as personae in a situation of illicit liquor den so openly was not the best way magic realism could have been used to portray the recondite truth the novelist was aiming at!( Rushdie : “It is not a ban against discussing the book, reading from it, from copies already in India.” Therefore I must thank novelist and teacher Raj Rao for this. However horrifying the metaphor of the bar and the pilgrimage what most have not felt is that it is also a book about racial tension as seen in Farista or Amitabh Bachan mistreated by the London police and made to ejaculate and lap his semen! )
Much later Rushdie deigned to become god father of another novelist who wrote in his tradition and she also upheld his views. Modi however welcomed Taslima Nasreen, a stormy petrel, because she was not much different although she wrote a novel sympathetic to the few Bengali Hindu victims of partition violence. In her novel she shows anger at the way a Hindu family suffers hugely during the partition of the country. In contrast to this Rushdie has nuances of perception. He is unequivocally contemptuous in regards to demagogues and all kinds of demagoguery. Rushdie would not have disagreed with Tomkin for calling Modi as a demagogue. Nor would he have countenanced any demagoguery other than the way it should be. As he wrote in his famous essay “Slaughtering in the name of god”in the Waashington Post on March 8, 2003: “The defining image of the week, for me, is of a small child's burned and blackened arm, its tiny fingers curled into a fist, protruding from the remains of a human bonfire in Ahmadabad, Gujarat, in India. The murder of children is something of an Indian specialty. The routine daily killings of unwanted girl babies . . . the massacre of innocents in Nellie, Assam, in the 1980s when village turned against neighboring village . . . the massacre of Sikh children in Delhi during the horrifying reprisal murders that followed Indira Gandhi's assassination: They bear witness to our particular gift, always most dazzlingly in evidence at times of religious unrest, for dousing our children in kerosene and setting them alight, or cutting their throats, or smothering them or just clubbing them to death with a good strong length of wood.”
A sample of Indian specialty
Rushdie was also irrepressibly an India and had this to say: “The horrible truth about communal slaughter in India is that we're used to it. It happens every so often; then it dies down. That's how life is, folks. Most of the time India is the world's largest secular democracy; and if, once in a while, it lets off a little crazy religious steam, we mustn't let that distort the picture.” For a country that has a Constitution and rule of law this last is inexcusable.
More of the same specialty
“Of course, there are political explanations. Ever since December 1992, when a VHP mob demolished a 400-year-old Muslim mosque in Ayodhya, which they claim was built on the sacred birthplace of the god Ram, Hindu fanatics have been looking for this fight. The pity of it is that some Muslims were ready to give it to them. Their murderous attack on the train-load of VHP activists at Godhra (with its awful, atavistic echoes of the killings of Hindus and Muslims by the train-load during the partition riots of 1947) played right into the Hindu extremists' hands.”
Though Rushedie did not know the full extent of the reports and exposures he at least was candid to put his finger at what led to the carnage: “The electoral failure of the BJP is thus, in all probability, the spark that lit the fire.” Going further than the matter of fact on the ground at that time Rushdie touches upon even larger truth: “in India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of "respect." What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name? How well, with what fatal results, religion erects totems, and how willing we are to kill for them! And when we've done it often enough, the deadening of affect that results makes it easier to do it again.” Though blasphemy does incite people of diverse faiths and whether it is stupid to get so much worked up over it will naturally have differences of opinion. But what Rushdie said what he said in the last paragraph quoted here is the basic situation of the subcontinent, let alone India. Not laws but sanity and proper up bringing in the tradition of patience and forbearance perhaps could save a lot of trouble.
Would Modi have the courage to even welcome Rushdie? He would have shown courage to do even that. But as a matter of fact Modi is a different kettle of fish. As a staunch hard core Hindutva paracharak he does not eye anyone from Muslim community with favour. Even his public acknowledgement that the Muslims had given 12 bighas for the enlargement of the Somnath temple does not mean his softening stance against the Muslims. Whether Wali Gujarati’s gave or shrine or the skull cap that the sofi sect maulanas wanted to present to him in mid-September 2011 and his rejection proves the fact. What Tomkin says further at greater length also cuts no water vis-à-vis Modi when he talks of a new book. “Yet you will come across just such a fresh eye, and a clear perspective, in Sadakat Kadri's new book Heaven and Earth (Bodley Head, £20). Learned, level-headed, engaging, Kadri's "journey through Shari'a law" deserves praise on every front as the London human-rights lawyer tours the places – from Cordoba to Cairo, Deoband to Lahore – and the ideas that have shaped the multi-dimensional, ever-changing traditions of Islamic jurisprudence. Our wise guide, the son of a father from the flexible, eclectic Barelvi strain of Subcontinental Islam, finds that the kinds of Shari'a now trumpeted by theocrats and militants always owe more to human arrogance than to divine inspiration.
"Islamic intolerance is objectionable," he argues, "because of its toxic effects on Islam's own traditions." With weary sadness, he regrets that "societies that used to be oceans of diversity are sinking into sectarian swamps" in the name of modern, unhistorical dogmas.” The fresh eye of Kadri is no different to Modi who just does not want Muslims as equal citizens of the country. His contempt is for all. Bohras met the same fate despite their suavity and so did the gratuitous offering the skull cap by the maulana of moderate Islam.
There has been no nuance in Modi’s perception of Muslims nor did the police make any difference between different groups of Muslims either of Kadri.s Barelvis or Rushdie’s bête noir Deobandis. Only for the reason, that extinction of existence of the Muslim was the overwhelming force of the genocide. For the last ten years when Rushdie had written in the Washington Post on March 8, 2002 Modi and Rushdie are the same. If one is a liberal the other is a hardliner. Both have also been sucked into the compulsive and competitive politicizing of religion across the land. Thus at the time of the Jaipur fiasco Rushdie not only agreed but dilated further on the politicizing “that must be so because there is no other sensible explanation. And I would just like to say that while I've been cast as this so called enemy of Islam, which seems ludicrous to anyone who knows how I have written and spoken over the years, the real enemies of Islam are the leaders, the Deobandis, the various extremist leaders and their followers, who behave like this, because what they do is to strengthen the extremely negative image of Islam as an intolerant, repressive, and violent culture, as an ideology masquerading as a gentle faith, whereas actually what happens every time it's crossed, or every time it dislikes something, is that it resorts to threats and violence.” If Modi/BJP can use religion to get power so is the Congress not left behind, as Rushdie avers it in the present context of the Jaipur meet: he has been visiting India “ a number of times in these last years; five or six times in the last eight or nine years. I've even spoken at the Jaipur Festival … four years ago. I spoke at the India Today Conclave in Delhi last year. I brought my family for a several weeks-long holiday in India the year before that. I've been coming and going a lot and it's astonishing to me that suddenly not only my physical presence, but even my image on a video screen is considered to be unacceptable. I think it's pretty shocking.” This might sound strange ironically that during the same period the Deobandi’s have not much changed or improved their hold either. Their rejecting Maulana Satnavi is on account of his praise of Modi, it is another matter that the Congress party in Ahmadabad has also started praising Modi.
There are many contrasting themes of Modi vis-à-vis Rushdie. Most of the victims of the pogroms in Gujarat were from the commonalty of Muslims, neither the extremists nor the terrorists as Modi made it out in the aftermath of the training accident, or the other commonalty of Muslims whom Narndra Modi always targeted when he denigrated them as people besmirched with oil and grease repairing vehicles. As Rushdie speaks of the same commonalty of Muslims when he turns to them and remarks: “I would have said that the vast majority of Indian Muslims really, frankly, don't give a damn whether I come or go. They have many other pressing concerns of their own, to do with their own economic conditions, their own educational conditions, their own prospects in the country, and they are concerned with those. They are concerned with their personal lives and whether a writer comes to speak at a literary festival or not, I would suspect, is a non-issue for the vast majority of Muslims in the country.” The Ghanchi Muslims of the shanty of Godhra, the tea vendor of Godhra railways stations and their counter parts at all the railway stations between Ajodhya and Godhra included were engaged in their “economic conditions”.
If the economic, education, and other conditions that Rushdie mentions which occupy the minds and days of the Indian Muslims why could then Modi and the destructive forces he unleashed upon them create such havoc? It was because coupled with the competitive politics there is also running parallel is the competitive intolerance. But this would not be true as far as the genocide in Gujarat is concerned. Breaking the Newtonian law the reaction far more outweighed the action. The gun of Ahsan Jafri and the shrine of Wali Gujrati are the totems which are not in real existence. How could these totems be there since Modi did not allow even the reporters and reminded them that their fate would be no different than that of Daniel Pearl and that too in the neihgbouring Pakistan.
Sadhbhavna must not just be a spectacle of splendor of the riches of Gujarat. It should be a time of contrition, of remorse and readiness to compensate and reconciliation. Primarily it should be a true reawakening over the evil deeds which have produced so many dead. Instead of it there is the inanity of well dressed and well manicured, fully scented and combed and choreographed personalities ready for the photograph sessions. Everything is done by the functionaries of the state and powered by the huge amount of money sanctioned under different heads but ending up in the lavish display of luxury of what Gujarat enterprise has achieved. In opposition it ought to have been what Rushdie felt when he went atavistic as he referred to “our particular gift” of slaughtering children: “I say "our" because I write as an Indian man, born and bred, who loves India deeply and knows that what one of us does today, any of us is potentially capable of doing tomorrow. If I take pride in India's strengths, then India's sins must be mine as well. Do I sound angry? Good. Ashamed and disgusted? I certainly hope so. Because, as India undergoes its worst bout of Hindu-Muslim bloodletting in more than a decade, many people have not been sounding anything like angry, ashamed or disgusted enough. Police chiefs have been excusing their men's unwillingness to defend the citizens of India, without regard to religion, by saying that these men have feelings too and are subject to the same sentiments as the nation in general.”
Gujarat and neighbouring Rajasthan saw two instances of what Rushdie called “black farce”—one in Gujarat where a farce of sadhbhavna ended at Godhra; the second according to Rushdie at Jaipur literary meet. However, a third is now surfacing towards the end of January 2012 as reports are coming of National Investigation Agency floundering in solving the terrorist attacks mounted by the Hindutva during the first decade of the twenty first century. Aseemanand’s confession and retraction is not been corroborated by evidence and the confession itself has not been of any evidentiary value. This after five years of incarceration of nine Muslims languishing in prison and many more still not bailed out for the other attacks.
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http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/boyd-tonkin-a-new-chapter-for-the-verses-6295214.html
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58173-2002Mar7.html
The full transcript of the interview of Rushdie-Barkha Datt, NDTV January 28, 2012.
Chapter 15
The elimination of the ‘wicked’ and saving the motherland
The word ‘dusht’ is of Indian origin and is adjective and means “wicked.” In the vocabulary of the Hidutva it refers to the Muslims. India in ancient time was a virgin land so to say. Almost it was like the virgin forest that occupies a special place in American literature denoting the forest where the red Indians lived and there were no industries. As William James would put it, it was a land without the dynamo. There is a beautiful lyrical description of it in Anandmath of Bankamchand Cahatterjee. In such an immaculate conception the people who have been the natives are supposed to be the progeny of the earth and hence motherland. The biological mother has much restricted role here and has to sacrifice herself and her family for the motherland. Her husband too, but he more than she has to forsake his wife and family members for the larger conception of the real mother. That is the mother land. Muslims or Christians are outsiders and hence they are thought of as ‘wicked’ or impure and hence there is need to cleanse the land by eliminating them. However the white Europeans and essentially the British are exception, they are preferred over the Muslims. Savarkar, Vajpayee and his father’s getting his son released, and the chief of the math in Anandmath, Satyanand also believes that the real enemy is the Muslim and not the British.
Just a week before Godhra fire incident, VS Naipaul had been to India along with David Price-Jones . Naipaul condemned the Muslims en mass as had Samuel Huntington and Vajpayee done. His grouse was that they do not let any other groups of different religions to grow where they are in majority. That the Ram temple must come up where stood the Babri mosque irrespective of the historical facts. Then, why should Muslim not learn about the others. Why should the world make effort to understand them (in the aftermath of 9/11). Thereafter he introduced Jones to the audience saying that he knew Islam from within as he lived in the Arab world. Jones remarked that Muslims must now accept not only the Ram temple but connect themselves to Ram as their ancestor! This kind of ideological interpretation set the stage for the genocide that followed in just a week’s time.
This is not just exclusive nationalism of the Hindutva ideology but it is also quaint. Naipaul and the Hindutva groups do not eye Chinese civilization as clashing with the Hindu civilization. Even a writer like Naipaul having travelled all over the world does not think that Chinese civilization poses a threat to Hindu civilization at all. On the ground also it is a fact as the Buddhists of Dalai Lama and even other Buddhists in general do not clash with Indian civilization. Satyanand in the novel also says almost the same thing when Mahendra Singh interacts with him on what is Vishnu religion. Mahendra had thought that Vishuu religion or Hindu religion was non violent. Satyanand corrected him and said it was so because of the obstinacy of the Buddhists. The real Vishu/Hindu religion is the elimination of the ‘wicked’ and the development of the motherland. (pun kharya Vishnu dharmancha lakshan manjhe dushtancha nirdalan aane hya dharneemate cha udhar).
Among the most crucial tenets of this ideology is the primacy of the motherland and appropriation of the motherland for the people who are exclusively Hindus. People of other religion are therefore not part of the land and hence legitimate targets of violence. During the genocide and since then for the whole decade the chief minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi behaved exactly according to this vision of Hindutva. He also followed the footsteps of Satyanand. The Hindus who like him had taken the grand vow of celibacy and abandoned their wives or had not married were hermit or sanyasis who would not be interested in looting the properties of Muslims. But they would not come in the way of the other remaining Hindus from doing the looting and burning. In Gujarat it was a copy case of what happened in Bengal when Mir Jafer ruled.
In this slant of view Naipual, Jones or Modi gave Muslims no alternative than to be extinct from the land or be eliminated. No laboratory experiment could have been so successful in theory and practice! To the ongoing juggernaut of the same Hindu extremist ideology there are people like Ashok Singhal and Arun Shourie and many of their ilks who would like Modi to take the experiment to the rest of the country. Modi would not use fund sanctioned by the central government for the improvement of the minority Muslim in his state and return the fund to the central government. Sachar Commission had recommended roughly 15% for the improvement of the Muslims and other minorities. Taking the cue from the chief minister Arun Shouri wanted Modi to take power in his hand at Delhi and carry out the same experiment!
DG Vanzara was DGP of Crime Bracnch and behaved like master like servant. He organized all the execution of extra judicial killing of Muslims in fake encounters. He did this in the name of patriotism which he called deshbhakti. He invariably gave the reason that the victims were terrorists out to kill Modi. K K Mysorewalla was in charge of the Naroda Patia area where highest numbers of Mulims were killed. He famously told the victims that he had orders from above not to save them. Thus he turned them to the marauding mobs of the majority who had come to kill the members of the minority and they did a thorough job.
If the killings took place in the name of patriotism, the pogroms were also of the same nature. The extremists and well trained cadres of the RSS wore khakhi half pants, and red head band with the words “vande matrum”(salute motherland) printed on it. Thousands of such volunteers took part in the killing in addition to the overwhelming others who wore differently. They also shouted “vande matrum”. These words of the song also come from Anandmath. When Satyanand performs the vow of grand celibacy and initiates recruits they have to utter those words. There has been controversy over the song as far as Muslims are concerned. They do not want to sing only because it is a vow of celibacy and devotion to motherland but amounts to idolatry. The land is compared with Durga and other Hindu deities. The extremist Hindus want the Muslims to sing. If it were just that the matter would not be serious. But they provoke the Muslims that they would have to sing the song if they want to live in India. This India is the present day India whose constitution has declared it to be secular and democratic republic. It is the refrain of the song that becomes an imperative insistence upon the Muslims and a source of exclusion of the minority. It goes even beyond, it becomes a war cry preceding attacks on the Muslims. During the pogroms in Gujarat it was just that.
Resurgent Hindutva: Hindu rashtra (Hind Nation) and vande matrum
In Naroda Patia the sudden appearance of the cadres of RSS in their thousands was eerie nature of preplanning that had gone into the making of the genocide. So callous had the initiated become that they had no remorse whom they were killing. Let alone the children even the Tamil paraplegic was not spared. The initiation of the ceremony of killing the so called ‘wicked’ was systematically done. The killers were initiated into violence and trained to perpetrate because the training camps were conducted for months and it was devoted to how to wipe out without any iota of pity or mercy. They were indoctrinated like Satyanand did to Mahendra and others. And then they were deployed to do the job and finish their ‘kill’.
The Tamil paraplegic fell as one of the earliest victims of elimination in Naroda Patia
The question of the ‘wicked’ needs more exploring since Modi as well as the philosophy of the Hundutva groups does not ever accord any credit to Muslims for having any good service to the nation. On the other hand they would oppose tooth and nail whatever little and rightful concessions are niggardly made by any government in the country for the beleaguered community. In what way could innocent children or the innocent paraplegic and the uncountable women be called ‘wicked’ and deserve elimination? Modi asking his police to let Hindus take revenge fully has been motivated by this perception of the Muslims being ‘wicked.’ He may not have used ‘wicked’ from English language lexicon but he is close to calling them ‘dusht’. Calling them terrorists on many occasions he has approximated to calling them ‘wicked.’ Calling them as hurdles to the development because of their fecundity he has called them ‘enemies’ which is synonymous to ‘dusht.’ He is like Bal Thackeray in choosing derogatory words for Muslims. Thackeray also used the same terminology of eliminating the landyas=the circumcised meaning Muslims. Such abusive language of Thackeray rang in the air during their massacre at the hands of his Shiv Sainik and the police in Mumbai in 1992-1993. He related it to the opening of the third eye of Shiva.
Such was the furor at the time of Modi using derogatory language against Muslims that the National Human rights Commission would ask for a transcript of his public speeches pouring vitriol on Muslims. The Gujarat police and administration would not cooperate and supply it. Modi and Thackeray have inherited much from VD Savarkar who coined the two phrases: Hindutva and Hindu Rashtra. Both these exclude Muslims. Savarkar also wondered what would be the fate of Muslims if the majority turned against them. What was improbable before independence was made probable given the enormity of the killings in Gujarat. Ten years back the government under the premiership of Vajpayee mounted a portrait of Savarkar. The entire opposition was shocked by the move. There was walk out in the parliament. The matter generated controversy. On May 2, 2003 same controversy cropped up when Vishnu Bhagwat made certain remarks about Savarkar. He said in an interview: “I only recapitulated the fact that Savarkar had turned into a collaborator with the British to secure his release from the cellular jail in Port Blair. I made this observation in the context of the boycott of the portrait unveiling function in Parliament by the opposition parties… He apologized not once but several times. This cannot be a tactical step. The British appointed him a foreman in the cellular jail itself.”
That the Hindutva groups have no place for the Muslims is also clear from the fact that the Malegaon municipality had cleared a memorial to honour the eleven people hanged by the British and the gazette of India had accorded them the status of freedom fighters. The Hindutva groups have adamantly refused to allow it with threat of communal violence also hanging over the minority as the eleven came from their community. Their unfinished monument has not appeared so far because of the attitude of the extremists among the Hindus while Gopal Godse father of Himani Savarkar was accorded a hero’s welcome in Malegaon after his release from jail. In the backdrop of these seemingly disparate events there is the closely worked out common design against the Muslims. The shrine in memory of the native poet Wali Gujarati was not only demolished but a road paved the spot within hours. When the police were passing the site at the time of demolition they cheered the people and exhorted them to finish the job thoroughly. It is in this background that Vishnu Bhagwat made another observation: “Thousands of people had preferred to go to the gallows rather than apologize or seek mercy from the British. I am moved by the story of the 11 weavers of Malegaon who were hung by the Britishers post 1857. My own ancestor Mangal Pandey went happily to the gallows. He could also have followed the "tactic" of seeking mercy. His entire family was hung upside down from trees by the British. Savarkar not only got himself released but subsequently propounded the concept of Hindu Rashtra and the two-nation theory.”
In a broader sense 1857, 1988, 1992 and 2002 have left Muslims far behind their fellow countrymen. Their lot worsened after each of the above dates, they are the mile stones showing steady degeneration on account of policies which discriminated against them. The educational situation has not much changed as compared to others. This also has given a kind of set back to the community in its struggle to march ahead for their bread, future, prospects for their children, etc. Modi’s giving them a body blow has staggered them further than was the lot already. In the backdrop of Salman Rushdie’s being withheld from coming to Jaipur Mushirul Hasan former vice chancellor of Jamia Milia and a victim of the upheaval of the Satanic Verses puts his hands on the pulse: “The Rushdie debate has exhausted itself, I think. Let the Muslim community reflect on its own status and position in the society. Let them seek empowerment from whatever sources are available to them. Let the present dispensation—the government –recognize the importance of integrating Muslims into the nation-building project. All other issues are subjectively important, but objectively, not.”
Another countercurrent point is that of Justice Katju. The publication of the novel was ‘sensationalism’ of a novel that he calls ‘poor and substandard’. Therefore what can the Muslims achieve by becoming so excited. This is not to deny them right to feel anguish over such publication. All these are relevant to the genocide in Gujarat where things were made to provoke reaction to victimize the Muslims but the community suffered because of overwhelming power of the state with which the sangh privar got the state sponsor the pogroms. In Dariapur of Ahmedabad a police officer asked Hindus how many would they like him to kill. He then aimed the gun and reportedly killed more than eighty Muslims. With this kind of situation it would be difficult to hold on but there is need now more than ever for coordination with world wide spread of organizations of civil liberties and human rights and the humanitarian people of the world to bail the Muslims out of the sorry mess they are trapped. In no way does it mean that the courts within the country have altogether failed. Therefore renewed effort should be the need of the hour. Some of them have got new water or electric connections and even roads in Godhra as a ploy of thaw but for future they need more than this kind of sops.
Such diversions cannot make one oblivious of the continuing of the ideology of hatred that has prompted extremists among the majority carry on the work of exterminating the minority. Another dynamic that has come up because of the perception of what Muslims are is the viewpoint that all the riots have been the work of the minority. The majority only responded. This you can see when the Hindu sanyasis or hermits in Anandmath attack the Muslims of Mir Jafer or Sirajud dawla. Although the collection of revenue was done by the British but the extremists would justify killing Muslims and praise the British. That was early years of the seventies in the eighteenth century. This has persisted or made to persist till today. Thus Modi appeared before the SIT on March 27-28, 2010. What he told the investigation group was: “As per available history—from 1714 until now—in Gujarat, thousands of incidents of communal violence have been recorded.” Therefore “communal riots are not new to Gujarat.” The tone and tenor is that of George Fernandes the defense minister of India in 2002 who dismissed the mass gang rapes of Muslim girls and women as nothing new, for history is full of it.
But the jugglery of words cannot conceal the fact that it was not just violence that periodically erupted. It was mass massacres well prepared on a large scale with follow up action which was sustained over days, months and years. This has not only continued down just one decade but for many decades and there is no end to it. Proviso, as long as the ideology of hate is kept alive. While speaking in Nasik on Monday February 20, 2012 the RSS chief Dr Mohan Bhagwat had this in the back of his mind when he remarked: desha cha swatantray la 64 vors zhalee. Tarihi ‘bacha’ Pakistan appnala dhamkauto. Shishya aslela cheen aaplaywor dodhe vatarto. Teyatach antergat sureksha cha prasn kayam aahe. Asa parasnavor utter shodhneyasathi sautautakhya payawor aadharit charitryasheel chatre shakti sikshanala chlna dyawi lage.”(India has been independent for 64 years. Even then ‘child’ Pakistan is threatening us and disciple China is glowering at us. And in this, the matter of internal security is continued. To find out solution to these questions it is necessary to have character building of the youths based on self reliance.) Bhagwat contemptuously dismisses Pakistan while patronizing China as a pupil to Indian civilization and culture.
Holding forth on the same and in the same vein he continued in his mother tongue Marathi: bhandan karu naye, asa aapla saubhaw aahe. Aamhi vyapar kareet nahin. Sagdeyana aangikarto. Propkrachi aapli vruti aahe. Aamhala kunashi ladha che nahi. Pan tarihi unmat, atyachari , swarthy lokana fakt shakti smajte eodech nahve tarjagateel aamanglay sanpvinyasathi bharat heech shakti aahe. Teyamude anisht, ku pravurti teja pude sare padu jatil. Asa tejaswi samaja chi ubharni aapnala karawi lage. (We do not fight, that is our characteristic behaviour. We do not do business. We welcome everyone. Voluntary help is our natural tendency. We are not going to fight against anyone. Even so there are wrongheaded people who perpetrate cruelty and are selfish and they do not understand anything but brutal force. Not only is this, to wipe out evil from the world is what India stands for. Therefore all run away from the luminous and resurgent people. We have to build such strong India.”) The import of the words of Bhagwat would imply that the internal security problem is on account of the wrongheaded people within the country who are inspired and instigated by Pakistan. To confront them there is need to militarize the youths of India.
More ominous than the internal security at the risk of people within India and of course Indian citizens, the place and time he chose to speak in needs scrutiny. He was speaking in the context of Bhonsla Military school of Nasik which had trained many Abhinav Bharat terrorists. They were also advised by the second most powerful office holder of the RSS, Indresh Kumar. Kumar had advised them to kill larger numbers of Muslims and take shelter from the police in temples. It was in Nasik where Lt Col Shrikant Prohit had recruited most of the cadres of Abhinav Bharat. The bombs that were used in neighbouring Malegaon were allegedly assembled in Nasik. And the most astounding of all, one of the four men who carried the bombs and planted them on Samjhauta Express was from Nasik. This news had just come, a day before the visit of Bhagwat there. What does his speech signify to the people of the rest of the country?
Furthermore, Bhagwat’s insidious allusion to internal security risk would suggest that it is the Muslims who are responsible for this. However there is need for check for Bhagwat. The Muslims do not believe that they are a danger to the country despite the fact that many of them have been falsely accused and put behind bars after terrorist attacks. The recent turmoil over failed arrest in Jamianager in Delhi bears witness to this. In sharp contrast to this is the non arrest of the Nasik man who put the bomb on Samjhauta. The people of Nasik and elsewhere welcomed and heard him raptly shows that neither the involvement of the city nor of the RSS nor of the Bhonsla military school in terrorist acts cut any ice.
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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com//city/mumbai/Savarkar-apologised-to-the-British-several-times/articleshow/39099452.cms
The Rushdie debate has exhausted itself. Indian Express, January 30, 2012.
saakal (Marathi daily) February 21, 2012.
Chapter 16
Mard aadmi hai (he’s a real man) and did Manly work (murdonwala kaam)
There is of course consistency in the violence in Gujarat genocide and the fake encounters. They are the two sides of the same coin made in Hindutva mint. Bajrangi was so awed by the bold step Modi had taken for such a daredevil work that he called his chief minister a real man (mard aadmi hai). Like master like servant. His most trusted cop was Vanzara who has been now known for having killed many in fake encounters for which he is in jail for several years and proudly says that he had performed manly work (murdowala kaam). Like master like servant. Modi has been performing fasting session full ten years later. There is no atonement nor is there any remorse for what he did. Vanzara is now busy with Gita progreamme. He has just passed an examination in Gandhian philosophy of nonviolence and is propagating grey cloth for the people. Gandhi used to weave grey cloth or khaadi on his spinning wheel and so he is doing it as a penance, perhaps. He got distinction in the examination as he stood first with seventy marks scored in the same examination. This is reported in the Daily Mail for the world to know what India is today. Indeed the Gujarat ADGP (Prisons) P.C. Thakur feels elated to report this to the press of his distinguished guest: “The jail authorities have now started a Bhagvad Gita Vichar in Sabarmati Jail, and Vanzara is playing an active role in inspiring inmates to attend. Having started with only 10, we now have around 500 inmates studying and discussing the Gita.” The same foreign paper has this to make the world know that ‘Vanzara had hit the headlines in April 2011 when he commented that people land up behind bars after doing something 'worthy of a man' while delivering a speech at Sabarmati Jail, where he was awarded a PG diploma in 'Value Education and Spirituality' conducted by Annamalai University.
'We are here for doing something manly (mardonwala kaam),' Vanzara had said, adding that a true man is happy in any condition.’ Of what sterner stuff such men of Hindutva ideology are made of is seen further: ‘While he had spoken on the spiritual aspect of life, his definition of being 'manly' had made it clear that the IPS officer - who allegedly orchestrated the murder of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife Kausar Bi, besides the killing of Ishrat Jahan along with three others - considered it 'valour' to kill unarmed women and didn't shy away from wearing this 'pride' on his sleeves.’ However, the paper has missed a significant point that the Muslims of his native Ilol village had contributed money in his childhood to have him educated for the larger good of the village. He even took the dead body of Kauser to his farm in Ilol and had her cremated and ashes paved with concrete slab on his well and covered!
The genocide in Gujarat was in line with the RSS central philosophy of initiating Hindus into violence. This they wanted to do under the ruse of inducting dehsbhakti or patriotism. Since the core philosophy of the Hindutva is to wipe out the ‘wicked’ (Muslims) their next objective is to train the youths in violent acts for that is how the task of cleansing the land would be achieved. It would be stupid by any account to say that the Hindus had been denigrated for being less potent than the Muslims, either by their own inhibition of inferiority complex or anything to do with the Muslims who allegedly taunted them to be so. Far more rapes and murders have been reported from across the country in which the Hindus outnumber the Muslims. Even today’s newspapers would verify that the trend has not shifted community wise to others. Even nine war saree dressed women have been raped often giving lie to the fact that provoking dress style of the women is the cause of molestation or rape. Those who work for the human rights of women know this quite well.
Babu Bajrangi was driven by fanatic hatred against the Muslims and even Christians who have married Hindu girls. There was/is nothing like virility of the other being the reason for the Hindu girls to marry them. In fact a Muslim youth of Malegaon and a Hindu girl of the same place had gone to Ahmadabad and got married and went to take shelter in the house of Ahsan Jafri but left the place when they rightly feared that it would be burnt out and the refugees killed. They were lucky. However the same girl later left the youth and married others and went away. She had arranged her escape from Malegaon so well that she had carried away her important documents of certificates of school and college education for the life she wanted to live away from home. This among others proves that the choice of a girl is a complex matter and there is no such thing like the Muslim being more potent than any other community. That is also not true as per the science of biology. DH Lawrence was thought to be a man of male prowess but the wife of his professor with whom he had eloped and married lived with him a long life. When he died in Mexico she married another person soon after the death of her loved Lawrence.
Bajrangi wanted to stress the fact that he was not just an eater of pulses and vegetables he could match the Muslims who eat meat and are supposed to be more potent. In no way this could be scientifically proved because the rapists raped Muslim girls and women a number of times over sometimes a number of days and then they killed them.
Therefore there is nothing manly about either sex or violence. A crowd is generally self powered because of its being well armed and in superior number. What happened in Gujarat was this crowd brutality in murdering children or raping women. They were mainly interested in what the Gujarati slogan they shouted, kill, and burn and cut the Muslims. It was this orgy of cleansing the minority in which they were prepared well in advance. Many of them were also assured that nothing would happen to them if they committed these crimes. Modi even proved this when he gave oral instructions to release all the Hindu fanatics caught in the crimes of genocide. Quintessentially it was this determined reckless resolve to carry the genocide to its logical conclusion of killing and destroying and covering up as follow up action that made Bajrangi praise Modi as a manly man.
What manly is about in the following events of gory death and gang rapes of the hapless Muslims? Saddam Hussein, 8, had run away with enormous hardship. Thanks to the 60 rupees his mother gave him he bought food to eat. For days of running and hiding he survived with the money his mother gave him after which she was raped and hacked to death.
Juned Salim Shaikh,7,had run three to four days without food for he could not have a mother or the money. Acute hunger affected his mind into a depression of months and years. He had seen his aunt’s body taken out of a well where she lay for three days with slash wound in the neck. She was alive but her two children were dead. As he saw the horror of mother and aunt raped and killed and thrown into a well and then taken out he was struck dumb. And now he hardly speaks.
Juned and grandfather Abdul Rahim Ahmed
In the case of Bajrangi and Vanzara being virile and sexually being potent or not is not as pathetic as is their determination to kill for hatred as is the case of Modi. When Ahsan Jafri called him at around two and requested to save the refugees the chief minister reportedly abused him and wondered that he was still alive. Vanzara worked with Abhay Chaudasma who is said to have raped Bilkis bano before killing her. He had claimed that he was chums with Sohrabuddin and had saved him in the Haren Pandya case. Even so he committed such gruesome crimes of rape and murder and conducted a racket of collecting huge amounts of money as kick back. If this was manly then there were women who had taken active part in killing Muslims. Even Maya Kodnani exhorted the fanatics to rape and kill Muslim women. She was health minister in charge of child health and the affairs of women. A woman like that could do all that in Naroda Patia where Bajrangi had proudly killed a pregnant woman and had cut her womb open and killed her foetus. Another killer was Ratilal Rathod who had also specialized in killing pregnant women and yanking out their fetuses and killing them as well. When he appeared before the Nanavati commission he was accompanied with his daughter Gita. What kind of stuff he was made of?
The women who took part in the genocide were quite numerous and not exception. Till then it was a kind of natural empathy that knew no caste or religious restriction where suffering was concerned. But what Modi did was for winning an election based on the strategy of arousing passion in the name of religion because only then the amorphous masses of Hindus would be instigated. Muslim women and children fell victim to the conspiracy of the Godhra incident. The mainstream paper like Sandesh published highly exacerbated imaginative details and aimed at what the chief minister aimed at. This is what the three members of the editors’ guild Dileep Padgaonkar, Aakar Patel and BG Verghese found in March 2002: Sandesh newspaper owner Falgunbhai Patel ‘ told us for the record: “Hindus were not temperamentally prone to starting riots. Gujarat had known worse disturbances (for example in 1969). But this time Hindu anger ‘irrespective of class’ was inflamed by the burning of innocent women and children at Godhra. Even Hindu women felt ‘theek hai, salon ko maro (it’s right to fix them)’.
“The English media had sided ‘out and out’ with the Muslims and the Gujarati papers were, by and large, pro-Hindu.”
‘This is the approach of someone who owns and runs a newspaper read by 3.2 million people. Sandesh led with a report that the breasts of women had been sliced out in Godhra. The government said this wasn’t true, but Sandesh had a policy of not publishing retractions. Such stories became truth for its readers.”’
Bajrangi candidly says that the state could have brought the rioters to their heels. But it did not. This is half truth. This is what the trio of the editors’ guild also believed to be the case. The real fact was that the state under Modi had abandoned its duty to protect the Muslims. The chief minister instructed the police and his administration to let the Hindus take revenge. Ahmadabad and Vdodra have had long history of tension between Hindus and Muslims. There had been riots almost most of the years. But it was for the first time there was a chief minister who decided and accordingly preplanned to teach the Muslims a lesson that they would never forget. What they would not forget would be according to Hindutva ideology that they are second class citizens of the country that too at the sufferance of the Hindus. This time he made experiment to remove the proverbial sufferance and have the Muslims killed. They were killed most horribly and that would be etched in their mind. The top guarded secret of the meeting at the house of the chief minister on February 27, 2002 boils down to this.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2094090/Tainted-IPS-officer-D-G-Vanzara-evolves-champion-philosophy-khadi-score.html#ixzz1l36N4Zio
Chapter 17
Wide spectrum of views
There is a wide spectrum of views on the decade that marked the rule of Narendra Modi in Gujarat. Aakar Patel: “It is difficult to explain to Indians the wrongness of collective punishment. This is because our identity is collective, and so is our behavior.” This has always been so. In Gujarat and elsewhere. In 1921 two police officers of the British Empire had harassed Indians and treated them very cruelly. The people killed Bhaskar Kulkarni and Patil and bunt the temple. This did not result in any tension or riot. But because the killers were Muslims and the victims were Hindus it was made out to be a matter of communal riot. Since then the extremist Hindus have not allowed the municipality to erect a monument in their name. Eleven of them were hanged. Even today the site is not allowed to be built up to mark the harsh British rule. Despite the government gazette declaring the event as against the empire and not communal, the Hindu traders in cloth collected a tax levied against the Muslims for burning the temple and killing the two and so continued collecting the fine much after the India became independent.
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Chapter 18
Haren Pandya
On February 6, 2012 the HC rejected Jagruty’s petition that the murder case of her husband Haren Pandya should be investigated again or further probed. She had written in August 2011 that Azam Khan had revealed how Abhay Chaudasma had remarked that he had saved Sohrabuddin from being implicated in the case of her husband. According to another point she raised was that Geetha Johari had said that the third person with Sohrabuddin and his wife was Kaleemuddin/Nayeemuddin. "Gujarat police could have arrested him, and if he was the third person (travelling with Sohrabuddin and Kauserbi), he would not have been allowed to go back. That is why, south Indian state Andhra Pradesh police sent seven of its officers to protect and take him back," Abhay Chaudasma too was deputed on CBI for investigating Pandya case. Now he too is in prison for his role in Soharabuddin case therefore the two cases have connection with each other and should be probed again. Full six months and more have passed for her petition and now the court has rejected it. Technically this is valid but nevertheless it is temporizing and filibustering of sorts. A whole decade has already passed for the Pandya case and procedural wrangling is still going on. Thus there are powerful forces at work in the two cases of Sohrabuddin and Pandya as they are interrelated.
I have called Haren Pandya case as Achilles heels of Modi. And he in collusion with others particularly other wings of state has forestalled himself from being prosecuted. This is how the demagogue has used his demagoguery for a whole decade and has also defied the world opinion that turned against him and his sponsored genocide of Muslims. He has made himself so safe that now no judiciary or executive branch would dare to prosecute him. How he has achieved seemingly invincible position? He has a knack for bedeviling appeal to arouse the raw passion of the populace and he works up their fear and hatred of Muslims. In this way he sweeps the populace off their feet going beyond the legendary pied piper of Hamlin. When the populace is snared and held in thralldom it loses its reasoning power and the government officials openly break the law of the land for which they know the chief minister would shield the lawbreakers than the honest officer. In such a situation of desperation has RB Sreekumar addressed an open letter to the “people of India” on February 2, 2012 after having felt anguish of being neglected in the nine affidavits that he has submitted. He observes: “But SIT has been turning a Nelson’s eye to any evidence incriminating to CM Narendra Modi and his collaborators.” He gives one example that has driven him to desperation and made him turn to the “people of India”. With regard to Naroda-Patia-riots, Sreekumar had told the SIT that on the morning of February 28, 2002, he was informed by the SRPF group II commandant, Khurshid Ahmed that a group of over 500 Muslims including women and children were requesting shelter as they were being chased by armed mobs led by VHP workers. Sreekumar claimed that he had ordered Ahmed to open the SRPF campus gates immediately and later sent a fax message confirming his oral order.
“But there was a pathetic and deplorable post-script in the whole affair. It is leant from SRPF officers that by the afternoon of 28.2.2002, under pressure from higher authorities and BJP leaders, the Commandant had closed the gates to the refugees without informing me.”
In what I have written here and in my first book on Gujarat “First Hindutva Genocide of Muslims and its Architect” (2011) Sreekumar seems to be the most daunting person with proof of what he so clearly called a genocide right from day one. He concludes: “Consequently, in front of SRPF Group-II entrance, nearly 100-130 Muslims were killed,, many women were gang-raped and dead bodies were dumped in a nearby abandoned well. Sreekumar had informed the DGP about the SRPF and his orders to Ahmed to allow those seeking shelter inside the barracks. “Then the DGP told me about a meeting convened by the chief minister Narendra Modi on 27/2/2002 late evening, and his verbal instructions to officers “to allow Hindus to give vent to their anger.” “In my view, this is substantial chain of evidence to establish that the anti-minority genocide, following the Godhra train fire incident was conceived, designed, organized, prepared and perpetrated by the then CM of Gujarat state Narendra Mode, his cabinet colleagues and Sagh Pariwar leaders.”
This is a damning indictment of the chief minister of Gujart as this accusation is corroborated with circumstantial evidence. It comes from no other than the arch-desperado of murder of the innocents. Babu Bajrangi has gone on record that he initiated the murder, mayhem and arson at Naroda Patiya. But he also touches up the commandant of SRPF episode. He calls him Sayeed and his pause on the tape of Tehelka indicates that he is not sure that it was exactly the same name. Second, he also ventures into thinking that the commandant must have saved 500 Muslims, a figure that even Sreekumar also uses for a different inference to draw. Bajrangi believes that the commandant saved them but Sreekumar believes that he tried to save but was prevailed upon and about a hundred and hundred and thirty lost their life. It was on account of the intervention from the office of the chief minister and that too through the channel of the Director General of Police of the state of Gujarat. It is further corroborated by the fact that the commissioner of police PC Pande got the bodies lifted and scattered all over Ahmadabad to make the matter not so gruesome. Therefore the pogrom was designed by the chief minister, it was he who organized it because he had deputed two ministers Ashok Bhatt and Jadega to monitor the situation from police control room. It was he who let his minister of state for home Zadhaphia to give “V” (victory) gesture to the murderers, arsonists at the site. It was he who had let VHP chief of the state Jaideep Patel take out the dead bodies of the kar sevaks of Ram mander killed in the fire accident. It was again he who let Zadhaphia send KK Mysorewalla to caution Bajrangi to go into hiding. Further, Modi also perpetrated the crimes against humanity by visiting Patia and told the murderers that they must continue the same(massacre) the next day too. It was the chief minister who prepared the holocaust because he turned down the appeal of the collector of Godhra. She had called it an accident but the fire accident was made into a terrorist attack by ISI and LeT at the insidious suggestion of Rajendra Kumar of IB. and mother of all preparation was that he it was he who let the Hind extremists kill the Muslims for three days to teach them a lesson that they would never forget.
Despite all such horrible charges against no other than the chief minister the SIT and the dud Nanavati commission do not feel that there is sufficient prosecutable evidence against Modi (or call him for questioning)!
It does not end there. Modi is neck deep into another set of crimes, that of cover up and destruction of evidence. It was he who orally ordered the release of all the arrested Hindus involved in the violence. Even the commandant also gave witness against Bajrangi whom the chief minister got out on bail through Justice Akshay Mehta. The other judges had told Bajrangi that they would have hanged him thrice for the crimes he committed against humanity. Even full ten years later the courts do not feel it correct to cancel his bail and have him rearrested. When the judicial process is subverted in the case of the foot soldier of Hindutva what about the pracharak of RSS who is also the chief minister? This is how we Indians feel surprised when we say in vernacular, andher nagri chopat raaj. Under the rule of the demagogue all the laws are topsy-turvy.
Full ten years later why has the murder mystery of Haren Pandiya kept unsolved? This has been done very craftily so as to shield the chief minister. Haren Pandya’s wife Jagruty had shown Modi the door. She like her father in law believed that Harend Pandya was killed for a political purpose which had nothing to do with what had happened in Gujarat. That political purpose was advancing Hindutva ideology of establishing a Hindu nation ultimately and making life impossible for the minorities. A parallel in contemporary India is that Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thakur had Sunil Joshi killed because he had come to know a good deal of the terrorist attacks that had taken place across the country. Even Aseemanand had told Sunil Joshi that his life was in danger because of Indresh Kumar. The extremist Hindutva members who lived with Joshi killed him and went in hiding and they were set on Sunil Joshi by the sadhvi. She even went to Joshi’s house and carried away important evidence. Joshi’s niece Chanchal accused her of the serious crimes. The RSS works through the maze of intrigues because otherwise it has no raison d etre. Pandya had also come to know so much that he let the citizens’ tribunal on March 13, 2002 in on the murky role of Modi. But that alone could not be enough for causing the elimination of Pandya. Modi in fact feared that since he was a rival and had known such vital evidence he would naturally reveal it and cause his nascent ascendance into the highest power seat of the state downfall. So murder came handy to forever shut his mouth. When Aseemanand told Sunil Joshi that his life was in danger on account of Indresh Kumar, number 2 man in RSS, he knew that Joshi could one day reveal everything because Kumar was against him (Joshi) and a potential rival. Pandya’s refusal to vacate the Ellisbridge seat in favour of the chief minister also aggravated the matter. Modi set in a reign of terror. Even the former chief minister Keshubhai Patel has tweeted that the Patels have begun to be sacred by Modi. He also tweeted that the people who wanted to honour him with fund must seek clearance from Modi. He as well as Pandya knew that Modi was autocratic and would not tolerate anyone who poses a challenge.
Pandya had deposed before the panel of Citizens for Justice and Peace that he feared that Modi would harm him and hence he had asked the panel not to mention his name. Their report did not mention his name for almost a whole ten years. But now the members of the panel of experts have come out with their names and have named Pandya and what actually he had told them. Justice of SC PB Samant, Chief Judge of Bombay HC H Suresh have now spoken again. On Friday H Suresh wondered whether the SIT was blind to what the panel had written about the crucial evidence of Pandya that they have given a clean chit to the chief minister. Justice Suresh told in an interview to the The Times of India on Friday February 17, 2012 that Modi had clearly told the police and administrative officers what they should do and what they should not do. The police must let the Hindus take revenge. He also had told the police that they must not do certain things. That is, they must not book Hindus in the riots that would result. In case they are caught they must release the Hindus. He had not only instructed them into what to do and what not to do but went further and orally instructed the additional secretary Narayanan to release the Hindus involved in the murder, rape and arson. And Narayan had naturally talked to RB Sreekumar about it. It was not just Sreekumar and Sanjiv Bhatt who had accused Modi of having given the instruction, it was Pandya himself who had approached the panel of judges and eminent human right activists and told them of the truth. Even more corroborative is the chief secretary Dr.PK Mishra who had given the phone number of Pandya and asked Sreekumar to tap the phone and find out what Pandya was talking. Why was the chief secretary apprehensive about the minister, Pandya? It was on account of the chief minister who correctly feared that Pandya was a potential danger as he would reveal the secret. And when he did reveal the secret the chief minister feared Pandya more and wanted the phone taped.
The deafening silence of the chief minister assumes sinister significance because he is most vulnerable in the case of the murder of Pandya. He is also vulnerable in the case of the genocide of Muslims. But as Shakespeare has shown through his plays that murder does reveal it through different means even when the tongues and hands are cut off.
Even when logically sound arguments are there which hold Modi responsible for the murder of Pandya there are people who somehow want to shield Modi against prosecution. If Pandya did not attend the meeting late at night on February 27, 2002 then they say that he had heard it from others who had attended the meeting that the chief minister wanted the police to let the Hindus take revenge upon the Muslims. This is even more fantastic because for the last ten years some people had gone public that Sreekumar had attended that meeting and had heard the chief minister instruct the police to let the Hindus take revenge. Sreekumar had maintained his assertion. Now newcomers like Manu Joseph are saying that Pandya was not in the meeting but he had heard what Modi had instructed the police. If he had only heard how could he have gone to the panel of Citizens for Peace and Justice and given witness to a serious crime just because what others were saying when he was allegedly not present in the meeting? It is a sinister design of deflecting attention from what Modi did say in the meeting. The strategy is to create as much doubt that the probability of Modi not saying such things would outweigh the real truth of the matter. What they are saying now is nothing but creating more snags and hurdle which could temporize and consume more time till Modi is out of office, or the case is closed. Another strategy is to issue him certificate of efficiency in administration and developing Gujarat as a cynosure of the eyes of the world in terms of material development. Joseph uses anonymous talented couple praise Modi sky high but does it mean that those who have shown moral turpitude of Modi are any less talented. Vijay Tendulkar was a very great dramatist whose “Ghasiram kotwal” was the first India drama to have been staged in Europe because of his innovative techniques in language and dramaturgy. He won world acclaim for his contribution. One day he went to a school in` Mumbai and while addressing the students someone in the audience asked him what he would do if he had a gun. He replied that he would kill Modi with it. Modi had the temerity to offer him one. Was Tendulkar less talented? Of the two Tendulkars who have brought fame to India which outmatch Modi, one is the dramatist and the other the cricketer. Even the cricketer has crossed swords with those who view only Hindus as the citizens of India like Bal Thackeray. Sachin Tendulkar like Sunil Gavaskar has not only spoken for national unity and harmony but has even saved life of Muslims caught in pogroms by refusing to toe the line taken by the RSS pracharaks. As compared to them Modi had seen to it that after a whole day of massacres the murderers should not become tire with ennui but finish the jobs in the next and the third day which he had stipulated to them.
Many non resident Indians (NRIs) praise Modi despite their being talented to get hefty jobs in the US and fund genocide. It was their money that was sent to the VHP office in Delhi from which they paid to the killers and fed them with dry fruits and drinks packed in pouches well in advance and supplied instantly. If this is also the example of entrepreneurship then Gujarat excels here too. It is on record that Sonal Shah born and brought up in the US and her father had remitted the huge amount of money. These VHPA office holders are as much complicit in the genocide as Modi. When this was brought to the notice of President Obama during his election campaign he dropped her. This is how even after leaving the home shore they could play so dangerous role. In comparison to them is another diaspora in the US. The Armenian Christians in the US strove nearly half a century to have the UNO recognize the genocide of the Armenian Christians in Turkey of 1915. This achievement contrasts in quality of humanity between the Gujarat genocide conducted well in the focus of modern audio-visual advancement of technology and yet the man who committed the atrocities winning elections one after another with the Armenian genocide when even the camera was not in common use. But the work of the Armenian diaspora prevented Turkey from becoming a full member of the European Union. Albeit there is a distinction that though the US refused visa to Modi but one time enemy of India and the US, China is welcoming Modi with open arms and is ready to invest in Gujarat and also keep amassing its soldiers on our borders! Is Gujarat the front state in dealing for business opportunities and also the same in dealing with President Musharraf to fight his state assembly elections? The miyans (Muslims) versus India?—this made the election of December 2002 as a straight fight between Hindu India and Pakistan across the border and within the borders, the ghettos where Indian Muslims live. This is how Modi fought and won. It was precisely this that neither Pandya nor Ahsan Jafri liked. They openly opposed it and put the blame on Modi. It was not just personal equation in which Modi hated the two but according to his ideology of hate for the Muslims and his intolerance of their existence with the country. This constitutes the crux of the matter why Pandya had to be killed, and Jafri had to be killed. The ideology that saw Gandhiji cut in his track in his effort to restore the Quwatul Islam mosque of Mehrauli to Muslims and his desire to visit Pakistan and return the money due to them could not allow the pracharak to waver. He did not. That one in 1948 was as determined as the one in 2002. In the court he had said that were Gandhi alive today he would kill him again.
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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/Haren-case-HC-turns-down-plea-for-fresh-probe/articleshow/11785045.cms
http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/Gujarat/SIT-shielding-Modi-from-prosecution-Ex-DGP/Article1-805801.aspx
SIT shielding Modi from prosecution: Ex-DGP February 2, 2012 Hindustan Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/world/asia/16iht-letter16.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Chapter 19
The gravamen of Hindutva hatred
The chief minister of Gujarat during the decade long rule felt never shy or ashamed of manufacturing falsehood that Muslims marry four wives and produce 25 children. This is like Nazi philosophy of repeating the lie so many times that the people come to believe it to be true. Even in this Bajrangi leads the list of the murderers inspired by his chief minister. He asserted that he had saved 957 Hindu girls who had married Muslims and he rescued them and brought them back to their fold. “Nine hundred and fifty-seven –that’s how many Hindu girls I have saved. On average one girl married to a Muslim produces five children. So, in effect, I have killed 5000 Muslims before they were born.”
The census of 2001 had alarmed many on account of the sharp increase in Muslim population. It came as an opportune time to fix the Muslims for their negative approach to what the extremists believed was the policy of having small families as a shibboleth of nationalism. But the opening year of the twenty first century also saw the attack on Washington, New York popularly known as 9/11. These followed in tandem with the publication of The Clash of Civilization of Samuel Huntington. All this added to the tension that Hindutva activists used to whip up the fear of the Hindus that they would be in a precarious situation now. The greatest gathering of Muslims was taking place in a mosque and its environs in 2001 in Bhopal. Sunil Joshi of Abhinav Bharat and his associates as well as the second most powerful man in RSS, Indresh Kumar, wanted to attack the Muslims and kill them in large numbers. In the first bomb attacks in Malegaon on September 8, 2006 there were 37 Muslims killed in Malegaon and more than two hundred injured. When the same group attacked Malegaon again on September 29, 2008 and only about half a dozen were killed Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thackur wondered at the insignificant number and asked Ramji Kalsangra why so few died. Behind such terrorist attacks was the same feeling that the population of Muslims was increasing much faster and posed a serious danger to the Hindus. This is how the Hindu right felt about it. Swami Aseemanand was by now firmly established in the Dangs area of Gujarat and had full support of Modi and Vajpayee who would visit him. Modi gave him large amounts of money that he must have used to organize terror acts. As Babu Bajrangi absconded from the law so did Aseemanand. As Bharatbhai Riteshwar based in Surat had funded terrorist acts the Hindutva groups needed much larger amount for organizing the genocide and the money came from the US. In both the cases of terror and genocide the object was the same: destruction of Muslims. Gujarat played a major role. It came to be known as Hindutva laboratory experiment of Gujarat. Modi’s refrain of Muslims as we five and our twenty five down the decade proves the point.
The Hindu extremists overjoyed by the success of the experiment and felt confident of their new strength. After demolition of the Babri mosque another decade passed and then happened Gujarat 2002. The second most momentous event also succeeded as the first did in 1992. The Hindutva leaders were overwhelmed by their success two times within a span of a decade. It was in such a context that VHP leader Ashok Singhal felt buoyed and said what was part of their hidden agenda. “However, it is not merely Singhal's totalitarian view expressed in that 1993 interview that is troubling. More recently (September 2002) he has gone on record to say that the horrendous Gujarat pogrom of 2002 in which at least 2000 Muslims were butchered, raped and publicly degraded in unspeakable ways, was a "successful experiment" and "will be repeated all over the country now." Singhal spoke glowingly of how whole villages had been "emptied of Islam," and how whole communities of Muslims had been dispatched to refugee camps. This was a victory for Hindu society, he added, a first for the religion.
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“("People say I praise Gujarat. Yes I do." (Original source: http://www.indianexpress.com/res/web/pIe/archive_full_story.php?content_id=8831)
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Tehelka November 3, 2007.
Chapter 20
Discrimination all the way
Over the last decade Modi government has introduced bills and passed them into law that discriminates against Muslims. For example a Muslim landlord cannot evict his premises if it is occupied by Hindus. Transportation of animals or meat is forbidden. The new regulations also stipulate how transaction of property should take place in disturbed areas. In all this the priority is to secure control of Hindus over property. In contrast it has violated many human rights of the people who were victims of the genocide. So the judgment of the HC read out on Wednesday February 8, 2012 says the court held that Modi government’s policy of restricting compensation only to damaged or destroyed houses and commercial establishments and not places of worship was violative of the fundamental rights guaranteed under Articles 14, 25 and 26 of the Constitution. “The policy of the state government taken in defence is one of evading the constitutional responsibility and will bring anarchy in the society, and thus, is detrimental to the establishment of the principles and the tenets of our Constitution.” The court judgment is also a repeat warning to modern day Nero ala James Michael Lyngdoh. The Moditva policy of flagrant discrimination would amount to the fact that “religious places should take up arms in their own hand because in the event of destruction of those places, no financial help would come from government.
“It will also encourage the religious bigots to destroy religious and other places of worship of the economically weaker section for the purpose of establishing their superiority over the others.” The sharp and stinging indictment comes as a breath of fresh air as it touches a gamut of accord in the good hearted with national sanity and good sense that many Indians still are. As the court says: “Even if we, for the sake of argument, accept the defense of the state that the cause of riot was a general reaction to the Sabarmati Express incident, the failure on part of police to gather intelligence about such general reaction (after the Godhra train burning incident) in time and to take appropriate timely action definitely come within expression 'negligence of the state'.”
“Similarly, the fact remain that the anarchy continued unabated for days ... itself suggests lack of appropriate action or adequate action, if not inaction, on the part of the State in handling the situation.”
“The state cannot shirk from its responsibilities. Once we hold that there was 'inadequate endeavour' on the part of the state government in effectively handling the situation resulting in destruction of more than 500 places of religious worship throughout the state belonging only to the one religious community.”
While passing the order, seen as a major setback to the Modi government, the court concluded: “It is the duty of the state government to restore all those religious places, irrespective of the religion, to its original position as it existed at the time of destruction.”
These are the signs of the sagas of discrimination against the Muslims that the pracharak Modi had carried on. Even after a decade there is a huge task waiting for the constitutional process to take to restore not just the rights of the minority but give them courage to be part of the mainstream Indian life and culture. Without this Indian polity cannot be complete and democracy would be imperfect. The benefits accumulating from the Sachar commission recommendations have been denied to the Muslims of Gujarat because of the same extreme Hindutva ideology. To be at par with the rest of their fellow countrymen that Muslims deserve those legitimate benefits as some of the other downtrodden communities. Those social changes may take more time but the need of the hour is to prevent Modi and Bal Thackeray and Arun Shourie and their likes from entangling the procedural process by communal consideration.
Chapter 21
Development as a ruse to commit atrocities
The showbiz of the Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi is that Gujarat has left even India behind in its march of development. That he can have direct talk with the Chinese leaders in order to earn a fast buck. That he watches every octroi post or road toll collection office right from his office and there is absolutely no lapse in it as Gujarat collects more than Maharashtra on the same road is sheer bragging. Given this business acumen he could lead India one day to economic heights that even Manmohan Singh or Narsimha Rao could not have dreamt. The calculated cunning-intention is that the pogroms should be overlooked for economic prosperity. That 24X7 electricity is more desirable than fake encounters of ‘criminals’ and ‘terrorists’ as well illuminated and metalled roads and industrial growth matter more. That the investigation agencies including SIT/Nanavati commissions will continue their work as a routine work of the aftermath scenario and hence to move on. All these works of inquiries have a catch. It is all right making investigation but since the phone records have been destroyed the chief minister is not prosecutable. It is some kind of Greek tragedy that infant Oedipus was left on the mountain to die and therefore he could not have grown up. So how could he have killed his own father and married his own mother and fathered children. And by the time the hard proofs emerge it would be too late. What Modi did constituted no less than the hubris called hamartia or fatal flaw of Greek tragedy. He is as despotic as any Greek tragic hero or even like Shakespeare’s Macbeth. It is this despotic streak that led the senior journalist and psychologist Ashish Nandi call him a development despot. He subverted administrative and law and order systems so thoroughly that his own additional general advocate Tushar Mehta sent out reports to Gurumurthy of RSS to find out how the genocide cases can be destroyed from within. That, the work of prosecution should be turned into defence of the guilty for which the government would pay largess to the advocate and his cohorts who would not be doing this for only a song. He had ordered his SBI second highest ranking officer to pay ten lakh rupees to the SIB chief to bribe Malika Sarabhai’s lawyer. She was fighting for justice to the enormous number of victims of Naroda Patia. What kind of masque is the chief minister wearing believing that all these crimes should not merit your attention! Only the focus on his ‘achievements’ should be the cynosure of your eyes! There is no remorse till today that such huge numbers of people were killed because he wanted Hindus to vent their anger and take revenge against Muslims en mass! He and his government have not cared a hoot to even look into what the civil rights groups or human rights groups or even the central government railway departmental investigation by Justice UC Bannerji had found! His self righteous stance vis-a-vis Muslims on the matter of genocide smacks of tragic flaw deliberately foisted upon himself and his ilks in an attempt to emulate Nazi propaganda being repeated so often that it looks true! Even the humanitarian concern and remorse of President KR Narayanan fell on his deaf ears and on his fellow ruler Vajpayee! What these modern day Neros have done is to vent their anger on the Muslims who are legitimate citizens of the country like them and teach them lesson because “they don’t live with their neighbours in peace” in the new ethos of the clash of civilization. So the show of the sadhbhavna or fast for peace, justice and harmony has focus on something different from what the rainbow experience in democracy that Nelson Mandela inducted in South Africa. Does not Gujarat need any finding of truth and reconciliation?
It is strange that the proverbial saying that the cries of the innocent reach the heaven but in the case of the cries of the innocent killed in Gujarat has not till today reached heaven, perhaps. But it is also significant that the nine affidavits and further persistent effort of no other than the former chief of the SIB Sreekumar’s official and voluntary efforts have not been taken by the SIT into consideration. Moreover no court or inquiry commission have bothered to take suo motto notice of what Sreekumar has written over the whole decade. In the most recent submission he has revealed more damaging truths that conclusively show how deep was Modi’s involvement in crimes against humanity. “Modi never once confronted me on the reports I had sent, first on April 24, then June 15 and August 28, all in 2002, how Muslims were losing faith and that the police was colluding with rioters.” Furthermore he wrote to RK Raghvan the Tata tainted officer in charge of SIT about the RSS tainted chief minister: “In my view, your act of exonerating Shri Narendra Modi and his collaborators in the anti-minority carnage will be celebrated by all enemies of our motherland, particularly Hindu and Muslim extremists...”
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Amid ‘closure’ buzz, Zakia seeks copy of SIT report. Indian Express February 10, 2012.
Chapter 22
Will the problem from hell end, ever
Where will this chapter of the genocide in Gujarat end? Will it end with the extinction of the Muslims like the Moors in Spain? That is what Ashok Singhal of Vishwa Hindu Parishad would have it as he had threatened to explicate it in other parts of India and as is also the hidden agenda of the Hindutva? Or, will it end in a whimper? That is when the law does not discriminate against any one in dealing with crimes of humanity. The much lauded aim of punishing the guilty howsoever great he may be? This is hardly possible because Bal Thackeray and Praveen Togadia and others of the saffron extremists have even dared the law of the land to punish them. The precedence of 1984 anti Sikh carnage also leaves little hope that it would ever happen. This is the case despite the Sikhs being so dominant in the army and better off economically in India and elsewhere in the world. As compared to them the Muslims cut much smaller figure. Nellie massacre in Assam has also shown that when the world leaders of the non-aligned countries which had fair number of Muslim heads of state or government being present in Delhi there is little attention paid to such events. Already in the case of Gujarat the head of the government of Indonesia visited India and Vajpayee parried the question of what happened in Modi’s state.
As the position of Muslims is sliding steadily after the Independence there is likelihood of their being more and more dispossessed and even disenfranchised. It would in the extreme be like the protagonist of the Zoo Story of Edward Albee. He is so much alienated from what we call in India mainstream life that nobody connects to him. Even the dog that he fed with hamburger shows disregard. Finally he goes to the zoo and the dreadful guerrilla embraces him in the cage.
This not to say that hope is irrecoverably lost. But there are grim signs. Sanjiv Bhatt had submitted crucial documents incriminating Modi in the Godhra case but he fears that the documents were either destroyed or were not consulted. The state department under Modi could do anything. It “inadvertently or otherwise facilitated the destruction of incriminating evidence against the Chief Minister and others.” A day before Bhatt expressed his views, Sreekumar wrote on February 10 that his evidence against Modi be recorded under section 164 of Cr PC as a witness against the chief minister. When these things are going on so openly what hope is there that the Muslims can have their grievances heard? Hence the growing need for foreign intervention. It is doubtful if India on its own can get justice for the victims despite the fact that most Indians are fair minded but then the demagogues are still at large.
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Sanjiv Bhatt defies SIT's clean chit to Modi The Hindu February 11 2012
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2883098.ece
Amid ‘closure’ buzz, Zakia seeks copy of SIT report Indian Express February 10. 2012.
Chapter 23
Who is Sophia (Sophie) in Godhra Mystery?
What happened in Godhra on February 27, 2002 takes us back to the Gothic novel of mystery and supernatural events of the eighteenth century. This has been made true even in the first decade of the twenty first century. Not just in one incident of fire on a train but in a host of other events which the government investigation agencies never bothered to even take trouble to establish fact that were staring in the eyes.
In the meantime people of Hidutva leanings read Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code for their own sense of male chauvinism and chivalry. They really took leave of rhyme and reason ala Samuel Taylor Coleridge by their “willing suspension of disbelief.” One of the most notable was Ashok Singhal of Vishwa Hindu Parishad. He saw in Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thakur the mystery descendant daughter of Christ. In this version Christ had married and had a long line of descent. But because the Pope tried successfully to kill the offspring of Christ they took refuge in an unknown church where the family line was safe and secure until the modern day monk was given the task to decode the mysterious codes to locate the church and go for the ultimate descendant of Christ. To Ashok Singhal it was parallel to the Anti Terrorism Squad headed by Heman Karkare’s investigation into the Malegaon blasts of September 29, 2008. Much of the code centres on Sophie and her whereabouts. A book also reads the reader.
However, the Gujarat genocide of Muslims also has a mystery. She is also a woman. Sophia (Sophie) of Godhra railway platform. She had come to her aunt’s house for the Eid festival and after it she was to take the train back from Godhra to Vadodra. She was at that time Sophiabano Sheikh. Later she married and became Sophiabano Dhantiya. Today she is 27. A whole decade in her life was covered by the shroud with which the investigation agencies had her wrapped up. The firs inquiry in regards to her was made on March 28, 2003. It is as mysterious thereafter as is who is, if at all, the wife of Modi? Or who is the woman he was supposed to have been betrothed. For reasons best known to the police and investigation agencies they kept it a close guarded secret what Sophiabano had said. After a whole decade now it is reported that she had said: “We reached the station at 7.30 am and the Sabarmati Express had just come in from Dahod. We were standing near the drinking water point. There were many people with kesri pattas (saffron bandanas) who got off the train shouting, ‘Jai Shri Ram’. We saw one of them beating up a bearded man and got scared. We started walking towards the ticket window and thought the train would go. A kesri pattawala came from behind and clamped his hand on my mouth and tried to drag me towards the train. I screamed for my mother who was ahead of me with Saheda (her sister). Hearing me shout, he let me go. Then I saw some kestri pattawalas tug at a burqa-cladwoman’s veil. They were screaming, ‘Musalmano ko maaro.’ We were not wearing burqua. I was very scared. My mother then said we should go back to Signal Falia.’
At the first glance it establishes that the Muslims were attacked there without any cause. The extremist Hindus had already taken law into their hands and could molest Muslim women and girls at will. This they could do even in a Muslim majority neighbourhood of the railway station. Was this already set up? Was this the onset of the pre planned pogroms?
Ten years on many more such stories are coming out with startling revelation. In the aftermath of the release of 63 who were allegedly involved in the train burning new indications confirm worst doubts. The police officers and ordinary cops who came to say good bye to the acquitted behaved in most unusual way. They were fawning on the released Muslims as if they were seeking some rewards for themselves. It looks as if these 63 had received some reward of which the cops were privy to. As one of them said: “We bumped into Amit Shah often. When we were released, the cops came to say goodbye and jokingly said, ‘Hamaara bhi kutchh karna’ (do something about us, [too], please).’” The Indian Express report of February 12, 2012 indicates that they had vivaciously talked about DG Vanzara, Rajkumar Pandian, NK Amin and Amit Shah in the prison. There is also ground for misgiving as the area is divided between those who were acquitted and those who were convicted and given heavy punishment. Does it mean that one group was paid to betray the other? This could be true as there was no real proof except what some Hindu residents of the area identified the Muslims of their neighbourhood as being involved. Moreover, why only S6 caught fire? That still remains a mystery. The molestation of Sophiabano took place near the ticket office when the train was stationery. The actual fire started much away from the railway platform at Godhra.
The other side is the kinds of real reason behind making Godhra happen. The extremists among the Hindus did not eye with favour Hindu girls marrying Muslim youths. This must have been one of the most serious reasons for it to happen; to scare the Muslims not to stray from their own and marry across religious line. To overcome the traumatic situation and violence Firdos Kothi of Godhra Ganchi Muslim Samaj says: “Those who made Godhra infamous will now know this place for positive things like communal harmony.” For this he has joined hands with the VHP leader Ashish Bhatt. “We returned four Hindu girls (who eloped with Muslim boys) recently. We have a pact now Love-shove[show] wears out after some time and our children come out of its soon.”
This is what Modi desired. He wanted to teach the Muslims a lesson. That is they must not forget their place and limit themselves to it, or face consequences. What he had told in the late night meeting of February 27, 2002 amounts to this. That is what people like Firdos Kothi learnt to their sorrow. The Muslims are resigned to their lot, at least for the time being. Because they have been made to either toe line with Hindutva or get out of the place. But this is not the end of the story as far as Godhra or Ahmadabad is concerned or even the villages around there. Zakia Jafri is still resolute and determined to seek justice. Such strangle hold Modi has on them that the family of her husband has totally cut off relation with her after the death of her husband. This reveals the powerful force Modi and his influence wields in the area. It shows how families can be vertically divided by the despotic manoeuvring of Modi and his government. The courts perhaps could not bring about any change in such matters where families voluntarily turned against each other owing to the kind of ethos created by a repressive regime.
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Why Sophiyabano is still terrified of train journeys. Sunday Express, February 12, 2012.
http://hsctruthout.stopfundinghate.org/PRs/pr_Question5.html
In Godhra, a burnt train and a divided neighbourhoos. Sunday Express February 12, 2012.
Chapter 24
Lies Nailed
It is the decency of Zakia Jafri that she did not mention the expletive Modi barked at Ahsan Jafri around noon on February 28, 2002. The RSS pracharak did say what he said. But then the chief minister went far beyond and told lies upon lies to hide the simple truth that he had sanctioned the genocide that he continued to conceal for the whole decade of his misrule. His deafening silence over the pogroms let alone repentance over it despite the showbiz over sadhbhauna tried to hide the psychopath. The BJP and its patron body RSS are full of many such who could take Modi’s place in Gujarat or even at the centre. However it is now for India to choose a statesman rather than a demagogue. That is the heart of the matter for the future of this country. Do they want Gujarat genocide repeated in Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka or elsewhere?
Zakia Jafri says: “However, in the SIT interrogation, Modi has claimed that he did not get a call from (Ehsan) Jafri Saheb. It was in front of me that Jafri Saheb called Modi, begging for help. I saw with my own eyes what happened to him when he went downstairs to talk to the mobsters. It is high time we got justice for the dark memories we hold. The authorities concerned should take prompt steps towards providing justice to the victims of Gujarat 2002.” If SIT is so corrupt then it should sit up and note that Modi had called Ahsan Jafri: “Mother fucker, are you still alive!” It was this that shocked the seventy year old moderate man to surrender to the mobs begging them to spare those who had taken shelter in his house. Like a true RSS pracharak he lied that Ahsan Jafri took out his gun at the crowd. It was not just his wife who heroically saw her husband meet his final tryst with destiny. Even the State Intelligence Bureau officer covering the incident at the house who sent his report of what happened there was a witness. His report confirms what she saw. There is a pyramid of lies that Modi built over the Gujarat genocide. But such is the hate that the RSS, VHP and other extremists have for the Muslims that they would continue making the same experiment elsewhere. It is the most serious challenge: will India allow Ashok Singhal to replicate it elsewhere. Karnataka ever since it came under BJP rule has done nothing but prepare for the continuation of the same genocide. How successful was the genocide tried for the first time and how crafty the demagogue will depend on how India brings him to book. Letting some other agency of justice like the International Criminal Court do it after some more decades, one decade is enough to come clean on Gujarat.
The need for international intervention for justice for the victims of the genocide is still viable because SIT and indeed the state of Gujarat and the sangh parivar or the Hindutva forces remain unaffected come what may. As RB Sreekumar avers that the operation is over but the patient is dead: “The six affidavits and more than 30 evidences to show the complicity of VHP and BJP members in the genocide have been ignored. This amounts to failure of the Indian state to provide justice for the victims of Gujarat 2002.” What aggravated the situation was the mainstream media English and vernacular alike baulked from using the word genocide that it really was. And at the same time they never hesitated in eulogizing the development that was going on in Gujarat as a showpiece. This really agonized many and now that the SIT and Modi are both exposed it is time to own up what it was. Member of Parliament Jagadanand Singh from Buxar puts it this way: “There is nothing more to say now about Modi after this report. People like Modi and organisations like the RSS are out to destroy this country. We cannot even call the Gujarat horror a riot. It was plain genocide. And that is in the open now.”
Babu Patel aka Babu Bajrangi
Why has the evil that is personified by Modi, Bajrangi and the marauders in the crowds of the extremist Hindus during the pogroms has been there at all? It was because of the hideous ideology of hating the other even when they have not done anything to deserve so much of suffering. The reason and its explaining comes in the figure and words of another demagogue: LK Advani on Modi given a clean chit: “the most heartening news I have read in a long, long time”. Writing in his blog like an anachronistic desperado Advani justified his protégé to the hilt and praised him. He did it with the fondness of a biological father as he spoke of Modi’s personality and his style of governance which had enamored him: “In my 60 years of political life I have not known any colleague of mine so consistently, so sustainedly and so viciously maligned by opponents as Narendra Modi.” He goes on to tell breathlessly ala the School for Scandal rumour mongers of Sheridan’s drama: “Several papers have reported that the SIT has found no evidence to substantiate the charge and has exonerated the Gujarat chief minister. The country is eagerly awaiting the full text of the SIT report to the Supreme Court.” As the president of BJP never tired of saying that there were many leaders of the same stature as Modi to take central leadership one must remember old fools who also crowd the party and Advani here leads the pack. The man would genuflect before Modi as easily as he did at the mausoleum of Mohammad Ali Jinnah.
The SIT was composed of three members of which Malhotra was more forthright in his comments than the chairperson Raghvan. It is worth to quote Tehelka in some detail: “On 1 March 2002, as the fire of communal riots was raging in Gujarat, in an interview to Zee News, Modi made the following remark: “Kriya pratikriya ki chain chal rahi hai. Hum chahte hain ki na kriya ho aur na pratikriya (The process of action and reaction is on. I would say if action doesn’t happen there would be no reaction).”
In the same interview, Modi had stated that Godhra Muslims had criminal tendencies and they were behind the gruesome Sabarmati train fire incident. And then added that the riots in Gujarat were a natural reaction to that. (“Godhra ke is ilake ke logon ki criminal tendencies rahi hain. In logon ne pahle mahila teachers ka khoon kiya. Aura ab yeh jaghanya apraadh kiya hai jiski pratikriya ho rahi hai.”)
On page 69 of his report, Malhotra notes: “It is to be stated that Narendra Modi has clearly stated in his Zee TV interview that it was late Ehsan Jafri, ex- MP, who first fired at the violent mob and the provoked mob stormed the society and set it on fire. In this interview he has clearly referred to Jafri’s firing as ‘action’ and the massacre that followed as ‘reaction’.”
Malhotra further writes: “It may thus be seen that in spite of the fact that ghastly violent attacks had taken place on Muslims at Gulberg Society and elsewhere, the reaction of the government was not the type that would have been expected by anyone. The above discussion also shows that the chief minister had tried to water down the seriousness of the situation at Gulberg Society, Naroda Patiya and other places by saying that every ‘action’ has an equal and opposite ‘reaction’.” He also says that Modi’s remarks “implied justification of the killings of innocent members of the minority community” and reflected his partisan mindset and thus were unbecoming of a chief minister.”
Can this poster boy of Hindutva who has to face investigation by several agencies and on so many issues lead the central government one day just because he has paved the roads and built splendid buildings and hospitals and also a police university and brought material development? The number of lies he has told and made his administration and police tell them or repeat them will require many years of probing further or reinvestigation. How come overwhelming number of lies, if analyzed, deal with hiding the murders, rapes and destruction of Muslims and their properties, denying them their rightful claim for rehabilitation, their share of the concessions that the present central government has sanctioned by way of constitutionally ordained bodies and commission recommendations for the amelioration of the lot of the minority of Muslims?
Everyday some case or the other comes into limelight despite Modi’s bragging and hectoring and yet he shows no introspection! Two parallel albeit antagonistic movements are discernable. One that he pontificates to Delhi for any pitfall in procedural matter, like setting up a national council to fight terrorism. Yet simultaneously the high court of Gujarat or the SC focuses on cases where there is his moral turpitude deepening ever more. The fake encounters of Tulsiram Prajapati and Ishrat Jehan and others are throwing up details where his culpability and complicity is staring in the eyes. Tulsiram it was who had travelled with Sohrabuddin and his wife Kauserbi. It was Tulsiram who had identified Sohrabuddin a day before Sohrabuddin was killed. The Gujarat police had sent him to Rajasthan by bus. At first Rajasthan police were reluctant to have him. Then the Gujarat police told their counterpart in Rajasthan that he was involved in the murder of Hamid Lala on November 29, 2005. DG Vanzara was transferred to the border district of Sabarkantha where the Gujarat police would take control of Tulsriram.they would then say that he had thrown chilli powder in their eyes and escaped. When they went to arrest him he fired at them and in the shootout he died by gun wound. This operation could not have been materialized without Modi signing orders of transfer and appointment of officers.
In the case of Ishrat Jehan the Intelligence Bureau gave false in puts that she was a terrorist or the other three were with her on way to kill Modi. This is how the intelligence set up at Delhi fed lies to the Americans who declared her a terrorist. She and the other three were killed and dumped on the road. The lies were repeated so often that the people in the country were taken in. There was no “tip off.” It was white lies rehearsed and messages sent accordingly. She and the other three were not alive when the police were laying the trap to stop her. Her dead body and the bodies of the other three were being brought and messages were sent from traffic points around the place where the bodies were finally dumped. How could her dead body fire at the Gujarat police? How could the chief minister Modi sitting in his office and checking even the toll tax at the Gujarat roads know very well that there is no corruption taking place while on the other side of Gujarat border on the same road the Maharashtra octroi or toll collection check points are taking bribes for themselves and hence the collection is more in Guajrat and less in Mahrasthra and yet he remained blind and deaf regarding the encounter cases?
Modi’s crime branch of the police handled the fake encounters and when the falsehood started coming out and the cases being given to Central Bureau of Investigation and the agency wants to see the inputs of IB the file does not have the input! How could the police clerk or officer steal the record without the order of the chief minister? Or, which is more probable, there was no input sent by the IB. That explains the truth about Godhra where the IB had sent bogus input that the ISI of Pakistan had prompted the local Muslims to set the train on fire and hence it was a terrorist attack! After many weeks passed the IB claims to have sent a general alert warning and not a specific warning in the case of Ishrat Jehan?
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India Reacts. Tehelka
Ranvir Shorey: bleeding India of its morals and ethics
Chapter 25
Periscope
The first decade of the twenty first century has been a very important period of time. It has belied the hope associated with the new aura that the new century heralded in of change and progress in the life of the nation. There were so many terror attacks in India as never before that a whole generation has been made to suffer. In October 2001 a communal riot on a flimsy issue in Malegaon led to such a frightening proportion that for the first time ever more than two hundred villages and towns around the city were affected by anti Muslim riots. Never before, even at the time of the partition of India were Muslims in the villages and even towns so scared that they were forced to migrate to the Muslim neighbourhoods in Malegaon. That the police passivity or complicity could lead to such wide spread migration and violence against the minority was rare by any standard. Even UP and Bhiar had not seen such scenes. They were forced to abandon their houses and farms and villages. The white powder and gas cylinders used in burning houses and mosques made people believe that this was a dry run for what happened three months later in Gujarat.
Gujarat genocide was a class by itself. A group of events, phenomena, violence, activities that marked the whole decade in the aftermath of the genocide dominated the decade and seems to overshadow the next decade too. In this there is still prevalent boycott of Muslims, no place for them in jobs and services, denial of their right to return to their hearth and heath, refusal to have impartial inquiry into the pogroms, witnesses being bought over to turn hostile, day light murder of key witnesses, the modern day Neros still fiddling away their time, returning unutilized central government funds meant for the minority Muslims, refusing to allow them to sell their property to eke out existence, frequent fake encounters and their exposure, police tampering with the evidence in which their fellow cops played leading role, startling exposures like that of Tehelka and even in other newspapers and magazines going without their significance in the matters pending in courts being taken in consideration, honest police officers continuing facing charges being brought against them, their times in jail and subsequent harassment, the rewarding of the police men complicit in the genocide and their continuing climbing up the ladder of the state largess to them for being loyal to the chief minister and supporting his juggernaut of eclipsing the genocidal crimes are some. But the most horrendous is that this laboratory experiment of Hindutva extremists has not dented the conscience of the overwhelming citizens of the country as they are mesmerized by the material progress that Gujarat has achieved at the cost of the moral turpitude in the land of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi. Equally continuing is the enigmatic and enduring doubtful role of the Intelligence Bureau, especially the role of its joint director and a pal of Modi, Rajinder Kumar. He fed the false information about the role of the ISI in the Godhra fire accident aboard the Sabarmati Express and the tip off the through his agency sent to Gujarat government that Ishrat Jehan was a LeT terrorist. Equally paralleling all other phenomena of Gujarat is the stealing or destroying of important documents and phone records with impunity. A chief minister who is lauded for being meticulous is showing nadir in letting important documents go missing and stealthily changing records which can save further troubles of his being exposed.
Surreptitiously the Gujarat pattern has enamoured fellow minded leaders of the Hindu right like Raj Thackeray. Their latent tendencies have come to the fore. One such is that the constitution and democracy do not count for them. It is demagoguery that counts and they want to spouse it. They have special knack for rabble rousing as Modi and Bal Thackeray have. In fact Bal Thackeray has reminded Modi not to forget that it was in Maharashtra that they had initiated what Modi took over for Gujarat. Raj wants to emulate Modi. Nay, he has even remarked that: “In Gujarat, people have put Modi in charge.” This one liner show utter desiccation of morality and responsibility. It also shows what they care for is development at the cost of the life and condition of the minority. Gone is the time when democracy was viewed as the government of the majority with secure rights of the minority. Gujarat has proved down the decade that the rights of the minority are a figment of the imagination.
Along with these persisting deviling developments that have marred the decade there is another, subversion of justice. As Sitaram Yecherury has observed: “Among all factors that reflect on the vulnerability of the secular, democratic foundations of modern India, this decade highlights the serious limitations of our system of delivery of justice. This is one of the main yardsticks that measure the character of a modern republic. On this count, India finds itself wanting. This is, unfortunately, not confined only to the victims of the communal genocide in Gujarat, but continues to plague the victims of other carnages as well. The old adage 'justice delayed is justice denied' cannot find a more tragic manifestation than what is happening to the hapless victims of the Gujarat genocide.”
Yechury does not blame Modi as a lone person responsible for all this. He names the organization of which Modi is a pracharak. “While the RSS and its political arm, the BJP, continue to pride themselves in these events as representing the success of the 'Hindutva laboratory' in Gujarat, the tentacles they use to spread the communal virus continue to extend further. Following its successful experiment in controlling the reins of governance at the Centre for six years by keeping its core communal agenda - the construction of a temple at Ajodhya, abolition of Article 370 and imposition of a uniform civil code - on the backburner to elicit the support of its NDA allies, it refrains from using these issues for communal polarisation. However, this polarisation is being pursued vigorously on other grounds.”
Modi played the role of shuffling different issues from time to time in an attempt to distract attention of the world. He wanted the President to sign stringent terror laws like that of Maharashtra, he wanted to surpass the central government and states governments in economic advancement of his state, he visited China to sign contract, he gave land to Tata for Nano car after the fiasco of Tata in Nandigram in West Bengal, his penchant for sarcasm against the foreign origin of Sonia Gandhi, the sadhbhavna showbiz, his sharp reluctance over the issue of National Counter Terrorism Council. All these have failed ultimately because do what he could he could not dispel the spectre of the carnage he brought about. Those seeking justice are also persevering. Rupa Mody:“We come for every hearing in this case. Until we are alive we are not going to give up. We are not going to leave him [Chief Minister Narendra Modi]. We know we will get justice even if it takes another 10years.”
However, the overall aim of Hindutva has been achieved. Muslims have become not only just marginalized but dispossessed. “On issues relating to the minority community, the dominant view is that over the past decade Gujarat has become more polarised than ever before. Access to education, employment, housing and other fundamental needs is becoming increasingly difficult. What is worse is that there are few rays of optimism – there is only a sense of helplessness .” so according to this view what happened in Gujarat was horrendous and what followed surpassed it and made the decade “a decade of shame.”
During this period what is most glaring in public view is that Modi never felt contrite over what he had brought about and he did not wince even just once. It could only be explained in terms of the lifelong commitment of the RSS pracharak. As remarked earlier the destruction of the dusht or wicked (Anandmath) is the sole aim of the mahavart or solemn vow of celibacy to serve the motherland. It is the part of the core Hindutva philosophy.
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The Idea Exchange, Sunday Express February 19, 2012.
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2012/02/frontline-cover-story-decade-of-shame.html
Chapter 26
Common concern and common pursuit
It is a heartening sign that despite all odds against speedy justice there are enough people, organizations, magazines and newspapers who have taken up the cause of justice for the victims of genocide. It is retrieving from oblivion the adage that pen is mightier than the sword. The persistence of Sreekumar and Sanjiv Bhatt as well as Teesta Setalvad, Zakiya Jafri, the coverage of Tehelka, Frontline and Indian Express, the efforts of Citizens for Peace and Justice, the perseverance of Justice Hosbet Suresh, Justice PB Sawant, of People’s Union for Democratic Rights, Human Rights Watch, International Initiative for Justice, and many others have revived hope that the guilty would be punished and the suffering of the victims addressed. The genocide of 2002 was the most unfortunate and terrible visitation upon the people of India and not just one community. It has scared the minds and hearts for centuries to come. All this will make it impossible for commonalty to forget what indeed happened because of an ideology of hate and a demagogue terribly obsessed with it to the exclusion of even an ounce of humanity. Much more still remains to be done. But done it would be one day! A decade is still a small span in the life of a nation. The modern Indian nation is relatively young though our civilization is much older than many others. The heroic work of bringing back the rule of law will ultimately surmount the present difficulties.
But for this enduring spirit for justice and peace we would not have known how Azhar Mody was lost, the suffering and his mother’s anguish would not have seen the light of the day. Rupa Mody: “As I fell I could hear my daughter shout: mummy get up, mummy get up. My daughter had been holding my son Azhar's hand right through the time we were hiding in Jafri Saheb's house. She had to let go of it to save me. When I managed to get up I only saw my daughter Binaifer not Azhar.” Her renewed resolve: “I will fight until my dying day to see that Modi and his band of rogues are nailed. I was in Jafri Saheb's house and saw how our cries for help were ignored by Modi and the police. I want them to pay.” And Tanaz Dara Mody aka Rupa’s an agnorisis of how commonalty suffered by the shuffling tags of faith: “The entire colony had been burnt down. Ironically, my house was untouched. Perhaps because I had a picture of Mata on the wall they thought it was a Hindu house. Sometimes I wonder if I hadn't left my house we would have been safe and I would still have Azhar.”
Suffering of commonalty, Shakila Pathan Courtesy: Frontline
But for the same sustained sterling quality of perseverance and personal integrity in discharging duty we would not have such iron resolves like that of RB Sreekumar: “I told him (Chief Secretart GS Subbarao when the secretary had told the intelligence chief that Modi wanted a few encounters carried out) the moment we decide to carry out an encounter it becomes a conspiracy and for that we can both be arrested. He still tried to persuade me, but I refused and told him that if any are carried out I will uncover the truth behind them.”
Good Old Samaritan: RB Sreekumar
Terrorism, genocide and fake encounters as far as Gujarat is concerned need more scrutiny. Shabri Kumb mela of 2006 produced the terrorist attack of September 2006 in Malegaon and the killing of migrant workers in the aftermath of 2002 genocide was also a case of fake encounters. All these issues are complex but interrelated. Swami Aseemanand was based in Dangs, Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thankur and Hiteshwarbhai Bharat were also connected to Gujarat. Modi had donated huge funds to the swami. Focusing on action and reaction by limiting it to Godhra would leave out the overall strategy of Hindutva. What did prompt The Satyashodhak Grameen Kashtakari Sabha of Dangs demand a ban on the Shabri Kumbh mela when its representative Kishor Dhamale met the President of India Ms Pratibha Patil on Friday February 24, 2012 when she was there on a visit? Why should top cops of Andhra Pradesh be arrested for what happened in Gujarat?
After a whole decade Sreekumar wrote on February 27, 2012: “Any chief minister of integrity would have immediately tried to de-politicise the Godhra train fire and, thereafter, strictly enforced the law. But the tone, tenor and thrust of Modi's response to the Godhra tragedy betrayed a political strategy to project the incident as an 'international conspiracy' targeted against the Hindu community. The obvious aim of this strategy was to get electoral dividends through mobilization of Hindus on communal lines.” But then that is what the difference between a demagogue and a statesman is.
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Frontline. Vol. 29:: No. 04 February 25-Mar09, 2012
http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column_gujarat-riots-were-part-of-a-political-strategy_1655594
February 28, 2012
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