Roguery under the rogue: Gujarat

The apothegm a man is known by the company he keeps is well illustrated in the campaign for 2014 election where Chief Minister Narendra Modi of Gujarat is invariably seen with the workers of Hindu party, BJP. The overwhelming ethos of the party is of course Hindu even in the secular democratic election process. His closest associate in campaign management has been his in charge of election in 2002 and has held the post in addition to a score of portfolios of ministries including minister of state for home, under the chief minister who was home minister then and for years to come. Amit Shah is in charge of election in UP. He has three counts of criminal charges of murder slapped against him in just one case. For that one case he had passed times in prison and lost his minister-ship on that account. There are numerous other such cases including 22 of fake encounters and the pogroms of 2002. He is what the investigation agencies call kingpin in the racket he conducted in collection of extortion money even through such well known figures of Sohrabuddin Sheikh. That the chief minister by no means has come clean on many sundry charges of genocide of Muslims in 2002 is another unending ‘battle’ in courts of law over his involvement. Only clean chits are issued for formality in charade of trial. Even the person who was the chief witness of Naroda Patia pogrom for which Modi’s minister Maya Kodnani is convicted and imprisoned, was murdered the day he was to give witness in court against the Hindutva extremists who conducted the genocide in Naroda Patia. Such events have been the order of the day for more than a decade when no riots took place since these events were in themselves enough to mar the face of Gujarat as a rogue state. Former chief minister Keshubhai Patel at least reined in Swami Aseemanand but Modi threw all regards for law to the winds. He flagrantly gifted huge funds from the treasury to Aseemanand to carry on his work of ethnic cleansing. Even those who conducted investigation like RK Raghvan were beneficiaries of the windfall of the Nano project of Tata Corporation thanks to the largess of Modi. Modi is on record of having harboured a proclaimed of laws and a mass killer in the pogroms, Babu Bhai Bajrangi of Bajrang Dal. Through then minister of home Gordon Zadhaphia, Modi sent the word that Bajrangi should hide from the law. Mt Abu Gujarat government guest house was furnished for him to abscond from the law. The shoot at sight order given by police commission PC Pande was vaudeville. Railway Minister in the Central government Lalu Prasad Yadu raised the hue and cry in the Parliament againt Bajrangi. Modi again sent words through his lieutenants to ask Bajrangi to surrender. Another pliant police officer PP Pandey conducted the farce of the show of the surrender of Bajrangi. Several judges conducted the trial of the worst offender of law. One such judge told Bajrangi that for the crimes he had committed he would sentence him to life imprisonment twice. Modi changed the judges until he came upon Justice Akshay Mehta who ordered release of Bajrangi on bail. For almost a decade Bajrangi was free to roam and rule what he saw his domain of threatening witnesses and kidnapping Hindu girls who had married non Hindus. Finally the law caught up with him and he is sentenced to life imprisonment. A decade may be a short span of history for the state but a long time for a person. Modi is no exception. In 2007 Kiran Thappar conducted an interview of the chief minister and put the gist of the matter that dogs Modi even today, more than a decade later: “In the six years that you have been the CM of Gujarat, the Rajiv Gandhi foundation has declared Gujarat to be the best-administered State. IndiaToday on two separate occasions declared that you are the most efficient Chief Minister. And despite that, people still call you to your face, a mass murderer, and they accuse you of being prejudiced against Muslims?” The interviewer reminded his interviewee that he as CM was on watch when hundreds of women and children of Muslim community were slaughtered. To this day he has not given any explanation let alone feeling regret or owning it up as his moral responsibility for protecting all the citizens of the state. What is worse he rubbed salt in the wounds of the victims who survived the pogroms by telling Reuter news agency that puppies do come under the fast moving cars at times. If this is not roguery what else is it? Even the suborning the judiciary was openly played as a game as he saw over subverting judicial process through the RSS tainted public prosecutors, using the Advocate General Tushar Mehta to send information to S Gurumurthy how best to deprive Muslims legal aid and instead of defending them aid the perpetrators of the genocide, Today he is rated as the most popular candidate for the post of PM of India! And he promises as in his Lucknow rally of Sunday March 2, 2014 that he would be on “watch” over Indian money transactions so that there is no corruption! He was on “watch” during the pogroms at Naroda Patia. So for any future such eventuality he would again turn a Nelson’s eye as was and is his wont! Even his admirers conveniently admit through Freudian slip of tongue as does Shilpi Tiwari. She attended a concert in Delhi where she declared: “He is the perfect candidate because he has shown how rogue elements from both sides (Muslims and Hindus) can be reined in so that his state could prosper. That’s the template India needs.” [1]In the light of Modi’s dispensation in Gujarat 2002 he is a rogue himself so how could he control rogues on both the sides of the great divide in India? Later he also acquired the sobriquet of safed dadi, grey beard, and Amit Shah as kali dadi, black beard who sanctioned the murder of Ishrat Jahan and three others. And the concert in Delhi on the eve of the conclave meet in Goa where Modi was chosen as the campaign in charge of his party included the proven rogues of Indian society. There was Tejinder Pal Singh Bagga with a long record of attacks on such proven secular as Arundhati Roy. Another figure in the same cast as Bagga was Suresh Albella a winner of The Great India Laughter Show on television. His macho jokes include the one that he as usual lifted from the RSS texts on nationalism. “Jaane kis din Lal Kille mein mardangi bhasha bolengee” (God knows on which day we will hear masculine language spoken from the Red Fort). In the same vein he remarked about the Prime Minister Mohan Singh, Dr Singh “remained silent like a teddy bear unless he was prodded by the high command.” The intention and perception of such people in pro Modi camp speaks volumes about what they expect Modi to do if he really dons the mantle of the prime minister. Already the postulate towards which the momentum of BJP campaign is moving is for a strong president to head Indian government and not a parliamentary democratic prime minister. Can then the parliament control the rogue given the past record? In just over a year after Noam Chomsky published his Rogue States, the rule of force in world affairs (2000) the state of Gujarat in India began a widely feared and carefully thought Hindutva laboratory experiment. In plain terms it was designed to show that the Muslims were at the sufferance of the Hindu majority and must learn to know their place and cease to be nuisance in their equation with the majority. The pogroms that followed and the subsequent fake encounters fall into this pattern. The Chief Minister of the state Narndra Modi and the Prime Minister of India AB Vajpayee and his deputy and Home Minister LK Advani maneuvered to let Modi continue his rule despite wide condemnation of the slaughter of more than two thousand Muslims, the inhuman boycott, the social and economic apartheid forcing them to live a dehumanized life in relief camps, disempowering them further and dispossessing them of whatever property they had in the holocaust that suddenly changed their life. Even a decade later their life has not returned to normal and there is no hope and scope left to them to improve their lot. The two convincing examples of Cuba blockade and Indonesia attack on East Timor compare and contrast with what Modi did with tacit approval and later open approval of Vajpayee and Advani. The blockade made the Cubans suffer inhuman conditions of poverty, disease and starvation. This was vehemently condemned by the UNO, the European Union, the Organization of American States, etc. the US did not relent. In the same way in the East Timor war of 1975 the US supported the Indonesian generals to the hilt. Within two months 60, 000 people were killed within years the number rose to 200,000 thanks to the support US gave to Indonesia. UN Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan was given the task to make UN ineffective. “The US wanted things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of States desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.” [2] Given this kind of roguery that states can play what is in store for India under Modi? ------- [1] Rock concert chants NaMo for PM The Telegraph, 1 June 2013 [2] Rogue States, the rule of force in world affairs (2000) New Delhi: India Research Press.