Muzaffannagar, fury and ferocity

Muzaffarnagar, fury and ferocity Mustafa Khan Even Keel Malegaon April, 2014 Mustafakhan1948@gmail.com 9960225763 9028225763 Mustafakhan1948@gmail.com Contents Chapter 1 The fateful morning Chapter 2 Women who suffered most in pogroms: Muzaffarnagar6 Chapter 3 Playing politics with terrorism ala BJP Chapter 4 Once their neighbours Chapter 5 Resurgent of Hindutva terrorism: Chapter 6 Muzaffarnagar: Replication of pogroms of 2002 Chapter 7 Persistent Pattern Chapter 8 Two Muslims fight over terrorism Chapter 9 How the Hindutva fight terrorism Chapter 10 Evilful design Chapter 11 Narendra Modi Sena Chapter 12 Amit Shah: the stormy petrel Chapter 13 Valmiki Angle Chapter 14 Religious freedom in danger Chapter 15 Stasis Chapter 16 Winning election by committing pogroms Chapter 17 Salutary steps Chapter 18 Post pogrom problems Chapter 19 Look back Chapter 20 Periscope Chapter 1 The fateful morning, September 7, 2013 Never had such morning come as it did on September 7, 2013 as lakhs of Jats were preparing to attend the grand gathering called maha panchayt at Sakheda [Sikhera]35 kilometers away from where Haji Samiuddin 65 lived in Lisarh. He and his family had for generations toiled to own a saw mill. Their properity was a tribute to their industrious life together at one place, from rags to riches. There had been seismic cataclysm as in September 1947 and the early years of 1990s but their halcyon days never felt even slightest tremor. They remained ensconeced in their bucolic lfie in a niche that was preserved for them. Then cam bolt from the blue as the news of the grand meeting of Jats was announced and its rendezvou. Trucks and farm tractors rent the air of the surrounding areas. People were leaving in large numbers in groups and on the wheels. As the movement and momentum increased it became a fury that was gathering the gigantic force of a whirl pool. It dazed the minority Muslims and seized them with scare of the worst in their life together. Their commonalty with the Jats was moth eaten by the rumours of impending doom. What lay in store for them was also amorphous and not easily namable. But what had happened in Gujarat was spelled out before them as Narendra Modi had not only appointed Amit Shah as poll in charge of the State of UP but Shah had also chosen Ayodhya to kick start the Hindu party BJP election campaign. Coming in days before August 27, 2013 these events began to make eerie sounds of “Narendra Modi Sena” being formed. Sena is of course militia, and forming such regiments was ominous. There were several meetings that Amit Shah held in devising strategies to fight election. According to Gopal Menon what happened in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts was the outcome of the strategies hatched at such meetings. “All local politicians who called for sabhas before riots were in the Shah’s shadow. The riots were manufactured by them to settle their feet in UP before elections.”[1] The Muslims were filled with spine chilling apprehension. Samiuddin’s son Hassan tried to reasons with his father and mother that they should better shift to a safer place in view of the danger to their life. The parents were not only born and brought up there but also felt that nothing would happen as they had shared so much with the Jats that it was unthinkable that their life would be endangered. His father told him. "We have lived here all our lives, half the youngsters here have grown up sitting in my lap. Nobody will harm us here." Hassan turned to his mother Hamida (58). Her reply was filial loyalty as a sacrosanct was a matter overriding fear for life. She told her son: "I cannot leave your father's side. Jahan bhi jao khuda to sab jagah hai (Wherever you go, god is everywhere)."[2] What happened next was what the “Narendra Modi Army” had taken upon themselves to do. The ethnic cleansing swept through the area leaving the aged parents being burnt alive in their own saw mill. This is the strategy of what Swami Aseemanand calls making Hindus kutter or hardcore violent extremists trained to ruthlessly kill “the other.”[3] The animality seen in Lisarh was unparalleled in the history of Western UP quintessentially in the Jats. That was how the ground was prepared for the onset of election 2014 in UP. In 2002 and thereafter Modi and Shah had won elelctions in Gujarat by the same devious means. What for did the epithet of “merchant of death” imply if not trading in dead bodies for winning election? The ruthlessness of the first few days of the second week of September 2013 did irreparable damage for all the times to come. The two thousand and five hundred Muslims in the 8, 000 population of the village have had close affinity with the Jats as they worked for them. Making the place as what it is popularly known as sugar bowl of UP. Hassan employed Hindus to work in his mill as the Muslims in large numbers worked for the Jat farmers numbered to be four thousand. There was 1, 500 Hindus divided into Pandits, Kumars, Nais and Valmikis. When violence started it was traced to a Valmiki parking his dirt cart before the sweets shop of a Muslim who objected to it. A brawl started and that is how the riot began according to one news channel. The Hindutva extremists have secretly planned to use the Valmikis to manufacture a riot as the interrogatories of Hemant Karkare into the conspiracy Abhinav Bharat reveals. According to this version the Valmikis are known as dreadful in fighting and thus to produce a spark is enough that would surely lead to a conflagration. And that is what happened. Dr RP Singh, Maj Ramesh Upadhya, Lt Col Prasad Purohit discussed this in the case of using bomb for bomb ideology of reataliatio against the Muslims. This finding of the modus operandi is plausible as in Lisarh or elsewhere. The probability of the theory having been applied is that the Jats and Muslims have had no trouble even during the partition in 1947 or the violence and bloodbath during the movement for the demolition and building of a temple at the site of the Ayodhya Babri mosque. The barrier of the civil self restraint and inhibition that the Jats had had to be broken to carry out the hidden agenda of winning election through the means of charging the atmosphere with communalism and hatred. The Muslims and Jats alike had their self regulatory code of conduct which could not countenance or brook any large scale violence and hence it had to be manufactured there. That was the dynamic that Amit Shah inducted into the UP campaign. The premonition came true and was confimed by the inquiries made independently. So the rueful requiem of Rakesh Choudhary, a Jat, who observed: "During Eid, the Muslims would make food for the rest of the village, and this was reciprocated by us in times like Diwali." Now no more. Gone with the wind was not just commity but divinity. When the fate sealed their life Hamida was forlorn in the village as she wailed and her son reported: "She said god was everywhere, but he was not in Lisarh. He was not in Lisarh." God was humanity as when Hassan had a wooden splinter pierce his thigh the Jats took him to hospital for treatment. As one good turn deserves another Hassan gave wood for the creamation ceremony for the Jats and Hindus. Now the saw mill itself has disappeared from the earth. So reciprocity fell a victim for good. It happened in Gujarat and so should it in Muzaffarnagar where the pogroms were enforced to confirm the same pattern. Modi stopped iftar party and so what chance of it in western UP? ------- [1] http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/ahmedabad/documentary-sheds-light-on-amit-shahs-link-in-muzaffarnagar-riots/ [2]http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/muzaffarnagar-riots-tales-of-tragedy-and-destruction-unfold-in-refugee-camps/1169288/0 [3]http://www.caravanmagazine.in/swami-asimanand-interviews Chapter 2 Women who suffered most in pogroms: Muzaffarnagar As if 2002 pogroms in Gujarat were not enough that Narendra Modi is at it again in UP and other places. Then as now he is posing as a macho man with hairy chest and hairy arms thumping his hands on his chest to challenge Mian Musharraf and now ready to take on Nawaz Shariff. Why did not Modi do anything to save the hundreds of women raped and burnt alive? Instead, why did he go after Pakistani president then and the prime minister now? Whether Shariff called the Indian premier Manmohan Singh as a rustic woman is debatable. But picking the gauntlet there and then in his penchant for real time revenge and retaliation circa Newtonian law of Godhra happening, Modi poses a serious threat to internal security of India. His handpicked man Amit Shah was behind the pogroms in which Muslim women suffered most in and around Muzaffarnager. The real politics was not Mian Musharraf then or Nawaz Shariff now but the avowed and hidden target: Muslims. The real target is not Muslim man but the Muslim woman who bears children for the family, protection and security. Politics of the Hindu extremists is hatred for the procreation of the Muslim women. Vote bank is misnomer. “Yet, the real politics of such violence is the grief a mother feels when she is compelled to abandon her child; the nightmares a young woman confronts each day as she recalls sexual violence; the harsh daily reality confronting pregnant women, nursing mothers, elderly women surviving in makeshift camps without sanitation, privacy or health care. Who is bothering to address these issues?”(1) In contrast to now in Muzaffarnager and then in Gujarat Modi was and is concerned with exterminating Muslims. Suresh Richard, a member of the Chharra community that the RSS had roped in to kill Muslims, said about what had dehyderated Modi when Kiran Thappar confronted him in his interview: “[On the day of the massacre] we did whatever we did till quite late in the evening…At aroud7.30 ..around 7.15, our Modibhai came.. Right here, outside the house…My sisters gathered around him with roses…He came with black commandos…got down from his Ambassador car and walked up here.. All my sisters garlanded him…a big man is a big man after all..Then he went this way. Looked at how things were in Naroda. ..He went around to all the places… He said our tribe was blessed… He said our mothers were blessed [for bearing us]”. (2)This is a true picture of how Modi went around the city on watch during the worst pogroms of Muslims in free India. He was in person at the epicenter of the worst incident of the pogroms. His minister in charge of women and child care was a lady called Maya Kodnani. Herself a doctor she had exhorted the marauding crows to rape Muslim women and kill and burn them. They did more than that they even chalked out the wombs and yanked the fetuses with spears and swords and took them on the points of their spears and raised them in the air as trophy! The other person there was Babu Bhai Patel incognito, under another name. The scene was Naroda Patiya where nearly 800 Muslims were killed in the most gruesome manner. It is strange that no court no investigation officers in any of the inquiries even that of the Special Investigation Team under RK Raghavan heeded this confession from the mouth of a killer. Now Modi flaunts the clean chit given to him on account of the report of the SIT! Unfortunately Modi had forsaken his own wife Jashodaben too early right after marriage to realize what it was that really happened in Muzaffarabad or in his own state in 2002. “Imagine if you are a woman with several children and a riot breaks out. You can run, carry one child, hold the hand of the other. But what about the rest? Who do you leave behind? How can you make sure they will be safe? How do you live with the choices you made in that moment of terror and panic? “These are the harrowing choices that hundreds of women must have faced when the communal violence flared up in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar district last month. As Muslim families fled, leaving behind their homes, some were also forced to abandon members of their own families. And now they have no idea what happened to those they left behind, whether they are alive or dead.”(3) Both Gujarat 2002 and Muzaffarnagar 2013 stand out very different from what had happened even in 1947-48. Women in the latter also had suffered but they were not made the focus as makers and markers of a distinct culture as they were in Gujarat and UP. Unlike the partition riots, now their modesty was violated beyond a point of no return. Holding women and girls in captivity for days together and raping them by turn was unheard of. That too the evil deeds were perpetrated by their next door neighbours and fellow villagers that this is the parting of the ways. The twain shall not meet again was hidden agenda. And this was also a tactic to win votes. The Hindutva adherents wanted to hide this ‘hidden’ agenda although they kept their men Modi and Shah to carry out this despite the world seized of the events of 2002. There is a quaint syllogism: “That we are Hindus who can allow Khap panchayat and code of proscribing endogamous marriages among Jats but being Muslims you are the ‘other’ but impure and thus we want to cleanse the land of you.” What Riyasat Ali of Bawari village near Kandhla witnessed from his hiding place was how the attackers had no mercy and were well trained as they hacked open his door with their swords then caught his brother and chopped off his feet at the ankle, shot his niece through her back and brought other neighbours and killed them in the same brutal manner. “It was raining bullets inside the house.”(4) Ali knew his neighbours who had perpetrated the mass atrocities and wrote down even their names. They were 37 of them according to his count. This gory tale took place on September 8, 2013 full one week and more after the murder of two youths who had killed a Muslim for stalking their cousin and in retaliation the Muslims had kill two Hindus on August 27. For several days nothing happened. Then the Hindutva groups and leaders like including MLA Sangeet Singh Som took the initiative of circulating a fake video of Muslims killing two Hindus obviously the context and indication is the two brothers namely Sachin and Gaurav. But later it became clear that it was doctored on the scene from corporeal punishment from Pakistan. The next well calculated step was the call for a mass gathering of the Jat council notoriously known as Khap panchayat. The Khap is a direct violation of the constitution of India even in the matters of the Jats as in the case of Nidhi of circa September 2013. This was called to protect their women their worshipful cows and their “nation”. This last is what Kingshuk Nag calls in his book on the chief minister of Gujarat The Namo Story, A Political Life “the thinly disguised agenda to establish a country based on Hindu nationalism.” (5)To this end Modi and Amit Shah are bound. Modi’s silence over the rape and murder of women and girls and men including children in Muzaffernagar is very eloquent as eloquent as his over the Gujarat pogroms on what actually he instructed his police in the night of February 27, 2002. He agreed with religious wing of his groups Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the armed wing of RSS, Banjrang Dal, for the strike the next day. There was huge mobilization of forces on military scale for the RSS with its cadres in khaki half paints and white shirts and their counter parts in Bajrang Dal with red bands across their forehead were out in mammoth crowds. Arms and ammunition including swords were already distributed and more were on the way and not only that even during the curfew hours importing of arms from Bihar, UP, Punjab, etc were taking place.(6) Similar preparation and arms were in display in Muzaffernagar on September 8, 2013 and thereafter. The Muslim had killed two Hindus or Jats but they did not go on killing spree and had no organized movement as had the Khap Panchayat of September 7 and again in Meerut on September 30 when 10, 000 had gathered in Khera village(7) despite deployment of police and paramilitary forces in 24 villages and call for yet another on . In this last Khap panchayat followed the same tactics of RSS and Bajrang Dal of giving undertaking in writing and yet amassing huge crowds as they did in the case of demolishing the Babri mosque. The Muslims also did not search for the girl whose brothers had killed the Muslim youth accused of stalking her. They had no agenda but the Khap agenda is replication of the 2002 pogroms as vowed by Pravin Togadia and Ashok Singhal. October 1, 2013 ------- (1) http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/Kalpana_Sharma/the-politics-of-violence/article5179448.ece (2) Tehelka. November 3, 2007. (3) Ibid. (4) http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/17/fear-and-loathing-in-north-indias-sugarcane-town/ (5) The Namo Story, A Political Life Kingshuk Nag.Rolli books, 2013. P.6. (6) Tehelka.op cit. (7) http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/Lucknow/Post-Muzaffarnagar-riots-administration-caught-napping-once-again/Article1-1128954.aspx Chapter 3 Playing politics of terrorism ala BJP The fury and ferocity Playing politics over terrorism was and is core of Hindu party BJP. LK Advani wanted the investigation changed when Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thakur was arrested. He it was who never uttered even a syllable when scores of innocent Muslims were rounded up in the aftermath of the blast in the Mecca mosque, Hyderabad. If he were a true Indian nationalist he would have espoused the cause of the innocent Muslims of Hyderabad and condemned the Sadhvi instead of defending her in such a questionable and illegal way of demanding transfer of the officers in the Malegaon case of September 29, 2008. That clearly spells the ideologyof Hindutva that all acts of terrorism are handiwork of Muslims while Hindus are resigned to retaliate and hence not terrorists. In Muzaffarnagar the right wing party threw all caution to the wind and was hellbent in reaping rich dividends at the polls by widening the great divide of India. Even the cultural nationalism by which the party swears and wears its heart on its sleeve is put on stake. Thus Janata Dal (U) leader Sabir Ali was inducted in BJP on March 28, 2014. This is the other side of the coin. The pogroms were then ‘raked up’ into the sugarcane farms of Muzaffarnagar in September 2013. They were acts of terrorism by international standards. The killing fields of Muzaffarnagar had matched the killing fields of Cambodia. Such is the fury and ferocity of the party that one of its own senior leaders remarked about the induction of what they believed till then of Sabir Ali to be a terrorist, “in its mad frenzy to capture power, the BJP is clutching at all possible straws, even if they are rotten.” (1) Ferocious in reaction to the induction but even at this the belief persists that a Muslim howsoever acquitted in Gulshan Kumar case is a Muslim and hence a terrorist. In contrast in Modi’s rally Suresh Rana and Sangeet Som two of the accused in the pogroms were honoured at Agra on Thursday November 21, 2013. The duo was charged under NSA and was duly arrested. The advisory board of UP government had recommended removal of NSA against them and they were just released from jail. The crowd at Agra cheered Rana and Som and encouraged them. It was nothing less than the celebration of the poll strategy that succeeded so well, the applause of the public and support for winning the forthcoming election. It is replaying of how Modi had asked the crowd in Gujarat what they would do to Sohrabuddin, the cowd thundered encore, kill him. The right wing party and its ideological affiliates had sown wind and were reaping whirl wind. The BJP president of UP state Lakshmi Kant Bajpayee justified even the later appearance of Modi on the scene. He said that the two were honoured because it was meant for the state unit to do this and when Modi would come they would take up national agenda! (2) Another strategy on the show was that two men from Agra Vivek and Amit told the reporters that BJP had distributed round Muslim caps to them and others to wear after it had failed to attract the Muslims to the Agra rally. If that is how Muslims react to BJP it is strange that even the supposed to be informed and having made a name and fame and fortunre like MJ Akbar should join BJP! What with his magnus opus Jawaharlal Nehru and all that! And also the Indian Muslim and the siege within! If the entire family of Rahul Gandhi has failed to fight the ideology of BJP, has it finally claimed Akbar as its own? The explanation to these enigmas lies in what a clear headed Hemant Karkare felt when he said in amazement: "I don't know why this case has become so political. The pressure is tremendous and I am wondering how to extricate it from all the politics." (3) Nitish Kumar extricated himself well through his brilliance when he refused to take Yasin Bhatkal in Bihar police custody and play politics over it. The Bihar chief minister would be a worthier son of the soil shunning the game of terror politics and concentrating on development. His is‘the road not taken’, least trodden by any. The interviewers of Indian Express asked Karkare “Was the pressure telling on the investigation, what with someone who could be the next prime minister of the country questioning the credibility of the ATS?” Karkare was true to his professional ethics and personal integrity in his reply: "Of course.We are being very very careful. In fact, when we want to question a suspect and if he or she has any Hindutvawadi connections, we make sure once, twice, thrice, that we have enough reason and evidence to even question. Normally it is not like that. We are able to freely question anyone we suspect." "In fact, immediately after the blast I had visited Malegaon along with the Deputy Chief Minister and other officials and witnessed the anger of the locals who shouted some slogans. After that I told my men that we have to pursue this case very objectively and not start with assumptions that people of this community or that community could be responsible."[3] Modi and his mentor Advani had always begun with “assumptions”. Advani knew that the attackers on the Parliament were looking like Pakistanis. He being one before he migrated to India was competent to assume that. Modi being a Ghanchi or teli by caste knew that the Ghanchi Muslims of Godhra were criminals by birth and were behind the burning of Sabarmati Express compartment. It was this assumption of the new chief minister of Gujarat that overrode the official line taken by the collector of Godhra Ms Jayanti Ravi that the fire was an accident. MJ Akbar was from the English literature class of a good reputed college of Calcutta and knew his Shakespeare well that there is tide in the affairs of man and if he takes it at the opportune time it will take him to windfalls of office and seats now that election 2014 is in full swing. Afterall it did benefit Modi and the chief minister used it to be the springboard of his development by playing politics on terror. The game of playing politics over terrorism was the agenda with which Modi and Shah began their campaign. In Patna Modi said that Hindus and Muslims should choose either fighting each other or fighting together against poverty. This is the the same sophistry of his ideology of hate. In 2002he had dared to articulate that he wanted Muslims taught a lesson that they would never forget. There can not be one to one equation between Muslims and Hindus. Muslims must learn to know their place. In other words they are second class citizens of the country and so stop demanding parity. The continued economic boycott in succeeding years underscores the point. This was transplanted into Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts of UP. Around this time the the ideologues, Modi and Shah, through their henchmen made the Muslims learn the same lesson. Whatever prosperity they had achieved by dint of hard work was wiped out and they were rendered homeless and succourless. They were even disenfranchised after being forced to live in refugee camps. In the light of this in the not distant past those who are clamouring for Modi and the mirage ofdevelopment do not know the difference of what Thane Richards says: “What matters here is where you draw the moral line between what is acceptable in a politician and what is a deal breaker.”What Akbar is doing is deal breaking. This is another way of playing politics with terrorism. [4] “India crosses the moral line of no return if Narendra Modi becomes prime minister.”The Jats knew this power of deal breaking when they switched their age old and trusted homily with the Muslims and enmass crossed over to the politics of hate and joined BJP. Their massacring Muslims so ruthlessly brought a stymie from the Congress. The government accepted their demand for reservation within a few months of the pogroms. Richards sums up the tergiversation in Akbar and a host of others in his remark “Economic development should not change your morals.” More than economic development is the kind of government the Hindu Party BJP and its patron RSS envisages. It is BJP centric and against all other political configurations of the country. As one RSS worker puts it: “We do not seek votes for any particular party. But most of the people who hesitate to vote are potential BJP voters. So, by convincing them to vote, we will ultimately contribute in the mission of making Narendra Modi the prime minister.” They would display their martial skills as shown in the picture below on March 30, 2014 not just boost their courage but underscore that they would not hesitate to defend themselves and even go aggressive if need arises. It is clear to cadets to see that the vote kate or fake voters are phyisically handled. So irrespective of the police and paramilitary presence at the polling booth the presence of armed and well t rained cadets would be a force to reckon with. [5] All this is fascist tendencies for which RSS is known all over the country and overseas. As the martial preparedness of a democratic process was on Modi spoke in Nanded on purging the parliament if he came to power. “The parliament will be purified within a year. Once we send all corrupt politicians to jail, there will be no need for any potical party to compromise (because of poltical compulsion).” [AA March 31, 2014]This kind of language is fraught with danger for the courts of India are there to determine and decide what corruption is and who is corrupt. Taking the power of the courts would speel Modi to be what PM Manmohan Singh has said, a disaster to the cougntry. Modi’s lieutenant Amit Shah has been described as king pin in the case of Sohrabuddin fake encounter. In the end of March 2014 Shah has appealed to the court to discharge him from the charges leveled against him. After having spent time in prison he was given bail and allowed to participate in election campaign. If the charges are dropped it would spell doom for the process of law. Another instance of subverting the judiciary is disenfranchising the Muslim refugees of Muzaffarnagar and Shamli who have sought shelter in refugee camps and too scared to return to their homes. Their homes are not only burnt down but as Gujarat 2002 genocide effect the majority has loosed a reign of terror of such magnitude that despite UP government’s arrangement the refugees canot dare to return. Hukum Sigh BJP MLA and his cohorts of BJP and Narendra Modi Sena [Army] have made life impossible for the refugees. Singh, Som, and others have been declared accused in many cases of pogroms. Aggravating the plight of Muslims now Singh has threatened that he would not allow the refugees to vote because they are squatters on public land and have no permanent domicile and record. The elections are hardly two weeks from now. The refugees have nothing except the cloth on their back. For example Hassan had left his parents and the house had all they had that could prove their life on the land. But his neighbor Umar Khan had seen how Samiuddin and his wife were attacked with knives and swords and their bodies were thrown into the burning house and the mills. Hassan rued for days and nights and when he visited the homestead he saw only the vacant lot. He reminisced his parents: "They gave us everything. Nobody loved us more and now there is not even enough left of them to bury. After the violence died down, a few of us went to the house. We found nothing, just ashes." Within a couple of days there were 21 relief camps housing more than 50, 000 people. One of the inmates of such a camp was Yasin Ahmad who blamed the purpoe behind the pogroms: "This is all political. This is just so they can polarise us before the elections. We are nothing but fodder for these politicians." The ferocious language of the accused is nuanced by a young boy of Hindu community who was wonderstruck: "I used to play with Nawazuddin and Syed. Tell me, what is the difference between them and me?" Friday, November 1, 2013 ------- [1] Asian Age March 29, 2014. [2]Inquilab November 22, 2013. [3] http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/karkare-s-response-to-a-death-threat-a-smiley/391325/0 [4] http://qz.com/187809/chinas-media-playbook-report-possible-terror-attacks-asap-but-downplay-horrific-industrial-accidents/ [5] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/politics/lok-sabha-polls-sangh-along/99/ Chapter four Once their neighbours, they held them captive and raped them for days It is all over the same as in Gujarat 2002. Women suffered the most. They were raped, were forced to see their daughter or daughters raped in their full view of the ignominy. This is most disturbingly true within a week of the death sentence passed on four of the six who raped a girl in the night of December 16, 2012 in Delhi-Noida. As in Gujarat so in Muzaffarnager the glaring discrimination is there for all to see. Even more brutal was the rape in the pogroms than the bus. Still the conscience of the people did not smite majority of the people as it did in the case of December 2012. Wasn’t it the same in 2002? If it wasn’t the same then how could the 2002 be Modi’s “exceptionalism”? (1) Or, Hukam Singh’s exceptionalism now, he who under the guise of saving daughters and daughters in law of his own community exhorted the mobs to go for the women from another community. The same common strain runs through the suffering of the women with no let up. In the case of a woman woebegone with sorrow she was forced to see three of her daughters raped, gang raped and held captive for days. In her own words she has woven the saga of her personal tragedy for the rest of her life to torment her. "Four women of my family, including my three daughters (age 17, 18 and 21 years), were held captive by 10-13 rioters and gang-raped in front of me. I was forced to see the shameful and brutal act. Two of my daughters have been released and the other two are still missing.” (2) Lisarh, Lank, Bahawadi, Hasanpur, Mohammadpur, Baghpat in Muzaffarnager and Panipat and also other districts like Shamli bore the brunt of the assault and rape on women, girls and minors. Communal riots in the yore had had few and far in between recurrence of rape or gang rape that lasted few hours and not for week as now; and, in Gujarat, for weeks together and even for months. In sheer brutality and inhumanity Muzaffarnager has matched Gujarat 2002. Lactating and suckling mothers holding their babies in their arms received head injuries as did their new-born. With no succor in sight and fear and terror desiccating their vitals of the body and minds traumatized in a daze had their babes on them. What hope of sustenance and nurture did the camera could catch in their plight as in such a case!? Fleeing from Dhanupura in Muzaffarnager Saira (23) was in advance stage of pregnancy and expected her child in less than a month. She got shelter in Loni where 30 other women in their advance pregnancy were also sheltered with their families. Their plight was untold but equally horrendous. The much maligned madrasas in the eyes of the outside world were now the only place they could rest and breathe a sigh of relief from burgeoning pain and angst of life.(3) there are other madrasas in Ghaziabad and 18 relief camps including the ones in Budhana and Sahapur where 30,000 refugees are housed. Such is the magnitude of the human disaster that has visited upon the minority who till it struck them had no inkling of what would happen and how swiftly it would change their life forever to come. One such is Noorjahan (25) of Nagla perplexed in agony where her ten year old daughter and husband would be. Laank is another village which has emptied out of Muslim population. Basheeran correctly gauges life in the empty villages when she says "I would prefer to die here than to go back. Nobody is waiting for us there." (4) Most of the assailants and rapist were the neghbours of the Muslim women and the victims of mass rape could easily name them as did the16 year old. She named Rajendra son of Hari Kishan who is leader of the Khap panchayat in the village. She survived to tell the depth of horror implied in perverted choice of what her rapist remarked: “Soni soni ladkiyon ke sindur bhar denge, aur bakiyon ko kaat denge (we will marry the beautiful ones and cut into pieces the others).” Another victim of 25 years also named her rapists, Subhash, son of Ilamnd and Ankit, son of Daria of her village Lisarh who raped her for five hours. She went further and told about Ajit the head of the village who had organized this violation of her chastity. He assured her safety and told her not to leave the village but betrayed her and others like her in the night. As if this ordeal was not enough when they reported the matter after the nightmarish events had happened the police man had this to tell the unfortunate victims: Police thane wale ne kaha ki hum to apne ki sahayta karenge, tum Musalmano ki nahi (“We will only save and help our people (Jat and Hindus), not you Muslims)." This many would recall is like what senior police officer KK Mysorewala had told Muslim women and children in Naroda Patiya, Gujarat on February 28, 2002, when they begged for mercy from him as the marauding mobs were in hot pursuit. (5) it would be many months when the saga of suffering of the 1.25 lakh refugees would be mapped. This time around the rapes of Muslims women and girls is calculated to yield more votes and seats in the parliament for the Hindu party BJP. The Communist Party of India spokesman stated: "The RSS had deployed its resources towards creating a communal polarisation which would benefit the BJP in the Lok Sabha election." (6)This need not surprise as Narendra Modi and Amit Shah had had enough of the same in 2002 and knew how it had won the first election for the right wing Hindu party which was shaky and uncertain at first and then it went on to win three more elections. Both the pogroms in Gujarat and in Muzaffarnager were organized to achieve the goal of Hindutva and mark it, there would be no remorse felt over it. for their next item is to tell loud and clear that the Muslims had it coming to them! This standard justification was asserted soon after the Babri mosque was demolished. Even the Muslims knew what was in store for them. In one of the refugee camps a victim called Yasin Ahmad remarked: "This is all political. This is just so they can polarise us before the elections. We are nothing but fodder for these politicians." (7) ------- (1) The Times of India Communal riots have now made big inroads into rural India DIPANKAR GUPTA | Sep 14, 201 (2) http://daily.bhaskar.com/article/UP-daughters-raped-in-front-of-mothers-muzaffarnagar-riots-victims-too-afraid-to-re-4376208-NOR.html (3) http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/uttarpradesh/Muzaffarnagar-Fear-lives-with-the-displaced-in-relief-camps/Article1-1122223.aspx (4) ibid. (5) ibid (6) http://zeenews.india.com/news/nation/muzaffarnagar-violence-rss-creating-communal-rifts-says-cpi-m_876400.html (7) http://www.indianexpress.com/picture-gallery/-muzaffarnagar-riots-tales-of-tragedy-in-lisrahs-relief-camps/3405-17.html Chapter 5 Resurgent Hindutva Terrorism: Narendra Modi Sena Before calling any organization as terrorist it is necessary to take a working definition of what terrorism is. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is the leading investigator into matters of terrorism for a long time. The Americans have had their fair share of terrorist attacks and know what terrorism is. “The unlawful use of force or violence against person or property to intimidate or coerce a Government, or the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.” (1)This broad definition of terrorism by the FBI includes the parameters of the range of activities that constitute terrorism. A girl from Muzaffarnagar on September 8, 2013 was heard talking to a boy called Anaoj that she “had talked to her uncle and persuaded the Provincial Armed Constabulary to be deployed late in the village.” She told her friend further: force kutch nahin karey gi chahe jitnon to maro. “Kill as many as you can the force would not take any action.” (2)This is not Maya Kodnani of Gujarat in 2002, but a Jat girl from Muzaffarnagar area that was rocked by the pogroms of Muslims. Her uncle is no other than Krish Pal Raghuvanshi who hails from that region and was ATS chief in Maharashtra and now the police commissioner of Thane. Unlawful activities include delaying the deployment of the PAC so that more hapless Muslims stranded or besieged in the villages and farms could be killed. One has only to imagine how terrified the victims would have been running for life in the farms or holding their breath out of fear of being chopped up by the machetes. She also speaks of importing into the district of Muzaffarnagar arms and distributing them among the Jats. Thus the girl and the marauding crowds fit in the qualifying attributes of terrorism. Here communal terrorism and state sponsored terrorism coalesce into one another. The victims have neither patronage of the police nor of the state of UP. Even so the right wing according to their wont would dub appeasement if anyone shows some concern for the murder and arson that the Jats let loose upon the Muslims. Chapter 6 Muzzafarnager: the replication of pogroms of 2002 Hindus and Muslims have lived cheek by bowl down the centuries in the subcontinent. There had been no preplanned and organized riots or pogroms until the conscious politicizing communalism in the form of Hindutva came on the scene. Those who avoid the Muslim rule in India and look at the rest of the ages as continuous and harmonious Hindustan including the British rule harbor the same illusion as the characters in Anand Math to whom the Muslim rulers are cruel and impure and the British as enlightened and good. Because of this skewed vision they take upon themselves the imaginary task of purifying the land of the impurity that came with the Muslims. In modern nomenclature it is ethnic cleansing. The Jats hunting and killing Muslims in rural areas in the environs of Muzaffanager did just that since August 27, 2013. This schizophrenic setting of the mind has been going on for sometimes in Gujarat and now in UP and Bihar in the recrudescence of communal violence. They killed the reporter of a news channel and chased and then lynched the photo journalist Israr who had made recording of the Jat meeting. It reflects Gujarat where Haren Pandya had made an audio recording of Chief Minister Narendra Modi at his residence on February 27, 2002 instructing his police to not stop Hindu mobs taking revenge against the Muslims in the next three days of protest. Despite the ruling party not unsympathetic to secularism in UP, the riots in Muzaffarnager have continued. What is worse they have spread to villages. The local administration rather than the mindset of the members of the ruling party is weak. The déjà vue pogroms were in the offing thanks to Narendra Modi assuming charge of the head of the Hindu party BJP campaign for election in 2014 and his lieutenant Amit Shah as in charge of UP. Many people felt premonition which came true later that Shah’s praying at Ayodhya’s temporarily set up temple reconstructed on demolished Babri mosque at the onset of election campaigning is an ominous signal. Although the BJP could not reap electoral gains on proposed construction of the temple in the second decade of the 21st century it stood to gain from the fall out of the communal clashes. An air of amazement was there in a mammoth meeting allowed by the government of the ruling party even in the face of the government ban on such gatherings. It was a conclave of the Jats. Why should the SP government which has avowed to put down communal violence which is deadly to Muslims for they lose in life and property more than anyone else let such a caucus meet? As Shahid Manzoor explained to his party: "We try to explain that the real cause is Narendra Modi and Amit Shah who are now concentrating on UP." The duo knows from their experience in the pogroms in their own state of Gujarat that the people of UP are easy to turn susceptible to communal appeal in the name of temple and religion. Or else what was there when a Valmiki parked his dirt cart before the shop of a Muslim who objected it and in the resultant clash a Hindu was killed and then two Muslims lost their life and the violence erupted like a wildfire. The Hindutva groups are in the wont of using lower castes like the Valmiki to ignite riots in which they reap rich harvest at the polls. Moreover the turn of events followed the pattern of the pogroms in 2002 Gujarat. Modi and Shah’s strategy resulted in what Manzoor said in his remark: “Ultimately, the responsibility [of ruling in UP] is ours. Obviously our image has taken a serious drubbing.” (1) As in Gujarat 2002 so in UP on September 9th 2013 five more bodies of Muslims were recovered from a farm then ten more on September 10th. These were hapless members of the minority fleeing from their villages in search of shelter from the roaming marauding members of the Jat Hindu community out to kill them. Where did the fracas and brawl on hygienic source of context turn to full blown pogroms? Why did the Jats take over from the Valmiki dirt cart driver? That critical fault lies in the words of the American writer Alex D Pate in Losing Absalom: “Critical weakness [is] that other men could identify with swift precision. It could be a core of coldness in warm peaceful exterior, a fear, a streak of terror carefully woven into the fabric of bravado, or, worst of all, a dark cynicism carefully tucked away in a hopeful body.”(2) That ‘dark cynicism’ and ‘streak of terror’ is easily discernible in the face of the most mentioned of all actors in the gruesome murder and mayhem: Hukum Singh. That face resembles the cold stare of Narendra Modi when the wide spread eyes of the Chief Minister in the sockets stare into the face of others and the gnashing teeth when he was ‘dehydrated’ and called for water in the interview with Kiran Thapar. Soon after the above murders the Jats went into a huddle a massive meeting in which more than a lakh people from adjoining states and Delhi travelled to Muzaffarnager. Hukum Singh addressed the irate mobs. The words used by the BJP leader are cat’s paw of taunt of the hateful ideology. He spoke tongue in cheek: “Instead of penalising me for my so called provocative speech, the district administration should first explain how a gathering of over 1.5 lakh people was allowed at Nagla Mandaur, 20 km from Muzaffarnagar, despite the prohibitory orders in force in the entire district. Why did the district administration allow thousands of vehicles and tractor trolleys from Haryana, Delhi and the neighbouring districts of UP to enter Muzaffarnagar and reach the venue of the mahapanchayat?” (3) There is no dearth of such gatherings of mammoth crowds and they were the order of the day in 2002 in Naroda Patia, Sardarpura, Gulberg Society and a host of other places in Gujarat. But mark his words. He knows that people from his community were on their way from distant places traversing hundreds of kilometers for a political get together. The the agenda before the meeting would not be airing of the need to protect Jat women but what action to take upon the alleged stalker of the Jat girl and the murder of her two cousins. The mahapanchayat was apparently for respect for daughters and daughters in law in Jat community 'Bahu Beti Sammaan Bachao Mahapanchayat' but it veered to a new line of saving daughters and daughters in law from being lured by Muslims into love and marriage. Although a dalit woman had affairs with a Muslim the Jats reacted in unison to support the dalit against the Muslims. This indicates how the BJP must have been hard at work in working up the Jats and the dalits against the Muslims. As the author RK Ohri observed that the Jats usually do not empathize with the Scheduled Castes but their unanimous condemnation of the inter caste affairs is tip of the ice berg that how much deep is the social unrest that Muslims and the rest have developed in their relationship thanks to BJP insinuation.(4) Hukum Singh with his platitudes uttered in the aftermath of the mahapanshcyat could not hide the facts that the crowds wanted him to talk of Narendra Modi alone. This would extend into of course how Modi taught a lesson to the Muslims in his state. This is proof of where the wind blows from in Muzaffarnager. But in the process of politicizing the issue the result is “a never before religious divide” between the Hindus and Muslims. (5)This is sure proof of the machination of the BJP and especially it emanates from the design of Amit Shah and Modi working from behind the curtain. [Months later Arun Jaitley had the cheeks to say that there was no reason for Modi to apologize. “To satisfy a fake campaign he does not have to apologize (for 2002).” Jaitley then said what Muslims had always feared and will always fear: he said that Modi was ‘putting a system so that riots did not recur.’ (Asian Age, April 1, 2014). This so called system is to use state machinery to crush Muslims so ferociously that they would dread to ever think of retaliating even in mute protest, like in the Gujrat pogroms.] Hukum Singhss’ insidiously remarking that the crowds wanted him to speak of Modi at the Mahapanchayat is fraught with danger. (6) This is grafting of the policy that Modi and Shah had played in Gujarat. The Sahar Mufti of Muzaffarnager Zulkicar Ali pointed his finger at this when he said: “It was a well planned riot, facilitated by the district administration and engineered with the aim of ensuring polarization among the voters on communal lines.”(7) There is also a disturbing pattern of what happened on August 27 was kept on animation and sustained by the ‘oxygen’ that keeps the BJP alive: communalism. The party through its leaders circulated a video showing the event of August 27 in such a way to inflame the passion of Hindus against Muslims. This is what Noam Chomsky called “inducement to violence” where he blames the drone bombing in the Middle East and Pakistan that produces violence as in the Boston bombing. The fake video made by BJP MLA Sangeet Som of Meerut also fits in that. The footage was made in Pakistan. (8)He is absconding from law and wants to secure anticipatory bail and then invite Modi to Muzaffarnager and sit with him on the dais. So what Hukum Singh said would imply that he wants to repeat for electoral gain the Gujarat model. Not to be left behind Varun Gandhi of the notoriety of Muslim bashing in his own election in Haryana now wants to sit with LK Advani in their planned swamibhan rally, self pride rally in Agra on September 15. It also confirms the growing concern that BJP is outsourcing 2002 into Muzaffarnager 2014 election as Amit Shah has opened his purse to bear the legal cost for whatever happens when BJP workers take on the UP SP government.(9) The result is already there for anyone to see as toddlers with their deadly injuries are appearing in hospitals and their parents hacked to death by the extremist Hindu mobs make headlines in the media. This is fuelling minority community’s feeling of insecurity and fear as it did in Gujarat 2002. Once again their fate is in the lurch. The children were innocent as were their parents as they were fleeing the marauding mobs of Jats. If even the children have to bear the brunt of the mobs what is left for the minority in India then! Muslims in Muzaffarnager had been nurtured on the Ganga Jammuna culture as is the case with their compatriots from Hindu community. A part of the calculated idea in the escalating violence against Muslims is to target the composite culture in favour of a monolithic culture of Hindutva or Hindu fundamentalism. It is here that the hate ideology of the RSS comes to fore in fomenting trouble. It could not brook LK Advani’s discovering Mohammad Ali Jinnah as a secular person. Bal Thackeray was upset when Modi started his sadhbhana rallies or rallies for harmony. He mistakenly thought that Modi was going soft on the Muslims. VHP also was disturbed when unauthorized temples were being demolished. Similarly Modi also changed his decision on appealing for harsher sentence against Maya Kodnani accused in the Naroda Patia pogroms because Shiv Sena was adamantly opposed that a Hindu should be punished for the massacre of Muslims. Will the RSS then allow anyone to come in the way of its avowed commitment to destroy the syncretic culture that prevailed in western UP particularly in Muzaffarnager”? So snatching children from fleeing mothers and fathers and killing or mauling them so barbarously is motivated by the hate ideology. No amount of rope walking by the SP or Congress on this will do. When Narendra Dabholkar was killed Sanathan Sansthan celebrated it because he died quickly instead of a long prolonged illness and bedridden life. To the RSS a good Muslim is a dead Muslim. We are back to square one on Muzaffanager pogroms. What is unfolding in western UP is hate ideology that is intolerant of even innocent children and women as in Gujarat. Mahatma Gandhi would have gone to fast unto death to stop the pogroms. But even conjecturing Modi to go on another even token or farcical Sadhbhauna on the killings in Muzaffernager like the one in September 2011would amount to crocodile’s tears. Because India First is his ideology of secularism where Muslims don’t figure. (10) ------- (1) http://www.indianexpress.com/news/azam-khan-blames-local-administration-and-akhilesh-govt/1166992/0 (2) Losing Absalom. Minneapolice: Coffee House, 1994. P.35) See in “Education and the Novel” by Mustafa Khan University News November 18, 1996. (3) The Man Accused Of Fanning The Muzaffarnagar Riots (4) http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/collapse-of-muslim-jat-alliance-gives-an-opening-to-bjp/articleshow/22447522.cms (5) http://www.dnaindia.com/india/1886951/report-muzaffarnagar-a-town-left-ravaged-with-ties-impaired (6) Crowds wanted me to talk only about Modi, says BJP leader – Ndtv Septermber 10,,2013 (7) http://www.tehelka.com/muzaffarnagarriots2013/ (8) Playing with fire. The Hindu September 10, 2013. (9) BJP mulls Modi rally in Muzaffarnagar Hindustan times Lucknow, September 10 2013. (10) http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/muzaffarnagar-riots-narendra-modi-indefinite-fast/1/309362.html Chapter7 Persistent pattern Do Indian politicians employ IM to wash their dirty linen in the public? Former minister and BJP leader Giriraj Singh says that chief minister ‘Nitish Kumar planned to get Modi ‘killed’ with the help of IM.1 He was referring to Narendra Modi’s rally of 27 October 2013 at the Gandhi maidan in Patna. This is not mere ‘linguistic terrorism’ of BJP as the ruling party in Bihar would like to taunt. TITLED Major Upadhaya. wma audio clipping in the laptop of Dyanand Pandey clearly shows that the planning of attack on Malegaon 2008 was a minor part of the Abhinav Bharat. The activists of AB are well trained in bomb making and exploding and what is frightening: they are spread all over the country. Their strength in number and quality of training in violent activities and attacks aimed at subversion of the rule of law and writ of the constitution itself is unmatched by any other terrorist groups. Given this potential for terrorism seemingly at the command of the extremists both in the BJP and in other right wing organizations it is not surprising that the alibi also includes gods of the Hindu pantheon in direct opposition of IM: “Narendra Modi’s life was saved only by the blessings of God and millions of his supporters. The chief minister was planning to get Modi killed with the help of the Mujahideen.”Why should otherwise the sangh parivar and BJP feel ‘very hurt and betrayed’ by the government in Bihar ordering inquiry against the role of former deputy CM and BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi? Gujarat police worked in tandem with the Maharashtra Anti Terrorism Squad. Even without substantiated proof of involvement in Ahmadabad blasts or related matter, the Gujarat police conveniently and facilely took Muslim youths from Hyderabad or Maharashtra and held them in prison. Such was the case of Afzal Usmani. His brother would travel to Ahmadabad for his bail taking this as a link the ATS detained Faiz Usmani and hung him by his feel that resulted in brain hemorrhage and he died. The post mortem has not been fully and fairly done hence what the widow Ruheda and her six orphans believe must be credible after what the ATS did to Khwaja Yunus and what the smart aleck fake encounter specialist Daya Nayak did to Jamal Sadik Mehtar by handing him over to the ace fake encounter specialist DG Vanzara who killed him on the bogus pretext that he was out to kill Modi. This importing of innocent Muslims as accused in terrorism incident in Gujarat and outside smacks of communalized approach to terror. Faiz is the example of exporting and Ishrat Jahan is of importing. This is conveniently done as it is rewarded by the state government for fighting terrorism ‘successfully’ and that calls for promotion in post and increment in the basic pay structure of the police. What happened in Patna was not a local issue despite Modi’s threat held out to the chief minister Nitish Kumar that he would be avenged for betraying BJP by breaking the alliance. Soon after the announcement that Amit Shah would kick start his campaigning from Ayodhya as in charge of UP it was clear that he would communalize politics. He had taken the dictum literally from VD Savarkar: communalizing politics and militarizing Hinduism. What happened in Muzaffarnagar on 7 September 2013 was quite relevant. The grand panchayat of the Jats was allowed to take place despite order to the contrary, weapons were stocked, and Provincial Armed Constabulary was accordingly and deliberately delayed at the airport when every minute was taking heavy toll on the Muslims. Communalizing politics ushered in militarization of Hinduism. Patna has not seen such scenes as bombs exploding even when a major political event was taking place there. The coming of the stormy petrel in the avatar of Modi was harbinger of violent and aggressive communalism. The early straw in the wind was Amit Shah’s machination. He is Machiavelli incarnate. LK Advani had universalized communalism and the attendant violence and pogroms of Muslims. No more was communalism product of local events. Pretext was local but the ideology was universal. The natives may be Muslims or Hindus. They could not resist what was thrust upon them. It was this that made many sober headed Jats queasy about the violence in Muzaffarnagar and other parts of western UP. They also saw the imported design. Communal violence and terrorism were one and the same. What we saw in pogroms in 2002 in Gujarat was terrorism though it was officially and wrongly dubbed communal riot. This also holds true in other cases. It was carefully crafted for Patna as it has its counterpart in Darbhanga, Lucknow has its own in Azamgarh. It was easier to again stigmatize Muslims as terrorists though the calamity that visited them was disastrous more pronouncedly in Muzaffarnagar. The other place was of course Bhatkal which had its first communal riot on 1st April 1993 in which 226 houses of Muslims were burnt down and 17 were killed. The cause was a stone thrown at the crowd of Hindus. Who did that has not been found out. And the commission of inquiry headed by the Karnataka High Court judge Kedambadi Jagannath Shetty drew a blank on that. But what the judge wrote was unmistakable truth that the communal violence was not on account of any local issue. Even more convincing is the Dhulia communal violence of 5th October 2008. A Muslim youth and a Hindu girl were in love and wanted to marry. The matter was amicably settled by their families; but the Hindu Raksha Samiti made it a love jihad inversely by torching all the houses of Muslims in Nardana where the Muslim boy lived. Subsequently the HRS took the Malegaon bomb blast of 29 September 2008 as a provocation to defend Hindus and hence the call to retaliate. The Hindu Raksha Samiti of Dhulia called a meeting ala Jat Mahapanchayat to safeguard Hindus. The violence followed on 5th October 2008 that shook Dhulia. In many such cases what essentially is honour killing is turned into accusation of love jihad to create a riot to kill Muslims and burn their property. This happened in Muzaffarnagar as it did in Dhulia. But there is a method in madness here. Mukul Dube confirms it when he speaks of a woman from central Canada who spoke of the method in madness emerging: “an established pattern rather than with something that was only now coming into being. “It would be foolish to speak of an “uncanny similarity”: because all the evidence we have, tells us that the same kind of careful, systematic planning and preparation went into the recent violence [in Muzaffarnagar]. As in Gujarat in 2002, the tinder had been made ready and all that was needed to unleash an inferno was a small spark.” 2 This time around Narendra Modi and Amit Shah had done their homework well and they carried the package to UP and Bihar and continued their Gujarat laboratory experiment of Hindutva there. So what Mukul Dube felt buttresses this role of the duo: “With both instances of targeted, one-sided brutality, it is uncertain whether chance provided the necessary sparks or whether the sparks too were struck as part of the larger plan.” The spark was borrowed from Gujarat to win election in UP because Modi had reaped a bumper electoral harvest thrice and this was the beginng of the fourth in 2014. 1. Asian Age15 December 2013 2. . http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/10/the-experiment.htm Chapter 8 Two Muslims fight over terrorism Sabir Ali joined BJP on March 28, 2014. Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, vice president and Muslim face of the Hindu party, BJP twitted on Saturday 29 within hours Sabir Ali was chucked out. The BJP vice president had twitted that “Terrororist Yaseen Bhatkal friend inducted to BJP” and Dawood was the next to enter and soon! Sabir Ali stiffly fought back Naqvi for more than 24 hours. Even his wife Yasmin joined him and picketed at the house of Naqvi until the police took her away. Finally Sabir Ali resigned to the last resort: “If he (Naqvi) is right, I am ready to be hanged.”(1) BJP and Hindutva in general is too shrewd to run the DNA test of the IM terrorist, for they know the truth and would continue to play politics over it for dividends at the polls. This reminds one the mother of Mohammad Mansoor Peebhoy who told Maharashtra ATS that if proved a terrorist she would herself hang her son! Seven years after even this extreme assertion and challenge the ATS has not picked up the gauntlet. A side circus show is in the name of the Drbhanga module. All the ‘terrorists’ arrested till we go to election have been having Modi as a target of assassination! As if Sohrabuddin, Ishrat Jahan, Sadiq Jamal Mahtar were not enough all the recent ones must also be invoked! Even the Patna attack just before Modi’s arrival showed how Hindus were caught and thrashed. But the agencies changed everything and brought in the names of Muslims as terrorists. Such a mistake never happens in the case of Muslims. They rot in jails for years before they are proved innocent and discharged. Even after acquittal the nemesis continues. BJP knows that Sabir Ali and MJ Akbar and even Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi know the truth of fighting terror. The same could also be said of Shahnawaz Hussein. In this war on terror they all know what kind of sincere platitutdes are coming out of the automation that Arun Jaitley is. However Sabir Ali knew better because he had experience of having worked in two other national parties and was in Rajy Sabha. His assessment of Modi was more objective than Akbar’s calling Modi Hitler. "He is an expert in turning a lie into the truth. It is the BJP's principle to divide the nation and rule. Wherever the BJP government is in power, there is more corruption. Modi has started thinking that by promoting a few industrialists and a constant presence in the media, he can take over the nation. He does not understand that 70 per cent of India is rural and this is not going to affect them. He is not only poor in calculation, but poor in history". This crystallizing of his own essence in the opening sentence must have pleased Modi. So Modi blundered again by okay-ing the memebership of Sabir. One opportunist is as good or bad as the other. Akbar and Naqvi also are opportunists but the former being a pundit in addition chose a dignified presence in the next Rajy Sabha. ------- [1]Asian Age March 31, 2014 http://indianexpress.com/article/india/politics/narendra-modi-attacks-rahul-gandhi-says-his-entire-family-has-never-been-able-to-fight-bjp-ideology/99/ he was “proud” of the ideology and the principles based on the “altar of sacrifice and service”. “I am proud of the fact that I was born from an ideology. Yes, we have an ideology…Our ideology is society is above family…Mother India is everything for us. Our ideology is that we will live and die for the country,” he said addressing a public meeting here. “And that is why, you (Congress) cannot fight this ideology. Your entire family has never been able to fight with this ideology. This ideology is based on the altar of sacrifice and service,” he said. "Certainly in our system of justice you can be found not guilty, which is not the same thing as found innocent". "Under these circumstances we should follow our laws, which say that we should not give a visa," http://ibnlive.in.com/news/narendra-modi-shouldnt-be-granted-visa-says-us-official/414820-2.html [If you will do this, we will be at ease with this. Nothing wrong will happen then. This will not be criminalized then. If you do it then people won't say that we did a crime for the sake of doing a crime. It will be connected to the ideology. This is very important for Hindus. Please do this. You have our blessings. Nothing more than that from us.] Bhagwat to Asimanand. Caravan Chapter 9 How the Hindutva fights terrorism The Hindutva groups are obsessed with only Muslims as terrorists. They do not want to even suggest as a hypothetical premise that the Hindus could also be terrorists. Second hypothetical premise is that Muslims of India want a separate state. This second is even more pernicious than the first. The Muslims of India have paid with life and property enormously for Pakistan. They have not ever thought of any separate state for themselves. It is a testimony to this that they have scattered all over the country. Muzaffarnagar itself illustrates how far and few in between they have been settled and lived along with Jats and Hindus who surround them everywhere. They have had no enclaves of their own as their exclusive space and they do not want. But as fear has gripped them so terribly in future they would be wary of living as they have so far because their own neighbours of the Hindu community of Jats and others have not only raped and killed and burnt them alive but made life impossible for the Muslims as human beings let alone fellow Indians. All that in the name of vote bank! The Hindutva have turned this situation on its head and accuses the Muslims for demanding a separate state!!! Thus the slogan: demand milk and we will give you milk pudding. Demand Pakistan we will tear you up! This kind of slogan was there in the aftermath of both 1991 events and in 2002. Even in the video of March 27, 2014 Dr Praveen Togadia begins his speech “Those who want separate state for Muslims should remember” with the example of Muzaffarnagar! Who ever asked a separate state in Muzaffarnagar? Then he moves to Kokrejahr, then Gujarat. Not a single Muslim in any of these even in his dream could think of asking a separate state. This is the fear psychosis of the Hindutva. They have sown so much hatred of Muslims in the minds of the simple Hindus that they think that to drive further wedge and push the situation far beyond return that they have invested the bogey of ‘separate state’. This is inverse logic. Modi it was who started this in 2002. He blamed Pakistan for the Godhra fire accident. And then he took upon President of Pakistan Gen Pervez Musharraf calling him Mian. He did not stop at that but so obsessed was he that he saw 2002 election as a fight between him and the general from across the border. Even his mentors Vajpayee and Advani could not make him see the illogicality. This went to such an extent that Musharraf took 2002 genocide to the UNO forum for no good to India. Now Jaitley says that if BJP wins Modi would follow Vajpayee’s foreign policy! A side circus show is in the name of the Drbhanga module. All the ‘terrorists’ arrested till we go to election have been having Modi as a target of assassination! As if Sohrabuddin, Ishrat Jahan, Sadiq Jamal Mahtar were not enough all the recent ones must also be invoked! Even the Patna attack just before Modi’s arrival showed how Hindus were caught and thrashed. But the agencies changed everything and brought in the names of Muslims as terrorists. Such a mistake never happens in the case of Muslims. They rot in jails for years before they are proved innocent and discharged. Even after acquittal the nemesis continues. The most recent is Sabir Ali acquitted in Gulshan Kumar murder and being inducted in BJP for a shourt sojourn was thrown out at the instance of Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi. The BJP vice president had twitted that “Terrororist Yaseen Bhatkal friend indcted to BJP” and Dawood was the next to enter and soon! Sabir Ali stiffly bought back Naqvi for more than 24 hours. Even his wife Yasmin joined him and picketed at the house of Naqvi until the police took her away. Finally Sabir Ali resigned to the last resort: “If he (Naqvi) is right, I am ready to be hanged.”(AA March 31, 2014) BJP and Hindutva in general is too shrewd to run the DNA test of the IM terrorist, for they know the truth and would continue to play politics over it for dividends at the polls. The terror politics is simple. Manufacture widespread communal violence to divide the people on the lines of religion. Muslims do not vote for the Hindu BJP anyway. Therefore make situation conducive for Hindus to vote only Hindu candidates. December 1992, December 2002 proved this politics to be most advantageous to BJP and RSS. Furthermore, therefore create the same situation in 2014 election. Modi elevated to the post of the chief poll campaigner of BJP appointed Amit Shah as in charge of UP. Shah chose Ayodhya to kickstart and chose divisive politics in western UP to garner the votes of the Jats. The Jats are Hindus but had had good relations and saysSingh Som and others used Taliban execution scene of Pakistan to make it look as if the Muslims were executing the cousins of the girl whom a Muslim boy had reportedly stalked. Chapter 10 Evilful design There is a close similarity of how ethnic cleansing is going on in the pogrom affected parts of Muzaffarnagar, Shamli and other parts. Shahenawaz of Hussein pur said that on Wednesday October 30, 2013 3 Muslims were killed by the same group that was very much active during the frenzy of September 8, 2013. This indicates that such groups may have been specially trained as a part of the formation of what Gopal Meneon described Narendra Modi Army. When asked about it Inspector General of Special Task Force claimed that he did not know about it. The bullets recovered there were being examined by the forensic department. On 31 October 2013 a piece of 30 bigah farm with sugarcane crop was burnt down in Purbaliyangaon of Shahpur. Farmers Mohammad Ali Jaan, Farooq, Aazad and Irfan complained to the police about the incident. From these incidents of firing, arson and usurping of Muslim farm land by Jats the intention of the marauders is clear. They do not want Muslims to return to their village. This is true of Raisinghgaon of Muzaffarnagar as it in elsewhere. The Jats who occupied the lands of the Muslim farmers are aggressive and their vicims frightened. The Jats threaten them with dire consequences. The distrct magistrate of Muzaffarnagar Kushal Raj Sharma regrets the regress in the revoery of stability temporarily achieved though hard work by the administration. (1) This evilful design is also imported from Gujarat. There are areas in the western state of Gujarat where the extremists have cleared Muslims from their areas and have proudly proclaimed on the gates of such villages and locality that they have been successful in creating areas without any Muslim left there. In fact a running theme of the design is tht of the VHP leader Praveen Togadia who boasts that Gujarat would be the first Hindu state in India. He even gave the date from which it would come into existence, 2015. Modi and Togadia are sides of the same coin. Their ideology is same. They do not want Muslims among them and do not want that there should be slaughter houses in their areas and even state. An aspect of their ideology is that they want to sacrifice everything at the altar of Mother India whom they view as a goddess. Anyone who does not entertain the idol worship in the same tenacity as they do is their enemy, be he a Muslim of a Hindu. A part of the dislike the BJP and its prime ministerial candidate Modi have for AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal is that the AAP sings a film ditty as their anthem which says that in this modern age the old divisions of castes has become outdated. There should be equality in the wage and reward give to all according to their work. Modi did not accept this and withheld scholarship that was sanctioned by the central government for Gujarat Muslims. Till today Modi has refused to disburse such meager amounts meant for Muslims. The Muslims of western UP were an eye sore to Hindutva because they had achieved a remarkable degree of affluence even in doing manual works. The road side cleaners and repairers of vehicles were the butts of joke and castigation of Modi in Gujarat. Even the poor in Gujarat were held in contempt, what about the well off peasantry in Muzaffarnagar. In transplanting violence in the region this was another aspect of the same juggernaut. ------- [1]Inquilab November 2, 2013. ------- Chapter Re-writing even recent history The pogroms of Gujart 2002 are a matter of only just over a decade. Still, the sangh parivar and essebtially BJP does not want to call them as pogroms or Holocaust or genocide. But they were just that. Officially even today India calls them as communal riots. This is misleading. The Muslims were visited with such initial shock and awe or stun strategy that there was no chance of their retaliation. The police opened fire at them and led the extremist Hindus to attack the minority people. This ethnic cleansing was initially done by the police. The marauding mobs were well armed and included RSS volunteers and Bajrang Dal activists taking active part in murder, loot and arson. This is well documented fact of history that is still fresh in the minds. By not calling the events as pogroms or holocaust let alone the extremist Hindus but the mainstream media and common Indians are also made to believe that the events were just riots! Within just over a decade the re-writing of the recent history has also begun. In a much publicized public appearance on Monday March 31, 2014 Arun Jaitley remarked that Modi was “concerned” over the pogroms [he uses the phrase violence] and was “about putting in place a system so that riots did not recur.”[1] Thus Jaitley has reduced the even watered down riots to a system which is not a riot but a riot control strategy. This is very disturbing phenomenon for India. Instead of calling a spade a spade we in our own democratic country see a fascist tendency of superimposing a falsehood to beguile the people who had seen on news channels how rampancy and savagery was taking place during 2002. Which is even more disturbing is that the same strategy was used in Muzaffarnagar. What happened in UP in Steptember 2013 was stark replication of pogroms. It was holocaust in the sense that suddenly a complete change in the life of people came over them when they were brutally killed and their women were raped by their next door neighbours and they were rendered abjectly helpless spectators, too dazed to make out any sense of why such a calamity had taken place. If this were not so Samiuddin and Hamida would have been alive and Hassan would have had his parents to vote for the Jats whom they had habitually voted in previous elections. Jaitley as an automation in a well set and pre-programmed way went on to demolish even the notorious fake encounters of Gujarat along with the pogroms. The fake encounters were another strategy to eclipse the pogroms and enhance the image of Modi as a Hindu leader facing danger from Islamic terrorists on account of the pogroms. Jaitley says “Those asking for an apology wanted the apology to be an act ofconfession. If he actually committed a mistake, why apologise, he should have been prosecuted and punished. ..We can squabble over the kind of expressions one wants to use…To satisfy a fake campaign he doe not have to apologise.” Thus the concern for genocide and the fake encounters perpetrated by Modi using state machinery has now been transformed into “a fake campaign.” It was this concern for which Nancy Powell tendere her resignation and Katrina Lantros Swett wondered at the sworn affidavits submitted by no other than the chief of intelligence agencies, RB Sreekumar and Sanjive Bhatt. Powell and Swett are of foreign origin and US citizens and if their objectivity is also swept under the carpet of mobocracy as is prevailing since long what sense of propriety! Modi had bluntly told the media persons that they would be at risk of the fate meted out to Daniel Pearl. “Those journalists who cover Gujarat may meet the fate of Daniel Pearl. Cover communal riots at your own risk, look at Daniel Pearl.” Modi had also said the unthinkable: “The killing of Daniel Pearl in Pakistan is a perfect example.”[2]In the pogroms of Muzaffarnagar the Hindu extremists used very careful strategy of removing two journalists one covering the event and the other making video. The police had opened fire and they blamed that the journalists died because of stray bullets! This would mean that state machinery was used even in UP which was under the rule of Samajwadi Party. But there was a difference. The police officers in the fields were not unamenable to communalism. If the ATS Mahrashtra chief Krish Pal Raghuvansi’s niece can get her uncle delay deployment of the army and paramilitary force until more Muslims were killed there are enough eager policemen tainted with VHP and RSS bent of mind to carry out the same work as did the Bajrang Dal and RSS volunteers. ------- [1]Asian Age, April 1, 2014 [2] Indian Express June 11, 2002 http://archive.indianexpress.com/oldStory/4180/ Cover communal riots at your own risk, look at Daniel Pearl: Gujarat govt Chapter 11 Narendra Modi Sena Narendra Modi Sena was like the Laxman Sena and the Balidana Jatha of 1992. Their brief was to secretly prepare to plant rampage and savagery that Muzaffarnagar had not seen in its history. The Hindutva forces are diverse and well connected. Many of the Jats had suddenly become so fierce in their enmity and hateful. Most of their victims could not believe that fellow villagers and negihbours or even master could become so different and so ruthless. This could not have happned all of a sudden just because a college girl was stalked. It was used asa pretext and had no substance. The Muslims were aware of honour killing among Jats and would not break the code of conduct in villages and small towns where they are at the mercy of the powerful Jats. In the meetings that Amit Shah had organized he must have seen the efficacy needed how to turn the Jats kuttur or or diehard communalists. They had till then bonded well with their negihbours. A lot of money and secret planning must have gone into transforming a region into a communal cauldron. In the mahapanchayat on September 7, 2013 the Jat crowd forced the speaker to switch on to Modi. The topic of the agenda about protecting the honour of daughters and daughters in law was put aside. This abrupt change points out the urgency of poll issue for which a violent turn was absolutely necessary. The Jat crowd returning from the grand assembly stated attacking Muslims and in the very initial stage killed a journalist and his photographer so that there would be no problem to them later. The mob at Ayodhya Babri mosque had taken out the media people for security reason. And the suicide squad or Balidani Jatha with their coded slogan Jai Sheshavatar shouting thrice started their work without any fear or regard for the law enforcement authorities or their own leaders from BJP or members of the crowd not in the loop of the conspiracy. Even the volunteers did not know until the occasion arose what their training was for any specific place or event. As Shushma Swaraj said that the temple movement in 1992 was encashed once and hence could not be done again and again. But the Hindutva since then has been more ingenious and had again encashed their violent agenda in 2002 Gujarat when they won election. They were so emboldened by the success that they broke new ground in UP. But this time they did not have their government in Lucknow as in 1992 and 2002. The Samajwadi Party government may have erred in not preventing the crowd gathering for the massive rally on September 7. The SP is not a party based on exclusionary politics of hatred for the Muslims. So much of the violence was the result of the rogue police officers and police men. The police and paramilitary forces have a large number of Jats. When the violence erupted they looked the other way. The Jats used guerilla tactics of secretly appearing on the scne at the right occasion to initiate action. They would come out of the thich sugarcanes standing in the farms and then disappeare secretly. Chapter 12 Amit Shah: the stormy petrel “For the integrity of the community, the answer is Modi. Not the government who gives compensation to those who killed Jats.” [1]This is truly a fatwa coming from the Hindutva stormy petrel in UP, Amit Shah. His arrival in UP and marking his initiating poll campaign by visiting Ayodhya Babri mosque site where the Ram temple is coming up was enough of provocation. It must have been so alarming that pat came the warning: khuni prachar, dharm ka thekaydar, abki bar atyachar “Bloody campaign, authorized by religion, this time cruelty, violence.” Modi was a pracharak or leader of the RSS and his campaign is based on religion and the logical outcome is cruelty and violence. The warning is justified in view of what Shah told next: “This is the time to avenge. The leader standing next to me” [Suresh Rana and Hukum Singh] have also been humiliated. A man can sleep hungry but not humiliated. This is the time to take revenge by voting for Modi. This will defeat both the governments, the one at the centre and UP government who lathi-charged and tortured our leaders.” He was speaking at Raajhar, Lissad, forty kilometers from Muzaffarnagar. Next stop was at the the Raja Rani Hall of Shamli. Among prominent khap leaders present there was Ajit Singh accused of fanning violence in September 2013. Another leader was Udayvir Pehelka. He demanded two things: “If Amit Shah has come to talk to us, he must promise that he will help us withdraw all the false cases against the Jats and secondly, address a national problem, which is to control the population of this country, else soon enough votes from our community will not count and only they [Muslims] will be present everywhere.” Both are political demands which Modi has in the past shown proclivity to handle with deft. In 2002 he had sent DG Vanzara who had arrested the culprits behind Naroda Patia. But he treated them with the food meant for the government officers in the government guest house and then left the arrested killers and rapists. This he could not have done without the approval of the Chief Minister Modi. Even in grave charges against some of them like Dr Maya Kodnani, Modi went soft and refused to appeal for harsher punishment when Shiv Sena leaders put pressure on him. The second demand is also political and Modi has shown great vigour in it. He has always passed slur on the Muslims for producing large number of children who are threat to development in Gujarat. He even insulted them by calling them unseemly as they appear in dirty apparel by the side of roads with their work of repairing veheicles and hence greasy. This is a fear psychosis of the RSS paranoia over the greater rate of producing children by the Muslims. Shah took the stage and gave the message loud and clear: “This election is the election of honour and revenge.” “And when we protect them [Rana and Singh, Sangeet Singh Som], we are called rioters because Mullah Mulayam is busy defending the minority.” Next attack of Shah was the food Muslims eat and how they procure it through their community butchers who have prospered by exporting meat. He quoted Modi “stop pink revolution and herald in green revolutiton.” Shah’s jibes came sharp and stinging: “Beggars have turned millionaires by running butcher houses.” Shah ended by entering into another controversial theme of the three Indian soldiers who according to defense minister AK Antony were behaeaded by Indian soldiers and not by the Pakistan army: “When Narendra Modi comes to power on May 16, Pakistan will learn a lesson for beheading our three soldiers.” “Utter Pradesh has always played a role in a change. This time western Utter Pradesh must ensure that Modi comes to power.” I have called Modi as a real time avenger in two of my books, First Hindutva Genocide of Muslims and its Architect, Decade of the Demagogue and his Demagoguery. Taking revenge is barbaric. It is filled with animality in essence. Sometimes back Rahul Gandhi had expressed fear for his life knowing well the forces that claimed his grandmother, father, and the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. They were still at work. To remind him of this Modi had the temerity to remark: “I am proud of the fact that I was born from an ideology. Yes, we have an ideology…Our ideology is society is aove family…Mother India is everything for us. Our ideology is that we will live and die for the country. And that is why, you (Congress) cannot fight this ideoogy. Your entire family has never been able to fight with this ideology. This ideology is based on the altear of sacrifice and service.”[2] The RSS ideology is vicerally relevant to what happned in 2002 and what happned in 2013 Muzaffarnagar. The fundamentals of the ideology also include among other thingsa a prayer: “O Lord, give us such might that no power on earth can even challenge.” Such awesome power no one has dared to control India as a democratic country. Even when it was banned during emergency no other than Narendra Modi was very active against the grand mother of Rahul Gandhi. His mentor was ‘Vakil Saheb’ Lakshamanrao Inamdar who laid the foundation of RSS in Ahmadabad in early 1950s. Modi wrote his biography called Jyoti Punj and PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee released it. Modi was truly like the Prime Minister, he had married Jashodaben but abandoned her to appear a celibate, a condition necessary for a RSS pracharak. She lived all her life alone as a primary school teacher in a village of Banaskantha district. She mostly taught Muslim children and recently retired in old age. This secrecy about his private life is more pronounced when the role of Modi is probed in September 1969 Ahmadabad riots are concerned when nearly a thousand people, mostly Muslims, were killed. He was also active in organizing the rath yatra of Advani that led to blood bath in whichever place it passed through in 1990s. As details are coming out the role of RSS in terrorism is even more a matter of concern because Modi is not only a pracharak of RSS but a candidate in election who is expected to become the prime minister of India. In 1992 it was not a frenzied mob that demolished the mosque at Ayodhya. As the RSS involvement is exposed in a sting operation the secrecy and conspiracy characterize the working of RSS and so leads to the secrecy surrounding how Amit Shah travelled to Muzaffarnagar on March 3, 2014. Shah and Modi are the closest to RSS. First the involvement and the nature of organization that went in the demolition of Babri mosque: “Ramji Gupta was put in charge of this band of 1,200 RSS workers secreted from various regions. Gupta supplied them with all the logistics such as chisels, heavy-duty hammers, pickaxes, spades, grappling hooks and sturdy ropes in good numbers. The army was divided into smaller groups of 10 each with a leader and each group had its job cut out. All these groups had the instructions to merge with the crowds when they would surge toward the Babri Masjid for karseva and finish the tasks assigned to them. They would not listen to any leader, however senior and respected he might be, till the task was accomplished. ‘Jai Sheshavatar’ was the signal for the groups to begin work on their brief, which according to Ramji Gupta, had to be raised thrice. According to Dharmendra Singh Gurjar of Bajrang Dal from Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, from among this band of Laxman Sena, even a suicide squad was formed, which they called Balidani Jattha, a la the fidayeen Islamic terrorist organisations use. This squad was supposed to lead the assault on the Babri Masjid from the front. When the Babri Masjid was razed to dust on December 6, it was Shiv Sena chief Balasheb Thackeray who proudly claimed before the world that it was the Shiv Sena which did the job, as BJP leaders like L. K. Advani went about town offering apologies. Thackeray’s claim was not hollow as the Cobrapost investigation establishes. Role of the Shiv Sena: Like the VHP, the Shiv Sena too had its own plan to demolish the Babri Masjid and conducted a secret training camp in Bhind–Morena in Madhya Pradesh, bordering Uttar Pradesh, where necessary skills were imparted to its cadres.” Little is known about the Narendra Modi Sena/Army that was formed in UP at the launch of the poll campaign by Modi and his lietenant. But now it is appearing that Shah was the king pin in Muzaffarnagar violence too. He trvelled mysteriously. Only the Gujarat police van gave away the secret. No loud speaker or mike was used in any of the meetings. Even the meetins were secret. He met community leaders separately and that gives strong sense of how caste ridden is the campaign. Because to win enough seats in UP will automatically boil down to “breaking deals” with the different castes. His separate meetings with Gurjjars, Rajputs and Dalits illustrate the dubious stand of the right wing Hindutva in dealing with the caste system. It also confiems the suspicion that the RSS used the Valmikis in manufacturing the initial communal clashes of September 7, 2013. Everywhere he went his thematic constant was badla or revenge. Was he instigating the Dalits [Valmikis] and others to extract revenge upon the Muslims? This augurs ill for the comity that has existed in western UP. A cartoon of Modi goes with the words recalling Muzaffarnagar pogroms : iss bar danga bahut bada tha, khub hui thi khun ki barish, agle saal achchi hogi fasal matdaanki. Abki bar sirf ahinkar. “This time riot was very big, there was rainfall of blood so this year the crop that they would reap at the election would be bumper. This time only pride.” What more provocating than the words that Shah uttered to instigate the different castes so insidiously: “This election is about voting out the government that protects and gives compensation to those who killed Jats. It is about badla (revenge) and protecting izzat (honour).” [3] He was flagrantly violent and wanted his message to produce violence as he uttered: “A man can live without food or sleep. He can live when he is thirsty and hungry. But when he’s insulted, he can’t live. Apmaan ka badla toh lena padega.[It is inevitable to take revenge.]” He was in fact imposing his will upon the audience. No sooner these rabble rousing sentiments were uttered than his aides got busy in camouflaging the words to sanitize them for the code of conduct that is enforced during the election period. One of them interpreted the meeting thusthe idea is to meet some influential people who will then go and spread the word in their communities. That works better than rallies.” However the real intent of Shah and his party comes out in the way he said and where he said all those words. Muzaffarnagar is still tense and the wounds are fresh. They have not dried even. People are still mourning their near and dear ones butchered there. All that was done for winning elections! And now these words of revenge had made the wounds bleed profusely. In the end he came to the problems facing India. Price rise is routine. He could not and would not dilate on it for his audience would be bored. It is blood he must demand, “Our country’s boundaries are being breached, heads of soldier are being chopped off and then played football with. Bangadeshis are infiltrating India, our women are’nt safe because the government is too busy with other things, andriots keep happening in utter Pradesh.” Shah’s secret agenda was most likely recruiting the Dalits in further violence that may take place because without them the upper caste cannot do much. In fact the theory that the sangh parivar has been using the Dalits in violence including the pogroms has been well documented. In Muzaffarnagar also it was a Valmiki that started a quarrel with the Muslim sweets shop keeper. Dalits have lived with the upper caste in times of riots and tension between Muslim and Hindus. Why did some of the Valmikis then flee to Dalit areas in Muzaffarnagar from the villages for shelter? It was the Jats who had turned upon their Muslim neighbours in the start of the pogroms. The case of Basi in the next chapter is just that. Shah cashed upon the hurt feelings of Dalits who could not receive compensation they demanded although their houses had not been torched and Dalits as a community escaped unharmed. Shah played on their self interest:kissi maa ke laal mein himmat nahin hai ki who Gujarat mein dange karaye..wahaan Narendra Modi ki sarkar hai. (No one has the courage to instigate riots in Gujarat. Narendar Modi runs the government there.” Why should he patronize the Dalits so? He addressed this last part not to the Jats. The girl that was s talked was from Jat community and not from Dalit community. To the upper caste Rajputs he had a different vein in which to address. Their religious sentiment on the issue of cow is holy. Dalits eat beef so this was not for them. But Rajputs shun beef: “Mullah Mulayam’s government shoud be booted out because they have allowed people who kill cows to prosper. In Gujarat, we don’t have any water, but we have milk. Here, you’re blessed. You have so much water. But all your cows are being killed; all your animals are ending up at the butchers.’” The remarks of taking revenge that Shah had at length dealt with was soundly assailed by most of the poltical parties but without surprising and like programmed automation Mukhta Abbas Naqvi as at his job as the Muslim face of his Hindu party: “The UP government has insulted the people of the state. This is not about Hindus and Muslims. This was about the revenge for the insult.” Thus in the topsy turvy world of Hindutva revenge is insult and insult is r evenge. ------ [1]http://scroll.in/article/this-election-is-a-fight-for-honour-and-revenge-amit-shah-tells-jat-audience-in-riot-areas?id=660535 The RSS prayer includes one, “O Lord, give us such might that no power on earth can even challenge.” [2]http://indianexpress.com/article/india/politics/narendra-modi-attacks-rahul-gandhi-says-his-entire-family-has-never-been-able-to-fight-bjp-ideology/99/ [3]http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/apmaan-ka-badla-lena-hoga-amit-shah-in-muzaffarnagar/ Chapter 13 Valmiki angle, a puzzle The news of the Valmiki person bringing his dirt cart and parking it before a Muslim sweets maker’s shop leading to brawl flashed in the news channels and then eclipsed as the murder of Shahnawaz and the retaliatory murder of Sachin and Gaurav were foregrounded. It is in this melee that the following was circumstanced. In the village of Basi the Jats were returning from their grand rally that confrontation with the Muslims originated and also the deaths of the journalist and his video maker were killed. Muslims had thrown stone at Jats and one of them was killed. Dalit Valmikis took to heels and disappeared from Basi. They sought shelter in Muzaffarnagar in their own neighbourhoods. It raises questions which defy any explanation. The conflict was between Jats and Muslims. Even this is true that not all Muslims and Jats were enemies of each other. The mob psychology is different. If the Dalits were left untouched they could have fled out of fear. Even then it is puzzling that they have grouse against the government for not giving compensation. So suspicion lurks, that the Hindutva groups must have used the Valmikis for their own hidden agenda of perpetrating atrocities on Muslims. In the transcripts of the interrogatives of the accused in September 29, 2008 bomb blast in Malegaon, Naharashtra, and also from the video clippings from the laptop of Dayanand Pandey, Hemant Karkare has cited in his charge sheet the conversation of a meeting where Dr RP Singh, Ramesh Upadhya, the anonymous man from Wanhera, near Ata in UP and other members of Abhinav Bharat talk about using Valmikis to manufacture riots in order to kill large numbers of Muslims. The two examples that crop up in the talk where hundreds were killed are the visit of Uma Bharti to Gudenwar in MP when Muslims opened fire and killed one and Hindus etaliated by killing hundreds and another is the example of “Gangaji ka maidan”, the littoral slum like area of the Gangese where such atrocities were perpetrated according to a “scheme’ of Abhinav Bharat and other extremist groups under the umbrealla of the RSS. (See chapter 12 in Mass-terror Atrocities on Muslims for Hindu Rashtra) In such a complex situation what happened on September 7, 2013 in Muzaffarnagar lends credence to how different groups were used in the murder and myem. There were 28 families of Valmikis in Basi that fled to the town. Ravi Valmiki (30) is one of the persons fled from Basi and now living in Gandhinagar of Muzaffarnagar town wonders:”Muslims got compensation but we didn’t get a single penny. Is it a crime to be a Hindu?”[1] The plight of the refugees is left in doledrums because of the election that is due later this month of April 2014. ------- [1] http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/muzaffarnagar-now-parties-love-voters-forget-victims/1/352765.html Chapter 14 Religious freedom in danger The vice president of USCIRF Katrina Lantos Swett has added her concern again over the role of Modi if BJP comes to power. If the BJP comes in power with Modi as its leader there will danger to the religious freedom of minorities. She says there are 30 groups including VHP, Bajrang Dal, RSS under the banner of the sangh parivar. In their agenda there is no place for minorities. The sangh parivar is forcing such government policies which will strengthen Hindu nationalist agenda and and adopt the Hindutva attitude. The sangh parivar views the non Hindus as non Indian. (Inquilab Sunday April 6, 2014) In the front page report the same paper says that within two days of coming to power they would see that the Mulayam Singh government falls. The new government would take revenge upon Singh. The fear that Swett has voiced coincides with what is actually taking place in Muzaffarnagar. Harish Bhatia is entrusted with the RSS' culture coordination cell for Muzaffarnagar told a voter while canvassing that the "time has come when Hindus need to unite, and that Modi is the man for the job." So uniting Hindus for what purpose? They want to unite against the minorities that is the obvious purpose. That would ultimately lead to formation of India as a Hindu nation. Muslims according to Hindutva are non-Indian citizens hence have no right to live in India unless they accept Hinduism and merge with the majority and cease their minority mentality and also accept Hindu culture. What happened in Muzaffarnagar was that the Muslims were made out to be a threat to the Jat girls and women. They were blamed for teasing Jat girls and women even when this was not a common feature because the Muslims knew how the khap panchayat of the Jats executes those who marry from the same gotra or group of Jats. They do not allow a fellow gotra jat boy and girl to marry or have love affair. This had happened around the time of the pogroms of Muslims when a Jat boy of the same gotra had eloped with a girl. The Jats went to his house and killed him though his father was very much in the house and dare not save his son. This cultural purity of the Jats does not disturb the upper caste Hindus in the RSS and its affiliates. In a similar vein Lalit Maheshwari, the VHP's Muzaffarnagar head, was also canvassing for Modi. He addressed women of a house:"in the present circumstances you have seen how Hindus were tortured and we have to do something and Hindus need to unite to make Modi win. We have come from BJP and we request you to vote for BJP to make Modi ji Prime Minister…The central and state governments are one-sided, and this has made everyone unhappy. As a form of reaction, every Hindu and Hindu family have raised their voice for Modi's government. When we see Gujarat model, we think we need such a Prime Minister who is clear about his mission." His allusion was how the Jat girl was stalked by Shahnawaz and her two cousins Sachin and Gaurav were killed.The VHP's Vijay Chaudhury who is in charge of the wing that organises satsangs seemed to elevate Mr Modi to a higher level. "Let me tell you like we believe in Sanatan dharma and Hindu religion, we believe many gods like Omkar, Bhrama, Vishnu, Mahesh. No individual can be equal to god, but we worship idols of gods. That idol is not god but our heart believes it to be to god. We pray both at home and at temple. But when we visit a temple the environment there is different. This is the same environment in politics. We have Modi's image then it is easy for us to explain." The only way for the BJP's candidate - a local Jat leader, Sanjeev Baliyan - to stand a chance is to hope that the riots, and the Modi card, will lead to a Hindu consolidation, in which some Dalits too break away. The RSS introduced us to a pradhan of a Dalit basti in Patel Nagar, who says that he considers himself to be staunchly Hindu, and that he and his community will vote for the BJP. Ram Madhav, RSS spokesperson, said, "The only issues for the RSS are security, economy, corruption, social fabric being destroyed in the name of caste, region, religion, minority, majority. Now you can pick any one item and say this is Hindutva. But I say all this is Hindutva. Whole thing is Hindutva.” This is the truth around which different groups of Hindutva play politics. They say that they do’t hate Muslims and yet they do not give any ticket to Muslims to fight election either in UP or Gujarat. When Muslims suffer most in any riot, pogrom or even genocide they have not pity for them. Nay, they remark that the Muslims had it coming to them. Furthermore how Hindutva can be the whole and sole agenda of a secular democratic country? http://www.ndtv.com/elections/article/election-2014/truth-vs-hype-the-rss-mission-modi-504888 Chapter 15 Stasis For Muslims affected by he pogroms of September 2013 a kind of stasis has set in as they are resigned to their lot in the relief camps. They have lost their houses and farms and have no steady jobs and no security. Different agencies have surveyed their lot and have drawn their own logical inference. Arjumand Bano (32) of Shaha pur articulates her family changed life thus: “Our situation is not going to change. “The rioters forced us to leave everything and since then we have been living in a temporary makeshift camp with no future for us and our children. Whoever comes to power our condition is going to remain the same. We don’t expect anything from this election.” Asghar Ahmad living in another relief camp with his wife and children: “Who should we vote for? Will they deliver a better future for us? We know nobody cares for us. You should see how our family is living in such a small place.” Rahat Azim(45) of Muzaffarnagar: “We have accepted our destiny. Nothing is going to change for us. We have realised the fact that the political parties, who are standing for Muslims, only want votes and will forget us once the elections are over.”[1] More than two years ago India did make a sincere effort to debate on the The Communal and Targetted Violence Bill in June 2011 in order to prevent what befell to more than 70, 000 people affected by the pogroms in Muzaffarnagr and Shamli disctricts and beyond. The bill was shot down by no other than the Hindutva parties, BJP, Shiv Sena and others. Had the bill been passed the fate of Arjumand Bano, Asghar Ahmad and Rahat Azim would have been different. There was a provision in the bill that the police officer on duty will go to jail if he does not take action and control rioting. The past history shows that if a riot continues for fifteen days it is on accout of the police because they have resources during this time to bring the trouble under control. In Gujarat 2002 chief minister Modi had himself given 72 hours to the extremist Hindu mobs to wreak havoc and take revenge upon the Muslims. Those who carried out his injunction were rewarded and those who stood by the law of the land and controlled the situation like Rahul Sharma were punished. In the pogroms of Muzaffarnagar more than a decade later, the same kind of pogroms took place but the police were more or less under a different dispensation. However unwieldy the situation it was brought to semblance of law and order much sooner. The government in UP did take stern action and did the best it could tohelp the reugees in a contrst to what the Modi dispensation had donein Gujarat. There was no Vajpayee to remind Akhlesh Yadav to do his duty or rajdharm. He was not a Modi either to move his lips perfunctorarily and pat give the reply that he was doing just that. But a Communal and Targetted Violence Bill in force would have gone a long way to even forestall such gruesome tragedies of our public life. [1[http://www.turkishpress.com/news/398441/ Chapter 16 Winning elelction by committing pogroms It is the audacity of the right wing Hindutva to use its hate ideology in open defiance of the democratic norms on which India has come thus far in its short life since independence. At this juncture in India when the people are going to election in a couple of weeks Modi has dared to claim his ideology of RSS based on the secondary nature of the biological mother and supremacy of the country as the female goddess to whom Hindus should worship, idol worship included, and hate the others who do not like the Muslims and think them more dangerous than the British and consider the English rule benign but the Muslim rule as dark ages and hence the need to get rid of the ‘impure’ Muslims or subjugate them as second rate citizen devoid of rights to life and property. Furthermore, he has taunted Rahul Gandhi that he like his ancestors has not understood the ideology for which Modi and others have sactificed so much in their love for Mother India. Mahatma Gandhi had seen the discipline and organization of the RSS and was impressed but he was wary of its import. He told the activists of RSS that “if the Hindus felt that in India there was no place for any one except the Hindus and if non-Hindus, especially Muslims, wished to live here, they had to live as slave of the Hindus, they wouldkilll Hinduism.” Jawaharlal Nehru had seen the ideology in practice and illustratively observed: “that the RSS have a great deal to do with the disturbances not only in Delhi but wleshwere.” In fact at one stage he had issue a warrant against MS Golwalkar when the RSS chief had prepared blue print for committing pogroms. [1] In the twenty first century the RSS through its pracharak Narendra Modi and staunch supporter and a king pin Amit Shah succeeded in organizing two sets of pogroms, of 2002 in Gujarat and of 2013 in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli. It was the same hate ideology which Golwalkar wrote in his book WE: “The non-Hindu people of Hindustan must either adopt Hindu culture and language, must learn and respect and hold in reverence the Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but of those of glorification of the Hindu race and culture.. in a wod they must cease to be foreigners or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment—not even citizens’ rights.” In conemporary India Modi has shown that he is the only one who could implement the ideology of the RSS. It is well seen in the events of violence in 2002 Gujarat and 2013 UP. This time around the RSS has openly espoused Modi to carry out its ideology into practice once he becomes the prime minister. Those who have suffered most know what is in the offing. Even those who have maintained their sanity have also voiced concern for what the hate ideology and its ideologu pracharak chief minister do if he assumes the premiership. PM Dr Manmohan Singh broke his silence only once and that was to warn the nation in the best interest of its people: “Without going into the credentials of anyone, I think it will be disastrous for the country to have Narendra Modi as the PM. If by strong prime minister you mean you preside over the mass massacre of innocent citizens in the streets of Ahmedabad – if that is the measure of strength – I do not believe that sort of strength this country needs.”[2] How Modi’s lieutenants and particularly Amit Shah have behaved in honouring the accused MLAs of Western UP in the pogroms of last year is cogent of the ideology that is still working. Hokum Singh has in fact called the refugees as squatters and he would not allow them to vote in election. That is what Golwalkar wanted Hindus to do vis-à-vis Muslims. That is what Modi did more than ten years ago. Who an stop him repeating the same in future? ------- [1] Gqnehi, Nehru and Golwalkar are quoted by Ramchandra Guha in his book India after Gandhi. New Delhi: Picador 2007. Pp 18-20. [2] http://www.truthofgujarat.com/think-will-disastrous-country-narendra-modi-pm-says-pm-manmohan-singh/#more-3289 Chapter 17 Salutary steps In a landmark judgment in the case of the Muzaffarnagar pogroms the apex court gave order that the state government should pay 15 lakh rupees to the families of each person killed and 5 lakh to each woman raped. This is a positive step in the right direction though in no way it can bring back the dead to life and the rape victim to normal life. Even so it contrasts with the pogroms of Gujarat where the Modi government failed to make record of gang rape and created such afear psychosis that people even dreaded to go to police station because those who killed and raped were allowed to roam freely and were violently threatening their victims and the relatives of the victims. The Modi government neglected its duties in flagrantly defiance of the world opinion. The UP government may not be ideal but much better. The enormous difference between the two is the deficit of fatith and efficiency in Gujarat government which otherwise shouts from roof top how the arro line of progress is climbing so high on its chart of development. The UP government also spares no time to condemn the violence, Modi indulged in prevarication and subterfuges. The Supreme Court further obverved what is so crucial and objective: “We hold the State government responsible for being negligent at the initial stage, by not anticipating the communal violence and for not taking necessary steps for its prevention.” If the UP government had been firm it would not have allwed the khap grand rally in which a huge number of Jats had gathered many of them well armed and threatening. The court also pulled up the central government: “Though the Central government, even on day one, informed this court that all necessary help, both financially and for maintaining law and order, had been provided to the State, there is no authoritative information to this court whether there was any advance intimation to the State about the violence.” In a notable observation the SC wondered if the the district administration was sounded out how the two dominant communites had acted as the situation developed into flash points. There was thus intelligence failure. This had happened in the case of Gujarat 2002 when the UP chief minister andalso home minister Rajnath Singh had suppressed the intelligence report on the unruly behavior of the kar sevaks during the journey of the Sabarmati Express through the state of UP. If Singh had been objective he should have warned Gujarat state about the dangerous trends of the volunteers of Ram temple. This is all the more questionable because March 15 2002 was fixed for a gran rally for the demand to build the Ram temple at Ayodhya. The tempestuousness of the mobs gathering for the mahapanchayat or grand rally should have alerted the state and central government for much swifter swinging into action than either of them showed. Even the dispatch of the army and paramilitary forces was delayed because of the criminal request ofa nice of Maharashtra ATS chief and later commissioner of police, KP Raghuvanshi. Till today no government in the country has bothered to take up this issue. ------- http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/sc-orders-uttar-pradesh-to-pay-rs-15-lakh-to-riot-victims-kin/article5834105.ece Chapter 18 Post pogrom problems Election is round the corner and palpably the Hindu party BJP is all set to encash the resentment of the Jats as a kind of vote bank of the Jats who have traditionally not voted BJP. Bhartendra Singh is the candidate from Malikpura. Sachin and Gauvar were from the same place and Bhartendra has started his campaign from the house of the cousins. The cousins had killed Shahnawaz at a nearby village of Kawaal. The right wing leaders do not want Muslims to return to their houses and cast their votes. This is disenfranchisement of Muslims. Muslims in refugee camps still fear to go to the polling booths. There are attempts to give space for Muslim refugee nearer their own areas which Harsh Mander calls “incentivizing ethnic cleansing”. This woud cause more problems in future. Another is the compilicating factor of caste equation: “What began allegedly with a Qureshi Muslim boy molesting a Jat girl ended up in a fight between Muley Jats and Hindu Jats. The Hindus and Muslims accused each other of targeting lower castes during the riots.”[1] Another aspect is what Rihana in a refugee camp says: "We had to leave our homes six months ago and we have been living like nomads. All we could gather before fleeing were our children. Now we have no identity, no proof. No help has arrived so far. How will we go to vote in the elections?"[2] The women of course are still traumatized by what happened to them. For the first time their bodies were the targets to bear most violence in the name religion. “As in other instances of communal violence, including the anti-Sikh pogrom of 1984, the Gujarat carnage of 2002 and the Kandhamal violence of 2007-2008, the bodies of women and girl had been targeted for specific brutalities of a sexual nature. Some women are actively seeking justice, despite the pressures on them to remain silent - both from the perpetrators and family members driven by notions of family and community honour. Reports such as 'Evil Stalks the Land', brought out by ANHAD, and 'A Human Tragedy Unfolds, As The State Watches', a citizens' report, refer to testimonies of Muzaffarnagar's gang rape and sexual assault victim-survivors. In a January 2014 writ petition filed in the Supreme Court, seven victim-survivors of gang rape expressed their loss of confidence in the Uttar Pradesh government, and have sought the establishment of an independent investigating team to ensure arrest, investigation and the prosecution of the accused persons.” “The two riot-ravaged districts of Muzaffarnagar and Shamli in western UP fall in a region where khap panchayats had already been wreaking havoc on women's lives. In this deeply patriarchal social milieu, the recent communal violence has only helped to turn the clock back on their empowerment and free movement. The women we spoke to revealed that while earlier they had enjoyed some mobility and could work in the sugarcane fields, they were now restricted to tents measuring six feet-by-six feet taking care of children, the sick and the elderly behind the 'purdah'. Their traditional roles as wives, mothers and care-givers have only been reinforced and community leaders now feel justified in restricting women's access to education and livelihood, given the nature of the violence that had been perpetrated on them. The strict control imposed by community leaders on women's dressing, mobility and behaviour is also reflected in the fact that women have not participated in any demonstrations to seek better facilities at the camps, despite being pushed to the brink of survival. Their specific experiences and needs have, therefore, not received adequate public attention. It is as if their existence and voices do not count. The camp leaders, who take decisions on behalf of the embattled community and liaison with the district administration, all happen to be men. In this way, women and girls have once again been rendered invisible “The plight of single women is particularly grave. Those among the victim-survivors who are pregnant or who have just delivered face great mental trauma coupled with a range of health problems because of the lack of nutritious food and poor access to health services. Young women, whose husbands have been killed in the violence, face immense pressure from their husband's family because of the government entitlements they had received. Women who have been allotted a government job due to the loss of an earning member, have to contend with the common refrain, "Why do you need a job?" “One of the striking impacts underlining the gendered by-product of violence are the estimated 550 mass marriages that have taken place in the relief camps, facilitated by Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind (JUEH). These are panic-driven marriages of young girls and women, taken proactively to supposedly protect them from sexual assault and safeguard family honour. The first 55 marriages were conducted in Shahpur camp with the active support of the state government that provided a cash incentive of Rs 1 lakh and household items to the couple, according to JUEH's local leader Maulana Nazhar Mohammed. We conversed with two girls, aged 16 and 17, who got married to boys barely a year or two older and who do small businesses for a living. Both said that they had been married against their wishes and had wanted to pursue their studies. They also expressed their anger at the perpetrators of the violence, which has resulted in the present situation. “The mothers in the camps confirmed that they allowed these marriages out of fear that their daughters would be sexually assaulted, community pressure and the cash/material incentives offered. The role of the state in sponsoring and facilitating mass marriages of young girls is particularly deplorable. It was the duty of the state to assuage the community's fears and provide protection, rather than support such steps driven by patriarchal compulsions. Through mass marriages, not only have these young women been pushed into the responsibilities of married life prematurely, their aspirations to study and earn a livelihood have been snuffed out. We continue to hear of impending mass marriages of young girls living in the camps. “The situation is exacerbated with the state having abdicated its responsibility of providing relief, rehabilitation and reparative justice, forcing vulnerable women to become dependent on religious organisations for their survival. For example, the JUEH is in the process of constructing 500 houses for those families of survivors who are not eligible for government compensation. According to Maulana Azhar Mohammed, each housing colony is designed to have a masjid and a madrassa. In response to our query, he added that a school would also be constructed if there was no government school in the vicinity. While this effort is commendable, how many girls living in these colonies would have access to mainstream education and under the conditions would the girls and women be living in such colonies is anyone's guess. “What is tragically clear is that the Muzaffarnagar-Shamli communal violence is not only a huge blot on secular, progressive and democratic India; it reflects how principles of gender equality and empowerment are routinely violated in the aftermath of such violence.” The above is a summary report of the camps at Hasina Khan to Loi, Juwala and Bassi Kalan camps in Muzaffarnagar district which S Uma visited in in January 2014. . A ubiquitous feature of post pogram is the recrudescence of violence over petty matters as recorded on 10-3-14 from MEERUT: “A brawl broke out between BJP and AAP members in Meerut on Sunday. “Police managed to defuse the situation but said that there was a strong possibility that some groups were triggering communal tension in western UP. "Outside elements are trying to create communal tension in the area. Local residents have been helping us," a senior police official said. "It all may be a coincidence," said Uttar Pradesh-based social activist Sandeep Pandey, who visited the strife-torn villages. "But there is certainly an increase in communal tensions. And I have not seen it so bad for years." [4] Outside elements would imply that Amit Shah has enormous amount of fund to pay the outsiders to carry out the dirty agenda of dividing the people and there by gaining more votes. ------- [1] http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-riots-bring-jats-dalits-on-the-same-page-1972259 [2] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-26540989 [3] Aftermath of Muzaffarnagar's Riots: Women Bear The Brunt | Saumya Uma [4] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/noida/BJP-AAP-supporters-clash-after-online-spat/articleshow/31749059.cms Chapter 19 Look back The events of violence in Muzaffarnagar and other places of western UP are too fresh to to say the final word. Therefore a look at the tragedy from its origin and increasing development into the stories gives a fair idea of where the developments are leading as Muzaffarnagar goes to poll today April 10, 2014. On the first day of September 7, 2013 there were 9 people killed in the aftermathofthe three killed in Kawaal on August 27. The army was deployed. 34 people were injured. A police photographer Israr was recording the grand panchayat when he was killed. A IBN7 channel's part-time correspondent Rajesh Verma also lost his life while covering the events. The pogroms were well planned as the violence spread from the first day, Saturday September 7. It coincided with the proclaimed dharm sansad that was scheduled to start at Deoband. This was also provocative as a religious gathering of Hindus was fixed at the small town of Deband which is the centre of the oldest and most famous seminary of Muslim. It was here that many Islamic scholars were educated and some of them also struggled to have a separate country for Muslims at the time of the partition. The general secretary of Samajwadi Pardy in power in UP, Naresh Goyal blamed BJP: “whenever there are elections, the BJP engineers riots.” He said further: “There have been intelligence reports that they want to cause communal riots.”[1] There is clear indication that it was not clash between two communities but pogroms of Muslims who were under constant threat of violence which led to their exodus from their villages. They fled with only “their clothes on their back and their children in arms.” This was scene in Kharad 45 kilometers from Muzaffarnagar where 70 families huddled into tractors, bullock arts and horse carts. Thus ethnic cleansing had begun before the end of the next day, Sunday September 8. A security officer escorting the the exodus said: “We came across only Muslims who were trying to flee their homes on Sunday, in this particular stretch of east of Muzaffarnagar. They are outunumbered by Jats.” If this was a communal riots there should have been many others besides Muslims fleeing their localities! There was no sign of Muslim attacking others in Kharad. [2] On Saturday the patron minister of Muzaffarnagar Azam Khan remarked "The manner in which the situation is being handled shows that neither the government nor the local administration is functioning." He went further on Sunday ""We needed tough measures... those instigating violence should have been treated as criminals and put behind bars even if he is an influential person. When prohibitory orders were imposed in the district, how did they allow such a big congregation for the Mahapanchayat?" another scrutiny of the disturbance came from another minority leader Shahid Manzoor, another minister who hails from Meerut: "Ultimately, the responsibility is ours. Obviously our image has taken a serious drubbing and I have apprised Mulayam Singh about it. But it is also not the opportune time to point out faults. Firstly, we are concentrating on restoring normalcy. We understand the lapse has been ours but it will be discussed later." Why such violence recur when SP is in power? To this he explained: "We try to explain that the real cause is Narendra Modi and Amit Shah who are now concentrating on UP." [3] Such criticism from within the ruling party shows not complicity of the ruling party itself in the pogroms but how the district administration was involved in letting the situation fester or else was incompetent. For the last two years India was struggling to adopt a bill aginst communal and targeted violence against minorities. But the Hindu party BJP did not allow it to pass. The proposed bill had envisaged 5 years of imprisonment for a police officer not cheking such violence and not using enough force available to nip the violence in the bud. BJP also reaps good result at polls after every such incident of violence and polarization of the Hindus and Muslims. The majority Hindus opt to choose BJP against Congress in the affected areas. On the third day, Monday September 9 the strategy of the assailants changed. They shifted their attacks from the affected ares to fresh areas where the fleeing Muslims were seeking safe haven. They started attacking the refugees on the move.Shariq (35) was attacked and killed when the Jats wounded him on his throat and stomach. He was waylaid on a road where he might have tarried to ease himself or fetch something near the village of Sanota. Two more suffered the same fate but at least one survived to tell the sorrowful fate. Yamin Ali, 33, and his neighbour Mohammed Irfan, 40, were also on the move in a tactful way to avoid roads. They were fleeing from Sisoli village to Dharmpuri when they were ambushed. "We had decided to leave Sisoli on motorcycles, through the fields... we thought we could avoid the mobs if we stayed away from the roads. But after dropping off our wives and children (in Dharmpuri), we were returning to pick up more relatives, when a gang of four ambushed us." "They were hiding in the fields and we did not see them. They pulled Irfan off his motorcycle and assaulted him. I rushed back to Dharmpuri and informed the police personnel there." (Ali) there were 1, 744 licensed weapons in the area, an awesome armed gentry! [4] "Violence increased because of rumours spread by those out to cause communal disharmony. I appeal to everybody to take responsibility for their own villages and not trust strangers from outside," remarkedBharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Rakesh Tikait. [5] The guerilla warfare that appeared for the first time on the second day was between the security forces and the rioters[Hindu Jats]. On Sunday again the violence returned to Kutba Kutbi where a mosque was vandalized, four people lost their life but when the army came it controlled the situation.the rioters even fired at the army. Violence was also reported in Bhavdi, Lakh, Hassanpur and Lisad villages. "The assailants used a crude form of guerrilla tactics and obviously knew the area well. In Bhavdi, where I was posted, they would fire from among the sugarcane fields where they were near invisible. Some would even dart out and throw petrol bombs into houses and at security personnel," According to the police, the rioters primarily comprised Jats who had escaped into the sugarcane fields on Saturday night. "They had fled and stayed the night in the fields. On Sunday afternoon, they returned to their villages to carry out attacks. We believe most suspects were known to their victims," said a senior officer. [6] The guerilla warfare that appeared for the first time on the second day was between the security forces and the rioters[Hindu Jats]. On Sunday again the violence returned to Kutba Kutbi where a mosque was vandalized, four people lost their life but when the army came it controlled the situation.the rioters even fired at the army. Violence was also reported in Bhavdi, Lakh, Hassanpur and Lisad villages. "The assailants used a crude form of guerrilla tactics and obviously knew the area well. In Bhavdi, where I was posted, they would fire from among the sugarcane fields where they were near invisible. Some would even dart out and throw petrol bombs into houses and at security personnel," According to the police, the rioters primarily comprised Jats who had escaped into the sugarcane fields on Saturday night. "They had fled and stayed the night in the fields. On Sunday afternoon, they returned to their villages to carry out attacks. We believe most suspects were known to their victims," said a senior officer.[7] ------- [1]http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/sp-sees-bjp-hand-bjp-an-allindia-tournament-for-muslim-votes/1166151/ [2]http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/muzaffarnagar-fearing-more-clashes-families-flee-homes-in-affected-areas/1166481/0 [3]http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/sp-minister-azam-khan-blames-local-administration-akhilesh-govt/1166804/0 [4] http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/muzaffarnagar-riots-villagers-fleeing-homes/1166836/ http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/stoi/deep-focus/Camps-shut-wounds-open/articleshow/30083664.cms [5] http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/muzaffarnagar-riots-villagers-fleeing-homes/1166836/ [6]http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/toll-26-violence-spreads-to-villages/1166266/0 [7]http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/rioters-used-whatsapp-to-fan-flames-p olice/1167873/0 Chapter 20 Periscope The 2014 elelction will be historic in the annals of record. Narendra Modi has been accused of hatching conspiracy to conduct pogroms on Muslims in Gujarat 2002 and again through his kingpin—the most crucial man for the success of an organization and function—Amit Shah, in September 2013 in and around the districts of Muzaffarnagar and Shamli. In the lexicon of genocide it is pogrom that fits into the pattern of events that unfolded in both the cases. It was nothing but butchery, annihilation, extermination, ethnic cleansing, carnage, final solutition, wholesale murder of holocaust. His Hindu party has the fierceness to get him elected even with this kind of background. He as home minister and chief minister rings up the secretary of Vishwa Hindu Parisha Dr Jaideep Patel on hearig of the trouble at Godhra. A Muslim girl Sophia was molested by the kar sevaks or volunteers for the building of temple in Ayodhya. A compartment of the train bringing the volunteers back from UP had caught fire from within. He remained in Ahmadabad for the whole day and then in the evening he went to Godhra and changed the account of the accident into sabotage by LeT and blamed the Ganchi Muslims living around at the railway station. How could a simple mamledar or deputy collector hand over the dead bodies of the people burnt on the train to VHP boss Jaideep Patel and yet Modi can get exonerated through nototrious clean chits? His right hand man Amit Shah took the clue from him and emulated 2002 in 2013 in UP’s Muzaffaragar! No doubt the UP government erred in not preventing the grand rallies know as khap maha panchayat but it did the right thing to conduct investigation judiciously. Even the Supreme Court evinced faith in it. But in the case of Modi vis-s-vis 2002 butchery the apex court was deeply disturbed. It is against this background that the election of this day April 10, 2014 in Muzaffarnagar and elsewhere will bear witness to who was behind the ethnic cleansing in UP. UP government’s seeking of cancellation of bail to Sangeet Som through Allahabad court, and the bails of Suresh Rana and Kadir Rana through the disctrict courts and as well as the bails of 50 others accused of the violence will weigh in the minds of the votors. The apex court held UP government responsible for not preventing the grand rallies of Jats which led to the pogroms. However the truth has at long last come in the open that the district administration and the police also erred. As the UP government was moving courts on April 8, 2014 the BJP was ready with its manifesto of election. If there is any straw that broke the back of the camel of communal harmony it was the articulation of the manifesto. In the guise of economic development it is the same Hindutva ideology couched in modern terms, it has predictably no space for the internally displaced Muslims in the refugee campsof Muzaffarnagar but has grave concern for the Hindus living in foreign countries and seeking to return and settle in India. The week which saw election beginning in North East on April 7, 2014 and Muzaffarnage today on Thursday April 10, it is clear to see the writing on the wall of extremist nationalism of the Hindu party BJP. "In a democracy, everyone is not only free, but also encouraged to voice his or her concerns … However, all this should happen within the framework of our constitution and with the spirit of 'India First'. We have to keep the nation at the forefront of our thoughts and actions. Any activity, which disrupts the integrity of the nation, cannot be in the interest of any segment of the society or any region of the country."[1] The opening sentence is a ploy that the Modi government in waiting is giving you right to criticize and that is your fundamental right in a democracy. But you are also shackled by two clases ‘our constitution’ and “spirit of ‘India First.’” Modi has shown obsession with a quaint secularism where India overrides its own commitment to secularism. If the Muslims think they can practice their own faith they are mistaken. That is not secularism. It is the adulation of Mother India that is supreme and not Muslims’ article of faith. Their scriptures do not allow idol worship but India First would leave them no chance in this regard. There are other serious implications of India First as I have dealt it in chapter 12 of my book Ishrat Jahan sacrificed at the altar of Hindutva Moloch (2014). If the chief secretary of the government and the advocate general of Gujarat under Modi were involved in the fake encounters and the cover up it means Modi was directly involved in the fake encounters and the cover up. Therefore his definition of secularism as “Indian first” is the proverbial sophistry of the Hindutva when confronted with the problem of the minority Muslims. It amounts to if India is a secular state then it is because the Hindus are secular. But by this logic neither Modi nor the Hindutva groups get away for why did Modi pay two lakh for Hindus killed in the Godhra fire while Muslims got one lakh. So India first as secularism translated into practical terms amounts to denying Muslim justice. Either they live at the sufferance of the Hindu majority or leave the country or get killed. In the evening of the first day of the pogroms on February 28, 2002 Modi visited Naroda Patiya and told Babu Bajrangi that he had come to visit them to encourage them to do the killings and burning with the same zeal as they had done the first day! It was in this context of permanently changing the equation between Muslims and Hindus that Modi had in mind when during his visit to Udhav Thackeray he made the observation of his reactionary theory: "Democracy is not a contract between the ruled and the rulers, as political parties think. Democracy is an excellent system to correct the wrongs and to strengthen the administration." Modi’s Hindutva is of the never-feel-remorse/ repentance type and contrasts with what GL Singhal felt in the end: ‘Singhal is said to have decided to speak the truth after his only child, his 17-year-old son, committed suicide this year. “This is divine justice, sir,” he told CBI officers during a conversation, breaking down. “I have been punished as I killed the innocent.”’Another side of Hindutva is that if an officer is caught and there is no other way to save him then prevent other criminal cases slapped against him. This is seen in Malegaon cases, the ones accused in 2006 were also involved in 2008 blasts. The Hindutva way is that none of their activists should ever be accused of terror crimes because a Hindu is not a terrorist by his gene and faith. But if charges are brought against him prevent other charges being applied. In the case of Gujarat under Modi this has gone on in hundreds if not thousands cases. DG Vanzara et al were arrested in 2007 in the Sohrabuddin cases but none of them is charged in the case of Prajapati case though Tulsirm Prajapati was killed in fake encounter on December 28, 2005 by Vanzara and his assistants. Even in mid 2013 the situation is left to fester in the same way of wayward application of law and order and warped judicial process. Amit Shah as junior home minister is allowed to contest and win election and is now fighting election for the candidates of his party in UP though he is neck deep in crimes, including crimes against humanity. Kauser bi resisted her husband’s abduction by the police Shah told his cops to take her as well. They were brought to private farm houses one of which Shah owned along with Rajiv Jirawala family. They were tortured and Kauser was raped. Tulsiram had known this and therefore he too was framed in false charges and brought from Rajasthan to court hearing in Gujarat and was killed. If this is not crime against humanity what else is this. Four Kashmiris were shot dead even though they had not committed any crime. They had come out their madrasa in Surat in March 2006. They too were accused of being on the way to kill Modi. If this is the precept and practice of India First it is euphemism for dispensation under Hindutva ideology. Harking back to the colonial past is a banal theme says VS Naipaul. He also admired Modi and did feel no remorse to what happened in 2002. And yet an admirerr of Modi Tarun Vijay picks up the same theme when he says: “The old colonial psyche that described us as heathens and pagans to be civilised through a hard dose of the gospel still survives” in the reluctance of the West to have to deal with Modi.[2] Even the vice chairperson Katrina Lentos Swett made it clear that if Modi administration cannot trust the sworn affidavits of its own intelligence officers like RB Sreekumar and Sanjiv Bhatt what to make of this? It is here that the coloial expression of lesser bree with no law comes to mind. Modi’s plain accent and three years of rigorous training is for the RSS to laud but breaking certain internationally accepted norms can be a problem for Modi as it was in the case of Slobodan Milosevic. The Serbian leader also had a penchant to arouse the Serbs against the Muslims. The West has dealt with far worse dictators and extreme nationalist leaders and also hve gone to the UNO the next day to defend their own support to them. This is how Samantha Power looked at the matter and had clearly informed the Obama administration of the ignominy involved in such international fora. India as a civilized country must go to UNO in a civilized manner not the way Modi took on Mian Musharraf and the Pakistani general took the matter to the UNO. Before Modi moves to the national scene as a PM of India he will have to clease the Augean stables of his own making. There are hundreds of cases still pending in which he is invoved in the genocide of Muslims. It is not enough that police agencies like SIT give him clean chits. It is after all the courts who would have to judge fairly in his matter. His officers like Narendra Amin have killed innocent Muslims who had gone to Hyderbad police station to protest arrest of their brothers and parents as did that of Mujahid Sleem. Amin killed Mujahid in the police station itself and there was no forensic examination of his service revolver, let alone registering a case against the inspector of police from Gujarat state! Do the police of Gujarat have this freedom of extra jurisdiction aggression? Will international law allow Modi to get away with this? Can a civilized country have two scales of justice of giving 2 lakh rupees to Hindus killed but only half for Muslims who died the same way? Even taking his own definition of democracy has he the ability to strengthen his own administration which is neck deep involved in butchery, for, after all, who was the grey beard who finally ordered the murder of Ishrat Jhan! Is the back beard really Amit Shah whose base passion promted him to say to Jats and Dalits badla lena hoga “You have to extract revenge.” Against the Muslims? What for? His saying all that in the Western UP gives him away that he was behind the planting of the enmity in the Jats and causing the pogroms in Muzaffarnagar. Amit Shah’s boss also exhorted his followers to take revenge. The revenge is for betrayal. In Bihar the betrayal was that Nitish Kumar renounced the alliance his party had with BJP. Modi threatened to avenge it. Within a short time the revenge came in the shape of the attack on the Budhist templt and the attack on the Gandhi maidan. Another revege was slapping AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal. In the second week of April 2014 he was slapped twice by rickshaw drivers who accused him of betrayal. It was the first incident of the kind. In Gujarat of course BJP musclemen attacked his car with iron rods. The foreces behind the violence are unmistakably right wing Hindutva goons like the ones who had chosen to manhandle lawyers and Hurriat leaders. In the last attack on April 8th Kejriwal went straight to the memorial of Mahatma Gandhi where people saw it as the attack on Gandhi by Nathuram Godse. This is in the vein of the reactionary tendency of the Hindu right. Modi was proud of this ideology of revenge and was a real time avenger. It was based on the tenet there is an “altar of sacrifice and service”. “I am proud of the fact that I was born from an ideology. Yes, we have an ideology. Out ideology is society is above family…Mother India is everything for us. Our ideology is that we live and die for the country.” This is such an exclusionary ideology that it cannot tolerante the existence of the Congress party and its ideology of secularism and equality. In the face of Rahul Gandhi criticizing him for his divisive politics that threatens to tear apart our national unity Modi even dared to fight him without gloves: “And that is why, you (Congress) cannot fight this ideology. Your entire family (Nehru/Gandhi family) has never been able to fight with this ideology.” On April 7, 2014 the Election Commission sent a letter to Amit Shah quoting a passage from his speech in which he clearly hints that he was in support of the street violence against the Muslims which in essence was pogroms. Danga karne ka kisi ko shauk nahin haiy, jab neyaye sabhi pakshon key saath nahin hota hai, tatha yek tarfa karwahi hoti hai , to janta sadak par uternay ko majboor ho jati hai.” “No one wants riots. But when there is no juice given to all parties, or it is partial action, then the people are forced to take to the streets.” This is a flagrant assertion of what the Narendra Modi Army or Sena did in Muzaffarnagar. It is connected to his exhortation that badla lena hoga, “you have to extract revenge.” Prevaricate however he or Modi or BJP do over this, Shah clearly uses the Hindu word badla or revenge and refers to street violenc e which had transformed into pogroms in Shamli and Muzaffarnagar on September 7 2013 and thereafter. Informal reports said that more than several hundred Muslims were killed. Many of the dead were left in the sugar famrs to rot. The Jats burnt them later. The commission has given extracts from Shah’s speech in Shamli where he also spoke that “It is a matter of the honour of Western UP. Now the time of revenge has come.” This is threat and clear violation of the code of conduct that revenge is the motive of election 2014 and the revenge is against the entire Muslim community because Shahnawaz was from Muslim community and he had “molested” the Jat girl whose cousins Sachin and Gaurav had killed him. The quintessential matter is: can a secular country allow revenge on the basis of religious strife that can vertically divide the country? Instead of giving reply to this, Shah and his party have asked the commission to quote exact words he had used and also clarify his phraseology. Shah is doing now what Modi did in 2006-7 election in Gujarat. He justified the murder of Sohrabuddin and even dared the central government to hang him! Dividing people on religious grounds and threatening one religious group people by the majority community in the country also threatens religious freedom for the minority . it is relevant to recall Michael Ignatieff’s observation on democracy. He says democracy enjoins the government to assure the protection of the minority. A secure minority and is participation in government is necessary. You cannot form a government and deny the minority a share in it with whom you have worked for freedom and share the country with them. 2002 Pogroms in Gujart were also revenge. Modi had joined the strike called by VHP and instructed his police to let the Hindus vent their feelings and take revenge for three days. The enior police officer in charge of intelligence and security and security of Modi himself was Sanjive Bhatt who gave a sworn affidavit that he attended the meeting where this instruction was given. Modi denied that Bhatt had attended the meeting. The three days led to genocide of Muslims in which more than 2000 Muslims lost their life. Such is the sorry state of affairs that it is not even recognized as genocide, pogroms of holocaust by the mainstream media of the government. But that is what it was. The American expert and writer Samantha Power in her book calls it The Problem from Hell. Satan came from hell and travelled to heaven to take revenge. The revenge that Modi extracted and Amit Shah wants the people of Western UP to do is clearly speeled out in the words he used at Shamli which the Election Commission has quoted. “You who live in Western UP and are the natives of it, do you know what condition you are forced to live in ; even when you insulted you helplessly sit in your houses silently, this condition has been forced upon you, we have been forced to live as second class citizens, I have nothing to say if you practice communalism by abandoning self respect. The people who cannot defend their self respect [honour] cannot do anything in their life.” Till morning of April 10, the Commission and Shah have been overtaken by the election in Muzaffarnagar. ------- [1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/07/indian-election-bjp-manifesto-nuclear-weapons [2] http://www.rediff.com/news/column/ls-election-column-tarun-vijay-is-stopping-modi-the-wests-new-priority/20140408.htm?pos=3&src=NL20140409&isnlp=0&isnlsp=0 April 10 2014