Gujarat: A blot on the face of secularism

Mamoona Ali Kazmi




RECENTLY, Supreme Court's appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) of Gujarat police brought out the involvement of politicians and officials in the Gujarat riots of 2002. The SIT charged the present Minister of Education and Naroda's three times BJP MLA Maya Kodnani with leading a mob of 15,000 to 17,000 rioters that killed 95 Muslims in Naroda Patiya and Naroda Gem areas of Ahmadabad on 28 February 2002. She fired from her pistol and distributed swords among her supporters. SIT has 33 witnesses against the Minister. This is totally opposite to the claims of Chief Minister Narendra Modi that the riots were a reaction to the burning of Sabarmati Express and the state had no role in it. There is no rule of law in Gujarat as the woman involved in the killing of Muslims continues to remain as Minister and Muslims are still waiting for justice. The Congress party revealed that the ruling BJP was shielding Minister Maya Kodnani and the Chief Minister himself facilitated her to go into hiding in order to secure bail. Two senior police officers, Mr. R.B. Sreekumar and Mr. Rahul Sharma have disclosed to SIT how Mr. Modi had instructed them on 7 May 2002 not to concentrate on the Sangh Parivar as its members were not doing anything illegal.

In 2002, in the Indian State of Gujarat, the storm troopers of the Hindu right, launched a pogrom against the local Muslim population. They looted and torched Muslim-owned businesses, assaulted and murdered Muslims, gang-raped and mutilated Muslim women. By the time the violence spluttered to a halt, about 2,500 Muslims had been killed and about 200,000 driven from their homes. Despite the passage of seven years since the February-March 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in the Indian state of Gujarat, not a single one of the principal perpetrators of this horrific crime has been punished. Most of the cases filed by victims of the violence have never been investigated. Witnesses have been intimidated. No more than a dozen low-level culprits have been convicted and no major conspirator has been brought before the court.

Gujarat pogrom occurred in the wake of burning of Sabarmati Express carrying Hindu extremists. In the fire 59 Hindu militants (kar sevaks) were killed. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its Rashtriya Sawyamsevak Sangh (RSS) allies have insisted that Muslims executed this incident. Within hours of the fire, leaders of the BJP and allied Hindu communalist organizations were inciting Gujaratis to come into the streets to protest the Godhra deaths. When Muslims became the target of violent attacks, they depicted the attacks as spontaneous, arising from Hindus' desire for revenge. There is much evidence to show that leading figures in the Hindu-supremacist BJP, which was in power in 2002 and its militant factions such as the RSS, Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) organized and fomented the carnage in Gujarat. Indian and global human rights organizations have singled out Gujarat's Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, of the BJP as the key culprit. Yet, Modi remains Chief Minister and has become the BJP's most popular figurehead.

K.R. Narayanan, who was India's President at the time of Gujarat massacre, told a Malayalam-language Magazine that he implored Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to immediately deploy the army to Gujarat with orders to suppress the anti-Muslim riots, but the BJP leader ignored his pleas. He said, "If the army had been given the powers to suppress the violence, the Gujarat riots would never have escalated into a state-wide convulsion. But the BJP government did not do it; the centre also did not do it. It was a conspiracy between the state and the central government that was responsible for the Gujarat violence".

SIT is not the first to bring out the involvement of the Gujarat government regarding Muslim riots into the limelight. Previously, Tehelka magazine revealed that the 2002 Gujarat sectarian riots had the "sanction" of Chief Minister Narendra Modi and that many of the accused had admitted this on camera. The magazine's Editor-in-Chief Tarun Tejpal said at a press conference that it had done a sting operation by talking to a number of Sang Parivar leaders, including Godhra BJP MLA Haresh Bhatt, Shiv Sena leader Babu Bajrangi, who was earlier in Vishwa Hindu Prishad (VHP), and VHP leaders Anil Patel and Dhawal Jayanti Patel to bring out the truth. Tarun Tejpal said his reporter was posing as a researcher studying the growth of Hindu nationalism. The men told the reporter that Gujarat's Chief Minister, Narendra Modi had encouraged them to massacre Muslims and prevented police from stopping the killings.

Transcripts of the recordings quote Bajrang Dal leader Babu Bajrangi as saying the killing of the Hindus on the train made him feel like killing Muslims and "hacking them apart". He said, "I am proud of it if I get another chance, I will kill even more". Bajrangi, who was arrested and then quickly released on bail for his alleged role in the rioting, was also quoted as saying Modi manipulated the legal system to protect the rioters. Bajrangi told that Modi kept on changing judges to ensure his release. A leader of Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Rajendra Vyas, reportedly told Tehelka: "As Chief Minister, Narendra bhai (Modi) couldn't say kill all the Muslims. I could say it publicly because I was from VHP. He gave us a free run to do whatever we wanted to since we were already fed up of the Muslims ... the police was with us".

Similarly, Godhra BJP MLA Haresh Bhatt was purportedly caught on tape saying he was present in a meeting in which Modi gave him three days time "to do whatever they wanted." "After three days, he (Modi) asked to stop and everything came to a halt." The magazine claimed Dhawal Jayanti Patel told its undercover reporter that the VHP activists made lots of bombs in a factory owned by him. A BJP MLA was shown as saying they even made rocket launchers, which was used in the pogrom. Tehelka's story quotes activists of the BJP and affiliated right-wing Hindu groups, such as the VHP and the Bajrang Dal, as saying that bombs were assembled and hundreds of swords collected ahead of the planned violence.

BJP is a gang of a few sophisticated ruffians. These people are hungry for money and power. Their speeches and their actions do not match. They want to spread communal hatred in the name of Hinduism and thereby climb to power. According to the noted scholar Ashish Nandy, Modi shows all signs of being a psychopathic dictator. He, Advani and their likes must be arrested and jailed for their anti-national and anti-constitutional crimes. Modi's ministry contains so many criminals and ruffians. Modi's government in Gujarat is being run on lies, oppression and spying. And Gujarat is now engulfed in crime and riots.

The principal architect of the massacre was Narendra Modi, the then and now Gujarat's Chief Minister. Notwithstanding his role in inciting the violence and ensuring that security forces took no effective action to protect Gujarat's Muslims, Modi not only continues to head Gujarat Government but also serve as one of the principle leaders of the BJP at national level. This is due to Congress' reluctance to convict him despite a lot of evidences that he organized the Gujarat pogrom. The perpetrators of the Gujarat pogrom remain at liberty while Muslims who were arrested in 2002 under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), a law formally repealed by the UPA government in 2004, still remain in detention. Tens of thousands of Muslims have been condemned to live in squalor in relief camps. The Muslims who have returned to their hometowns and villages in the years since the pogrom have frequently been forced to make "concessions" to their Hindu Chauvinist tormentors and must live under the constant threat of renewed Hindu supremacist violence. Many Muslims were only able to return to their home villages after agreeing to drop criminal cases filed against Hindus. In many Gujarat villages, the local mosque has had to cease making calls to prayer and Muslims must celebrate their religious festivals behind close doors and have been compelled to stop openly selling meat.

Congress and BJP are making fun of democracy. Both have their hands dipped into the blood of innocent people. Congress is accountable for the massacre of the Sikhs in 1984 and BJP is responsible for Gujarat pogrom and Christian carnage in Orissa. For their parochial interests both avoid to convict each other for their sins as both are sailing in the same boat. No doubt, India has failed to emerge as a secular state even after 61 years of independence. BJP and Sangh Parivar are constantly using the communal card to win the forthcoming elections. Whether it is BJP or Congress both have sidelined Muslim community to the advantage of Hindu vote bank.