Gujarat: Let The Truth be Told

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>[bJP News]: Gujarat carnage: let the truth be told

>Thu, 9 May 2002 08:21:06 -0700

>

>Title: Gujarat carnage: let the truth be told

>Author: M.V. Kamath

>Publication: Free Press Journal

>May 9, 2002

>

>

>Now, that the carnage in Gujarat has abated, if not altogether stopped, the

>time has come to state some truths, mostly unpleasant. But they have to be

>told in the interests of future peace and a better social order.

>

>One, there would have been no Ahmedabad had there been no Godhra, a point

>that need to be stressed again and again. And nobody is seriously going to

>take the finding of Star News that Godhra was not pre-planned; there is

>every indication that it was well-planned and equally - and diabolically -

>well-executed.

>

>To say that the Muslims living by the railway track did not appreciate the

>kar sevaks shouting Bharat Mata ki jai is an astonishing bit of sophistry.

>Where is that slogan to be shouted: in Pakistan?

>

>And to insist that Godhra would not have taken place if there was no

>Ayodhya is adding insult to injury. Had the Muslim community been gracious

>- is it too much to ask for that virtue? -and granted the right of Hindus

>to dismantle the Babri masjid and set up a temple to Sri Ram on the site,

>India would have been applauded as a model state where all people lived in

>peace and mutual understanding. The role of the secularists in goading a

>minuscule Muslim population to deny Hindus their straightforward request

>made over centuries has contributed much to Hindu-Muslim tensions.

>

>The secular extremists - yes, there are such in the country-must ask

>themselves whether they may not have been responsible, howsoever

>indirectly, to the spawning of the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu

>Parisad. It is the steadfast role of the secularists in denying the Hindus

>their self-respect in their own country which has been responsible for the

>setting up of the parallel Hindu organisation.

>

>To demonise Narendra Modi and say that he deliberately waited for a couple

>of days before summoning units of the Armed Forces to control the rioters

>merely serves to remind one of the killings in Delhi in 1984 following the

>assassination of Indira Gandhi. Then there was just as much delay in

>summoning the Armed Forces and just as much involvement of the police in

>the killing of innocent Sikhs. And it may be well worth reminding everyone

>that as many as 3,000 Sikhs, men, women and children, were killed in the

>orgy started by Congress hooligans, or almost three times those killed in

>the Ahmedabad riots.

>

>Communal violence has been endemic in Gujarat - and especially in Ahmedabad

>- and it should not be necessary to point out that in the 1992 riots, a

>local conflict transmuted itself into a month-long carnage that left some

>1,500 people dead, 90 percent of them Muslims. As Anuradha Kumar has

>pointed out in a perceptive article in The Telegraph (1 May), "in this and

>in conflagrations that would later follow, not only did political and

>social leaders fail to contain violence, some of them were the chief

>instigators of such violence".

>

>According to an impartial writer, Bharat Wariavwalla, "the Hindu-Muslim

>divide in Gujarat is deeper than perhaps anywhere else in the country and

>it cuts across party lines". Says Wariavwalla, writing in The Tribune (27

>April): "The the Congress is secular and the BJP is sectarian simply

>doesn't hold true in Gujarat". This is a point that Sonia Gandhi may do

>well to remember.

>

>For a three-man committee appointed by the Press Guild of Indira to say

>that the media can be absolved of fanning the fires of killings, loot and

>murder is to refuse to look facts in their face. The media, especially the

>English print media, and, of course certain Television channels, have much

>to answer for.

>

>Whether the 2002 riots in Ahmedabad rank higher is ferocity or bestiality

>than riots in the same city in the past or riots elsewhere in the country

>is a moot question. What needs to be asked is whether both communities have

>learnt the simple lesson that in the end violence just does not pay. One

>view is that the just-concluded riots may at last bring sanity to people in

>Gujarat and see the end of riots for all times to come. Those who have

>followed events elsewhere in the world point to the fact that after a

>quarter century of bitter fighting, Christians and Muslims in Lebanon have

>made peace with each other, and there is no reason why Hindus and Muslims

>in Ahmedabad and elsewhere in India should not follow the Lebanon example.

>

>The point must be emphasised that all Opposition parties have cynically

>used the Ahmedabad riots for self-serving purposes and as a way of catching

>minority (namely Muslim) votes. That is the most sickening aspect of the

>picture as it emerges. Worse still is the deliberate manner in which

>parliamentary proceedings were stalled by the Opposition for six whole days

>at heavy cost to the national exchequer. The manner in which the

>proceedings were carried on, the foul language used, the theatricals and

>the hysterics reflect no glory to the Opposition which, by its behaviour,

>has demeaned itself. This calls for public condemnation.

>

>Another point to be noted is the angst shown by tribals in the

>Chotte-Udepur area of the Vadodara district when 7,000 of them, armed to

>the teeth, sought to massacre Muslims in Bodeli town, complaining that they

>have long been ill-treated by Muslim merchants and middle-men. A Media

>inquiry would surely find out - if an inquiry is pressed - that the tribals

>of Gujarat blame local Muslims for their exploitation, especially of tribal

>women.

>

>According to another observer, Arvind Lavakare, bullying by the minority

>over the years has largely been responsible for the educated Hindu class to

>veer to the conclusion that 'enough is enough'. It may not bring back a

>single wasted life but it may explain to some extent the ferocity of the

>riots this time.

>

>Writes Lavakare: "The overt and covert appeasement of Muslims by the

>political class and the media is finally it appears, becoming too stifling,

>even for the traditionally tolerant Hindu".

>

>The religious guru and founder of the Art of Living Foundation, Ravi

>Shankar has been quoted as saying that in Karnataka, 40,000 Hindu temples

>have an annual income of Rs. 400 million of which only Rs. 5 million are

>spent on them, the rest going to the government. Ravi Shankar is then

>quoted as saying that while the income from minority religious institutions

>is just about Rs. 5 million, they get government grants of Rs. 80 million.

>

>Though the riots this time were confined strictly to Gujarat and, that too,

>mainly in Ahmedabad their repercussions have apparently been felt all over

>India. It may well usher in aperiod of deep introspection among both the

>Muslim and Hindu communities as to how far they can go without damaging

>their respective economies. It could also lead to fresh thinking on what

>secularism is and what Hindutva should be and how far both could be pressed

>without inviting opprobrium.

>

>Yet another phrase - jihad - that has frequently reverberated in Muslim

>areas in large towns and cities may now come to be re-defined. As practised

>by Pakistan in Jammu & Kashmir, it has reflected badly on Muslims in India

>and may be said to have substantially contributed towards the raising of

>Hindu-Muslim tensions in the country.

>

>At the same time attention of secularists is being drawn to the plight of

>the Pundits of Kashmir, thousands of whom are living in the most miserable

>conditions in Jammu and elsewhere. According to Ashok Padit, spokesperson

>of Punum Kashmir, about 10,000 Kashmiri Pandits have been shot dead over

>the years and some 3.5 lakhs have not only been dispossessed but have been

>thrown out of the state without so much as a protest from the secularists.

>While the Gujarat Government is being condemned for not showing enough

>sensitivity towards the plight of Muslim refugees, not one word of

>sympathy, it is claimed, has been uttered concerning the suffering of

>Kashmiri Pundits. The insensitivity of secularists in this regard can only

>be termed as sickening.

>

>For the first time in Indian history foreign intervention in India's

>affairs have been noted with the European Union - represented in India by

>Spain and Belgium - presenting a 'demarche'against Delhi for violation of

>Human Rights. This is ironic considering that in the middle ages the

>Spaniards drove out the Moors from the entire Iberian peninsula and

>destroyed every one of their mosques with a mindless ferocity that would

>put to shame anything that has happened in India in the last fifty years.

>As for the Belgians, their record in the Congo would make any decent man

>cry in shame. But apparently the Government of Spain and Belgium think

>Indians either have no sense of history or are short of memory.

>

>What Muslims forget, but what M.J. Akbar has rightly pointed out in his

>book: 'The Shade of Swords' is this. To quote him: "The only Muslims in the

>world to enjoy sustained democratic liberty are not in Pakistan, but those

>who remained in India. Indian Muslims have had more problems than anyone

>deserves, paying the price for their ancestors, on the one hand and the

>success of the Muslim League on the other, but they remain the only Muslims

>- and there are now over 160 million of them - with guaranteed democratic

>rights" which no party in India - and certainly not the BJP - wants to or

>can take away from Muslims. And when that is said, everything is said.

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