Cry O my beloved India!

[Guest guest]

Just to balance things and help us understand how taking sides in political

disputes is not so black and white here is something worth reading:

 

Vajpayee is an honourable man

 

So why did he do nothing when Gujarat burned?

 

MADAN BHATIA

 

The BJP, while demanding the resignation of charge-sheeted ministers, has

said that L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti, who had also been

charge-sheeted and were made ministers, belonged to a different class

because the crimes with which they were charged did not involve moral

turpitude.

 

This differentiation exposes the depravity of the party. According to it, if

you destroy a place of worship for Muslims, drive a wedge of hatred between

Hindus and Muslims and strike at the basic foundation of secularism on which

the Constitution is based and thereby commit an offence under Section 153A

of the Indian Penal Code, punishable with imprisonment extending to five

years, such an offence is merely part of political ideology and bereft of

any moral turpitude. No wonder the BJP has been identified with fascism. By

this logic, Hitler and his Nazi party which committed crimes against Jews

and resorted to ‘the final solution’ by exterminating 6 million Jews did not

commit any crime which involved moral turpitude; those crimes were committed

in furtherance of the Nazi ideology.

 

 

 

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The offences committed by the Sangh Parivar and with which the BJP leaders

had been charged were crimes against the integrity of India. They are so

heinous that Section 8 of the Representation of the People Act provides that

if a person is convicted of an offence punishable under Section 153A of the

IPC, he shall be disqualified for a period of 6 years. The BJP leaders’

criminal conduct does not stop there. On February 27, 2002, two bogies of

the Sabarmati Express were set on fire near Godhra station by a mob of

Muslims; 59 passengers were burnt to death in a gruesome manner. Those who

perpetrated the cold blooded murders were guilty of a crime against India’s

integrity. The might of the state should have been directed at catching them

and they ought to have been tried in the manner of the Nuremberg trials.

Retribution ought to have been swift and exemplary.

 

What actually took place was an occurrence the like of which had never taken

place in independent India. There was state-sponsored terrorism and riots in

which thousands of innocents, Muslim men, women and children, were

butchered. Women were raped. Lootings went on unchecked. Thousands left

their homes and huddled like animals in makeshift camps. While all these

events were taking place, the Modi government, to borrow from the Supreme

Court’s observation, fiddled like Nero. Modi’s conduct made him the abettor

of all these crimes.

 

This abetment did not stop at Modi. The then home minister, L.K. Advani, and

the then prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, were equally guilty of

abetment. The Gujarat disturbances called for the immediate deployment of

the army. Advani desisted from deploying these forces. He declared it was a

law and order problem which did not fall within the Centre’s purview.

Vajpayee’s only concern was the media which was exposing the events. When

disturbances broke out on February 28, all that Advani did was to make an

announcement on the evening of February 28 that a decision had been taken to

instruct the army to stand by. Only 600 troops reached Ahmedabad on March 1

but they were not deployed. It was only in late afternoon that they were

sent in by which time the carnage had spread to different parts of the

state. The stand taken by Advani and the Vajpayee-led Union government that

what was happening was a matter of law and order which fell within the state

government’s purview, and that the Union had no constitutional

responsibility, was specious, indefensible and contrary to Article 355.

 

The US Constitution which is purely federal in character obliges the federal

government under Article 4 Section 4 to protect each state from foreign

invasion and “on application by the Legislature or the Executive of a State

against domestic violence”. There is no such restriction contained in

Article 355 of the Indian Constitution. But even in the US, the Supreme

Court has nullified the restriction of an application by the legislature or

the executive of a state before the federal government can intervene to put

down domestic violence by declaring: “No trace is to be found in the

Constitution of an intention to create dependence of the Govt of the Union

on those of the States for the execution of the great powers assigned to it.

Its means are adequate to its ends and on these means alone was it expected

to rely for the accomplishment of its ends...We hold it to be

incontrovertible principle that the Govt of the US may by means of physical

force exercised through its official agents, execute on every foot of

American soil, the powers and functions that belong to it. This necessarily

involves the power to command obedience to its laws and hence the power to

keep the peace to that extent.”

 

Each word of the US Court applies with equal force to the Indian Union. For

the protection of life, liberty and fundamental rights of citizens and for

preserving India’s integrity and secular fabric, the writ of the Union runs

on every foot of Indian soil. Advani and Vajpayee, therefore, neglected

their constitutional duty. Their complicity, and that of the BJP, in the

Gujarat events stood exposed at the meeting of its National Executive in Goa

at which Modi was hailed as a hero and Vajpayee virtually declared that it

was Muslims themselves who were responsible for the carnage.

 

Modi is liable to be chargesheeted for the crimes committed in Gujarat 2002

as accomplice and abettor of those crimes. Advani and Vajpayee are liable as

abettors under Section 107 of the IPC for having failed to perform their

constitutional duty to crush the disturbances. Their utterances at Goa and

conduct in protecting Modi demonstrate their indifference and omission to

perform their constitutional duty to protect the lives, liberty and rights

of Gujarat’s Muslims was deliberate. Vajpayee’s admirers may describe him as

the best prime minister India has had after Nehru. But for his indefensible

and morally, politically and constitutionally reprehensible role during the

Gujarat disturbances, posterity shall not forgive him.

 

If the BJP removes Narendra Modi and Uma Bharti as chief ministers and

Advani resigns as leader of the Opposition and Vajpayee and Advani are

chargesheeted and face trial for abetment of the crimes committed in

Gujarat, the nation will support the BJP’s demand for the resignations of

Laloo Prasad Yadav and other chargesheeted ministers. If the BJP is not

willing to do so, it has no locus standi or moral justification to make such

a demand.

 

The writer, a barrister, is a former Congress MP