Author: M.V.Kamath
Publication: Free Press Journal
Date: June 24, 2004
URL: http://www.samachar.com/features/240604-features.html
If former Prime Minister Atal Behari
Vajpayee is to be believed, then not removing Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra
Modi following the 2002 communal violence in the state was "a big mistake".
According to Vajpayee, the impact of the Gujarat riots was felt nation-wide,
it was unexpected "and hurt us badly". Certain elements had shot films
showing the riots in a ghastly light and, as Vajpayee put it, "the whole
thing was run like a campaign".
So should Modi be thrown out? The
throwing out of Modi if accomplished may turn out of be a one-day wonder.
Politicians in the past have come and gone and some have achieved no greater
distinction than being treated as footnotes to history. Modi may well turn
out to be just one more footnote. But to do justice to him one would have
to compare what happened between February and May 2002 in Gujarat with
what happened between October and December 1984, in Delhi. In the former
case riots took place in some parts of Gujarat following the incineration
of 58 women and children in a railway caoch in Godhra; in the latter case
riots took place following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Consider the background to Indira
Gandhi's assassination. From 1982 onwards she was playing a dangerous game
of political roulette in the Punjab which was bound to have serious consequences.
Support had been given to Bhindrawale who turned out to be a monster. In
order to contain him and his separatist adventurism the Army had to be
enlisted to attack the Golden Temple premises, with what results is so
well known.
Indira Gandhi hurt the Sikh community
deeply and it took months for the separatist tendencies finally to be brought
under control. At no time did the community as a whole wish to hurt her.
In the end it was only two of her Sikh body guards who did her in. What
happened then has been graphically described by a senior journalist Rajinder
Puri on Sunday, November 2, 2003 in the Spectrum supplement of the Chandigarh
based The Tribune. And this is what he wrote: "The next day anti-Sikh riots
began. It was a systematic massacre. Sikh homes were earmarked, and then
torched. Sikhs were pulled out of their homes and killed or burnt alive.
I witnessed the carnage at several places.
"A mob burnt a shop near Regal Cinema
in Connaught Place in Delhi while a policeman looked on silently... This
continued for several days... Later I learnt that the same mob went further
and set fire to a car with a Sikh lodged inside. He was burnt alive. If
the police wanted, the situation could have been controlled easily. In
fact, I witnessed policemen urging lumpen youth from shanty colonies to
burn and loot... I visited some of the worst sites like Khichripur in East
Delhi where poor, defenceless Sikhs were brutally killed while their wives
and children watched... The Army offered to control the situation at the
first signs of an ugly situation. The government bluntly ordered the Army
to desist, Only after the carnage, after more than 3,000 Sikhs had been
slaughtered, after forty to fifty thousand had been rendered homeless,
did the government take steps to stop the violence..."
Congress sympathisers were heard
to shout: "Blood to avenge blood!". And consider what Inder Malhotra, no
friend of the BJP wrote in his book `Dynasties of India and Abroad': "He
(Rajiv Gandhi) had been slow to control the shameful anti-Sikh rioting
in Delhi... More disgracefully there was also evidence to show that several
Congress (I) leaders had joined in engineering the pogrom... He (Rajiv)
played very heavily on anti-Sikh sentiment... He seemed not to realise
that to play the communal and religious card in a country of Inidia's diversity
and pluralism was like playing with fire..." And M. J. Akbar wrote in The
Telegraph (2 Nov. 1984): "The police simply looked the other way... The
looters were totally unembarrassed. The desire for revenge was the controlling
theme of the day..."
On Sunday, July 13, 2003 The Times
of India carried an article entitled: The X-Files: Where The Mob Goes Scot-free.
It described the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, the Mumbai riots and the Gujarat
riots of February-May 2002. According to the article 2,733 people were
killed in the anti-Sikh riots, senior Congress leaders like H.K.L. Bhagat,
Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar were the main accused, all of whom were
acquitted by a lower court. According to The Times of India in Gujarat
there were "approximately 1,000 deaths".
Incidentally a Times staffer, Sidharth
Varadarajan mentions some 2,000 people were killed in Gujarat. Let us accept
the higher figure. It is still 2/3 of the number killed in Delhi. But consider
the circumstances in which the Gujarat riots took place. Some 58 women
and children were suffocated and burnt alive in two railway coaches in
Godhra. Indira Gandhi was shot by just one Sikh bodyguard. But the railway
coaches were set on fire by a huge crowd of Muslims that had gathered.
Narendra Modi had nothing to do with the passengers in the coaches nor
had he done any personal harm to the Ghanchi Muslims who indulged in arson.
Rajiv Gandhi took 72 hours to seek the help of the Army.
Narendra Modi sought help within
24 hours. A Chief Minister who, on learning that 58 Hindu women and children
have been burnt alive in a railway coach in Godhra promptly calls for help
of the Rapid Action Force and the Army, would hardly be simultaneously
inciting a mob to loot, burn and kill. When the anti-Sikh riots took place
in Delhi Rajiv Gandhi is reported to have said: "When a big tree falls
the earth is bound to shake". He never denied saying it.
To put words in Narendra Modi's
mouth he is supposed to have said: `Action and reaction are equal' the
English media did not hesitate, though Modi himself never used them. And
consider this: Ahmedabad had a Congress majority in the Municipal Corporation.
Not a single Congress corporator went out into the streets to put an end
to rioting. Nor did any Ahmedabad Congressman. And Sonia Gandhi sat tight
in Delhi, no doubt reading reports. That was Congress contribution to the
ending of riots.
In the case of Indira Gandhi it
might be argued that she attracted the fury of Sikhs. In what way was Narendra
Modi responsible for the Muslim fury against innocent women and children?
Did Rajiv Gandhi stop the killing of Sikhs? Can it be said that he connived
in the riots? Put it another way: could Rajiv Gandhi have succeeded in
stopping the riots? He could not. Nor could Narendra Modi have succeeded
in Gujarat even after the Army help was obtained. There are times when
logic flies out of the window and revenge enters. President Kalam speaks
of the `gruesome killings' in Gujarat, no doubt referring to the Best Bakery
incident.
Undoubtedly it was gruesome. But
was the torching of a railway coach in Godhra less gruesome? Visualise
the scene. Thick smoke is pouring into the coach. The children are crying.
The mothers are trying desperately to hold on to their children even when
they are themselves asphyxiated. Then the flames leap in, scorching those
inside. Both the women and their children.
Why isn't anyone giving this some
thought? Why is the judicial mind silent about Godhra but is so vocal about
the Best Bakery? Aren't those women and children fifty eight of them also
human, even if they happen to be Hindus? Or are some of our Nero fiddlers
in high places blind as well? Shedding blood is gruesome. Is it all right
to kill 3,000 Sikhs for the fault of one guard who killed a Prime Minister,
in a spirit of revenge, but it is all wrong for people to get incensed
at the thought of 58 women and children killed in the most gruesome way?
In Gujarat the matter was taken up by the Gujarati press, reflecting prevailing
Gujarati sentiment. Modi had no hand in it. One has to understand the Gujarat
psyche to understand what happened after Godhra and why?
Even if by some perverse chance
Sonia Gandhi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat she would not have been
able to halt the wave of anger that swept across Gujarat at what happened
in Godhra. If there was no Godhra, there would have been no Best Bakery
and Modi would probably have ended a term as Chief Minister without any
fanfare. Much of the hatred against Modi is pure English media creation.
The gruesomeness of the anti-Sikh
riots is deliberately played down. The gruesomeness of Gujarat riots is
deliberately played up. We have a media that is determined to shoot down
Modi and it will go to any length to see that he is punished and forget
Delhi 1984. Were the Sikh gentleman locked up in his car which was then
set fire to, to come to life and give evidence in a court, he no doubt
would be able to say how it feels like to be burnt alive. Likewise the
58 women and children.
There must be a limit to media hypocrisy.
Baying for Modi's blood sounds glorious. We are a secular people, aren't
we? We have to defend the lives of the minorities, shouldn't we? What,
one wonders, would the Godhra Muslim community have done if a Hindu mob
had deliberately set fire to a railway coach that was bringing 58 Muslim
women and children returning from a Haj pilgrimage. Taken it sportingly?
And would the English media have given excuses for the behaviour of the
Hindu mob as it has provided excuses for the torching of the railway coaches
by the Ghanchis of Godhra? Modi says that he is willing to be hanged, but
who will hang the gentlemen of the English media who have deliberately
created an atmosphere of hatred against Gujarat in general and its Chief
Minister in particular? And what purpose is it supposed to serve in the
end? And does the English media realise that by continuing to condemn Modi
it is only inciting Islamic fundamentalists to resort to more violence
and to make plans to kill him?
