Author: AK Roy
Publication: The Statesman
Date: September 23, 2004
URL: http://www.thestatesman.net/page.arcview.php?clid=3&id=83317&usrsess=1
When the country was trying to forget
that frightening memories of the Godhra and Gujarat episodes, the proposed
re-inquiry will not only reopen the Godhra file; it will reopen the Godhra
wound. Nothing can benefit parties like the BJP more. The new inquiry by
Justice Mr UC Banerjee has come when already an inquiry by the Nanavati
Commission is in progress.
The need for another inquiry cannot
be explained except that a new government has come into existence. The
controversies have started from the very beginning both on the motive and
on the procedure. The Godhra re-inquiry only shows that we are losing common
sense.
Role of the mob
What shall we expect to achieve
by the Godhra re-inquiry except travelling by the Sabarmati Express from
Muzaffarpur to Godhra passing through Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh
with 62 stoppages in between? What happened at Godhra railway station on
the morning of 27 February 2002 was witnessed by thousands when the train
stopped at the signal at 7.30 am, caught fire killing 57 Kar Sevaks in
a reserved compartment S-6, including 25 women and 14 children. The question
was not who set fire to the train or how it caught fire but that it caught
fire and the passengers had to die burning with doors and windows closed
when the train was stationary, surrounded by the mob of thousands.
This questions the role of the mob.
Does it need a forensic expert? Had the mob been neutral, the passengers
would have jumped from the burning train and had the mob been friendly
it would have tried to put out the fire and not prevented the fire brigade
from approaching. But the mob was more frightening to the passengers then
the fire which was consuming them slowly. Can there be a more horrific
situation than this?
But there was no condemnation against
the perpetrators of this crime and not a word of sympathy for the victims,
at least not a word came out in the Press as a reaction, and now one more
inquiry has been constituted to divert attention from the cruelty.
The Godhra incident was the starting
point of the Gujarat episode over which the secular forces are wailing
so loudly. They are justified in doing so but they should have spoken out
against the Godhra incident with equal wrath and condemnation when Godhra
was a million times ghastlier than the Best Baker incident. On the contrary,
adding insult to the injury, a demand was made for a forensic inquiry to
belittle the crime and confuse the public. Now a re-inquiry has been started
perhaps now to erase that crime altogether. Thus the secularits lost the
battle against the communalists in Gujarat in the first round itself.
Who are gaining from such partisan
handling of the episode? The answer is, the communal forces. It is not
the noise but silence over Godhra that has weakened the secular forces
and strengthened the communal forces, specially the Gujarat government
and its chief minister. The incident took place in broad daylight.
Wrong campaign
Godhra is a minority-dominated area,
even called a "mini Pakistan" and the mob at the station was definitely
not to greet the Kar Sevaks. But what were the Gujarat police and the administration,
supposed to be the protector of Hindus, doing? Stern action at the start
would have averted the disaster, saving Hindus in Godhra and Muslims in
Ahmedabad. But nothing was done and for this failure the Gujarat government
along with its chief minister stand accused. But due to the wrong campaign
on Godhra they have emerged as the heroes of Gujarat.
No inquiry, whether by Mr Nanavati
or by Mr Banerjee on Godhra and Gujarat, will be meaningful if it fails
to explain the frenzied behaviour of Hindus in the last riot. One can understand
the interest of the ruling Hindu majority but what was the interest of
the minority in starting the riot? Was it sheer madness or part of the
deal between the two communal forces? Or was there a CIA and ISI hand to
bring destabilisation especially when Mr Musharraf is being fondly called
Busharraf? It looked as if the majority was fighting its last battle of
existence. This is something new and, at the same time, a matter of great
concern.
What is disturbing is that, even
after two years, whether in Godhra or in Ahmedabad, there is no sign of
repentance, specially among the majority, which is vital for bringing about
normalcy. There is an apprehension of becoming dominated. The failure to
enforce a uniform civil code, the proposal for reservation for the minority
in Andhra Pradesh, the result of the last census on the population growth
etc. have contributed to such a notion, communalising Hindus who had remained
so long in a liberal society.
In India though Hindus constituted
81.4 per cent of the population and Muslims 12.4 per cent, that does not
mean that one communalism is less aggressive and less menacing than the
other.
After all, a 20 per cent Muslim
population could cause the division of India creating Pakistan. A series
of cold-blooded, one-sided unprovoked attacks on devotees in temples or
pilgrims on the route and, that too, without any serious censure and restraint
either from their respective religious leaders or the secular forces had
its effect on the Hindu psychology. The Statesman (25 March 2003) published
a list of such "soft targets" between 25 January 1997 and 6 August 2002
giving 14 cases and killing of 315 persons which did not include the more
known cases of the Akshardham temple in Gujarat, the Raghunath temple in
Jammu and the killing of Kashmiri pandits as part of the cleansing operation.
In many cities which have more than 40 per cent minority population in
India, the majority had to live in fear, a fact we hide officially to project
our secular character but admit privately as a harsh reality needing immediate
attention and correction.
Partisan attitude
What has hurt the Hindu mind are
not the atrocities so much as the partisan attitude. In this exploitative
system the minority can suffer from a sense of discrimination but here,
thanks to a new tribe of secularists, the majority community feels as if
it is taken for granted and discriminated against. The demand for the "Hindu
Taliban" is coming up. The furore over the burning of Graham Stains and
his two sons was understandable but what is disturbing is the deafening
silence over burning of 12 tribal children in Purnea after a whole Santhal
village was set on fire (only Ram Vilas Paswan raised the issue in Parliament)
- as if that was nobody's business. Even the Godhra victims included 14
children. How many times do we talk of them?
In our area some time ago, one girl
was lifted and gang-raped. Though there was condemnation from all sides,
those who used to take lead in such matters remained mum as all the accused
were found to be from the minority community. This is what is seen to appeasement,
polarising the Hindu community sharply.
It is not a small thing that all
the cases of Gujarat riots were to be transferred out of Gujarat for retrial
as no organ of the state was found secular, not even Gujarat High Court,
making the fight against communalism a fight against the whole state. Who
has turned Gujarat, the land Mahatma Gandhi, so communal? It is not the
majority nor the minority but the secularists.
(To be concluded)
========================================
Godhra And After-II - Secular
Forces With Doubtful Credentials
Author: AK Roy
Publication: The Statesman
Date: September 23, 2004
URL: http://www.thestatesman.net/page.arcview.php?clid=3&id=83427&usrsess=1
One feature of the Gujarat riots
which any inquiry must note was the absence of any organised resistance
on the ground though the Congress was in control of the Ahmedabad Municipal
Corporation. The ordeal which a well-known social worker had to face at
Sabarmati Ashram should not be interpreted as hostility due to an alleged
anti- Gujarat stand on the Narmada dam issue. The weakness of the secular
forces in Gujarat, now spreading throughout India, was ideological, defining
secularism as an anti-Hindu phenomenon and anything connected with the
word Hindu or Hindutva was termed communal.
Nothing can be more wrong. Hindu
is not a religious term found in any holy text book like the Vedas, Upanishads
and the Geeta. Even Rama did not know whether he was a Hindu. In The Discovery
of India, Nehru wrote: "The word Hindu did not occur at all in our ancient
literature. The first reference to it in an Indian book is in the eighth
century where Hindu means people and not the follower of any particular
religion - people on the other side of the Indus river".
Religion
It is commonly the name given by
the people of western Asia to the inhabitants of India irrespective of
religion. It is the "religion'' of a region not of any section. To Babar
even Ibrahim Lodi was a Hindu. Why should one have any quarrel with such
a broad secular term? If some people use the term communally that distortion
should be opposed, not that word.
Thus Hinduism is better understood
as a civilisation rather than as religion. While some secularists of doubtful
credentials are averse to calling themselves Hindus, this was not the case
with past stalwarts. Vivekananda called Hindu a universal religion. "It
is inclusive enough, broad enough to include all ideals", he told Nivedita
in 1899 and he visioned India with "Vedantic brain and Islamic body". In
his address on 16 March 1912, Rabindranath stressed both broadness and
depth of Hindutva. "The transcendental mind of the Aryan, by its marriage
with the emotional and creative art of the Dravidian gave birth to an offspring
which was neither fully Aryan nor Dravidian but Hindu". Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan
said, "Hinduism does not aim at bringing about mechanical uniformity of
behaviour and worship by elimination of all that is not in conformity with
a particular creed. It does not believe in any statutory method of salvation".
To Gandhiji, Hinduism is nothing but "spiritual secularism". When asked
by Radhakrishnan about his religion Gandhiji replied, "My religion is Hinduism
which for me, is religion of humanity and includes best of all religions
known to me". Not only was the "Hindu'' word contributed by Muslims of
West Asia to the Indian culture, there were many Muslim scholars who have
thrown rare light in it. Writing in The Statesman on 31 May 1992 under
the heading, "Know your Hinduism" Hossainur Rahaman said:
"Hinduism is difficult to define
but easy of understanding. Hinduism is not a religion in the sense Islam
or Christianity is. Hinduism has no founder nor any central Church. One
remains Hindu without believing in the scriptures and even God. Atheism
is nobody's headache in the Hindu scheme of things". The VHP links Hinduism
with state politics which is against the spirit of Hinduism. So except
for the "secularists" and VHP members, all are Hindus in India.
Objections
Objections have been raised on calling
all Indians Hindus. But Muslim pilgrims from India are still called Hindu
in Arab countries. The famous traveller Ramnath Biswas was surprised when
he was told in Singkiang (the Muslim inhabited part of China) that the
people there did not take beef but the Hindus did. He later discovered
that all the inhabitants beyond the border, i.e., India, both Hindus and
Muslims, were called Hindu by them. Even Marx called all Indians Hindus.
In a letter to the New York's Daily Tribune on 10 June 1853 Marx wrote:
"England has broken down the entire framework of Indian society without
any symptoms of reconstruction. This loss of the old world, with no gain
of a new one imparts a particular kind of melancholy to the present misery
of the Hindu..''.
Whom did Marx mean by Hindu? Marxists
can declare with pride that they are Hindu. Similarly virtually a war has
been unleashed against the word "saffron'' making it synonymous with Hindus
communalism though it has nothing to do with any community or communalism.
The word "saffron'' has a noble meaning and a great history behind it,
symbolising sacrifice and renunciation. Tagore wrote his famous poem on
Shivaji depicting the greatness of his saffron flag adopted after the teaching
of his mentor Guru Ramdas. After a great debate, the saffron colour was
adopted in our national flag even in our struggle for Independence and
placed on the top. Many gave their lives under this flag. Now we are even
insulting this colour and the flag.
According to history, the tricolour
flag with saffron at the top was raised by the youth of Bengal to oppose
partition in 1906. This flag was hoisted and declared a national flag by
Madam Kama in Germany in 1907. Since then this tricolour combination with
green and white developed as a national consensus. Why should there be
any controversy over saffron after more than 50 years of Independence?
Is the saffron in the tri-coloured flag communal? By handing over all the
noble traditions of our national struggle, whom we are hurting and weakening
? The casualty in this wrong politics are the real secular forces in the
country, now on retreat not only in Gujarat but in all places.
Lessons
India's communal problem accompanied
our freedom struggle from the very beginning and is continuing after Independence.
It has left some lessons. As communalism is the cancer of our society,
minorityism is cancer for secularism. Secularism has no meaning if it fails
to understand the mind of the majority. Modern communalism has very little
to do with religion though it rides the god of its choice. The communal
riots are not taking place in remote villages where the god- fearing Hindus
and Muslims live but are taking place in cities like Mumbai, Ahmedabad,
Hyderabad, Bangalore, Kanpur and even in Delhi. The typical urban nature
of the modern communalism as seen in Gujarat was petrol-driven and market-oriented
and has become even more menacing with globalisation using the euro, dollar
or petro dollar. The fight against communalism is connected with the fight
against globalisation.
As communalism is the product of
capitalism, so secularism is the product of socialism. The present spurt
of communalism in the country is due to dilution of the socialist content
of our politics with globalisation particularly affecting western India.
Unless some radical socio-economic measures are taken to rehabilitate social
values and recast the system, no amount of accusation and homilies will
make it safe for any community in India.
(Concluded)
