Kusum Choppra

On the morning of 27the February, the Sabarmati Express from Ayodhya to Ahmedabad made an ill fated stop at the Godhra station, amidst raucous slogan shouting by its kar sevak passengers. Five minutes later, as it steamed out, the chain was pulled not once but twice.

In a very short while the S6 bogie of the train was in flames which engulfed 58 persons, mainly women and children, but none of the kar sevak netas, who had miraculous escapes. Within hours, chief minister Narendra Modi was at the site for a first hand inspection of the damage done. And by evening, Godhra, Vadodara and Ahmedabad were in flames.

The “Jehadi Hindus”

On February 28th, the ruling BJP supported a VHP bandh to protest the train carnage. What began as a protest bandh and communal violence turned three days later into a genocide by ethnic mobs, led by known faces carrying voters lists to zero in on homes, offices, shops, hotels, factories whatever, to wipe out the muslims totally.

Human beings were torched by the dozen, homes by the scores. And looters came riding in Esteems and Santros to denude branded shops like Zodiac, Pantaloons, Akbarally’s and Metro apart from smaller establishments.

By the time the Army came in, the social fabric had been rent asunder.

One wondered about these new foot soldiers of religion. They called themselves Jehadi Hindus. “Why should only they have jehad? We must also have our own jehad, our own agenda” they declare forcefully.

And the aim of their jehad is to exterminate the “kafirs” from Bharat.

Did they know the meaning of “Kafir”? One who does not believe in Islam.

Here the roles have been reversed. It is the foot soldiers of Hindutva who have become jehadis, out to convert or kill the Islamic Kafirs i.e. those who believe in Islam and not in Hindutva. Were these neo-Hindus or neo-Muslims?

In another attempt to stand tradition on its head, they went about building temples at de-secrated sites instead of holy ones. It is an Islamic tradition to build a masjid at the site of another reli-gion, not a Hindu one. But these new jehadi Hindus are putting up instant temples at the sites of razed masjids and dargahs; and giving them upto-the-minute names like “Godhriya Mahadev” (a take off on Godhra) and Hulladiya Mahadev (hullad means riot). The irony is that in these neo mahadev mandirs, the portrait installed is that of Ram Bhakt Hanuman the presiding diety perhaps of the Bajrang Dal.

Phased, Systematic Violence

The wounds go deeper every day, more than a month later, as individuals are now picked on in a sinister pattern, partners in inter religion marriages, the people who have helped them, their means of livelihood, all are grist to the killer mill.

George Fernandes flew in to induct two army brigades which stood by for hours while the last of the urban genocide was completed and the state authorities scoured Ahmedabad for trucks. Then it marched out with one hand tied behind its back, a la IPKF in Sri Lanka.

Violence shifted base to the rural areas, purportedly the sanskritised tribals attacking their Muslim oppressors. This was the first time any such thing has happened in any part of the country, leave alone Gujarat. Finally violence was controlled a daily simmer of death and arson and loot, carefully controlled so that Gujarat was an adequate blackmail issue for March 15 at Ayodhya.

Public Emasculation of a PM

That was the second phase of the violence. The third was timed to the Prime Minister’s visit, before and after. Patently cornered by saffron loyalties into protecting Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, the man who has won his government the ultimate inter-national defame of being equated with the Taliban and jehadis, never was prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee more so evidently emasculated in public than when he stood by the impassive Modi. The prime minister resorted to a now familiar tactic: rhetoric eloquence.

His emotional appeal over the growing practice of burning people alive “Kya hum insaan nahi rahe? …. Kya mooh lake jaunga?…” met a stoic response when the crowd murmured loudly “wahi jo hamare paas leke aye ho”. If he can face us, why not anyone else? deman-ded Nuriben at the Shah Alam camp, adding that if he had come earlier instead of waiting for “security reasons”, he could have felt the heat of the burning for himself.

The absence of any clear criticism, as against implied criti-cism, of the Gujarat administration, was plain. Mr. Vajpayee did not say a word against the chief minister, his colleagues who participated in the instigation of the violence and the police that stood by.

Hindutva’s Stormtroopers

No one is in a mood to give peace a chance. Something so innocuous as a poster campaign by the Citizens’ Council of Ahmedabad has been viciously disrupted by hindutva storm-troopers who threatened the advertisement agency which got the contract, with dire consequences unless the hoardings were removed. These included “sarv dharma ek samaan, bharatni saachi pehchan”, “mandir todo masjid todo ya gurudwara girijaghar, usme baitha sabka malik ek” etc.

Points to Ponder

Galling facts are now crawling out of the woodwork.

l That the RSS warned the PM that any move to remove Modi will mean spread of violence all over the country. Having long viewed Vajpayee as a millstone around its neck, it is now pushing for early elections, never mind that means the opposition benches for the BJP. The saffron lobbies are apparently emboldened by the results of the vote polarization experiments in Gujarat that it had sent Modi to carry out.

l At the height of the violence, Modi sent out teams of his ministers into the districts to assess how far the violence and its aftermath could be trans-lated into BJP votes in a snap poll. Party insiders insist that the responses were positive and things would have been in place, except for Vajpayee putting his foot down at Delhi on March 27 when he told Modi that relief and rehabilitation were to be his priorities, not elections.

l A big question that is whispered but not answered is “who planned Godhra?” the ISI theory has come apart and investigation stalled.

l The next question that arises is “Who planned post Godhra?” and the question rebounds off Gujarat. No one knows the answer. But hints have surfaced with records of a BJP survey done in mid-March 2002 to assess the effect of the violence on the BJP’s share of the vote in case a snap poll was held immediately, instead of waiting for the scheduled February 2003 assembly election.

l CM Narendra Modi is reported to have told off the PM that he could not be expected to better his efforts at controlling the situation and providing relief and rehabilitation. He was doing the best he could.

l Haresh Bhatt, president of the Gujarat unit of the Bajrang Dal says that the PM has hurt the sentiments of the Hindus by saying he was ashamed of what happened in Gujarat. “No one said he or she was ashamed when the Godhra incident happened. That is an insult to us”.

l Can this be constituted as an admission that they have done whatever it was that the PM is ashamed of. If he was not given a chance to express his shame over Godhra, perhaps it was because before anyone could do anything, the after Godhra stage was underway in full force.

l On the other hand, Union Minister of State for Youth and Cultural Affairs, Uma Bharati who accompanied the prime minister claims to be appalled by the change she found in Hindu youth in Gujarat. Shocked by details of the torching of human beings, she wondered aloud why Hindu youth were not even repentant after such violent acts.

l Finally the Union Home Ministry has woken out of its deep slumber. A month after the Godhra train carnage, it has circulated a note to the state home secretary and police indicating that miscreants were determined to keep the situa-tion simmering, that the state administration must rise to the occasion to thwart those designs, that police must be given a free hand to deal with external influences and that radical Muslim groups were mobilizing youth and preparing them for physical training.

l After the systematic pogroms against them, it can be no surprise that the ministry anticipates that Gujarat has become a fertile ground for recruitment by ISI and its affiliates. What is worth ques-tioning is why the union home ministry never noted the earlier surveys and other preparations which allowed such a systematic ethnic cleansing to take place in such short order. After a terror-quake of this magnitude, is it any wonder that the 104 odd refugee camps are deemed “ripe ground” for jehadi recruitment’s? Or since the Gujarat government has failed to conduct surveys of damages and needs, some other agency may do so, which may not be exactly conducive to our national interests? Already some 8000 odd Muslims are reported to have fled to safety in Uttar Pradesh after living in Gujarat for generations.

l The Gujarat High Court dismissed an application seeking the transfer of the investigations into the Godhra train carnage to the CBI and initiate action against IB officials for negligence. The court observed that “in the present situation it is too early to say that the state government has not taken any steps, as it has other important things to take care of ……”

Among those other important things is no doubt the dramatic transfer of 27 senior police officers, with the focus on those who had ensured that no untoward incident took place in the districts under their juris-diction. What followed was evident from the sudden outbreak of violence in Anjar in the first week of April, over a whole month after the Feb.27 Godhra carnage.

l The Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF) a national forum of 500 social action groups and intel-lectuals sent a team to investigate tribal excesses during the recent violence. Panel members discovered tribals promised liquor and jobs by VHP activists to overcome hesitation over violent attack on Muslims. They were threatened that if they did not attack, their own homes would be attacked. “tribals were used as a shield by right wing organizations to carryout the agenda of ethnic cleansing and communal genocide”.

Like the Kargil war, the post Godhra riots were played out under the glare of TV camera, unblinking and even handed. They showed nauseating images of the Hindu corpses spilling out of the S-6 bogie at Godhra and haunting images of burnt down Muslim homes by the dozen all across Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Kadi and dozens of villages. While the S-6 images, which were stomach wrenching drew no criticism, the rest, along with the comments on the official instigators of such revenge lowered the boom on the electronic media.

Hindu gangsters could be identified by their saffron scarves and trishuls, the Muslims by their skull caps and beards; their reli-gious places were so easy to identify that it was useless to use verbal subterfuges; so the media came right out and said “Hindu/Muslim mob”, “masjid”, “dargah’ etc.

Modi and his officials were furious at being identified. His loud and abrasive denials, while backing the butchery, quickly turned him from a media darling to “chief monster” and the entire print and electronic media was clamouring for his removal louder than any opposition party.

Perhaps Modi miscalculated his famous clout with the Delhi media; for it was the Delhi media, print as well as electronic which has led the call for his head. Every word he utters is scrutinized for ulterior motives and he resents it. It showed in subsequent interviews and magnified the decibels of the call for his resignation.

Broad hints of a “hidden agenda” were extended to the agenda of the pogroms unleashed against the Muslims with total impunity; Ahmedabad’s elected MLAs and Ministers were seen leading and instigating mobs; later they confessed that they dared not face their constituents in the refugee camps. Gangsters named in FIRs were not arrested. Was it another hidden agenda to use the post-Godhra outrages to blackmail the Centre into submission at Ayodhya?

How many times will Gujarat have to pay the blood price for that Ram Mandir? First after L. K. Advani’s Ram Rath Yatra and V. P. Singh’s Mandal yatra, again in 1992-93 after the Babri Masjid was torn down and now, after Godhra.

Ms. Kusum Choppra is a journalist and a frequent contributor to Freedom First