The Hindu
February 23, 2011
Attacks on churches were sponsored by State, says Saldanha report
Staff Reporter
The report is an outcome of public inquiry conducted at instance of PUCL and TII
The attacks on churches in Karnataka in September 2008 and the others that subsequently occurred were “pre-planned” and “State-sponsored” by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led Government, according to a report by Michael F. Saldanha, retired judge of Karnataka High Court. Mr. Saldanha released it here on Tuesday.
The report was the outcome of a public inquiry conducted at the instance of the People's Union for Civil Liberties and Transparency International India (TII), Karnataka Chapter.
Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Saldanha said that when Karnataka appointed Justice B.K. Somasekhara Commission to inquire into the attacks, Christian organisations had told Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa that his candidature “did not inspire confidence”.
“We, therefore, decided to have a people's inquiry which would be free, frank and unbiased,” Mr. Saldanha told a press conference. The incidents in Karnataka “are representative of the hidden agenda of the party in power, the BJP. Every one of the attacks and incidents were instigated and pre-planned. They were State-sponsored and not only supported by the State but were covered up by the State. The responsibility of this devolves on Home Minister V.S. Acharya and Mr. Yeddyurappa,” the findings conclude.
The report also indicts the State police force for “coercing” the perpetrators of violence and allegedly even guiding assault in some places. In one instance, “the police storm[ed] the church at Pemannur, obstruct[ed] and stopp[ed] the Mass, assault[ed] the celebrant priest, and standing on top of the altar, direct[ed] the assault,” the report alleges.
“As far as the saffron activists are concerned, the Bajrang Dal leader and the leader of the Sri Rama Sene have at all times boldly and openly admitted that it was their organisations which had undertaken all the attacks. The evidence clearly established that as far as Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts are concerned, the RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh] was involved,” the report states alleging “total collusion” between the BJP Government and these organisations.
Mr. Saldanha said that he visited 431 places and spoke to over a thousand witnesses, besides collecting material from journalists, and from press clippings and television footage.
Cardinal Oswald Gracias said the people of Karnataka had called for a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation. He said the guilty must be brought to book and compensation to victims must be given at the earliest.
“It is time for us to stand up for a cleaner society. The credibility of the country and inquiry commissions is at stake. Mistakes have to be rectified,” he said. Christian NGOs condemned the Somasekhara report for being “biased” against Christians and for being “a sham to whitewash the crimes of the BJP Government and protect the Hindutva brigade.” They demanded expunging the “false allegations” on conversion and misuse of funds against Christian organisations.
“The Karnataka riots are part of a wider plan of radical Hindutva elements targeting the Christian community after the Muslim community. You have seen this in all the BJP-ruled States,” Joseph Dias of The Catholic Secular Forum said.
|
February 23, 2011
February 22, 2011
Myth of Gujarat Development
Myth of Vibrant Gujarat
Ram Puniyani
Nearly nine years after the carnage of Gujarat (Feb 2011), a perception has been created that Gujarat is developing with rapid strides, there is all peace and harmony and minorities are happy. Like ‘Shining India’ a word has been coined, ‘Vibrant Gujarat’.
Nothing can be farther from truth. In the aftermath of the violence, the death of over two thousand Muslims, the rapes, the humiliation at the hands of instigated mobs, are still fresh in the air as the state has totally been unjust to the victims of the violence. There was no rehabilitation worth its name, the ‘refugee camps’ were closed too soon. State totally washed its hands off the rehabilitation process.
Today while the few amongst the Muslim minorities, especially a section of traders, have been won over by the BJP and dominant social forces, the majority of Muslim community has been forced to live the life of severe social and economic deprivation. The trend of ghettotization is increasing in major cities and expanding. Juhapura is the showpiece of the fear and insecurity which has gripped the Muslim community. Many a traders are trying to continue with their businesses in old localities while settling their families in the Muslim ghettoes like Juhapura. Most of the Muslim establishments have changed their names and patterns to sound like being the Hindu establishments, with the hope that this will prevent their religion being identified in the future pogroms, protect their property, and this move will overcome the economic boycott from the majority community. Incidentally this call of economic boycott of Muslims has been given by VHP. The domination of Modi/BJP in the social and political arena is leading to the situation where a large section of Muslims is forced to hide their pain and anger and carry on with the ignominies of their situations. Remarkably many a social groups from amongst Muslim communities are concentrating their work in the area of education; preparing the youth to take up jobs in the fields that are free from discrimination, and to prepare them to traditional and newer avenues of self employment.
A major study by Abdul Saleh Sharif (Relative Development of Gujarat and Socio-Religious Differentials, 2011) is very revealing about the condition of Muslims. This shows that Muslims fare very badly on the parameters of poverty, hunger, education and vulnerability on security issues. The study shows that levels of hunger are high in Gujarat alongside Orissa and Bihar. Muslims are educationally deprived. Muslim community which at one time was dominating in diamond and textile trade has been pushed behind. Poverty of Gujarat Muslims is 8 times more than high caste Hindus and 50% more than OBCs. Twelve per cent Muslims have bank accounts but only 2.6% of them get bank loans. This study concludes that Muslims in Gujarat face high levels of discrimination, even on the roll out of NREGA, Gujarat is at the bottom of the pile. (TOI, Feb 18, 2011, Mumbai)
As per the report of Pratham, an NGO devoted to the issues of education (Annual Status of Education Report), Gujarat is worse than Bihar when it comes to educational standards. Gujarat has been doing miserably in Social development indices and its budgetary allotment in this sector is low compared to other large states, being 17th amongst the 18 large states. While all this is happening, the mental ghettoes, the emotional partitions have become fairly strong and physical ghettoes tell the real truth of Gujarat, the ‘Hindu Rashtra in One State’. Those displaced due to carnage are living with no civic facilities reaching them. The banks and telephone companies are shunning these areas and children’s education is one of the major problems for the victims.
Through conclaves like Guarvi Gujarat, and the annual meetings of NRIs; Industrialists, investment is being solicited and more than the forthcoming investment, projections are being made of the flow of dollars, creating the image that it is during Modi regime that Guajarat has begun to progress. The fact is that there are some investments; there is some industrialization; but it is far from what is being projected. In previous Vibrant Summits claims of big capital investments have been made. For example in 2005 claim for Rs.106161 crores had been made. Out of that investment of Rs.74019 crores (63%) was made as stated by Chief Minister but in reality as per the information availed under R.T.I. only Rs.24998 crores (23.52%) projects were under implementation.
As per Teesta Setalvad, “…Likewise, in 2007, 363 MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) were made in which Modi Government claimed to have mobilized capital investments of Rs.461835 crores. Factually this amount was Rs.451835 crores and not Rs.461835 crores so an excess investment of Rs.10000 crores was claimed. Out of this State Government claimed to have made an investment of Rs.264575 crores but as per the figures by Industry Commissioner of Gujarat projects worth Rs.122400.66 crores (27.08%) were under implementation. Actually out of the investments in 2003, 2005 and 2007 only 20.28% of projects were under implementation in Gujarat.”
While Gujarat was already amongst the most industrialized states, it has been able to invite good deal of investment. Still it remains next to Maharashtra which leads the pack. While one does not hear much about the Maharashtra progress, through different types of media hypes the image of Gujarat phenomenon has been built up. The industrialization in Gujarat has a pattern. Two decades back, the growth rate of Gujarat was something between 12 and 13 per cent. The national average was six to seven per cent then. Today, Gujarat has the growth rate of 11 per cent while National growth rate is 10 per cent. This fact should make the matters clear to us.
As such Gujarat state has opened its coffers to subsidize the industrialists. Land, water and soft loans are the order of the day; they have been given to the industrialists at extremely cheap rates. It was one of the reasons because of which Tata shifted his Nano project to Gujarat. The subsidy, which this small car gets, is huge. Industrialists are having a free run and the social concerns like job creation are very poor in the Gujarat pattern. Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra are far ahead of Gujarat in the Job creation ratio on the investment. The investment figures which are flashed are not all actualized. One of the major victims of the reckless industrialization is the ecology, which has been ignored totally far as Gujarat is concerned.
The growth differentials in Gujarat are very appalling. On one hand, there is the growth, on other there is a serious decline in the social indicators of like sex ratio. According to ‘India State Hunger Index 2008’, Gujarat is shockingly ranked worse than Orissa. Gujarat is ranked 13th in the 17 big states which were calculated in this list. Gujarat is only above Jharkhand, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, which are globally equal to the hunger situation in Ethiopia. Poverty levels are rising; employment and agriculture are not in good shape. The agricultural production has been declining, e.g. from 65.71 lakh tones in 2003-2004 to 51.53 in 2004-2005. A survey conducted by NSS in 2005 reveals that approximately 40% farmers of state said that given the option they would like to shift away from agriculture. Recent studies show that during the last decade agriculture and labor both have suffered extensively.
Modi, in a reply given in state assembly stated that in one year up to Jan 2007, 148 farmers had committed suicide and the condition is worsening on that score. While on one side the state exports electricity, its villages are having a power deficit. Indian Express 8th April 2007 reported that state is reeling under the shortfall of 900 mega Watt of power, the victims of this are mainly in the villages. One of the indices of poverty, prevalence of anemia, is very revealing on this count. The percentage of women suffering from anemia has risen from 46.3% in 1999 to 55.5% in 2004 (Third round of National Family Health survey report 2006) among women. Amongst children it rose from 74.5% to 80.1%. Some of the reports point out the conditions of dalits and women has deteriorated during last decade. For women, one of the indices is the declining sex ratio in Gujarat during last decade. The plight of Adivasis is no better.
Gujarat is facing problems at the level of living conditions more of poor, women and minorities. The media hype is meant to change the image of Narendra Modi from the one who led the carnage to a development man. But deeper look at the economic and social situation tell us another story.
Ram Puniyani
Nearly nine years after the carnage of Gujarat (Feb 2011), a perception has been created that Gujarat is developing with rapid strides, there is all peace and harmony and minorities are happy. Like ‘Shining India’ a word has been coined, ‘Vibrant Gujarat’.
Nothing can be farther from truth. In the aftermath of the violence, the death of over two thousand Muslims, the rapes, the humiliation at the hands of instigated mobs, are still fresh in the air as the state has totally been unjust to the victims of the violence. There was no rehabilitation worth its name, the ‘refugee camps’ were closed too soon. State totally washed its hands off the rehabilitation process.
Today while the few amongst the Muslim minorities, especially a section of traders, have been won over by the BJP and dominant social forces, the majority of Muslim community has been forced to live the life of severe social and economic deprivation. The trend of ghettotization is increasing in major cities and expanding. Juhapura is the showpiece of the fear and insecurity which has gripped the Muslim community. Many a traders are trying to continue with their businesses in old localities while settling their families in the Muslim ghettoes like Juhapura. Most of the Muslim establishments have changed their names and patterns to sound like being the Hindu establishments, with the hope that this will prevent their religion being identified in the future pogroms, protect their property, and this move will overcome the economic boycott from the majority community. Incidentally this call of economic boycott of Muslims has been given by VHP. The domination of Modi/BJP in the social and political arena is leading to the situation where a large section of Muslims is forced to hide their pain and anger and carry on with the ignominies of their situations. Remarkably many a social groups from amongst Muslim communities are concentrating their work in the area of education; preparing the youth to take up jobs in the fields that are free from discrimination, and to prepare them to traditional and newer avenues of self employment.
A major study by Abdul Saleh Sharif (Relative Development of Gujarat and Socio-Religious Differentials, 2011) is very revealing about the condition of Muslims. This shows that Muslims fare very badly on the parameters of poverty, hunger, education and vulnerability on security issues. The study shows that levels of hunger are high in Gujarat alongside Orissa and Bihar. Muslims are educationally deprived. Muslim community which at one time was dominating in diamond and textile trade has been pushed behind. Poverty of Gujarat Muslims is 8 times more than high caste Hindus and 50% more than OBCs. Twelve per cent Muslims have bank accounts but only 2.6% of them get bank loans. This study concludes that Muslims in Gujarat face high levels of discrimination, even on the roll out of NREGA, Gujarat is at the bottom of the pile. (TOI, Feb 18, 2011, Mumbai)
As per the report of Pratham, an NGO devoted to the issues of education (Annual Status of Education Report), Gujarat is worse than Bihar when it comes to educational standards. Gujarat has been doing miserably in Social development indices and its budgetary allotment in this sector is low compared to other large states, being 17th amongst the 18 large states. While all this is happening, the mental ghettoes, the emotional partitions have become fairly strong and physical ghettoes tell the real truth of Gujarat, the ‘Hindu Rashtra in One State’. Those displaced due to carnage are living with no civic facilities reaching them. The banks and telephone companies are shunning these areas and children’s education is one of the major problems for the victims.
Through conclaves like Guarvi Gujarat, and the annual meetings of NRIs; Industrialists, investment is being solicited and more than the forthcoming investment, projections are being made of the flow of dollars, creating the image that it is during Modi regime that Guajarat has begun to progress. The fact is that there are some investments; there is some industrialization; but it is far from what is being projected. In previous Vibrant Summits claims of big capital investments have been made. For example in 2005 claim for Rs.106161 crores had been made. Out of that investment of Rs.74019 crores (63%) was made as stated by Chief Minister but in reality as per the information availed under R.T.I. only Rs.24998 crores (23.52%) projects were under implementation.
As per Teesta Setalvad, “…Likewise, in 2007, 363 MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) were made in which Modi Government claimed to have mobilized capital investments of Rs.461835 crores. Factually this amount was Rs.451835 crores and not Rs.461835 crores so an excess investment of Rs.10000 crores was claimed. Out of this State Government claimed to have made an investment of Rs.264575 crores but as per the figures by Industry Commissioner of Gujarat projects worth Rs.122400.66 crores (27.08%) were under implementation. Actually out of the investments in 2003, 2005 and 2007 only 20.28% of projects were under implementation in Gujarat.”
While Gujarat was already amongst the most industrialized states, it has been able to invite good deal of investment. Still it remains next to Maharashtra which leads the pack. While one does not hear much about the Maharashtra progress, through different types of media hypes the image of Gujarat phenomenon has been built up. The industrialization in Gujarat has a pattern. Two decades back, the growth rate of Gujarat was something between 12 and 13 per cent. The national average was six to seven per cent then. Today, Gujarat has the growth rate of 11 per cent while National growth rate is 10 per cent. This fact should make the matters clear to us.
As such Gujarat state has opened its coffers to subsidize the industrialists. Land, water and soft loans are the order of the day; they have been given to the industrialists at extremely cheap rates. It was one of the reasons because of which Tata shifted his Nano project to Gujarat. The subsidy, which this small car gets, is huge. Industrialists are having a free run and the social concerns like job creation are very poor in the Gujarat pattern. Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra are far ahead of Gujarat in the Job creation ratio on the investment. The investment figures which are flashed are not all actualized. One of the major victims of the reckless industrialization is the ecology, which has been ignored totally far as Gujarat is concerned.
The growth differentials in Gujarat are very appalling. On one hand, there is the growth, on other there is a serious decline in the social indicators of like sex ratio. According to ‘India State Hunger Index 2008’, Gujarat is shockingly ranked worse than Orissa. Gujarat is ranked 13th in the 17 big states which were calculated in this list. Gujarat is only above Jharkhand, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, which are globally equal to the hunger situation in Ethiopia. Poverty levels are rising; employment and agriculture are not in good shape. The agricultural production has been declining, e.g. from 65.71 lakh tones in 2003-2004 to 51.53 in 2004-2005. A survey conducted by NSS in 2005 reveals that approximately 40% farmers of state said that given the option they would like to shift away from agriculture. Recent studies show that during the last decade agriculture and labor both have suffered extensively.
Modi, in a reply given in state assembly stated that in one year up to Jan 2007, 148 farmers had committed suicide and the condition is worsening on that score. While on one side the state exports electricity, its villages are having a power deficit. Indian Express 8th April 2007 reported that state is reeling under the shortfall of 900 mega Watt of power, the victims of this are mainly in the villages. One of the indices of poverty, prevalence of anemia, is very revealing on this count. The percentage of women suffering from anemia has risen from 46.3% in 1999 to 55.5% in 2004 (Third round of National Family Health survey report 2006) among women. Amongst children it rose from 74.5% to 80.1%. Some of the reports point out the conditions of dalits and women has deteriorated during last decade. For women, one of the indices is the declining sex ratio in Gujarat during last decade. The plight of Adivasis is no better.
Gujarat is facing problems at the level of living conditions more of poor, women and minorities. The media hype is meant to change the image of Narendra Modi from the one who led the carnage to a development man. But deeper look at the economic and social situation tell us another story.
February 14, 2011
Khaki knickers In a twist. The RSS rift over terror charges
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 8, Issue 7, Dated 19 Feb 2011
HINDUTVA TERROR
Khaki knickers In a twist. The RSS rift over terror charges
BY SOPAN JOSHI
Losing their grip The status-conscious RSS brass is in danger of losing touch with comfort-loving cadre
PHOTO: AP
BACK IN the day when Congressmen and RSS pracharaks could meet like honourable opponents, an anecdote doing the rounds went thus: In a discussion on how to tackle the socialists, Madhya Pradesh chief minister Dwarka Prasad Mishra, Congress’ ‘Chanakya’ and father of former National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra, told RSS pracharak Dattopant Thengdi how to neutralise a political organisation.
“Make its cadre comfort loving and its leaders status conscious. The cadre will lose touch with the masses and the leaders with the cadre,” said Mishra. Thengdi, who was to later create the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, would often recall this advice as a warning. This was a time when the question among Sangh’s supporters and critics was: will the RSS stop interfering with the BJP and let it grow into a mass-based political party? Because it was the RSS cadre that formed the BJP’s backbone.
Those days are long gone. Now that the BJP has tasted power for six years at the Centre, and currently commands eight state governments, the question has come a full circle: Can the RSS free itself from the BJP’s influence? The RSS brass, reputed for its apathy to its public image and for doggedly pursuing its ideology, is now conscious of how it is perceived. The Sangh has accepted the politics of perception. And this is reflected sharply in the way it has handled charges of Hindutva terror.
On 10 January, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat refuted the charges, saying the RSS has always asked extremists to leave. It looked like he was in denial. He came across as a patriarch trying to distance himself from a rowdy youth. Had he first acknowledged the RSS links of some ex-pracharaks facing terror charges, and then detailed how the Sangh tried to stop them or sack them, he would have been more credible.
Insiders say there were several discussions among the RSS brass on how to counter the terror charges, and one section wanted to own up past associations with the likes of Sunil Joshi, a pracharak in Dewas, Madhya Pradesh, who was asked to leave after a series of incidents in which he defied his superiors and bad-mouthed them openly, saying they were cowards.
MOHAN BHAGWAT SARSANGHACHALAK
Indecisive. Image conscious. Created his faction of Maharashtrian Brahmins
SURESH JOSHI SARKARYAVAH
The next chief. Apolitical, with a social agenda. Shrewd. Wants transparency on terror charges
SURESH SONI SAHSARKARYAVAH
BJP pointsman. Fond of power, money and chartered flights. Blamed for corrupting cadres
DATTATREYA HOSABALE SAHSARKARYAVAH
Young and dynamic intellectual. Tipped for the top job in future
“Most families know what it is like to deal with rebellious young men. In the public eye, we would have struck a sympathetic chord by accepting an uncomfortable truth. And we would have shown our cadre that we would never shy away from owning them,” says an RSS source. But the RSS has moved on the path of denial, and there is no return. It is the fear of disrepute, typical of the middle-class when the police comes knocking at the doors. The RSS faces a situation it has no experience in tackling. Reportedly, when the Anti-Terrorism Squad went to the RSS Kanpur office and identified itself as ATS, an office-bearer asked: “Yeh ATS kaun si company hai?” (What company is this ATS)?
In internal discussions, one faction favoured making a clean breast of it, and letting national executive member Indresh Kumar defend himself. If he is not guilty he would emerge unfazed; if he is, he should pay the price and not the entire organisation. Sources believe this faction includes Bhagwat’s trusted deputy and RSS general secretary Suresh ‘Bhaiyaji’ Joshi.
But Bhagwat has been indecisive, and he has made a prestige issue out of Indresh’s defence. Indresh’s rise is attributed to former chief K Sudarshan, who was careless in his choice of people, often backing unscrupulous ones. Bhagwat also took a liking for him. The need to defend Indresh is now driving the brass’ reactions — it is sure it did enough to expunge radicals like Joshi, and that it cannot be held accountable for their deeds. It is sure that Swami Asimananda’s confession came under duress. But it is not sure of how to make the bad publicity disappear.
Bhagwat, who cut a statuesque figure in his deft handling of the Sangh Parivar after the 30 November Ayodhya verdict — it was he who kept a tight leash on those who wanted to make political capital out of the verdict — has come up short this time around. Sources say he had got feet of clay just now because he is overly bothered about his image and that of the RSS.
MADAN DAS DEVI PRACHARAK PRAMUKH
A saintly presence. Was the BJP pointsman till 2004. Now marginalised by poor health
MG VAIDYA CORE GROUP MEMBER
Veteran. Staunch Maharashtrian Brahminist. Frustrated; feels that he has been denied his due
ASHOK SINGHAL CORE GROUP MEMBER
Trusted veteran. But poor health keeps him out now
MADHUBHAI KULKARNI CORE GROUP MEMBER
Bhagwat’s trusted lieutenant. Being groomed to take over BJP charge from Suresh Soni
On 10 November, Bhagwat became the first RSS chief to sit on a dharna — RSS bosses tend to behave like queen bees that stay deep inside the honeycomb and are seldom seen outside. In his first year at the helm, he gave so many interviews it became a problem for scribes to keep track of his statements. Sources close to the RSS sense that Bhagwat now has his own faction, something that a chief should never do. This has created confusion, and it is not just the Congress and its general secretary Digvijaya Singh who are waiting to capitalise on it. Some within the RSS also smell an opportunity.
Chief among them is RSS No. 3, joint secretary Suresh Soni, who is responsible for liaising with the BJP. He has not aligned with either side, playing a waiting game, not willing to risk anything by speaking his mind on how to tackle the terror allegations. He is from Madhya Pradesh and his rise is due to the patronage of Kushabhau Thakre and then Sudarshan. It is said that he literally runs Madhya Pradesh through the BJP state president Prabhat Jha and chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who moved under Soni’s patronage after his mentor Pramod Mahajan died.
Bhagwat has got feet of clay now as he is too bothered about his image, say RSS sources
Soni commands political power and money. He has several critics within the Parivar who blame him for introducing the influence of money. “Earlier, nobody had heard of RSS pracharaks making money from transfers and postings of government officials. But this is a reality now,” says a source in Madhya Pradesh.
There is a caste angle too. Soni, a non- Brahmin from the Vaishya Sunar community, feels upstaged by the return of Maharashtrian Brahmins at the RSS helm in the form of Bhagwat. He believes Bhagwat should have chosen him as the secretary, and not Bhaiyaji Joshi, also a Maharashtrian Brahmin from Indore. While the Sangh has always stood against the caste system formally, its core is dominated by Maharashtrian Brahmins and their sensibility. Madan Das Devi, from whom Soni took the charge of handling BJP after the former had a brain haemorrhage in 2004, was also a non-Brahmin. Devi has an impeccable reputation and is said to have stayed out of factionalism. All this leaves the final and youngest member of the RSS brass, Dattatreya Hosabale, in a corner. He keeps a low profile and there is no loose talk or negative stories on him.
Factionalism is only to be expected in what is India’s biggest NGO, claiming 50,000 branches and a general participation of six million people. But the terror charges have made the cracks more visible. And the power and influence of the BJP in the RSS is now a greater reality than the ideological influence the RSS wields on the BJP.
Some of these changes are natural, given the BJP’s rise in the past two decades. Sangh sources recall how Atal Bihari Vajpayee would sit on the ground in front of former RSS chief MS Golwalkar out of respect. By the time it came to Sudarshan — who had grown up reciting Vajpayee’s poems — he would stand up when Vajpayee walked in. Bhagwat is 23 years junior to LK Advani.
The Sangh is also subject to wider social changes. Sources say the days are gone when pracharaks shied away from politics of power to a fault. When it was easy to find model pracharaks, embodying discipline and character building, the two themes declaimed ad nauseum in RSS Bauddhik sessions. People riding cycles to go meet the high and mighty, shunning the offer of a car because they didn’t want to be seen even in the car with the rich and powerful. Several in the RSS believe that the organisation had occupied the conservative space Mahatma Gandhi had created, which the Congress has abandoned.
BUT THOSE cliches are due for revision. Today, meeting a BJP minister is a matter of prestige for a pracharak. The love for comfort Thengdi warned about has set in. “I know pracharaks who puke at the idea of travelling second class in a train,” says a source. They want to sport the latest laptop and cell phones, whether they know how to use them or not. At RSS meetings, it is not surprising to see swanky cars now.
“In BJP-ruled states, RSS cadre are power drunk,” says a source. The RSS has become a lot more than an instrument of social change; it has become a career option. The RSS finds itself struggling to stay true to its idea of itself, which drew appreciation from even its staunchest critics. An organisation committed to social engineering finds itself in the midst of social changes that have the power to redefine it.
The influence of the BJP on RSS is now a greater reality, not the other way round
What fuels such talk is the RSS’ informal nature. It is not a registered body. A host of peripheral bodies handle its expenses and administrative costs. Trusts run by swayamsevaks usually own and maintain RSS offices, and the pracharak’s expenses are taken care of by a system of guru dakshina. But where the BJP is in power, it is not uncommon for the party to foot the bills of pracharaks. This means BJP leaders at the local level dictate the RSS agenda.
And this is why several in the RSS fear the terror charges. Having tasted power and become familiar with how a government can pursue a probe, they fear unwarranted surprises. For example, what if the sleuths inspect the pracharaks’ travel expenses and find unsavoury details? Which is why several in the RSS believe coming clean would have been best.
It would have allowed the outfit to defend itself aggressively in public. Instead, with its status-conscious leadership and comfort-loving cadre, it is now reduced to a passive entity in a trial by media that does not look like ending soon.
HINDUTVA TERROR
Khaki knickers In a twist. The RSS rift over terror charges
BY SOPAN JOSHI
Losing their grip The status-conscious RSS brass is in danger of losing touch with comfort-loving cadre
PHOTO: AP
BACK IN the day when Congressmen and RSS pracharaks could meet like honourable opponents, an anecdote doing the rounds went thus: In a discussion on how to tackle the socialists, Madhya Pradesh chief minister Dwarka Prasad Mishra, Congress’ ‘Chanakya’ and father of former National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra, told RSS pracharak Dattopant Thengdi how to neutralise a political organisation.
“Make its cadre comfort loving and its leaders status conscious. The cadre will lose touch with the masses and the leaders with the cadre,” said Mishra. Thengdi, who was to later create the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, would often recall this advice as a warning. This was a time when the question among Sangh’s supporters and critics was: will the RSS stop interfering with the BJP and let it grow into a mass-based political party? Because it was the RSS cadre that formed the BJP’s backbone.
Those days are long gone. Now that the BJP has tasted power for six years at the Centre, and currently commands eight state governments, the question has come a full circle: Can the RSS free itself from the BJP’s influence? The RSS brass, reputed for its apathy to its public image and for doggedly pursuing its ideology, is now conscious of how it is perceived. The Sangh has accepted the politics of perception. And this is reflected sharply in the way it has handled charges of Hindutva terror.
On 10 January, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat refuted the charges, saying the RSS has always asked extremists to leave. It looked like he was in denial. He came across as a patriarch trying to distance himself from a rowdy youth. Had he first acknowledged the RSS links of some ex-pracharaks facing terror charges, and then detailed how the Sangh tried to stop them or sack them, he would have been more credible.
Insiders say there were several discussions among the RSS brass on how to counter the terror charges, and one section wanted to own up past associations with the likes of Sunil Joshi, a pracharak in Dewas, Madhya Pradesh, who was asked to leave after a series of incidents in which he defied his superiors and bad-mouthed them openly, saying they were cowards.
MOHAN BHAGWAT SARSANGHACHALAK
Indecisive. Image conscious. Created his faction of Maharashtrian Brahmins
SURESH JOSHI SARKARYAVAH
The next chief. Apolitical, with a social agenda. Shrewd. Wants transparency on terror charges
SURESH SONI SAHSARKARYAVAH
BJP pointsman. Fond of power, money and chartered flights. Blamed for corrupting cadres
DATTATREYA HOSABALE SAHSARKARYAVAH
Young and dynamic intellectual. Tipped for the top job in future
“Most families know what it is like to deal with rebellious young men. In the public eye, we would have struck a sympathetic chord by accepting an uncomfortable truth. And we would have shown our cadre that we would never shy away from owning them,” says an RSS source. But the RSS has moved on the path of denial, and there is no return. It is the fear of disrepute, typical of the middle-class when the police comes knocking at the doors. The RSS faces a situation it has no experience in tackling. Reportedly, when the Anti-Terrorism Squad went to the RSS Kanpur office and identified itself as ATS, an office-bearer asked: “Yeh ATS kaun si company hai?” (What company is this ATS)?
In internal discussions, one faction favoured making a clean breast of it, and letting national executive member Indresh Kumar defend himself. If he is not guilty he would emerge unfazed; if he is, he should pay the price and not the entire organisation. Sources believe this faction includes Bhagwat’s trusted deputy and RSS general secretary Suresh ‘Bhaiyaji’ Joshi.
But Bhagwat has been indecisive, and he has made a prestige issue out of Indresh’s defence. Indresh’s rise is attributed to former chief K Sudarshan, who was careless in his choice of people, often backing unscrupulous ones. Bhagwat also took a liking for him. The need to defend Indresh is now driving the brass’ reactions — it is sure it did enough to expunge radicals like Joshi, and that it cannot be held accountable for their deeds. It is sure that Swami Asimananda’s confession came under duress. But it is not sure of how to make the bad publicity disappear.
Bhagwat, who cut a statuesque figure in his deft handling of the Sangh Parivar after the 30 November Ayodhya verdict — it was he who kept a tight leash on those who wanted to make political capital out of the verdict — has come up short this time around. Sources say he had got feet of clay just now because he is overly bothered about his image and that of the RSS.
MADAN DAS DEVI PRACHARAK PRAMUKH
A saintly presence. Was the BJP pointsman till 2004. Now marginalised by poor health
MG VAIDYA CORE GROUP MEMBER
Veteran. Staunch Maharashtrian Brahminist. Frustrated; feels that he has been denied his due
ASHOK SINGHAL CORE GROUP MEMBER
Trusted veteran. But poor health keeps him out now
MADHUBHAI KULKARNI CORE GROUP MEMBER
Bhagwat’s trusted lieutenant. Being groomed to take over BJP charge from Suresh Soni
On 10 November, Bhagwat became the first RSS chief to sit on a dharna — RSS bosses tend to behave like queen bees that stay deep inside the honeycomb and are seldom seen outside. In his first year at the helm, he gave so many interviews it became a problem for scribes to keep track of his statements. Sources close to the RSS sense that Bhagwat now has his own faction, something that a chief should never do. This has created confusion, and it is not just the Congress and its general secretary Digvijaya Singh who are waiting to capitalise on it. Some within the RSS also smell an opportunity.
Chief among them is RSS No. 3, joint secretary Suresh Soni, who is responsible for liaising with the BJP. He has not aligned with either side, playing a waiting game, not willing to risk anything by speaking his mind on how to tackle the terror allegations. He is from Madhya Pradesh and his rise is due to the patronage of Kushabhau Thakre and then Sudarshan. It is said that he literally runs Madhya Pradesh through the BJP state president Prabhat Jha and chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who moved under Soni’s patronage after his mentor Pramod Mahajan died.
Bhagwat has got feet of clay now as he is too bothered about his image, say RSS sources
Soni commands political power and money. He has several critics within the Parivar who blame him for introducing the influence of money. “Earlier, nobody had heard of RSS pracharaks making money from transfers and postings of government officials. But this is a reality now,” says a source in Madhya Pradesh.
There is a caste angle too. Soni, a non- Brahmin from the Vaishya Sunar community, feels upstaged by the return of Maharashtrian Brahmins at the RSS helm in the form of Bhagwat. He believes Bhagwat should have chosen him as the secretary, and not Bhaiyaji Joshi, also a Maharashtrian Brahmin from Indore. While the Sangh has always stood against the caste system formally, its core is dominated by Maharashtrian Brahmins and their sensibility. Madan Das Devi, from whom Soni took the charge of handling BJP after the former had a brain haemorrhage in 2004, was also a non-Brahmin. Devi has an impeccable reputation and is said to have stayed out of factionalism. All this leaves the final and youngest member of the RSS brass, Dattatreya Hosabale, in a corner. He keeps a low profile and there is no loose talk or negative stories on him.
Factionalism is only to be expected in what is India’s biggest NGO, claiming 50,000 branches and a general participation of six million people. But the terror charges have made the cracks more visible. And the power and influence of the BJP in the RSS is now a greater reality than the ideological influence the RSS wields on the BJP.
Some of these changes are natural, given the BJP’s rise in the past two decades. Sangh sources recall how Atal Bihari Vajpayee would sit on the ground in front of former RSS chief MS Golwalkar out of respect. By the time it came to Sudarshan — who had grown up reciting Vajpayee’s poems — he would stand up when Vajpayee walked in. Bhagwat is 23 years junior to LK Advani.
The Sangh is also subject to wider social changes. Sources say the days are gone when pracharaks shied away from politics of power to a fault. When it was easy to find model pracharaks, embodying discipline and character building, the two themes declaimed ad nauseum in RSS Bauddhik sessions. People riding cycles to go meet the high and mighty, shunning the offer of a car because they didn’t want to be seen even in the car with the rich and powerful. Several in the RSS believe that the organisation had occupied the conservative space Mahatma Gandhi had created, which the Congress has abandoned.
BUT THOSE cliches are due for revision. Today, meeting a BJP minister is a matter of prestige for a pracharak. The love for comfort Thengdi warned about has set in. “I know pracharaks who puke at the idea of travelling second class in a train,” says a source. They want to sport the latest laptop and cell phones, whether they know how to use them or not. At RSS meetings, it is not surprising to see swanky cars now.
“In BJP-ruled states, RSS cadre are power drunk,” says a source. The RSS has become a lot more than an instrument of social change; it has become a career option. The RSS finds itself struggling to stay true to its idea of itself, which drew appreciation from even its staunchest critics. An organisation committed to social engineering finds itself in the midst of social changes that have the power to redefine it.
The influence of the BJP on RSS is now a greater reality, not the other way round
What fuels such talk is the RSS’ informal nature. It is not a registered body. A host of peripheral bodies handle its expenses and administrative costs. Trusts run by swayamsevaks usually own and maintain RSS offices, and the pracharak’s expenses are taken care of by a system of guru dakshina. But where the BJP is in power, it is not uncommon for the party to foot the bills of pracharaks. This means BJP leaders at the local level dictate the RSS agenda.
And this is why several in the RSS fear the terror charges. Having tasted power and become familiar with how a government can pursue a probe, they fear unwarranted surprises. For example, what if the sleuths inspect the pracharaks’ travel expenses and find unsavoury details? Which is why several in the RSS believe coming clean would have been best.
It would have allowed the outfit to defend itself aggressively in public. Instead, with its status-conscious leadership and comfort-loving cadre, it is now reduced to a passive entity in a trial by media that does not look like ending soon.
February 12, 2011
Sanjeev Bhatt : The cop who has blown the lid on Modi and Gujarat 2002
Tehelka, 19 Feb 2011
GUJARAT RIOTS
‘I was there. Narendra Modi said let the people vent their anger’
DIG Sanjeev Bhatt knows the terrible truth about Gujarat 2002. ASHISH KHETAN has his explosive revelations. Will the Supreme Court take it on record?
PHOTO: INDIAN EXPRESS ARCHIVE
CHIEF MINISTER Narendra Modi’s interrogation by the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT), published in TEHELKA last week, (The Artful Faker), was a class act in tactical evasion. But Modi made one slip. On the evening of 27 February 2002, after the terrible Sabarmati train carnage in Godhra, Modi had called a ‘law and order meeting’ at his residence, at which, in an unforgivable act, he is infamously reported to have told his officers, “Let the Hindus vent their anger.” The signal was sent. The mayhem that followed is history.
In March 2010, when asked by SIT inquiry officer AK Malhotra about who was present at this meeting, Modi named seven bureaucrats and officers. Then, he singled out one police officer: Sanjeev Bhatt, deputy commissioner of internal security in the State Intelligence Bureau (SIB).
Malhotra had asked Modi who was present at the meeting, not who was absent. But curiously, after he had listed the names of those present, Modi volunteered this unnecessary and unprompted piece of information: Sanjeev Bhatt, DC (Int) was not at the meeting, he said, because it was a “high-level meeting”.
It is significant that Modi unilaterally tried to disown and discredit Bhatt’s presence at the 27 February meeting because two months earlier, as officer after officer had pleaded amnesia about the proceedings at the meeting, just one officer had told the SIT team that if the Supreme Court were to summon him, or if a criminal case were to be registered, he would testify and tell the truth of what he heard at that meeting. That officer was Sanjeev Bhatt.
‘As I looked through the charred debris, my shoes were encrusted with a thick paste, a mix of burnt flesh and soil,’ says Bhatt
It is also significant that neither Modi nor others refute the fact that Bhatt was present the next morning at another highlevel law-and-order meeting called by the chief minister (at which no infamous thing was said). Or, indeed, at several other lawand- order meetings chaired by the chief minister in the weeks to come. If he was not too junior to attend a meeting on 28 February then, why was he too junior to attend one on 27 February?
What does Sanjeev Bhatt know that Modi would like to discredit?
When Sanjeev Bhatt was summoned by the SIT in January 2010, he deposed for two days before them.
“As I was surveying the torched building and the compound, alongside the heaps of charred remains, what looked like a mix of household objects and decomposing bits of human flesh, I came upon a half burnt Encyclopaedia Britannica. I picked it up and wiped off the soot deposited on it with my handkerchief. Inside the book, at the top on the first page, the name Ahsan Jafri was written with a flourish. For a few moments I kept staring at the name, admiring the stylish handwriting. Though I had never known or met Jafri in my life, in his handwriting I could see that he must have been a cultured and learned man,” Bhatt, 47, told the SIT.
Bhatt was describing the heartrending scene he saw on his visit to Gulberg Society two days after a Hindu mob had killed 69 Muslims in this building. Among the dead was former Congress MP Ahsan Jafri. He was 64 at the time and his body and the bodies of 37 other victims were hacked and burnt beyond recognition and thus could never be identified: they were all buried en masse. The bodies of only 31 victims were identified, some by their mangled remains, some through the few discernible pieces of clothing that had remained unburnt.
The SIT calls Modi partisan and communal but refuses to probe further. It forgets that if he had been fair, it would have saved lives
“My thoughts immediately went back to my childhood,” Bhatt continued. “In those days there was no internet and for any reference material I would have to cycle to the nearest library. As a student it was my desire to own a copy of Encyclopaedia Britannica. And here it was lying half burnt, in a heap of charred human remains before me.” After a moment, he added, “The stench was nauseating. In many parts the soil was crusted with a thick charcoal like paste, perhaps a mixture of burnt human flesh and sundry other things. The soles of my shoes got plastered with that substance. I haven’t worn those shoes since neither have I cleaned them.”
Bhatt had other things to tell. It was agonizing, he said, to see the impunity with which violent mobs had gone about the city unleashing terror.
“Two days after the Godhra train incident,” he told the SIT, “I was passing by Saraspur area. To my right I saw a mob trying to demolish a masjid known as Mancha Masjid. I told my driver to stop. The moment I stepped out of the car, the mob started dispersing.”
Police and mobs don’t sit well together, Bhatt added. But during the 2002 riots that’s exactly what happened. As sections of the Gujarat police morphed into a cheering crowd on the sideline, Hindu mobs went on a killing spree. “It takes decades for a building to be reduced to ruins. The Gulberg Society was turned into wreckage in a span of few hours,” he said.
Some of what Bhatt told the SIT was recorded in a typed statement, a copy of which is now before the Supreme Court. But it’s what Bhatt told the SIT cops offthe- record that paints the true picture of the Gujarat riots.
IN ITS cover story last week (Here is the smoking gun, 12 February), TEHELKA had exposed how the SITwas unwilling to prosecute Modi and other senior officials and ministers, despite recording an overwhelming body of evidence that showed that both Modi himself, and his government, had behaved in a dangerously communal manner at the peak of the riots, had illegal positioned politicians in police control rooms, persecuted neutral officers, appointed Sangh members as public prosecutors and destroyed police wireless messages and minutes of crucial law and order meetings. Yet, the SIT had concluded, all of this was not sufficient grounds to investigate Modi further “under law”.
The SIT team had also reported that the most serious allegation against Modi — his alleged instruction to senior administrative and police officials that Hindus should be allowed to vent their anger — could not be substantiated. Inquiry officer Malhotra reported that such a meeting had indeed been held on 27 February, but none of the officers present, save Sanjeev Bhatt, would testify about what had transpired at the meeting. (Curiously, two claimed amnesia; four denied Modi had made such a statement; one denied he had been part of the meeting.) Malhotra also noted that most of these officers did not seem to be speaking their minds, either because they had been rewarded by the Modi government with choice postings, or because they were still in its service and feared the fall-out.
However, in an explosive detail that can have far-reaching consequences if the Supreme Court decides to pursue it, on page 149 of his report, Malhotra also noted that “Sanjeev Bhatt, the then DC (Int), has claimed off-the-record that the CM did utter these words.”
This opens up space for some urgent questions. What exactly did Sanjeev Bhatt tell the SIT “off-the-record”? Why did he choose not to put it on record? And what impact will it have if it is put on the record? First, read what Bhatt told the SIT.
“There is a lot of anger in the people. This time a balanced approach against Hindus and Muslims will not work. It is necessary that the anger of the people is allowed to be vented.” These, according to Bhatt, are the exact incendiary words Modi had spoken at the meeting and which Bhatt later scribbled down in a personal notepad he maintained during the riots.
When Bhatt made this revelation, Malhotra had jumped out of his chair. “You are the first man who has dared to speak the truth,” he said and took Bhatt by his hand to the cabin of his senior officer Paramvir Singh, a former special director of the Central Bureau of Investigation, who was supervising the probe against Modi at the time. Singh, too, was reportedly delighted to find a witness ready to stand his ground and speak the truth.
Bhatt then described the ground floor room where the meeting occurred. He also told Malhotra and Singh that though the then BJP MLA Haren Pandya was not part of the meeting, he was present in one of the adjoining rooms in the CM’s bungalow while the meeting was going on.
(About two and a half months after the riots, on 13 May 2002, Pandya had deposed before two retired judges — Justice PB Sawant and Justice Hosbert Suresh — that ‘he had attended a meeting on 27 February 2002 night at the residence of Modi in which the latter had made it clear that should there be a backlash from the Hindus the police should not come in their way.’ Pandya was murdered mysteriously a few months later.)
Vanished lives Late Ahsan Jafri, heavy on the country’s conscience; Zakia Jafri, still fighting
PHOTO (RIGHT): TRUPTI PATEL
Both Justices Sawant and Suresh have testified before the SIT confirming Pandya’s deposition before them, implicating Modi. Now, Bhatt’s version of events coupled with the existing evidence pointed towards a strong possibility that on the night of 27 February, Modi had convened two meetings — one administrative and the second political — and on one hand gave VHP and BJP leaders a fatal signal to mobilise riotous mobs and on the other hand instructed the police machinery to turn a blind eye.
(In 2007, in another corroborative detail, the then Godhra BJP MLA and a rabid Bajrang Dal leader, Haresh Bhatt had also told this reporter in the course of an undercover investigation that Modi had given rioters approval to run amok for three days. Arvind Pandya, the Modi government’s special prosecutor in the Justice Nanavati- Shah Commission, was also captured on a spy-cam saying it was Modi’s strong leadership that had made the post-Godhra pogrom possible.)
Bhatt told the SIT officers everything that transpired at the meeting but declined to put it on record because the ongoing SIT probe was merely a preliminary enquiry and not a criminal investigation under the Criminal Procedure Code of India.
“He has stated that he attended this meeting in his capacity as an intelligence officer, and as per his belief, it would not be professionally appropriate on his part to divulge the exact nature of discussions that took place during the said meeting. However, he would be duty bound to disclose the same to the best of his recollection and ability, as and when he is required to do so under legal obligation,” Malhotra noted in his report. (Bhatt is presently a DIG with the State Reserve Police Training Centre.) The understanding was that if an FIRwas filed later, Bhatt’s initial statement could be expanded into a full disclosure, recorded under Section 161 of the CrPC.
Though this one statement, if proved, should be enough indictment against Modi, there are other damning things Bhatt told the SIT team off-the-record.
In a damaging written statement, which is now with the Supreme Court, Bhatt had recorded how the SIB was flooded with a deluge of intelligence after the Sabarmati tragedy, indicating that the VHP, Bajrang Dal and other Hindutva organisations could incite communal violence in Ahmedabad and other districts in Gujarat. He had also recorded that all the while mobs were mobilising at Meghani Nagar and surrounding Gulberg Society, the SIB was consistently receiving and passing on field intelligence to the office of the then DGP K Chakravarthi and then Commissioner of Police of Ahmedabad, PC Pande about the dangerous build up.
But what Bhatt told the SIT off-therecord is even more shocking.
Bhatt told Malhotra that he did not only pass this information to the DGP and Commissioner: he also spoke directly with the office of the chief minister himself.
“Initially I kept passing the reports of a mob build-up near Gulberg Society to DGP K Chakravarthi and Commissioner PC Pande. But I found Pande was not bothered at all,” Bhatt said.
“Then I went to the office of DGP Chakravarti and told him to somehow prevail upon Pande to at least announce curfew in Naroda and Meghani Nagar. After much dithering, Pande announced curfew sometime post noon. But the order existed only on paper. On the ground it was never implemented. The mob at Gulberg was not dispersed until 4.30 pm,” Bhatt said.
“Since the curfew was never imposed, the crowd at Gulberg kept multiplying,” he continued. “Finally, when I saw that Pande was not budging at all, I made Chakravarthi speak to Pande on the phone. But to my utter shock I found Pande was still not willing to act,” Bhatt reportedly told Malhotra.
‘Intelligence was pouring in. Pande refused to act. I realised Modi’s signal had percolated through the police machinery,’ says Bhatt
“It was at this point that I called up OP Singh (Modi’s personal secretary) and spoke to him. I explained the gravity of the situation at Gulberg Society to him and told him to communicate immediately to the chief minister that if the police didn’t act immediately, the mob would set the society on fire and kill dozens of Muslims including former Congress MP Ahsan Jafri,” Bhatt said.
According to Bhatt, after his call to Modi’s secretary he waited a while to see if the city police would finally act. But, terrifyingly, there was still no response. “At this point I got convinced,” Bhatt told Malhotra, “that Modi had really meant what he had said the night before and his message had percolated down to a large section of the police machinery.” According to Bhatt, Chakravarthi had wanted to act but he was helpless. The city police was under Pande and he was not ready to do anything.
Given the way other senior officers had evaded questions about that fateful meeting at the chief minister’s residence (See TEHELKA story The Smoking Gun), Bhatt was the only hope for the SIT in its quest for the truth. But between January, when Bhatt deposed before the SIT, and May 2010, when SIT submitted its report to the Supreme Court, things changed dramatically. In the last week of February 2010, Paramvir Singh quit the probe team citing personal reasons. Malhotra alone drafted the 600-odd page inquiry report which he submitted before the court in May 2010. And instead of recommending the registration of an FIR and full-fledged investigation (as Bhatt had thought the SITwould do), the SIT came to conclusions that contradicted the very findings on which they were based.
Raghavan and Malhotra reprimanded Modi for being unfair, partisan, communal and immoral but — inexplicably — claimed this was not sufficient ground for a further and more stringent investigation against him. They seemed to forget that non-partisan and fair conduct from Modi could have saved the lives of hundreds of innocent men, women and children whose only crime was that they were Muslims in a state run by him.
THERE ARE many other questions the SIT must answer. Why didn’t it keep a written account of everything Bhatt told them off the record for future reference? Doesn’t the Supreme Court have the right to know Bhatt’s full off-the-record deposition? Why did Malhotra only mention a small portion of it? Equally, did Malhotra follow up on the leads and inputs provided by Bhatt? If not, what was the purpose of making him depose for over two days? What efforts did Malhotra make to corroborate Bhatt’s version of events besides asking the top rung of the bureaucracy and police, who are themselves cited as accused in Ahsan Jafri’s wife Zakia’s complaint? Why did he not go down the ladder to lower level police personnel to know from them what was happening on the ground?
TEHELKA has managed to track down one independent witness who has corroborated Bhatt’s claim of having attended the 27 February evening meeting. This witness is one more proof of the shoddiness of the SIT probe. Proof of all the unturned stones; the work waiting to be done if there is the will for it.
But before we get to that, take a look at what was happening behind the scenes in the corridors of power, even as hundreds of Muslims were being brutalised on the streets of Ahmedabad.
Sanjeev Bhatt was the senior most deputy commissioner in the State Intelligence Bureau (there were two other DCs besides him) and was also the longest serving officer in the bureau. He was in-charge of the internal security desk and his job involved collecting, collating and analysing intelligence before sending it to senior police officers, the home minister and chief minister of the state.
On 28 February, police inspectors, subinspectors and constables posted with the SIBwere constantly sending reports to the SIB control room about the rapidly deteriorating situation in Naroda Gaon, Naroda Patiya and Meghani Nagar (where Gulberg Society was situated).
According to Bhatt’s testimony before the SIT, a SIB police inspector whose last name was Bharwad was positioned in Meghani Nagar for collecting intelligence. (Bhatt didn’t remember his first name but told Malhotra he could easily make an official enquiry with the SIB and find out.) According to Bhatt, Bharwad was sending him a ball by ball commentary of the crisis spiraling at Gulberg Society.
According to Bhatt, Bharwad told him over the phone that local VHP and Bajrang Dal leaders kept shouting abusive anti- Muslim slogans for several hours outside Gulberg Society, inciting and mobilising the mob. Many VHP and Bajrang Dal members from Meghani Nagar were part of the mob, but tempos, cars and motorcycles carrying rioters from other localities also kept pulling in, adding to the numbers. Most of the Bajrang Dal activists were carrying tridents in their belts, a small number were carrying firearms. But the most preferred weaponry was gas cylinders and cans filled with petrol and diesel.
For several hours, hundreds of Muslims who had taken shelter in Gulberg — thinking that a society housing a Congress leader would be safer — made desperate calls to friends, relatives and the police, pleading to be rescued. But the local police remained a mute spectator. At times, it even goaded the mob into committing violence. At around 2 pm, after four hours of complete paralysis on the part of the police, the emboldened mob finally stormed the building.
“According to Bharwad, the rioters first looted the place. He also reported a few instances of rape. As Bharwad sent us these field reports, we called up the Ahmedabad police control and passed it on to them,” Bhatt told Malhotra.
“At around 2.30 pm he again called me and told me that the mob had dragged out Ahsan Jafri and had clasped his head in a sandsa (a contraption used in Gujarat to catch stray dogs). For some time the mob paraded him around, his head still clasped in the iron contraption, kicking and slashing him. Then they removed the sandsa and hacked him into pieces. Finally they made a heap of him and set it on fire,” Bhatt reportedly told Malhotra.
WHEN NARENDRA Modi was questioned by the SIT, Malhotra asked him: ‘Did you receive any information about an attack by a mob on Gulberg Society? If so, when and through whom? What action did you take in the matter?’
High handed Modi, always on guard
a policeman watches Muslim shops burn in Ahmedabad
Lest we forget Qasimbhai (foreground) who lost 19 members of his family at Gulberg
MODI REPLIED: ‘To the best of my recollection, I was informed in the law and order review meeting held in the night about the attack on Gulberg Society in Meghani Nagar area and Naroda Patiya.’
Where does the truth lie? Bhatt had told Malhotra that he had personally informed OP Singh, Modi’s personal secretary, about the ongoing Gulberg carnage. It is also important to remember that since October 2001, when Narendra Modi took over as Gujarat chief minister, he has held the post of home minister of the state. In this capacity, the Gujarat Police and state intelligence functions directly under him.
It is also important to remember that on 28 February, as the massacre at Gulberg Society ensued, the police control room was flooded with distress calls. Here are just a few wireless messages that the SIT has managed to procure.
12:20 HRS: Police Inspector KG Erda of Meghani Nagar sends a message to Ahmedabad police control room that a mob of around 10,000 had surrounded Gulberg Society and was pelting stones and also trying to set it on fire. Erda requested for additional forces.
12:38 HRS: A police mobile van stationed near Meghani Nagar sends a message to Ahmedabad police control room that Gulberg Society had been surrounded by a mob of 4,000 to 5,000 people.
14:05 HRS: Joint Commissioner Sector 2, MK Tandon sends a message to police control room that Ahsan Jafri had been surrounded by a mob and additional forces should be dispatched.
14:14 HRS: KG Erda sends another message to Ahmedabad police control room that a mob of 10,000 people was about to set Gulberg Society on fire and ACP, DCP and additional forces be sent immediately.
14:45 HRS: KG Erda sends yet another message that the society had been surrounded from all sides and the mob was about to set it on fire.
15:45 HRS: Tandon sends a message to control room enquiring if there was any incidence of violence at Gulberg Society (by this time the carnage was in full swing).
Just this tiny sample of messages is proof that the police were fully aware of what was going on but did little to disperse the mobs, except exchange messages. It is also important to note here that the SIT report says that the original police control room records are missing and that ‘the Gujarat government has reportedly destroyed the police wireless communication of the period pertaining to the riots.’
Isn’t just this — the destruction of official records — sufficient grounds for further investigation?
From 12.30 pm to 3.45pm, no reinforcements were sent. Tandon only reached the spot around 4:30 pm to clear the bodies. Erda has already been booked by the SIT in the Gulberg Society case. SIT has also accused Tandon and the then DCP of the area PB Gondia of willfully allowing the carnage and is investigating their role further. But, inexplicably, the SIT has not indicted PC Pande, the Commissioner of Police, Ahmedabad at the time.
Yet, here’s the obvious question: what did Pande do about the constant stream of reports, both from the local police and the SIB, about the mob build-up? (A few wireless messages that the SIT has managed to procure and quoted in its report show that Pande had apparently instructed a few officers to reach the spot but he never followed up on his own orders to find out if they were complied with.) This, coupled with Bhatt’s account that Pande deliberately did not pay any heed to his intelligence inputs, nails Pande’s culpability. There is also the plain, bald fact: why did no senior officers or reinforcements reach the spot?
Pande was one of the officers present in the infamous February 27 meeting at the CM’s residence. He also received around 15 calls from the chief minister’s office around the time the massacres at Naroda and Gulberg were underway. The natural question that arises is what did Pande discuss with the chief minister and his aides while these terrible massacres were on? In a constitutional state, the chief minister would have asked Pande what he was doing to ensure the safety of citizens and instructed him to take urgent measures. If Modi claims, as he has done in his interrogation session with the SIT, that he didn’t even know about the massacres till later that night, should one accuse him only of a communal mindset or also add plain inefficiency and incompetence?
In an interesting codicil, after his retirement in 2009, Pande was appointed as chairman of the Gujarat Electricity Regulatory Commission — a post-retirement benefit he continues to enjoy.
ACCORDING TO SIT sources, besides narrating his first-hand account, Bhatt also submitted a few intelligence reports prepared during the riots to the SIT.
A few reports, dated February 27, soon after the Sabarmati train carnage news broke, show that the state government had a mountain of intelligence which clearly showed that VHP and Bajrang Dal leaders and cadres were preparing for communal violence on February 28.
A report named DIR/2/COM/Precaution/ 72/2002 dated 27.02.2002 said: Information has been received that in respect of the Godhra incident, VHP has called for Gujarat bandh on 28.02.2002. In that respect the VHP has called for a meeting at its Ahmedabad office to chalk out future activities and strategies. In this regard necessary watch needs to be kept and any information so received must be transmitted.’
In another message to all district police the SIB said, ‘The situation arising out of bandh call needs a strict vigil from the police units to avoid any untoward incident.’
Yet another message, numbered D-1/9- HA, alerted all police commissioners and district SPs that after the Godhra incident the people of minority community travelling by public transport and cars may be targeted to take revenge.
Bhatt also submitted a few reports which had warned the government very early on the morning of February 28 about the mobilisation of mobs by Hindutva organisations. Again, the reports were sent to the chief minister’s office.
For instance, a report named C/Precaution/ 177/2002, dated 28.02.2002 and marked to the CMO and MOS (Home), states: ‘Some members of Bajrang Dal and VHP have been found to be part of the mobs at different places. They are moving on motorcycles and are attacking autorickshaw drivers who belong to the minority community. They are also attacking poor people of other professions from the minority community and thereby causing serious injuries. It is hereby directed that police must take extra precautions in respect of such vehicles and people.’
There are other glaring crevices between official statements and the truth. Contrary to the Modi government’s claim that there were no funeral processions of the victims of the Sabarmati train carnage paraded in Ahmedabad, the intelligence reports submitted by Bhatt show that funeral processions were indeed taken out in Ahmedabad. This lends credence to the allegation that Modi deliberately had the bodies brought from Godhra to Ahmedabad to fuel the communal frenzy.
A REPORT named C/Dir/ Shamshan yatra/ 176/2002 dated 28.02.2002 and marked to Modi’s office and senior police officers states: ‘In respect of the incident at Godhra in which the funeral procession of identified bodies of dead karsevaks is likely to be taken out from the Sola Civil Hospital. In this procession a large number of people are expected to participate and during and after the processions there is a likelihood of disturbances.’
Cover-up team? Then Police Commissioner, Ahmedabad, PC Pande; Additional DG Police, Geeta Johri
PHOTOS (L TO R): INDIAN EXPRESS ARCHIVE, AP
Bhatt also gave the SIT a series of intelligence reports suggesting that a large number of bodies were dumped in a well at Naroda Patiya then covered with debris so nobody would get suspicious. His reports also show that when an SIB inspector tried to probe further, somebody planted a dead pig in the well as a decoy for the foul stench and derailed the search. (It is significant to remember that one of the prime conspirators of the Naroda Patiya massacre, Babu Bajrangi had told this reporter during TEHELKA’s undercover story that many bodies were disposed off in wells to bring down the official death toll.)
Human rights activists like Teesta Setalvad have been petitioning the government and the courts for eight years to excavate the well at Naroda Patiya. When the probe was transferred to the SIT, these activists reiterated their plea but the SIT bought the Gujarat government’s explanation without further probing.
All of this emerges from just a few reports that Bhatt managed to procure. In a move that can only be construed as a cover- up, the Modi government did not provide the SIT with any documents related to intelligence or law and order meetings pertaining to the riots. The government also refused to share the security logs of the chief minister and other senior officials which would have shown their movement during the riots.
Apart from Bhatt, there are only two other police officers who have provided the SIT with crucial documents that could nail the Modi government.
Former ADGP (Int) B Sreekumar gave the SIT a huge volume of intelligence reports on how arms and bombs were smuggled in Ahmedabad during the riots and how the Modi government didn’t take enough security measures for the karsevaks before the Godhra train incident. Both Bhatt and Sreekumar were shunted out of the SIB by the same order on the same date: 18 September 2002. Sreekumar was superseded and had to fight a case to get his pension; Bhatt has not been given one executive posting for the past eight years.
IPS officer Rahul Sharma who gave the SIT cellphone data records of senior ministers, bureaucrats and police officers for the period pertaining to the riots was served a show cause notice by the Modi government last week for producing these records before the SIT without its permission. (See box)
The SIT report has recorded many instances of how upright officers were persecuted by the Modi government after the riots. Clearly, that intimidation continues.
Tehelka has managed to track down a new witness. If a magazine can make the effort to verify Bhatt’s claims, why can’t the SIT?
The SIT report – under whatever compulsion it may have felt – has tried to deflect Sanjeev Bhatt’s claim that he was at the February 27 meeting and that he had gone there on the insistence of DGP Chakravarthi. But TEHELKA managed to track down Tarachand Yadav, 50, a Gujarat police head constable, who was Bhatt’s driver during the riots. Yadav told TEHELKA that on February 27, 2002, Bhatt left office at around 8 pm, after which he drove Bhatt to his home at Drive-In Road, Ahmedabad.
‘Sahab went jogging and returned after an hour or so. I had finished my dinner when sahab again came out and told me that we had to go back to Police Bhawan at Gandhinagar. When we reached DGP sahab’s car was already parked outside. Sahab got into DGP sahab’s car and told me to follow. We drove to CM Bungalow in Gandhinagar. DGP sahab and Bhatt sahab went inside. There were other cars also parked outside the bungalow. After about half an hour Bhatt sahib came out and I drove him back to Police Bhawan. Sahab must have worked in the office for another hour or so after which I drove him back home.’
TEHELKA is ready to provide the SIT and, if asked, the Supreme Court a copy of Yadav’s recorded version of events.
But the moot question is, if a newsmagazine can make the effort to cross-check and verify Bhatt’s claims, why didn’t the SIT — mandated by no less than the Supreme Court of India — take more trouble to get to the bottom of one of the most violent ruptures in our nation’s recent history?
Can a lax probe of this nature – which has itself listed all that it has not done — ever hope to unravel the truth behind the killing of over 2,000 innocent people? Will Gujarat remain a festering wound, providing extremists in both the Hindu and Muslim communities a pretext to indulge in more horrific acts of violence? Will no corrective lesson go out to all those leaders and officers who failed in their duty? Or will the Supreme Court intervene forcefully in the riot victims’ despairing quest for justice?
All eyes are now on the three judge bench which will convene on March 3 and deliver its much anticipated verdict.
ashish.khetan@tehelka.com
LAST MEN STANDING
The persecution of upright officers continues even now, finds ANUMEHA YADAV
A KEY POINT of the SIT report on the 2002 riots was that it affirms that the Narendra Modi government persecuted police officers who tried to stop the violence. Their persecution is still on.
On 5 February, the government issued a notice to senior IPS officer Rahul Sharma asking how and why he submitted phone records of senior politicians and bureaucrats during the riots to inquiry commissions without approval. In its notice, nine years aer the riots, it asked Sharma why action should not be taken against him.
“The government is trying to discredit Sharma and intimidate him. It destroyed all original evidence and now it is trying to discredit the records Sharma has submitted,” says lawyer Mukul Sinha of Jan Sangharsh Manch.
The Modi government did not keep any records or minutes of the crucial meetings it held during the riots, something the SIT has raised a question over.
Sharma, a 1992 batch IPS officer now posted as DIG Rajkot, was DCP (control room), Ahmedabad, in April 2002. Investigating the violence at Naroda Patiya and Gulberg Society, he collected data from AT&T and CelForce mobile service providers of all calls received and made in Ahmedabad during this period and handed over these to the Crime Branch. These CDS containing phone records of senior ministers, police officers, and members of RSS and VHP to each other were subsequently “lost”. But while deposing before the Nanavati Commission set up in March 2002 to inquire into the riots, Sharma submitted a copy of this CD that he had preserved.
Obstructed IPS officers Satish Verma (top) and Rahul Sharma
These phone records have been one of the most significant pieces of evidence in nailing the guilty, including the arrest and the cancelling of anticipatory bails of Gujarat VHP president Jaideep Patel and minister Maya Kodnani in 2009, and in the investigation into the killing of Congress ex-MP Ahsan Jafri and 30 others at Gulberg Society. The CDS are vital pieces of evidence in the Naroda Patiya violence in which 105 Muslims were killed by official count.
But scuttling any effort for fair investigations seems to be the norm in Gujarat. A week before Sharma received his notice, another senior IPS officer, Satish Verma, member of a separate SIT set up to inquire into the 2004 Ishrat Jehan encounter, flagged that he was being restricted from pursuing leads in the case. Verma, one of three police officers probing this encounter allegedly carried by Gujarat police officers to please their political bosses, submitted an affidavit citing instances of interference.
In an 80-page affidavit in the Gujarat High Court on 28 January, Verma described how obvious forensic evidence had been ignored by a previous SIT set up by the Gujarat government in 2009, including bullets in Ishrat’s body that did not match the weapons the police claim were used in the encounter. Verma described how Mohan Jha, a Gujarat cadre officer, who was also a member of the previous SIT, and Karnail Singh, a Delhi cadre officer, deliberately forwarded the retraction of a key witness to the HC without any comments to create doubt and ambiguity. Verma disclosed how Jha, who is the current JCP, Detection of Crime Branch (DCB), tried to put 26 police officers directly under himself in the Special Operations Group last month, claiming they were needed for security in the Vibrant Gujarat summit. All 26 were with the DCB on the day of the encounter.
“Verma says he had started maintaining an official note on what is going on in the SIT in December, 19 days aer the SIT began work. This shows he saw the need to put the irregularities on the record and anticipated that his efforts for a fair investigation would be obstructed. It shows how twisted this attempt to investigate these fake encounter killings is,” says a senior police officer, requesting anonymity.
anumeha@tehelka.com
GUJARAT RIOTS
‘I was there. Narendra Modi said let the people vent their anger’
DIG Sanjeev Bhatt knows the terrible truth about Gujarat 2002. ASHISH KHETAN has his explosive revelations. Will the Supreme Court take it on record?
PHOTO: INDIAN EXPRESS ARCHIVE
CHIEF MINISTER Narendra Modi’s interrogation by the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT), published in TEHELKA last week, (The Artful Faker), was a class act in tactical evasion. But Modi made one slip. On the evening of 27 February 2002, after the terrible Sabarmati train carnage in Godhra, Modi had called a ‘law and order meeting’ at his residence, at which, in an unforgivable act, he is infamously reported to have told his officers, “Let the Hindus vent their anger.” The signal was sent. The mayhem that followed is history.
In March 2010, when asked by SIT inquiry officer AK Malhotra about who was present at this meeting, Modi named seven bureaucrats and officers. Then, he singled out one police officer: Sanjeev Bhatt, deputy commissioner of internal security in the State Intelligence Bureau (SIB).
Malhotra had asked Modi who was present at the meeting, not who was absent. But curiously, after he had listed the names of those present, Modi volunteered this unnecessary and unprompted piece of information: Sanjeev Bhatt, DC (Int) was not at the meeting, he said, because it was a “high-level meeting”.
It is significant that Modi unilaterally tried to disown and discredit Bhatt’s presence at the 27 February meeting because two months earlier, as officer after officer had pleaded amnesia about the proceedings at the meeting, just one officer had told the SIT team that if the Supreme Court were to summon him, or if a criminal case were to be registered, he would testify and tell the truth of what he heard at that meeting. That officer was Sanjeev Bhatt.
‘As I looked through the charred debris, my shoes were encrusted with a thick paste, a mix of burnt flesh and soil,’ says Bhatt
It is also significant that neither Modi nor others refute the fact that Bhatt was present the next morning at another highlevel law-and-order meeting called by the chief minister (at which no infamous thing was said). Or, indeed, at several other lawand- order meetings chaired by the chief minister in the weeks to come. If he was not too junior to attend a meeting on 28 February then, why was he too junior to attend one on 27 February?
What does Sanjeev Bhatt know that Modi would like to discredit?
When Sanjeev Bhatt was summoned by the SIT in January 2010, he deposed for two days before them.
“As I was surveying the torched building and the compound, alongside the heaps of charred remains, what looked like a mix of household objects and decomposing bits of human flesh, I came upon a half burnt Encyclopaedia Britannica. I picked it up and wiped off the soot deposited on it with my handkerchief. Inside the book, at the top on the first page, the name Ahsan Jafri was written with a flourish. For a few moments I kept staring at the name, admiring the stylish handwriting. Though I had never known or met Jafri in my life, in his handwriting I could see that he must have been a cultured and learned man,” Bhatt, 47, told the SIT.
Bhatt was describing the heartrending scene he saw on his visit to Gulberg Society two days after a Hindu mob had killed 69 Muslims in this building. Among the dead was former Congress MP Ahsan Jafri. He was 64 at the time and his body and the bodies of 37 other victims were hacked and burnt beyond recognition and thus could never be identified: they were all buried en masse. The bodies of only 31 victims were identified, some by their mangled remains, some through the few discernible pieces of clothing that had remained unburnt.
The SIT calls Modi partisan and communal but refuses to probe further. It forgets that if he had been fair, it would have saved lives
“My thoughts immediately went back to my childhood,” Bhatt continued. “In those days there was no internet and for any reference material I would have to cycle to the nearest library. As a student it was my desire to own a copy of Encyclopaedia Britannica. And here it was lying half burnt, in a heap of charred human remains before me.” After a moment, he added, “The stench was nauseating. In many parts the soil was crusted with a thick charcoal like paste, perhaps a mixture of burnt human flesh and sundry other things. The soles of my shoes got plastered with that substance. I haven’t worn those shoes since neither have I cleaned them.”
Bhatt had other things to tell. It was agonizing, he said, to see the impunity with which violent mobs had gone about the city unleashing terror.
“Two days after the Godhra train incident,” he told the SIT, “I was passing by Saraspur area. To my right I saw a mob trying to demolish a masjid known as Mancha Masjid. I told my driver to stop. The moment I stepped out of the car, the mob started dispersing.”
Police and mobs don’t sit well together, Bhatt added. But during the 2002 riots that’s exactly what happened. As sections of the Gujarat police morphed into a cheering crowd on the sideline, Hindu mobs went on a killing spree. “It takes decades for a building to be reduced to ruins. The Gulberg Society was turned into wreckage in a span of few hours,” he said.
Some of what Bhatt told the SIT was recorded in a typed statement, a copy of which is now before the Supreme Court. But it’s what Bhatt told the SIT cops offthe- record that paints the true picture of the Gujarat riots.
IN ITS cover story last week (Here is the smoking gun, 12 February), TEHELKA had exposed how the SITwas unwilling to prosecute Modi and other senior officials and ministers, despite recording an overwhelming body of evidence that showed that both Modi himself, and his government, had behaved in a dangerously communal manner at the peak of the riots, had illegal positioned politicians in police control rooms, persecuted neutral officers, appointed Sangh members as public prosecutors and destroyed police wireless messages and minutes of crucial law and order meetings. Yet, the SIT had concluded, all of this was not sufficient grounds to investigate Modi further “under law”.
The SIT team had also reported that the most serious allegation against Modi — his alleged instruction to senior administrative and police officials that Hindus should be allowed to vent their anger — could not be substantiated. Inquiry officer Malhotra reported that such a meeting had indeed been held on 27 February, but none of the officers present, save Sanjeev Bhatt, would testify about what had transpired at the meeting. (Curiously, two claimed amnesia; four denied Modi had made such a statement; one denied he had been part of the meeting.) Malhotra also noted that most of these officers did not seem to be speaking their minds, either because they had been rewarded by the Modi government with choice postings, or because they were still in its service and feared the fall-out.
However, in an explosive detail that can have far-reaching consequences if the Supreme Court decides to pursue it, on page 149 of his report, Malhotra also noted that “Sanjeev Bhatt, the then DC (Int), has claimed off-the-record that the CM did utter these words.”
This opens up space for some urgent questions. What exactly did Sanjeev Bhatt tell the SIT “off-the-record”? Why did he choose not to put it on record? And what impact will it have if it is put on the record? First, read what Bhatt told the SIT.
“There is a lot of anger in the people. This time a balanced approach against Hindus and Muslims will not work. It is necessary that the anger of the people is allowed to be vented.” These, according to Bhatt, are the exact incendiary words Modi had spoken at the meeting and which Bhatt later scribbled down in a personal notepad he maintained during the riots.
When Bhatt made this revelation, Malhotra had jumped out of his chair. “You are the first man who has dared to speak the truth,” he said and took Bhatt by his hand to the cabin of his senior officer Paramvir Singh, a former special director of the Central Bureau of Investigation, who was supervising the probe against Modi at the time. Singh, too, was reportedly delighted to find a witness ready to stand his ground and speak the truth.
Bhatt then described the ground floor room where the meeting occurred. He also told Malhotra and Singh that though the then BJP MLA Haren Pandya was not part of the meeting, he was present in one of the adjoining rooms in the CM’s bungalow while the meeting was going on.
(About two and a half months after the riots, on 13 May 2002, Pandya had deposed before two retired judges — Justice PB Sawant and Justice Hosbert Suresh — that ‘he had attended a meeting on 27 February 2002 night at the residence of Modi in which the latter had made it clear that should there be a backlash from the Hindus the police should not come in their way.’ Pandya was murdered mysteriously a few months later.)
Vanished lives Late Ahsan Jafri, heavy on the country’s conscience; Zakia Jafri, still fighting
PHOTO (RIGHT): TRUPTI PATEL
Both Justices Sawant and Suresh have testified before the SIT confirming Pandya’s deposition before them, implicating Modi. Now, Bhatt’s version of events coupled with the existing evidence pointed towards a strong possibility that on the night of 27 February, Modi had convened two meetings — one administrative and the second political — and on one hand gave VHP and BJP leaders a fatal signal to mobilise riotous mobs and on the other hand instructed the police machinery to turn a blind eye.
(In 2007, in another corroborative detail, the then Godhra BJP MLA and a rabid Bajrang Dal leader, Haresh Bhatt had also told this reporter in the course of an undercover investigation that Modi had given rioters approval to run amok for three days. Arvind Pandya, the Modi government’s special prosecutor in the Justice Nanavati- Shah Commission, was also captured on a spy-cam saying it was Modi’s strong leadership that had made the post-Godhra pogrom possible.)
Bhatt told the SIT officers everything that transpired at the meeting but declined to put it on record because the ongoing SIT probe was merely a preliminary enquiry and not a criminal investigation under the Criminal Procedure Code of India.
“He has stated that he attended this meeting in his capacity as an intelligence officer, and as per his belief, it would not be professionally appropriate on his part to divulge the exact nature of discussions that took place during the said meeting. However, he would be duty bound to disclose the same to the best of his recollection and ability, as and when he is required to do so under legal obligation,” Malhotra noted in his report. (Bhatt is presently a DIG with the State Reserve Police Training Centre.) The understanding was that if an FIRwas filed later, Bhatt’s initial statement could be expanded into a full disclosure, recorded under Section 161 of the CrPC.
Though this one statement, if proved, should be enough indictment against Modi, there are other damning things Bhatt told the SIT team off-the-record.
In a damaging written statement, which is now with the Supreme Court, Bhatt had recorded how the SIB was flooded with a deluge of intelligence after the Sabarmati tragedy, indicating that the VHP, Bajrang Dal and other Hindutva organisations could incite communal violence in Ahmedabad and other districts in Gujarat. He had also recorded that all the while mobs were mobilising at Meghani Nagar and surrounding Gulberg Society, the SIB was consistently receiving and passing on field intelligence to the office of the then DGP K Chakravarthi and then Commissioner of Police of Ahmedabad, PC Pande about the dangerous build up.
But what Bhatt told the SIT off-therecord is even more shocking.
Bhatt told Malhotra that he did not only pass this information to the DGP and Commissioner: he also spoke directly with the office of the chief minister himself.
“Initially I kept passing the reports of a mob build-up near Gulberg Society to DGP K Chakravarthi and Commissioner PC Pande. But I found Pande was not bothered at all,” Bhatt said.
“Then I went to the office of DGP Chakravarti and told him to somehow prevail upon Pande to at least announce curfew in Naroda and Meghani Nagar. After much dithering, Pande announced curfew sometime post noon. But the order existed only on paper. On the ground it was never implemented. The mob at Gulberg was not dispersed until 4.30 pm,” Bhatt said.
“Since the curfew was never imposed, the crowd at Gulberg kept multiplying,” he continued. “Finally, when I saw that Pande was not budging at all, I made Chakravarthi speak to Pande on the phone. But to my utter shock I found Pande was still not willing to act,” Bhatt reportedly told Malhotra.
‘Intelligence was pouring in. Pande refused to act. I realised Modi’s signal had percolated through the police machinery,’ says Bhatt
“It was at this point that I called up OP Singh (Modi’s personal secretary) and spoke to him. I explained the gravity of the situation at Gulberg Society to him and told him to communicate immediately to the chief minister that if the police didn’t act immediately, the mob would set the society on fire and kill dozens of Muslims including former Congress MP Ahsan Jafri,” Bhatt said.
According to Bhatt, after his call to Modi’s secretary he waited a while to see if the city police would finally act. But, terrifyingly, there was still no response. “At this point I got convinced,” Bhatt told Malhotra, “that Modi had really meant what he had said the night before and his message had percolated down to a large section of the police machinery.” According to Bhatt, Chakravarthi had wanted to act but he was helpless. The city police was under Pande and he was not ready to do anything.
Given the way other senior officers had evaded questions about that fateful meeting at the chief minister’s residence (See TEHELKA story The Smoking Gun), Bhatt was the only hope for the SIT in its quest for the truth. But between January, when Bhatt deposed before the SIT, and May 2010, when SIT submitted its report to the Supreme Court, things changed dramatically. In the last week of February 2010, Paramvir Singh quit the probe team citing personal reasons. Malhotra alone drafted the 600-odd page inquiry report which he submitted before the court in May 2010. And instead of recommending the registration of an FIR and full-fledged investigation (as Bhatt had thought the SITwould do), the SIT came to conclusions that contradicted the very findings on which they were based.
Raghavan and Malhotra reprimanded Modi for being unfair, partisan, communal and immoral but — inexplicably — claimed this was not sufficient ground for a further and more stringent investigation against him. They seemed to forget that non-partisan and fair conduct from Modi could have saved the lives of hundreds of innocent men, women and children whose only crime was that they were Muslims in a state run by him.
THERE ARE many other questions the SIT must answer. Why didn’t it keep a written account of everything Bhatt told them off the record for future reference? Doesn’t the Supreme Court have the right to know Bhatt’s full off-the-record deposition? Why did Malhotra only mention a small portion of it? Equally, did Malhotra follow up on the leads and inputs provided by Bhatt? If not, what was the purpose of making him depose for over two days? What efforts did Malhotra make to corroborate Bhatt’s version of events besides asking the top rung of the bureaucracy and police, who are themselves cited as accused in Ahsan Jafri’s wife Zakia’s complaint? Why did he not go down the ladder to lower level police personnel to know from them what was happening on the ground?
TEHELKA has managed to track down one independent witness who has corroborated Bhatt’s claim of having attended the 27 February evening meeting. This witness is one more proof of the shoddiness of the SIT probe. Proof of all the unturned stones; the work waiting to be done if there is the will for it.
But before we get to that, take a look at what was happening behind the scenes in the corridors of power, even as hundreds of Muslims were being brutalised on the streets of Ahmedabad.
Sanjeev Bhatt was the senior most deputy commissioner in the State Intelligence Bureau (there were two other DCs besides him) and was also the longest serving officer in the bureau. He was in-charge of the internal security desk and his job involved collecting, collating and analysing intelligence before sending it to senior police officers, the home minister and chief minister of the state.
On 28 February, police inspectors, subinspectors and constables posted with the SIBwere constantly sending reports to the SIB control room about the rapidly deteriorating situation in Naroda Gaon, Naroda Patiya and Meghani Nagar (where Gulberg Society was situated).
According to Bhatt’s testimony before the SIT, a SIB police inspector whose last name was Bharwad was positioned in Meghani Nagar for collecting intelligence. (Bhatt didn’t remember his first name but told Malhotra he could easily make an official enquiry with the SIB and find out.) According to Bhatt, Bharwad was sending him a ball by ball commentary of the crisis spiraling at Gulberg Society.
According to Bhatt, Bharwad told him over the phone that local VHP and Bajrang Dal leaders kept shouting abusive anti- Muslim slogans for several hours outside Gulberg Society, inciting and mobilising the mob. Many VHP and Bajrang Dal members from Meghani Nagar were part of the mob, but tempos, cars and motorcycles carrying rioters from other localities also kept pulling in, adding to the numbers. Most of the Bajrang Dal activists were carrying tridents in their belts, a small number were carrying firearms. But the most preferred weaponry was gas cylinders and cans filled with petrol and diesel.
For several hours, hundreds of Muslims who had taken shelter in Gulberg — thinking that a society housing a Congress leader would be safer — made desperate calls to friends, relatives and the police, pleading to be rescued. But the local police remained a mute spectator. At times, it even goaded the mob into committing violence. At around 2 pm, after four hours of complete paralysis on the part of the police, the emboldened mob finally stormed the building.
“According to Bharwad, the rioters first looted the place. He also reported a few instances of rape. As Bharwad sent us these field reports, we called up the Ahmedabad police control and passed it on to them,” Bhatt told Malhotra.
“At around 2.30 pm he again called me and told me that the mob had dragged out Ahsan Jafri and had clasped his head in a sandsa (a contraption used in Gujarat to catch stray dogs). For some time the mob paraded him around, his head still clasped in the iron contraption, kicking and slashing him. Then they removed the sandsa and hacked him into pieces. Finally they made a heap of him and set it on fire,” Bhatt reportedly told Malhotra.
WHEN NARENDRA Modi was questioned by the SIT, Malhotra asked him: ‘Did you receive any information about an attack by a mob on Gulberg Society? If so, when and through whom? What action did you take in the matter?’
High handed Modi, always on guard
a policeman watches Muslim shops burn in Ahmedabad
Lest we forget Qasimbhai (foreground) who lost 19 members of his family at Gulberg
MODI REPLIED: ‘To the best of my recollection, I was informed in the law and order review meeting held in the night about the attack on Gulberg Society in Meghani Nagar area and Naroda Patiya.’
Where does the truth lie? Bhatt had told Malhotra that he had personally informed OP Singh, Modi’s personal secretary, about the ongoing Gulberg carnage. It is also important to remember that since October 2001, when Narendra Modi took over as Gujarat chief minister, he has held the post of home minister of the state. In this capacity, the Gujarat Police and state intelligence functions directly under him.
It is also important to remember that on 28 February, as the massacre at Gulberg Society ensued, the police control room was flooded with distress calls. Here are just a few wireless messages that the SIT has managed to procure.
12:20 HRS: Police Inspector KG Erda of Meghani Nagar sends a message to Ahmedabad police control room that a mob of around 10,000 had surrounded Gulberg Society and was pelting stones and also trying to set it on fire. Erda requested for additional forces.
12:38 HRS: A police mobile van stationed near Meghani Nagar sends a message to Ahmedabad police control room that Gulberg Society had been surrounded by a mob of 4,000 to 5,000 people.
14:05 HRS: Joint Commissioner Sector 2, MK Tandon sends a message to police control room that Ahsan Jafri had been surrounded by a mob and additional forces should be dispatched.
14:14 HRS: KG Erda sends another message to Ahmedabad police control room that a mob of 10,000 people was about to set Gulberg Society on fire and ACP, DCP and additional forces be sent immediately.
14:45 HRS: KG Erda sends yet another message that the society had been surrounded from all sides and the mob was about to set it on fire.
15:45 HRS: Tandon sends a message to control room enquiring if there was any incidence of violence at Gulberg Society (by this time the carnage was in full swing).
Just this tiny sample of messages is proof that the police were fully aware of what was going on but did little to disperse the mobs, except exchange messages. It is also important to note here that the SIT report says that the original police control room records are missing and that ‘the Gujarat government has reportedly destroyed the police wireless communication of the period pertaining to the riots.’
Isn’t just this — the destruction of official records — sufficient grounds for further investigation?
From 12.30 pm to 3.45pm, no reinforcements were sent. Tandon only reached the spot around 4:30 pm to clear the bodies. Erda has already been booked by the SIT in the Gulberg Society case. SIT has also accused Tandon and the then DCP of the area PB Gondia of willfully allowing the carnage and is investigating their role further. But, inexplicably, the SIT has not indicted PC Pande, the Commissioner of Police, Ahmedabad at the time.
Yet, here’s the obvious question: what did Pande do about the constant stream of reports, both from the local police and the SIB, about the mob build-up? (A few wireless messages that the SIT has managed to procure and quoted in its report show that Pande had apparently instructed a few officers to reach the spot but he never followed up on his own orders to find out if they were complied with.) This, coupled with Bhatt’s account that Pande deliberately did not pay any heed to his intelligence inputs, nails Pande’s culpability. There is also the plain, bald fact: why did no senior officers or reinforcements reach the spot?
Pande was one of the officers present in the infamous February 27 meeting at the CM’s residence. He also received around 15 calls from the chief minister’s office around the time the massacres at Naroda and Gulberg were underway. The natural question that arises is what did Pande discuss with the chief minister and his aides while these terrible massacres were on? In a constitutional state, the chief minister would have asked Pande what he was doing to ensure the safety of citizens and instructed him to take urgent measures. If Modi claims, as he has done in his interrogation session with the SIT, that he didn’t even know about the massacres till later that night, should one accuse him only of a communal mindset or also add plain inefficiency and incompetence?
In an interesting codicil, after his retirement in 2009, Pande was appointed as chairman of the Gujarat Electricity Regulatory Commission — a post-retirement benefit he continues to enjoy.
ACCORDING TO SIT sources, besides narrating his first-hand account, Bhatt also submitted a few intelligence reports prepared during the riots to the SIT.
A few reports, dated February 27, soon after the Sabarmati train carnage news broke, show that the state government had a mountain of intelligence which clearly showed that VHP and Bajrang Dal leaders and cadres were preparing for communal violence on February 28.
A report named DIR/2/COM/Precaution/ 72/2002 dated 27.02.2002 said: Information has been received that in respect of the Godhra incident, VHP has called for Gujarat bandh on 28.02.2002. In that respect the VHP has called for a meeting at its Ahmedabad office to chalk out future activities and strategies. In this regard necessary watch needs to be kept and any information so received must be transmitted.’
In another message to all district police the SIB said, ‘The situation arising out of bandh call needs a strict vigil from the police units to avoid any untoward incident.’
Yet another message, numbered D-1/9- HA, alerted all police commissioners and district SPs that after the Godhra incident the people of minority community travelling by public transport and cars may be targeted to take revenge.
Bhatt also submitted a few reports which had warned the government very early on the morning of February 28 about the mobilisation of mobs by Hindutva organisations. Again, the reports were sent to the chief minister’s office.
For instance, a report named C/Precaution/ 177/2002, dated 28.02.2002 and marked to the CMO and MOS (Home), states: ‘Some members of Bajrang Dal and VHP have been found to be part of the mobs at different places. They are moving on motorcycles and are attacking autorickshaw drivers who belong to the minority community. They are also attacking poor people of other professions from the minority community and thereby causing serious injuries. It is hereby directed that police must take extra precautions in respect of such vehicles and people.’
There are other glaring crevices between official statements and the truth. Contrary to the Modi government’s claim that there were no funeral processions of the victims of the Sabarmati train carnage paraded in Ahmedabad, the intelligence reports submitted by Bhatt show that funeral processions were indeed taken out in Ahmedabad. This lends credence to the allegation that Modi deliberately had the bodies brought from Godhra to Ahmedabad to fuel the communal frenzy.
A REPORT named C/Dir/ Shamshan yatra/ 176/2002 dated 28.02.2002 and marked to Modi’s office and senior police officers states: ‘In respect of the incident at Godhra in which the funeral procession of identified bodies of dead karsevaks is likely to be taken out from the Sola Civil Hospital. In this procession a large number of people are expected to participate and during and after the processions there is a likelihood of disturbances.’
Cover-up team? Then Police Commissioner, Ahmedabad, PC Pande; Additional DG Police, Geeta Johri
PHOTOS (L TO R): INDIAN EXPRESS ARCHIVE, AP
Bhatt also gave the SIT a series of intelligence reports suggesting that a large number of bodies were dumped in a well at Naroda Patiya then covered with debris so nobody would get suspicious. His reports also show that when an SIB inspector tried to probe further, somebody planted a dead pig in the well as a decoy for the foul stench and derailed the search. (It is significant to remember that one of the prime conspirators of the Naroda Patiya massacre, Babu Bajrangi had told this reporter during TEHELKA’s undercover story that many bodies were disposed off in wells to bring down the official death toll.)
Human rights activists like Teesta Setalvad have been petitioning the government and the courts for eight years to excavate the well at Naroda Patiya. When the probe was transferred to the SIT, these activists reiterated their plea but the SIT bought the Gujarat government’s explanation without further probing.
All of this emerges from just a few reports that Bhatt managed to procure. In a move that can only be construed as a cover- up, the Modi government did not provide the SIT with any documents related to intelligence or law and order meetings pertaining to the riots. The government also refused to share the security logs of the chief minister and other senior officials which would have shown their movement during the riots.
Apart from Bhatt, there are only two other police officers who have provided the SIT with crucial documents that could nail the Modi government.
Former ADGP (Int) B Sreekumar gave the SIT a huge volume of intelligence reports on how arms and bombs were smuggled in Ahmedabad during the riots and how the Modi government didn’t take enough security measures for the karsevaks before the Godhra train incident. Both Bhatt and Sreekumar were shunted out of the SIB by the same order on the same date: 18 September 2002. Sreekumar was superseded and had to fight a case to get his pension; Bhatt has not been given one executive posting for the past eight years.
IPS officer Rahul Sharma who gave the SIT cellphone data records of senior ministers, bureaucrats and police officers for the period pertaining to the riots was served a show cause notice by the Modi government last week for producing these records before the SIT without its permission. (See box)
The SIT report has recorded many instances of how upright officers were persecuted by the Modi government after the riots. Clearly, that intimidation continues.
Tehelka has managed to track down a new witness. If a magazine can make the effort to verify Bhatt’s claims, why can’t the SIT?
The SIT report – under whatever compulsion it may have felt – has tried to deflect Sanjeev Bhatt’s claim that he was at the February 27 meeting and that he had gone there on the insistence of DGP Chakravarthi. But TEHELKA managed to track down Tarachand Yadav, 50, a Gujarat police head constable, who was Bhatt’s driver during the riots. Yadav told TEHELKA that on February 27, 2002, Bhatt left office at around 8 pm, after which he drove Bhatt to his home at Drive-In Road, Ahmedabad.
‘Sahab went jogging and returned after an hour or so. I had finished my dinner when sahab again came out and told me that we had to go back to Police Bhawan at Gandhinagar. When we reached DGP sahab’s car was already parked outside. Sahab got into DGP sahab’s car and told me to follow. We drove to CM Bungalow in Gandhinagar. DGP sahab and Bhatt sahab went inside. There were other cars also parked outside the bungalow. After about half an hour Bhatt sahib came out and I drove him back to Police Bhawan. Sahab must have worked in the office for another hour or so after which I drove him back home.’
TEHELKA is ready to provide the SIT and, if asked, the Supreme Court a copy of Yadav’s recorded version of events.
But the moot question is, if a newsmagazine can make the effort to cross-check and verify Bhatt’s claims, why didn’t the SIT — mandated by no less than the Supreme Court of India — take more trouble to get to the bottom of one of the most violent ruptures in our nation’s recent history?
Can a lax probe of this nature – which has itself listed all that it has not done — ever hope to unravel the truth behind the killing of over 2,000 innocent people? Will Gujarat remain a festering wound, providing extremists in both the Hindu and Muslim communities a pretext to indulge in more horrific acts of violence? Will no corrective lesson go out to all those leaders and officers who failed in their duty? Or will the Supreme Court intervene forcefully in the riot victims’ despairing quest for justice?
All eyes are now on the three judge bench which will convene on March 3 and deliver its much anticipated verdict.
ashish.khetan@tehelka.com
LAST MEN STANDING
The persecution of upright officers continues even now, finds ANUMEHA YADAV
A KEY POINT of the SIT report on the 2002 riots was that it affirms that the Narendra Modi government persecuted police officers who tried to stop the violence. Their persecution is still on.
On 5 February, the government issued a notice to senior IPS officer Rahul Sharma asking how and why he submitted phone records of senior politicians and bureaucrats during the riots to inquiry commissions without approval. In its notice, nine years aer the riots, it asked Sharma why action should not be taken against him.
“The government is trying to discredit Sharma and intimidate him. It destroyed all original evidence and now it is trying to discredit the records Sharma has submitted,” says lawyer Mukul Sinha of Jan Sangharsh Manch.
The Modi government did not keep any records or minutes of the crucial meetings it held during the riots, something the SIT has raised a question over.
Sharma, a 1992 batch IPS officer now posted as DIG Rajkot, was DCP (control room), Ahmedabad, in April 2002. Investigating the violence at Naroda Patiya and Gulberg Society, he collected data from AT&T and CelForce mobile service providers of all calls received and made in Ahmedabad during this period and handed over these to the Crime Branch. These CDS containing phone records of senior ministers, police officers, and members of RSS and VHP to each other were subsequently “lost”. But while deposing before the Nanavati Commission set up in March 2002 to inquire into the riots, Sharma submitted a copy of this CD that he had preserved.
Obstructed IPS officers Satish Verma (top) and Rahul Sharma
These phone records have been one of the most significant pieces of evidence in nailing the guilty, including the arrest and the cancelling of anticipatory bails of Gujarat VHP president Jaideep Patel and minister Maya Kodnani in 2009, and in the investigation into the killing of Congress ex-MP Ahsan Jafri and 30 others at Gulberg Society. The CDS are vital pieces of evidence in the Naroda Patiya violence in which 105 Muslims were killed by official count.
But scuttling any effort for fair investigations seems to be the norm in Gujarat. A week before Sharma received his notice, another senior IPS officer, Satish Verma, member of a separate SIT set up to inquire into the 2004 Ishrat Jehan encounter, flagged that he was being restricted from pursuing leads in the case. Verma, one of three police officers probing this encounter allegedly carried by Gujarat police officers to please their political bosses, submitted an affidavit citing instances of interference.
In an 80-page affidavit in the Gujarat High Court on 28 January, Verma described how obvious forensic evidence had been ignored by a previous SIT set up by the Gujarat government in 2009, including bullets in Ishrat’s body that did not match the weapons the police claim were used in the encounter. Verma described how Mohan Jha, a Gujarat cadre officer, who was also a member of the previous SIT, and Karnail Singh, a Delhi cadre officer, deliberately forwarded the retraction of a key witness to the HC without any comments to create doubt and ambiguity. Verma disclosed how Jha, who is the current JCP, Detection of Crime Branch (DCB), tried to put 26 police officers directly under himself in the Special Operations Group last month, claiming they were needed for security in the Vibrant Gujarat summit. All 26 were with the DCB on the day of the encounter.
“Verma says he had started maintaining an official note on what is going on in the SIT in December, 19 days aer the SIT began work. This shows he saw the need to put the irregularities on the record and anticipated that his efforts for a fair investigation would be obstructed. It shows how twisted this attempt to investigate these fake encounter killings is,” says a senior police officer, requesting anonymity.
anumeha@tehelka.com
February 11, 2011
Gujarat Police File Court case against Teesta Setalvad / + news on Bail Hearing at the Godhra Court
The Hindu
AHMEDABAD, February 12, 2011
Crime Branch registers case against Setalvad
Manas Dasgupta
The Ahmedabad Crime Branch police have registered a case against the Mumbai-based social activist and general-secretary of the Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), Teesta Setalvad, for allegedly hacking the e-mail ID of her estranged colleague, Raees Khan Pathan.
Mr. Pathan, the field co-ordinator for the Gujarat region of the CJP, had lodged a complaint with the Ahmedabad police commissioner in September last, against Ms. Setalvad, naming her as the one who had hacked his e-mail ID and posted false reports in his name on the Internet.
The city commissioner had entrusted the task of investigating Mr. Pathan's complaint with the Crime Branch, which finally registered an offence against Ms. Setalvad on Friday.
o o o
The Times of India
Court hears Teesta's bail application
TNN, Feb 10, 2011, 11.22pm IST
VADODARA: A Godhra court started hearing the anticipatory bail petition filed by civil rights activist Teesta Setalvad of Citizens for Justice and Peace on Thursday. The petition was filed in the wake of apprehensions that the Panchmahal police may arrest Setalvad in connection with the Lunawada exhumation case.
The petition for anticipatory bail was moved by Setalvad through her counsel A A Hasan on January 27. The petition was moved in the wake of the arrest of nine persons for allegedly exhuming the bodies of riots victims on December 27, 2005, at Lunawada without following legalities. Lunawada police station had registered an offence regarding the incident.
Those arrested include Setalvad's one-time aide Rais Khan Pathan. The arrests were made after the Gujarat high court lifted a stay on the investigations in the case. The stay was granted as two accused in the case had moved the high court seeking that the offence against them should be quashed.
Hasan in his arguments on Thursday said that Setalvad could be granted anticipatory bail on grounds of parity as other accused were also granted bail or anticipatory bails earlier. He said that Setalvad was also a prominent activist, who had helped riot victims and was also given awards for her work.
---
RELATED CONTENT from NDTV
Teesta Setalvad seeks anticipatory bail from Godhra court
PTI | 10:01 PM, Jan 29,2011
Now, Setalvad has moved the Godhra court apprehending arrest, advocate Hasan said."In her anticipatory bail plea, Setalvad has said that her name is not mentioned in the FIR," Hasan said. The bail plea says that she had filed cases in the court to help the riot victims, and was not involved in any illegal activity."We have also said that as all the main accused in the case have been given bail (after arrest), court should consider her plea for advance bail," Hasan further said. Setalvad's plea further says that Pandarwada body exhumation gained a lot of publicity, after which the Gujarat High Court ordered DNA tests of bodies, and later ordered that they be handed over to the relatives of victims.The remains were then re-buried with total respect by the relatives, it adds.Khan, after falling out with Setalvad, has filled affidavit in some of the riot cases being investigated by the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT), alleging that Setalvad made victims sign false affidavits after the post-Godhra riots.
AHMEDABAD, February 12, 2011
Crime Branch registers case against Setalvad
Manas Dasgupta
The Ahmedabad Crime Branch police have registered a case against the Mumbai-based social activist and general-secretary of the Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), Teesta Setalvad, for allegedly hacking the e-mail ID of her estranged colleague, Raees Khan Pathan.
Mr. Pathan, the field co-ordinator for the Gujarat region of the CJP, had lodged a complaint with the Ahmedabad police commissioner in September last, against Ms. Setalvad, naming her as the one who had hacked his e-mail ID and posted false reports in his name on the Internet.
The city commissioner had entrusted the task of investigating Mr. Pathan's complaint with the Crime Branch, which finally registered an offence against Ms. Setalvad on Friday.
o o o
The Times of India
Court hears Teesta's bail application
TNN, Feb 10, 2011, 11.22pm IST
VADODARA: A Godhra court started hearing the anticipatory bail petition filed by civil rights activist Teesta Setalvad of Citizens for Justice and Peace on Thursday. The petition was filed in the wake of apprehensions that the Panchmahal police may arrest Setalvad in connection with the Lunawada exhumation case.
The petition for anticipatory bail was moved by Setalvad through her counsel A A Hasan on January 27. The petition was moved in the wake of the arrest of nine persons for allegedly exhuming the bodies of riots victims on December 27, 2005, at Lunawada without following legalities. Lunawada police station had registered an offence regarding the incident.
Those arrested include Setalvad's one-time aide Rais Khan Pathan. The arrests were made after the Gujarat high court lifted a stay on the investigations in the case. The stay was granted as two accused in the case had moved the high court seeking that the offence against them should be quashed.
Hasan in his arguments on Thursday said that Setalvad could be granted anticipatory bail on grounds of parity as other accused were also granted bail or anticipatory bails earlier. He said that Setalvad was also a prominent activist, who had helped riot victims and was also given awards for her work.
---
RELATED CONTENT from NDTV
Teesta Setalvad seeks anticipatory bail from Godhra court
PTI | 10:01 PM, Jan 29,2011
Now, Setalvad has moved the Godhra court apprehending arrest, advocate Hasan said."In her anticipatory bail plea, Setalvad has said that her name is not mentioned in the FIR," Hasan said. The bail plea says that she had filed cases in the court to help the riot victims, and was not involved in any illegal activity."We have also said that as all the main accused in the case have been given bail (after arrest), court should consider her plea for advance bail," Hasan further said. Setalvad's plea further says that Pandarwada body exhumation gained a lot of publicity, after which the Gujarat High Court ordered DNA tests of bodies, and later ordered that they be handed over to the relatives of victims.The remains were then re-buried with total respect by the relatives, it adds.Khan, after falling out with Setalvad, has filled affidavit in some of the riot cases being investigated by the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT), alleging that Setalvad made victims sign false affidavits after the post-Godhra riots.
February 10, 2011
Gujarat High Court turns down public interest litigation against religious ritual on court campus
The Times of India
'Secularism is not anti-god': Gujarat HC
Saeed Khan, Feb 10, 2011, 06.48pm IST
AHMEDABAD: The Gujarat high court on Thursday dismissed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) that had challenged the performance of religious rituals in the court campus. The court observed that "secularism" is not "anti-god."
While dismissing the PIL, the high court has also slapped a penalty of Rs 20,000 on the petitioner, Rajesh Solanki who is a Dalit activist. The court raised doubts over bonafide intentions of the petitioner.
Rajesh Solanki had filed the PIL questioning performance of Hindu religious rituals on the high court campus on the ground that a public place should maintain its secular credentials in a secular country.
The PIL referred to the laying of foundation stone ceremony that had taken place on the high court campus situated in Sola area of Ahmedabad on May 1 last year. The function was to mark the expansion of the existing court campus.
The petition claimed that the court campus was a secular place and religious rituals - Bhoomi-pujan followed by a prayer and chanting of shlokas - should not be permitted, else the judiciary would lose its secular credentials in the public eye. The petitioner sought the performance of rituals be declared as unconstitutional by the high court.
This PIL first came up for hearing before Chief Justice SJ Mukhopadhaya, who refused to hear it saying that he too was part of the ceremony. Apart from the chief justice, the governor and many Supreme Court and high court judges were present during the function.
Later the case was heard by a bench of Justice Jayant Patel and Justice JC Upadhyay, who concluded that performance of rituals was intended for betterment of mankind and hence it should be viewed in this context.
Rejecting the contention of the petitioner to declare the act of rituals on court campus as unconstitutional, the judges have observed that secularism is not anti-God. Quoting ancient scriptures and judgments delivered by other courts in relation to this idea, the court has concluded that the word "dharma is not contradictory to secularism, if interpreted in a proper manner". The court ruled out the contention that performance of religious rituals on the foundation laying ceremony was a non-secular act.
'Secularism is not anti-god': Gujarat HC
Saeed Khan, Feb 10, 2011, 06.48pm IST
AHMEDABAD: The Gujarat high court on Thursday dismissed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) that had challenged the performance of religious rituals in the court campus. The court observed that "secularism" is not "anti-god."
While dismissing the PIL, the high court has also slapped a penalty of Rs 20,000 on the petitioner, Rajesh Solanki who is a Dalit activist. The court raised doubts over bonafide intentions of the petitioner.
Rajesh Solanki had filed the PIL questioning performance of Hindu religious rituals on the high court campus on the ground that a public place should maintain its secular credentials in a secular country.
The PIL referred to the laying of foundation stone ceremony that had taken place on the high court campus situated in Sola area of Ahmedabad on May 1 last year. The function was to mark the expansion of the existing court campus.
The petition claimed that the court campus was a secular place and religious rituals - Bhoomi-pujan followed by a prayer and chanting of shlokas - should not be permitted, else the judiciary would lose its secular credentials in the public eye. The petitioner sought the performance of rituals be declared as unconstitutional by the high court.
This PIL first came up for hearing before Chief Justice SJ Mukhopadhaya, who refused to hear it saying that he too was part of the ceremony. Apart from the chief justice, the governor and many Supreme Court and high court judges were present during the function.
Later the case was heard by a bench of Justice Jayant Patel and Justice JC Upadhyay, who concluded that performance of rituals was intended for betterment of mankind and hence it should be viewed in this context.
Rejecting the contention of the petitioner to declare the act of rituals on court campus as unconstitutional, the judges have observed that secularism is not anti-God. Quoting ancient scriptures and judgments delivered by other courts in relation to this idea, the court has concluded that the word "dharma is not contradictory to secularism, if interpreted in a proper manner". The court ruled out the contention that performance of religious rituals on the foundation laying ceremony was a non-secular act.
Muslims preach RSS values in Lucknow
Sify News
2011-02-09 21:30:00
Lucknow, Feb 9 (IANS) Donning skull caps and armed with RSS literature, small groups of Muslims here are on a campaign to preach the values of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh among members of their community.
Under the banner of the Akhil Bharatiya Maha Sufi Sant Sewa Samiti (ABMSSSS), around 75 Muslims are on a door-to-door campaign to project 'the spirit and values of RSS'.
'You can call our exercise a campaign to link Muslims with the RSS, an organisation that has undertaken several rehabilitation programmes in the country,' ABMSSSS president Mohammad Wahid Chisti told IANS.
Chisti, an editor of an Urdu daily, said that like him Muslims from different professional backgrounds were involved in the drive that started Sunday with RSS assistance.
'Though most of those associated with the campaign are Muslim clerics, small traders, students and social activists are also involved,' he said.
Chisti and his friends every morning fan out in different localities of the city to reach out to fellow Muslims. They hand over copies of a booklet published by the RSS.
'Initially, we present an overview of RSS to the Muslims and then provide them the booklets,' said Chisti.
'In our interaction, we emphasize the experiences shared by prominent personalities including Mahatma Gandhi, B.R. Ambedkar and Zakir Hussain about the Sangh,' said Chisti.
RSS and ABMSSSS members said the campaign was finalised a few months ago.
RSS 'pracharak' Umesh Kumar told IANS: 'Involvement of the Muslims has immensely helped us. Had we directly approached the Muslims, we would have faced difficulties.'
2011-02-09 21:30:00
Lucknow, Feb 9 (IANS) Donning skull caps and armed with RSS literature, small groups of Muslims here are on a campaign to preach the values of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh among members of their community.
Under the banner of the Akhil Bharatiya Maha Sufi Sant Sewa Samiti (ABMSSSS), around 75 Muslims are on a door-to-door campaign to project 'the spirit and values of RSS'.
'You can call our exercise a campaign to link Muslims with the RSS, an organisation that has undertaken several rehabilitation programmes in the country,' ABMSSSS president Mohammad Wahid Chisti told IANS.
Chisti, an editor of an Urdu daily, said that like him Muslims from different professional backgrounds were involved in the drive that started Sunday with RSS assistance.
'Though most of those associated with the campaign are Muslim clerics, small traders, students and social activists are also involved,' he said.
Chisti and his friends every morning fan out in different localities of the city to reach out to fellow Muslims. They hand over copies of a booklet published by the RSS.
'Initially, we present an overview of RSS to the Muslims and then provide them the booklets,' said Chisti.
'In our interaction, we emphasize the experiences shared by prominent personalities including Mahatma Gandhi, B.R. Ambedkar and Zakir Hussain about the Sangh,' said Chisti.
RSS and ABMSSSS members said the campaign was finalised a few months ago.
RSS 'pracharak' Umesh Kumar told IANS: 'Involvement of the Muslims has immensely helped us. Had we directly approached the Muslims, we would have faced difficulties.'
The true colour of bigotry
Indian Express, Feb 09 2011
by Mehmal Sarfraz
On January 30, thousands of people gathered in Lahore at a rally ostensibly arranged by the religious right, but which had the full support of centre-right political parties. The banned Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) participated, as did the Sipaha-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), the Tehrik-e-Millat-e-Jafariya, the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) — as well as Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and various factions of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N, PML-Q, PML-Z). Their rallying call: a warning to the government and all those seeking any amendment or repeal of the notorious blasphemy laws.
In pre-Partition India, the British introduced the blasphemy law into the Penal Code in 1860 in order to protect the religious sentiments of the minorities. But General Zia-ul-Haq’s Pakistan did the exact opposite, through Section 295 C of the Pakistan Penal Code: “Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine.”
By introducing the death penalty for blasphemy, General Zia officially sanctified vigilante justice. Many people accused of blasphemy have lost their lives at the hands of religious fundamentalists without even a proper hearing in a court of law; some others have been killed while on trial. The blasphemy laws have not just been used to ostracise the Ahmadis (a sect declared “non-Muslim” by Pakistan’s parliament in 1974) but Christians and Muslims have also been victimised under these black laws. Usually, the real reasons behind such accusations are property disputes, personal vendettas, family rivalry, and so on.
The blasphemy issue came under the spotlight once again last year when a lower court in Pakistan handed out a death sentence to a Christian woman accused of blasphemy. Aasia Bibi was the first woman to have been given a death penalty under the blasphemy laws. On November 20, 2010, Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer visited Aasia in jail where she filed a clemency petition for President Zardari. All hell broke loose after that.
The religious right started issuing fatwas against Taseer, and labelled him a blasphemer. Ironically, Taseer’s own party — the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) — issued no statement to refute these baseless accusations, thus isolating him. In fact, Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani went so far as to say that since he is a descendant of Prophet Mohammed, he cannot even think of changing the blasphemy laws.
Our political class has let us down, particularly the PPP. In a bid to appease the mullah brigade, this party is repeating the same mistakes its founder, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, made in the 1970s. In the end, the right-wing forces he appeased celebrated his judicial murder.
A recent blasphemy case highlights how preposterous this law really is. Syed Samiullah, a young student, was arrested for writing something blasphemous in his exam papers. Instead of getting the young lad professional psychiatric help, the professor who marked his paper reported it to the Intermediate Board. Sami is now in jail and extremely frightened. What is so “sacred” about a man-made law that penalises a 17-year-old boy for writing some blasphemous sentences in his examinations? Yet the religious right, with the support of their political allies, have now succeeded in ending all debate on this issue.
Pakistan is fast turning into a country where it is difficult for liberals to voice their opinions. It is not without reason then that analysts like Pervez Hoodbhoy think that a “clerical tsunami” is on the cards. Every nook and corner of our country has become a fatwa factory. Last week, a senator moved a privilege motion against a female human rights activist in the Senate because she had sent him a text message asking him to attend the chehlum of “Shaheed” Salman Taseer. Senator Mandokhel said that calling a “blasphemer” a “martyr” was in itself blasphemy. That a senator should make such absurd remarks on the floor of the House shows where this country is heading.
Right-wing forces are strong and getting stronger because of the covert and overt support they have been getting from Pakistan’s powerful military establishment for decades. On the other hand, liberal and progressive voices are weak and disparate. But this is no time to give up. On the contrary, it is time to fight back. The space that we have unwittingly provided to the religious and political bigots must be taken back. Otherwise, the future looks very bleak for Pakistan.
The writer is op-ed editor of ‘Daily Times’, Lahore
express@expressindia.com
by Mehmal Sarfraz
On January 30, thousands of people gathered in Lahore at a rally ostensibly arranged by the religious right, but which had the full support of centre-right political parties. The banned Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) participated, as did the Sipaha-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), the Tehrik-e-Millat-e-Jafariya, the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) — as well as Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and various factions of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N, PML-Q, PML-Z). Their rallying call: a warning to the government and all those seeking any amendment or repeal of the notorious blasphemy laws.
In pre-Partition India, the British introduced the blasphemy law into the Penal Code in 1860 in order to protect the religious sentiments of the minorities. But General Zia-ul-Haq’s Pakistan did the exact opposite, through Section 295 C of the Pakistan Penal Code: “Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine.”
By introducing the death penalty for blasphemy, General Zia officially sanctified vigilante justice. Many people accused of blasphemy have lost their lives at the hands of religious fundamentalists without even a proper hearing in a court of law; some others have been killed while on trial. The blasphemy laws have not just been used to ostracise the Ahmadis (a sect declared “non-Muslim” by Pakistan’s parliament in 1974) but Christians and Muslims have also been victimised under these black laws. Usually, the real reasons behind such accusations are property disputes, personal vendettas, family rivalry, and so on.
The blasphemy issue came under the spotlight once again last year when a lower court in Pakistan handed out a death sentence to a Christian woman accused of blasphemy. Aasia Bibi was the first woman to have been given a death penalty under the blasphemy laws. On November 20, 2010, Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer visited Aasia in jail where she filed a clemency petition for President Zardari. All hell broke loose after that.
The religious right started issuing fatwas against Taseer, and labelled him a blasphemer. Ironically, Taseer’s own party — the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) — issued no statement to refute these baseless accusations, thus isolating him. In fact, Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani went so far as to say that since he is a descendant of Prophet Mohammed, he cannot even think of changing the blasphemy laws.
Our political class has let us down, particularly the PPP. In a bid to appease the mullah brigade, this party is repeating the same mistakes its founder, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, made in the 1970s. In the end, the right-wing forces he appeased celebrated his judicial murder.
A recent blasphemy case highlights how preposterous this law really is. Syed Samiullah, a young student, was arrested for writing something blasphemous in his exam papers. Instead of getting the young lad professional psychiatric help, the professor who marked his paper reported it to the Intermediate Board. Sami is now in jail and extremely frightened. What is so “sacred” about a man-made law that penalises a 17-year-old boy for writing some blasphemous sentences in his examinations? Yet the religious right, with the support of their political allies, have now succeeded in ending all debate on this issue.
Pakistan is fast turning into a country where it is difficult for liberals to voice their opinions. It is not without reason then that analysts like Pervez Hoodbhoy think that a “clerical tsunami” is on the cards. Every nook and corner of our country has become a fatwa factory. Last week, a senator moved a privilege motion against a female human rights activist in the Senate because she had sent him a text message asking him to attend the chehlum of “Shaheed” Salman Taseer. Senator Mandokhel said that calling a “blasphemer” a “martyr” was in itself blasphemy. That a senator should make such absurd remarks on the floor of the House shows where this country is heading.
Right-wing forces are strong and getting stronger because of the covert and overt support they have been getting from Pakistan’s powerful military establishment for decades. On the other hand, liberal and progressive voices are weak and disparate. But this is no time to give up. On the contrary, it is time to fight back. The space that we have unwittingly provided to the religious and political bigots must be taken back. Otherwise, the future looks very bleak for Pakistan.
The writer is op-ed editor of ‘Daily Times’, Lahore
express@expressindia.com
February 09, 2011
Karnataka: Use of public funds for erection of religious structure planned - 25 crore for statue of goddess
Mail Today, 10 February 2011
Karnataka takes a cue from Maya’s UP
IT LOOKS like Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati has inspired her Karnataka counterpart B S Yeddyurappa with regard to erecting statues! The Karnataka Chief Minister surprised everybody when he recently announced the state governments’s plan to erect a statue of Goddess Bhuvaneshwari ( Mother Karnataka). The government will set aside ` 25 crore for the project, which will start in April this year.
According to Yeddyurappa, the statue will rival the Statue of Liberty in New York or the Statue of Lord Buddha in Hyderabad.
It will be located in Bangalore at a prominent spot.
“ We want to erect a statue, which will outmatch every other statue in terms of dimensions,” he pointed out.
Though some people welcomed the announcement, most of the litterateurs of Karnataka criticised it.
“ This is not the way to promote or protect Kannada and the culture of the state. These are merely symbolic gestures to appease sections of the people.
A perfect tribute to Bhuvaneshwari is a comprehensive programme aimed at promoting the language,” a wellknown litterateur said.
It is interesting that both the chief ministers — Yeddyurappa and Mayawati are tainted by charges of corruption.
Karnataka takes a cue from Maya’s UP
IT LOOKS like Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati has inspired her Karnataka counterpart B S Yeddyurappa with regard to erecting statues! The Karnataka Chief Minister surprised everybody when he recently announced the state governments’s plan to erect a statue of Goddess Bhuvaneshwari ( Mother Karnataka). The government will set aside ` 25 crore for the project, which will start in April this year.
According to Yeddyurappa, the statue will rival the Statue of Liberty in New York or the Statue of Lord Buddha in Hyderabad.
It will be located in Bangalore at a prominent spot.
“ We want to erect a statue, which will outmatch every other statue in terms of dimensions,” he pointed out.
Though some people welcomed the announcement, most of the litterateurs of Karnataka criticised it.
“ This is not the way to promote or protect Kannada and the culture of the state. These are merely symbolic gestures to appease sections of the people.
A perfect tribute to Bhuvaneshwari is a comprehensive programme aimed at promoting the language,” a wellknown litterateur said.
It is interesting that both the chief ministers — Yeddyurappa and Mayawati are tainted by charges of corruption.
India: The taboo over uniform civil code
The Times of India
A failure of secular vision
Feb 10, 2011, 12.00am IST
The failure of every administration since Independence to address one of Indian society's glaring shortcomings - the lack of a uniform civil code - has come in for criticism again. And just like every time, the ruling dispensation will brush it off with specious arguments. But the fact of the matter is that leaving minority communities out of the ambit of reform of personal laws that has - rightly - been implemented for the Hindu community is not a show of secularism. It is, as the Supreme Court has pointed out in this instance, precisely the opposite, undermining the basic concept of the rule of law applying equally to every citizen in a democracy.
This is an issue that has come up of late elsewhere as well, such as in British Prime Minister David Cameron's speech in which he attacked a particular brand of multiculturalism in Britain. The same kind of multiculturalism - one that has less to do with the positive aspects of tolerance and inclusiveness and more with the creation of insular religious or cultural ghettos for political purposes - is the problem when it comes to personal laws in India. It strikes at the root of liberal values, giving primacy to the community rather than to the individual and his rights as enshrined in the Constitution.
When the decision was first made by Jawaharlal Nehru's government to put aside the reform of the minority communities' personal laws, it may have been understandable even if divisive, given the horrors of Partition. But in the decades since, successive administrations have displayed both breathtaking cynicism and an utter lack of will, as in the Shah Bano case - despite repeated prodding by the Supreme Court. It is time to make this reform something more than an idealistic irrelevance languishing as a directive principle of state policy.
A failure of secular vision
Feb 10, 2011, 12.00am IST
The failure of every administration since Independence to address one of Indian society's glaring shortcomings - the lack of a uniform civil code - has come in for criticism again. And just like every time, the ruling dispensation will brush it off with specious arguments. But the fact of the matter is that leaving minority communities out of the ambit of reform of personal laws that has - rightly - been implemented for the Hindu community is not a show of secularism. It is, as the Supreme Court has pointed out in this instance, precisely the opposite, undermining the basic concept of the rule of law applying equally to every citizen in a democracy.
This is an issue that has come up of late elsewhere as well, such as in British Prime Minister David Cameron's speech in which he attacked a particular brand of multiculturalism in Britain. The same kind of multiculturalism - one that has less to do with the positive aspects of tolerance and inclusiveness and more with the creation of insular religious or cultural ghettos for political purposes - is the problem when it comes to personal laws in India. It strikes at the root of liberal values, giving primacy to the community rather than to the individual and his rights as enshrined in the Constitution.
When the decision was first made by Jawaharlal Nehru's government to put aside the reform of the minority communities' personal laws, it may have been understandable even if divisive, given the horrors of Partition. But in the decades since, successive administrations have displayed both breathtaking cynicism and an utter lack of will, as in the Shah Bano case - despite repeated prodding by the Supreme Court. It is time to make this reform something more than an idealistic irrelevance languishing as a directive principle of state policy.
Reform personal laws - Supreme court ruling re uniform marriageable age
The Times of India
Centre changed personal laws of only Hindus: SC
Dhananjay Mahapatra, TNN, Feb 9, 2011, 02.30am IST
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has again pulled up the government for its failure to overhaul personal laws of the minority communities, saying that it was a reflection on their secular credentials.
The court also said on Tuesday that government's attempts to reform personal laws don't go beyond Hindus who have been more tolerant of such initiatives.
"The Hindu community has been tolerant to these statutory interventions. But there appears a lack of secular commitment as it has not happened for other religions."
Justices Dalveer Bhandari and A K Ganguly made the observation while hearing petitions filed by the National Commission for Women and its Delhi chapter. The petitioners have sought formulation of a uniform marriageable age and complained that different stipulations in as many statutes had created confusion.
Additional solicitor general Indira Jaising explained the differences in age limits provided in statutes, saying that these were meant to achieve diverse social objectives. "Hence, there could not be a uniform age. Though the government feels that girls above 16 years should be said to have attained the age of consent to sexual relation and hence could marry, the formal age of marriage would stay at 18 years," argued the ASG.
When asked by the bench and NCW counsel Aparna Bhat about the glaring discrepancies between different laws and how government plans to reconcile them, Jaising said: "Hindu laws is one of the finest laws, a saying that has to be taken with a pinch of salt. It provides for all oppression and also the escape route. The problem with the Hindu law is that legislators have tried to chip away little by little but there is no overhauling of it."
Jaising argued that though there can be no uniform marriage age, other laws including the Hindu Marriage Act, needed amendments to make them conform to the age of marriage provided under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006.
She said under the 2006 law, marriages in which the girls are below 16 years are void and those in which they are between 16-18 years are voidable.
In the last two decades, the Supreme Court had stressed time and again the importance of enacting a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) as advised by the Constitution.
Between the Shah Bano judgment in 1985, Sarla Mudgal judgment (1995) and John Vallamatom verdict in 2003, the court had thrice stressed the need for enacting a UCC, saying it would help forge national integration and remove dissimilarities.
Provision for UCC is incorporated in Article 44 under the Directive Principles chapter of the Constitution, which says, "The State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India."
The Directive Principles, despite being termed by the Constitution itself as 'fundamental in the governance of the country' and that 'it shall be the duty of the state to apply these principles in making laws', are not enforceable in a court of law.
Centre changed personal laws of only Hindus: SC
Dhananjay Mahapatra, TNN, Feb 9, 2011, 02.30am IST
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has again pulled up the government for its failure to overhaul personal laws of the minority communities, saying that it was a reflection on their secular credentials.
The court also said on Tuesday that government's attempts to reform personal laws don't go beyond Hindus who have been more tolerant of such initiatives.
"The Hindu community has been tolerant to these statutory interventions. But there appears a lack of secular commitment as it has not happened for other religions."
Justices Dalveer Bhandari and A K Ganguly made the observation while hearing petitions filed by the National Commission for Women and its Delhi chapter. The petitioners have sought formulation of a uniform marriageable age and complained that different stipulations in as many statutes had created confusion.
Additional solicitor general Indira Jaising explained the differences in age limits provided in statutes, saying that these were meant to achieve diverse social objectives. "Hence, there could not be a uniform age. Though the government feels that girls above 16 years should be said to have attained the age of consent to sexual relation and hence could marry, the formal age of marriage would stay at 18 years," argued the ASG.
When asked by the bench and NCW counsel Aparna Bhat about the glaring discrepancies between different laws and how government plans to reconcile them, Jaising said: "Hindu laws is one of the finest laws, a saying that has to be taken with a pinch of salt. It provides for all oppression and also the escape route. The problem with the Hindu law is that legislators have tried to chip away little by little but there is no overhauling of it."
Jaising argued that though there can be no uniform marriage age, other laws including the Hindu Marriage Act, needed amendments to make them conform to the age of marriage provided under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006.
She said under the 2006 law, marriages in which the girls are below 16 years are void and those in which they are between 16-18 years are voidable.
In the last two decades, the Supreme Court had stressed time and again the importance of enacting a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) as advised by the Constitution.
Between the Shah Bano judgment in 1985, Sarla Mudgal judgment (1995) and John Vallamatom verdict in 2003, the court had thrice stressed the need for enacting a UCC, saying it would help forge national integration and remove dissimilarities.
Provision for UCC is incorporated in Article 44 under the Directive Principles chapter of the Constitution, which says, "The State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India."
The Directive Principles, despite being termed by the Constitution itself as 'fundamental in the governance of the country' and that 'it shall be the duty of the state to apply these principles in making laws', are not enforceable in a court of law.
Narendra Modi: Special investigation Team Report
Gujarat Carnage; Modi and SIT
by Ram Puniyani
After the Special Investigation Team appointed by Supreme Court submitted its report in December 2010, a front page headline in a leading daily announced that SIT gives a clean chit to Modi. This was picked up by a large section of the media to hail Modi being the man for progress of Gujarat. The industrialist’s chorus for Modi the potential Prime minster is on from last quit some time. This news of ‘clean chit’ to Modi gladdened the hearts of communal forces. The social activists could not believe what they read. Number of Citizens inquiry Committee reports has already worked overtime to bring forward the truth of Gujarat carnage. It has been called as a state sponsored carnage by social activists for no reason. The ground work of activists, interacting with the hapless victims already had given the precise picture of what took place in Gujarat. There are scores of Citizens committee reports, and also the report of Peoples tribunal, led by the leading legal luminary who had concluded that the carnage went on the way it did due to the pro active involvement of Modi Government which gave it the horrific character.
Despite all the reports a substantial section of the popular perception looked at Modi in a favorable light. The way truth is undermined when it pertains to the minorities and weaker sections of society was clear in the case of Gujarat carnage. Though ‘social consciousness’ had some doubts that the carnage was not handled well, the major focus was shifted to Godhra carnage and the alleged role of Muslims was highlighted. This projected role of Muslims seemed to be giving justification to Hindus retaliating. Despite the Bannerjee Commissions report, saying that Godhra tragedy was not preplanned act by Muslims, in popular perceptions it could not make a dent as already the media and other propaganda machinery led by Modi had created the image ofaggressive Muslims burning the train.
Now with SIT coming to investigate some aspects of the carnage there was a hope amongst victims and social activists that the truth of Gujarat, the truth of the state sponsored carnage will finally come out and the guilty will be punished and victims will get justice. With this hope in the background when the perceptions were manufactured that SIT has given a clean chit to Modi, it was a fake and bitter pill for the victims and social activists doing their best to fight for the cause of justice. With so called news of SIT giving clean chit many further lost the faith in the system, with the feeling that probably this is end of the road for justice in this country.
Fortunately that is not the case. The Tehelka scoop (5th February 2011) clearly shows that the newspaper headline was a concoction. The scoop shows that the report has squarely put the blame of carnage on Modi. All the charges against him stand vindicated in the SIT investigation report. The report practically confirms all the findings of the people’s tribunal and other Citizens committees who painstakingly investigated the Gujarat violence and called it a pogrom. The SIT report submitted to the Supreme Court tells that Modi had tried to alter the situation in the Gulbarg society by saying, by now most infamous, ‘every action has equal and opposite reaction’. SIT report confirms that Gujarat Government had deputed ministers in the police control room, a move which gave the management of violence in the political hands making it more horrific and motivated act. It was a common knowledge that few honest police officers, who had stood by the call of their duty and prevented the aggravation of violence, were transferred to insignificant postings.
With this scoop now it stands confirmed that the Gujarat Government had destroyed the records of wireless communication of the period of the violence. Modi did display a discriminatory attitude towards the victim minorities and he did not visit the riot affected areas or minority camps till quiet late during the carnage. Government appointed RSS affiliated lawyers in the sensitive riot cases. Modi did not take any steps to stop the Bandh call given by VHP and supported by BJP on 28th February, this move of VHP gave a big start to the massacre and the attitude of state to the bandh gave a signal to the rioters for doing what they did. SIT confirms that the officials tried to mislead the election commission in the wake of forth coming elections by projecting that there is peace and atmosphere is conducive for elections while the truth was that the violence was simmering in the society. Police has carried out extremely shoddy innvetigagation of Naroda Patia and Gulbarg society cases.
There are diverse reactions to the report. The social activists are demanding that this is the sufficient ground for lodging FIR against Modi. The BJP on the contrary is more worried about investigating as to how the leak took place. Interestingly while today this party is demanding probe into the scoop, BJP and no one else raised the question when the news ‘SIT gives clean chit to Modi’ was highlighted! Nobody in their best wisdom asked a question as to when the report is confidential how come this headline in the newspapers? In a classic display of double standards BJP never questioned the first ‘leak’, as that suited its political purpose. Now when the boot is in the other foot the legality of scoop etc is being raised.
Meanwhile what is happening to the victim community? They have been browbeaten in to second class citizenship, ghettoization is going up by leaps and bounds, and the process of justice to victims of violence is prominent by its absence, the efforts of human rights activists succeeding in few cases, notwithstanding.
That raises the larger issue of how the popular perceptions are modulated, how the mass consciousness is manufactured in the society. Right since the Godhra train burning a particular view of events put across by the murderers is dominating the media world. Any doubts about the major erosion of the story have been treated with contempt by large sections of media. In the case of headline ‘SIT gives a clean chit to Modi’, the same perception was boosted that it is the minorities and social activists who are the cause of trouble. The social perceptions are very crucial in making the criminals of the of the ilk of Modi to rule with iron hand to and to keep getting re-elected despite having a huge stock of skeletons in the cupboard, despite there being blood on his hands.
In this battle for the minds of society the communal elements are having the major manipulating power at present. Goebbels is being outplayed in Gujarat. This whole episode should make us do the introspection as to how to ensure that ‘truth shall prevail’ in present circumstance. Also which are these forces, politics-media alliance which can manipulate the mass thinking at will by publishing that ‘SIT has given clean chit to Modi’? If we cannot wake up to this stark fact of our society, such popular perceptions will be laying the ground for the mass murderers to keep ruling with the great appreciation form the communal forces and captains of industry and they can also manipulate the opinion of masses in their favor.
by Ram Puniyani
After the Special Investigation Team appointed by Supreme Court submitted its report in December 2010, a front page headline in a leading daily announced that SIT gives a clean chit to Modi. This was picked up by a large section of the media to hail Modi being the man for progress of Gujarat. The industrialist’s chorus for Modi the potential Prime minster is on from last quit some time. This news of ‘clean chit’ to Modi gladdened the hearts of communal forces. The social activists could not believe what they read. Number of Citizens inquiry Committee reports has already worked overtime to bring forward the truth of Gujarat carnage. It has been called as a state sponsored carnage by social activists for no reason. The ground work of activists, interacting with the hapless victims already had given the precise picture of what took place in Gujarat. There are scores of Citizens committee reports, and also the report of Peoples tribunal, led by the leading legal luminary who had concluded that the carnage went on the way it did due to the pro active involvement of Modi Government which gave it the horrific character.
Despite all the reports a substantial section of the popular perception looked at Modi in a favorable light. The way truth is undermined when it pertains to the minorities and weaker sections of society was clear in the case of Gujarat carnage. Though ‘social consciousness’ had some doubts that the carnage was not handled well, the major focus was shifted to Godhra carnage and the alleged role of Muslims was highlighted. This projected role of Muslims seemed to be giving justification to Hindus retaliating. Despite the Bannerjee Commissions report, saying that Godhra tragedy was not preplanned act by Muslims, in popular perceptions it could not make a dent as already the media and other propaganda machinery led by Modi had created the image ofaggressive Muslims burning the train.
Now with SIT coming to investigate some aspects of the carnage there was a hope amongst victims and social activists that the truth of Gujarat, the truth of the state sponsored carnage will finally come out and the guilty will be punished and victims will get justice. With this hope in the background when the perceptions were manufactured that SIT has given a clean chit to Modi, it was a fake and bitter pill for the victims and social activists doing their best to fight for the cause of justice. With so called news of SIT giving clean chit many further lost the faith in the system, with the feeling that probably this is end of the road for justice in this country.
Fortunately that is not the case. The Tehelka scoop (5th February 2011) clearly shows that the newspaper headline was a concoction. The scoop shows that the report has squarely put the blame of carnage on Modi. All the charges against him stand vindicated in the SIT investigation report. The report practically confirms all the findings of the people’s tribunal and other Citizens committees who painstakingly investigated the Gujarat violence and called it a pogrom. The SIT report submitted to the Supreme Court tells that Modi had tried to alter the situation in the Gulbarg society by saying, by now most infamous, ‘every action has equal and opposite reaction’. SIT report confirms that Gujarat Government had deputed ministers in the police control room, a move which gave the management of violence in the political hands making it more horrific and motivated act. It was a common knowledge that few honest police officers, who had stood by the call of their duty and prevented the aggravation of violence, were transferred to insignificant postings.
With this scoop now it stands confirmed that the Gujarat Government had destroyed the records of wireless communication of the period of the violence. Modi did display a discriminatory attitude towards the victim minorities and he did not visit the riot affected areas or minority camps till quiet late during the carnage. Government appointed RSS affiliated lawyers in the sensitive riot cases. Modi did not take any steps to stop the Bandh call given by VHP and supported by BJP on 28th February, this move of VHP gave a big start to the massacre and the attitude of state to the bandh gave a signal to the rioters for doing what they did. SIT confirms that the officials tried to mislead the election commission in the wake of forth coming elections by projecting that there is peace and atmosphere is conducive for elections while the truth was that the violence was simmering in the society. Police has carried out extremely shoddy innvetigagation of Naroda Patia and Gulbarg society cases.
There are diverse reactions to the report. The social activists are demanding that this is the sufficient ground for lodging FIR against Modi. The BJP on the contrary is more worried about investigating as to how the leak took place. Interestingly while today this party is demanding probe into the scoop, BJP and no one else raised the question when the news ‘SIT gives clean chit to Modi’ was highlighted! Nobody in their best wisdom asked a question as to when the report is confidential how come this headline in the newspapers? In a classic display of double standards BJP never questioned the first ‘leak’, as that suited its political purpose. Now when the boot is in the other foot the legality of scoop etc is being raised.
Meanwhile what is happening to the victim community? They have been browbeaten in to second class citizenship, ghettoization is going up by leaps and bounds, and the process of justice to victims of violence is prominent by its absence, the efforts of human rights activists succeeding in few cases, notwithstanding.
That raises the larger issue of how the popular perceptions are modulated, how the mass consciousness is manufactured in the society. Right since the Godhra train burning a particular view of events put across by the murderers is dominating the media world. Any doubts about the major erosion of the story have been treated with contempt by large sections of media. In the case of headline ‘SIT gives a clean chit to Modi’, the same perception was boosted that it is the minorities and social activists who are the cause of trouble. The social perceptions are very crucial in making the criminals of the of the ilk of Modi to rule with iron hand to and to keep getting re-elected despite having a huge stock of skeletons in the cupboard, despite there being blood on his hands.
In this battle for the minds of society the communal elements are having the major manipulating power at present. Goebbels is being outplayed in Gujarat. This whole episode should make us do the introspection as to how to ensure that ‘truth shall prevail’ in present circumstance. Also which are these forces, politics-media alliance which can manipulate the mass thinking at will by publishing that ‘SIT has given clean chit to Modi’? If we cannot wake up to this stark fact of our society, such popular perceptions will be laying the ground for the mass murderers to keep ruling with the great appreciation form the communal forces and captains of industry and they can also manipulate the opinion of masses in their favor.
Karnataka: Justice B.K. Somasekhara Commission does a cover up job
Frontline, 12 February 2011
Attacks justified
SECULAR and Christian organisations in Karnataka have voiced strong protest against the report of the Justice B.K. Somasekhara Commission submitted to the government on January 28. They have done so on the basis of the highlights of the report put up on the commission's website and also the parts of the report made available selectively to the media. The entire report has not been released.
The one-man commission consisting of Justice Somasekhara, former judge in the High Courts of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, was set up in September 2008 to “inquire into the sequence of events and circumstances leading to attack on the places of worship and incidents thereafter, which occurred during the month of September 2008 in Dakshina Kannada and other districts of Karnataka”.
Its terms of reference also included identifying the persons and organisations responsible for such incidents and ascertaining whether there was any negligence or lapses on the part of the district administrations in dealing with the situation.
The September 2008 incidents, mainly in Dakshina Kannada, were the first in a series of actions by fringe groups of the Hindu Right since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in Karnataka that year.
The attacks on churches, according to media reports then, looked planned and they evoked fear and insecurity in the Christian community in the State. Groups in the Sangh Parivar such as the Bajrang Dal claimed responsibility for them (“Now, Karnataka”, Frontline, October 10, 2008). Even the State Home Minister, Dr V.S. Acharya, had justified the violence by saying that there were reports of “forced conversions”.
Given the evidence produced by affected persons, including priests and nuns, and the audacity of the lumpen members of the Sangh Parivar in accepting their role in the attacks, the commission's job seemed fairly simple. The report, however, has come as a disappointment, as it has refused to recognise the government's culpability although it acknowledges that “misguided fundamentalist miscreants... have mistakenly presumed that they would be protected by the party in power with their policies at the relevant time”.
The highlights of the report show that the one-man commission has not done its best to fulfil its mandate. There are contradictions in the report. On the fundamental question as to who was responsible for the attacks, the commission says: “There is no basis to the apprehension of Christian petitioners that the Politicians, BJP, mainstream Sangha Parivar and State Government directly or indirectly, are involved in the attacks [ sic].”
It further states that the Bajrang Dal and the Hindu Jagran Vedike (HJV) were responsible for attacks on 12 churches across the State. There is no doubt that the Bajrang Dal and the HJV are Sangh Parivar organisations, and Mahendra Kumar, the State president of the Bajrang Dal, is known to hobnob with BJP politicians, especially during the annual Datta Jayanthi celebration.
While concluding that the impression that police officers of the district administration colluded with the attackers is false, the report says that the police action against Christian protesters in several parts of the State was justified. It also indicts several police officers for failing in their duty to protect churches but refuses to connect the work of the police with the government. It is learnt from advocates present at the hearing that an application to summon the Home Minister to explain the failure of the police was ignored.
By and large, the commission has accepted the idea that religious conversions were the main reason for the attacks. According to a lawyers' forum that took part in the proceedings, the commission's work was an eyewash, with “pastors and priests who had suffered attacks being repeatedly and aggressively questioned as to their alleged conversion activities, almost making it seem that the attacks were justified”. By contrast, the report has paid little attention to the activists of the Sangh Parivar.
The Archbishop of Bangalore, in a press release, stated: “After going through the highlights of the final report of Justice Somashekara Commission, the entire Christian Community is disappointed and felt the report is very unfair. It also feels the Commission has very badly let down the Christian community.”
Fr Amborse Pinto, Principal of St Joseph's College, Bangalore, pointed out that there were no attacks on the Christian community before the BJP came to power. “Given the fact that it was a government's commission, the report is no surprise. The commission has done the biddings of its masters by wasting the resources of the state,” he said.
Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed
Attacks justified
SECULAR and Christian organisations in Karnataka have voiced strong protest against the report of the Justice B.K. Somasekhara Commission submitted to the government on January 28. They have done so on the basis of the highlights of the report put up on the commission's website and also the parts of the report made available selectively to the media. The entire report has not been released.
The one-man commission consisting of Justice Somasekhara, former judge in the High Courts of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, was set up in September 2008 to “inquire into the sequence of events and circumstances leading to attack on the places of worship and incidents thereafter, which occurred during the month of September 2008 in Dakshina Kannada and other districts of Karnataka”.
Its terms of reference also included identifying the persons and organisations responsible for such incidents and ascertaining whether there was any negligence or lapses on the part of the district administrations in dealing with the situation.
The September 2008 incidents, mainly in Dakshina Kannada, were the first in a series of actions by fringe groups of the Hindu Right since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in Karnataka that year.
The attacks on churches, according to media reports then, looked planned and they evoked fear and insecurity in the Christian community in the State. Groups in the Sangh Parivar such as the Bajrang Dal claimed responsibility for them (“Now, Karnataka”, Frontline, October 10, 2008). Even the State Home Minister, Dr V.S. Acharya, had justified the violence by saying that there were reports of “forced conversions”.
Given the evidence produced by affected persons, including priests and nuns, and the audacity of the lumpen members of the Sangh Parivar in accepting their role in the attacks, the commission's job seemed fairly simple. The report, however, has come as a disappointment, as it has refused to recognise the government's culpability although it acknowledges that “misguided fundamentalist miscreants... have mistakenly presumed that they would be protected by the party in power with their policies at the relevant time”.
The highlights of the report show that the one-man commission has not done its best to fulfil its mandate. There are contradictions in the report. On the fundamental question as to who was responsible for the attacks, the commission says: “There is no basis to the apprehension of Christian petitioners that the Politicians, BJP, mainstream Sangha Parivar and State Government directly or indirectly, are involved in the attacks [ sic].”
It further states that the Bajrang Dal and the Hindu Jagran Vedike (HJV) were responsible for attacks on 12 churches across the State. There is no doubt that the Bajrang Dal and the HJV are Sangh Parivar organisations, and Mahendra Kumar, the State president of the Bajrang Dal, is known to hobnob with BJP politicians, especially during the annual Datta Jayanthi celebration.
While concluding that the impression that police officers of the district administration colluded with the attackers is false, the report says that the police action against Christian protesters in several parts of the State was justified. It also indicts several police officers for failing in their duty to protect churches but refuses to connect the work of the police with the government. It is learnt from advocates present at the hearing that an application to summon the Home Minister to explain the failure of the police was ignored.
By and large, the commission has accepted the idea that religious conversions were the main reason for the attacks. According to a lawyers' forum that took part in the proceedings, the commission's work was an eyewash, with “pastors and priests who had suffered attacks being repeatedly and aggressively questioned as to their alleged conversion activities, almost making it seem that the attacks were justified”. By contrast, the report has paid little attention to the activists of the Sangh Parivar.
The Archbishop of Bangalore, in a press release, stated: “After going through the highlights of the final report of Justice Somashekara Commission, the entire Christian Community is disappointed and felt the report is very unfair. It also feels the Commission has very badly let down the Christian community.”
Fr Amborse Pinto, Principal of St Joseph's College, Bangalore, pointed out that there were no attacks on the Christian community before the BJP came to power. “Given the fact that it was a government's commission, the report is no surprise. The commission has done the biddings of its masters by wasting the resources of the state,” he said.
Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed
RSS-sponsored congregation in Madhya Pradesh sparks fears among Christians
The Telegraph
RSS sparks faith fears
- Christians scared of conversion at Sangh meet
RASHEED KIDWAI
(From top) Chauhan, Modi and Singh
Bhopal, Feb. 8 [2011]: An RSS-sponsored congregation in Madhya Pradesh expected to a draw a million-strong crowd has stirred fear among Christians leaders that the event will be used for re-conversions to Hinduism.
The organisers of the Ma Narmada Samajik Kumbh (Narmada social congregation), to be held from February 10 to 12 in Mandla district on the river’s banks, are projecting it as a ghar wapsi (homecoming) celebration.
This has fanned Christian leaders’ concerns that the event will be used for reconversion in the BJP-ruled state. Their suspicion has also been stoked by lakhs of forms, printed by the organisers, saying the “signatory is re-converting on his or her free will”.
Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan is expected to attend the gathering along with Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and his Chhattisgarh counterpart Raman Singh.
Organising secretary Rajendraji said reconversion was not on the agenda of the Narmada Kumbh but added that “if some tribals wish to rediscover their roots with Hindu faith, they will be welcomed with open arms”.
Another organiser, Rajkumar Matale, described Mandla’s “social congregation” as a follow-up to the Shabri Mahakumbh held in the tribal-dominated Dangs district of Gujarat in 2006. Incidentally, the Dangs event was a brainchild of Swami Aseemanand, now in jail in connection over the Samjhauta Express blast and other attacks.
Father Anand Muthungal, spokesperson for the Madhya Pradesh Catholic Church, today asked chief minister Chauhan to explain the true purpose of the event and cited a state law, the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act, which requires anybody converting to another faith to give prior notice. He said he had information that many tribals who had earlier become Christians would be forced to sign forms to “reconvert.”
A “fact-finding team” of Christian leaders has produced offensive pamphlets, posters, banners and hoardings that they claimed was meant to spread hate against Christian missionaries ahead of the RSS show.
John Dayal, secretary-general of the All India Christian Council, said he feared the Narmada event would “poison the atmosphere”.
“We support the freedom of the majority community to hold such a massive religious event. But we fear that even if there is no violence or a forcible conversion of Christians to Hinduism during the kumbh, the Hindutva campaign will poison the atmosphere in Madhya Pradesh and will negatively impact relationships between Christians and tribals in the hamlets, villages and townships of the region (Mandla).”
Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh accused the BJP regime of diverting government funds for the kumbh. He claimed he had information that “crores” had been spent on housing, kitchen, toilets and other accommodation-related arrangements.
RSS sparks faith fears
- Christians scared of conversion at Sangh meet
RASHEED KIDWAI
(From top) Chauhan, Modi and Singh
Bhopal, Feb. 8 [2011]: An RSS-sponsored congregation in Madhya Pradesh expected to a draw a million-strong crowd has stirred fear among Christians leaders that the event will be used for re-conversions to Hinduism.
The organisers of the Ma Narmada Samajik Kumbh (Narmada social congregation), to be held from February 10 to 12 in Mandla district on the river’s banks, are projecting it as a ghar wapsi (homecoming) celebration.
This has fanned Christian leaders’ concerns that the event will be used for reconversion in the BJP-ruled state. Their suspicion has also been stoked by lakhs of forms, printed by the organisers, saying the “signatory is re-converting on his or her free will”.
Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan is expected to attend the gathering along with Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and his Chhattisgarh counterpart Raman Singh.
Organising secretary Rajendraji said reconversion was not on the agenda of the Narmada Kumbh but added that “if some tribals wish to rediscover their roots with Hindu faith, they will be welcomed with open arms”.
Another organiser, Rajkumar Matale, described Mandla’s “social congregation” as a follow-up to the Shabri Mahakumbh held in the tribal-dominated Dangs district of Gujarat in 2006. Incidentally, the Dangs event was a brainchild of Swami Aseemanand, now in jail in connection over the Samjhauta Express blast and other attacks.
Father Anand Muthungal, spokesperson for the Madhya Pradesh Catholic Church, today asked chief minister Chauhan to explain the true purpose of the event and cited a state law, the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act, which requires anybody converting to another faith to give prior notice. He said he had information that many tribals who had earlier become Christians would be forced to sign forms to “reconvert.”
A “fact-finding team” of Christian leaders has produced offensive pamphlets, posters, banners and hoardings that they claimed was meant to spread hate against Christian missionaries ahead of the RSS show.
John Dayal, secretary-general of the All India Christian Council, said he feared the Narmada event would “poison the atmosphere”.
“We support the freedom of the majority community to hold such a massive religious event. But we fear that even if there is no violence or a forcible conversion of Christians to Hinduism during the kumbh, the Hindutva campaign will poison the atmosphere in Madhya Pradesh and will negatively impact relationships between Christians and tribals in the hamlets, villages and townships of the region (Mandla).”
Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh accused the BJP regime of diverting government funds for the kumbh. He claimed he had information that “crores” had been spent on housing, kitchen, toilets and other accommodation-related arrangements.
Debate on Law Commission’s recommendations on religious conversion
The Telegraph, February 9 , 2011
PUTTING IT ON PAPER
The Law Commission’s recommendations on religious conversion are being hotly debated in legal circles. Some experts tell V. Kumara Swamy that a change in religion should be documented
G.A. Arife converted to Hinduism and became Arti just before her marriage to Gopal Dutt Sharma in 1989. But after a few years when the marriage went sour and she wanted a divorce under the Hindu Marriage Act (HMA), 1955, all hell broke loose. Her husband maintained that her conversion was a sham and that she had continued to follow Islam even after marriage. He also contended that there was no documentary evidence to prove that she had really converted to Hinduism.
After losing the case in lower courts, the woman approached the Delhi High Court. In August 2010, the court, while admitting that it was in a “Catch-22 situation”, ruled against the appellant saying that she had failed to prove her conversion from Islam to Hinduism and refused any relief under HMA.
“The court was pretty clear that just an oral submission that she had converted to another religion wasn’t enough. There was no other substantial evidence to prove that her conversion to Hinduism had taken place,” recalls Gita Dhingra, a Delhi High Court lawyer who was in the team that argued against Arife.
The Law Commission of India has now stepped in, with a series of recommendations that are meant to address the issue of re-conversion. The main issue relates to Section 2 of the HMA. Clause (c) of the “Explanation” part of Section 2 states that the law is applicable to “any person who is a convert or reconvert to the Hindu, Buddhist, Jaina or Sikh religion.”
In a case similar to the one that the Delhi High Court ruled on, the Kerala High Court, in 2009 (Betsy and Sadanandan vs Nil), observed that the “absence of any stipulations of law or specific recognised practices to facilitate such conversion is causing great difficulties to the parties.”
The Kerala High Court further stated that the law which recognises conversions must also be in a position to prescribe how the parties, “without the necessity to get involved in unnecessary and time consuming litigation, can declare to the world such conversion.”
The basic argument of the Kerala High Court was that proof of one’s conversion should be simplified and credible documentary evidence should be made available so that these can be presented when disputes over conversion arise. The court had also asked the Law Commission of India to examine this aspect and suggest changes to the law.
The 19th Law Commission under Justice P.V. Reddi, in its latest report on “Conversion/re-conversion to another religion — mode of proof” submitted recently to the government, has tackled issues raised by both the Delhi and Kerala High Courts.
The commission has said that within a month after the date of conversion, the converted person can send a declaration to the officer in charge of registration of marriages in the concerned area. The officer, in turn, shall exhibit a copy of the declaration on the notice board of the office till the date of confirmation. And within 21 days from the date of sending or filing the declaration, the person concerned can appear before the registering officer, establish his or her identity and confirm the contents of the declaration following which he or she can get the certificate of conversion from the registrar.
While many people have welcomed the suggestion of the Law Commission, even going to the extent of asking the government to make it mandatory for every converted person to obtain such a certificate, there are others who say mere submission to a new religion shouldn’t be considered conversion.
“The High Court was absolutely spot-on on the need for a clear-cut law on conversions and it is good that the Law Commission has agreed with the Kerala High Court,” says Dinesh Mathew J. Muricken, a Kerala High Court advocate who fought on behalf of the appellants in the 2009 case. “Although the Arya Samaj temples in some parts of Kerala and India issue certificates to those who convert or re-convert to Hinduism, they are not legally valid. In this situation we need something that can be recognised by the courts,” says Muricken.
Bangalore-based matrimonial lawyer R. Vishwanath Rao says he is in favour of making the provision mandatory. “Let the whole world know you have converted so that there’s no controversy about it in the future,” he says. According to Rao, several divorce cases of inter-religious marriages are pending in the courts on the issue of conversion.
But the commission has stopped short of recommending compulsory registration of conversions. “Maybe, as and when compulsory registration of marriage and divorce becomes a reality and adequate machinery is put in place to implement the directives for registration of marriages, the question of recording/registration of conversion could also be considered,” the commission observes.
Although the freedom of conscience and the right to profess, practise and propagate religion is enshrined in Article 25 of the Constitution, conversion to Hinduism becomes contentious not only in matters relating to marriage but for other issues as well. According to Rao, several property cases are also pending because of such disputes. “If there is documentary proof of a conversion, it becomes easy,” says Rao.
Some also argue that just a certificate of conversion is not likely to solve the problems of those caught in legal wrangles. “As it was proved in Arife’s case, mere conversion is not important as change of religion involves conduct of rituals, practices and many other things. So courts will also take into account the conduct of a person after conversion or re-conversion to Hinduism,” says Dhingra.
Agrees Archbishop Leo Cornelio of Bhopal. “Whether the conversion is to Christianity or Hinduism, it’s a deep process undertaken by an individual and it involves faith, conscience and relationship with the Almighty. One cannot simply authenticate it on a piece of paper,” says the archbishop.
But since the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that no particular formalities or religious rituals or ceremonies are necessary to bring about conversion or re-conversion, the Law Commission states that deep faith in the new religion and performance of rituals are not a necessity while converting to another religion.
Ruling in another case, S. Anbalagan vs B. Devararajan and others in 1984, the Supreme Court said that no particular ceremony was prescribed for re-conversion to Hinduism.
“The Supreme Court rulings over the years have been fairly clear as far as the conversion ceremony is concerned, but at the same time we should also recognise that courts often insist on some kind of evidence when disputes arise,” says Muricken.
Some states including Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh have enacted Freedom of Religion laws prohibiting forcible conversion in the form of use of force, allurement or by other fraudulent means. In these states the law makes it mandatory for a person who converts to another religion to intimate the district magistrate either in advance or within a stipulated period.
The commission says that there is no need for a separate enactment or amendment to the respective personal laws to give effect to its “simple recommendation”. The proposal does not “go contrary to the existing provisions of law nor does it in any way impinge on the religious freedom or faith of any person.”
The Law Commission also says that the central government could ask states where there are no laws on conversion to implement its recommendations.
PUTTING IT ON PAPER
The Law Commission’s recommendations on religious conversion are being hotly debated in legal circles. Some experts tell V. Kumara Swamy that a change in religion should be documented
G.A. Arife converted to Hinduism and became Arti just before her marriage to Gopal Dutt Sharma in 1989. But after a few years when the marriage went sour and she wanted a divorce under the Hindu Marriage Act (HMA), 1955, all hell broke loose. Her husband maintained that her conversion was a sham and that she had continued to follow Islam even after marriage. He also contended that there was no documentary evidence to prove that she had really converted to Hinduism.
After losing the case in lower courts, the woman approached the Delhi High Court. In August 2010, the court, while admitting that it was in a “Catch-22 situation”, ruled against the appellant saying that she had failed to prove her conversion from Islam to Hinduism and refused any relief under HMA.
“The court was pretty clear that just an oral submission that she had converted to another religion wasn’t enough. There was no other substantial evidence to prove that her conversion to Hinduism had taken place,” recalls Gita Dhingra, a Delhi High Court lawyer who was in the team that argued against Arife.
The Law Commission of India has now stepped in, with a series of recommendations that are meant to address the issue of re-conversion. The main issue relates to Section 2 of the HMA. Clause (c) of the “Explanation” part of Section 2 states that the law is applicable to “any person who is a convert or reconvert to the Hindu, Buddhist, Jaina or Sikh religion.”
In a case similar to the one that the Delhi High Court ruled on, the Kerala High Court, in 2009 (Betsy and Sadanandan vs Nil), observed that the “absence of any stipulations of law or specific recognised practices to facilitate such conversion is causing great difficulties to the parties.”
The Kerala High Court further stated that the law which recognises conversions must also be in a position to prescribe how the parties, “without the necessity to get involved in unnecessary and time consuming litigation, can declare to the world such conversion.”
The basic argument of the Kerala High Court was that proof of one’s conversion should be simplified and credible documentary evidence should be made available so that these can be presented when disputes over conversion arise. The court had also asked the Law Commission of India to examine this aspect and suggest changes to the law.
The 19th Law Commission under Justice P.V. Reddi, in its latest report on “Conversion/re-conversion to another religion — mode of proof” submitted recently to the government, has tackled issues raised by both the Delhi and Kerala High Courts.
The commission has said that within a month after the date of conversion, the converted person can send a declaration to the officer in charge of registration of marriages in the concerned area. The officer, in turn, shall exhibit a copy of the declaration on the notice board of the office till the date of confirmation. And within 21 days from the date of sending or filing the declaration, the person concerned can appear before the registering officer, establish his or her identity and confirm the contents of the declaration following which he or she can get the certificate of conversion from the registrar.
While many people have welcomed the suggestion of the Law Commission, even going to the extent of asking the government to make it mandatory for every converted person to obtain such a certificate, there are others who say mere submission to a new religion shouldn’t be considered conversion.
“The High Court was absolutely spot-on on the need for a clear-cut law on conversions and it is good that the Law Commission has agreed with the Kerala High Court,” says Dinesh Mathew J. Muricken, a Kerala High Court advocate who fought on behalf of the appellants in the 2009 case. “Although the Arya Samaj temples in some parts of Kerala and India issue certificates to those who convert or re-convert to Hinduism, they are not legally valid. In this situation we need something that can be recognised by the courts,” says Muricken.
Bangalore-based matrimonial lawyer R. Vishwanath Rao says he is in favour of making the provision mandatory. “Let the whole world know you have converted so that there’s no controversy about it in the future,” he says. According to Rao, several divorce cases of inter-religious marriages are pending in the courts on the issue of conversion.
But the commission has stopped short of recommending compulsory registration of conversions. “Maybe, as and when compulsory registration of marriage and divorce becomes a reality and adequate machinery is put in place to implement the directives for registration of marriages, the question of recording/registration of conversion could also be considered,” the commission observes.
Although the freedom of conscience and the right to profess, practise and propagate religion is enshrined in Article 25 of the Constitution, conversion to Hinduism becomes contentious not only in matters relating to marriage but for other issues as well. According to Rao, several property cases are also pending because of such disputes. “If there is documentary proof of a conversion, it becomes easy,” says Rao.
Some also argue that just a certificate of conversion is not likely to solve the problems of those caught in legal wrangles. “As it was proved in Arife’s case, mere conversion is not important as change of religion involves conduct of rituals, practices and many other things. So courts will also take into account the conduct of a person after conversion or re-conversion to Hinduism,” says Dhingra.
Agrees Archbishop Leo Cornelio of Bhopal. “Whether the conversion is to Christianity or Hinduism, it’s a deep process undertaken by an individual and it involves faith, conscience and relationship with the Almighty. One cannot simply authenticate it on a piece of paper,” says the archbishop.
But since the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that no particular formalities or religious rituals or ceremonies are necessary to bring about conversion or re-conversion, the Law Commission states that deep faith in the new religion and performance of rituals are not a necessity while converting to another religion.
Ruling in another case, S. Anbalagan vs B. Devararajan and others in 1984, the Supreme Court said that no particular ceremony was prescribed for re-conversion to Hinduism.
“The Supreme Court rulings over the years have been fairly clear as far as the conversion ceremony is concerned, but at the same time we should also recognise that courts often insist on some kind of evidence when disputes arise,” says Muricken.
Some states including Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh have enacted Freedom of Religion laws prohibiting forcible conversion in the form of use of force, allurement or by other fraudulent means. In these states the law makes it mandatory for a person who converts to another religion to intimate the district magistrate either in advance or within a stipulated period.
The commission says that there is no need for a separate enactment or amendment to the respective personal laws to give effect to its “simple recommendation”. The proposal does not “go contrary to the existing provisions of law nor does it in any way impinge on the religious freedom or faith of any person.”
The Law Commission also says that the central government could ask states where there are no laws on conversion to implement its recommendations.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
