(Indian Express
October 25, 2006)
Editorial
Image and justice
Why can’t Modi see that rehabilitating riot victims serves even his own interests?
Narendra Modi’s attempted make-over may have appeared persuasive. Over the last several months, a series of photo-ops have framed the Gujarat chief minister as the tech-savvy, investment-friendly man in a hurry to develop Gujarat, already one of India’s most enterprising states. The leader who revels in organising investor extravaganzas and inaugurating projects with catchy names. The administrator impatient with bureaucratic red tape. A chief minister at home with big reforms that scare government leaders in other states. But the Rs 19.1 crore that the Modi government has returned to the Centre as money unspent on rehabilitating the over 5,000 Muslim families affected by the 2002 riots, who are still leading marooned lives in makeshift camps according to the findings of the National Commission for Minorities, is a terse reminder. Forward-looking nations cannot afford short memories. If India wants to move on from Gujarat 2002, Modi’s efforts to recraft his image — howsoever genuine each specific exertion might be — must not blunt the pressure on him to address the continuing injustice in his state, four years later.
This could even be a reminder that Modi might want to heed in his own political interest. He must know that there are serious limits to the politics he has patented so far. While hard Hindutva of the minority-bashing sort may have delivered massive political returns in Gujarat, it is a clear drag on any ambitions to make a place on the national stage. Gujarat’s specific socio-political history has made it hospitable to Moditva in a particular moment. But if Modi has ambitions that go beyond that moment in that state, he will have to do much more than flaunt administrative acumen and talk FDI. He will have to address the basic needs of those living degraded lives in the state’s relief camps. And create the conditions for those who live there to go back to their homes.
In the last instance, the justice undone in Gujarat is not about Modi’s political prospects. It is about the robustness or lack of it at the heart of India’s constitutional democracy. Both political and civil society, therefore, must remain vigilant against the onset of forgetting.