Gulf News
5 May 2007
Where's Gujarati conscience?
By Kuldip Nayar, Special to Gulf News
The BJP should feel humiliated, if not ashamed, of what has overtaken the government in Gujarat. Hardly does a day pass when a skeleton does not come out of the state Chief Minister Narendra Modi's cupboard or dug up from one place or the other. The latest is that the Gujarat government has admitted before the Supreme Court bench about a fake encounter. One of its officials has reconstructed the incident after the court's order and found it was a murder. It was courageous of the official to bring the whole thing to light despite government pressure. One Muslim lady accompanying her husband - both were killed in November 2005 - was hacked to pieces and her body burnt. And the police which did this hailed the act as desh bhakti (the country's love).
The account of the fake encounter is not the only one to tell that Gujarat administration has ceased to follow the norms of a democratic state. There is hardly any report which does not mention the deliberate killings of Muslims in the 2002 riots and their deplorable plight after having been ousted from their homes and lands. Human rights activists say that a climate of alienation and fear has seen deliberately fostered among the Muslim minority since the violence. The alienation has been corroborated by the findings by the Sachar Committee, a central government-appointed high level panel, mandated to look into the "social, economic and educational status of the Muslim community in the country."
In its latest newsletter, Amnesty International says: "Five years on, the Government of Gujarat remains unrepentant for its failings to protect the Muslim minority and to ensure that victims obtain justice, truth and reparations." The newsletter further adds: "The complete failure of the Government of Gujarat - itself accused of direct complicity in the violence which left over 2,000 people dead - is further evident in its persistent unrepentant attitude, as shown in their non-recognition of those still internally displaced by violence and by its failure to provide basic amenities to "relief colonies".
Lawless
If people are killed or ousted from their homes in the name of religion, the state is nothing but a lawless territory where religious buccaneers roam as headhunters.
Take the fake encounter. The three police officers involved were arrested only when the finger of suspicion was directed at the government. In fact, this is a case of vicarious responsibility. When the government headed by Modi reportedly "directs" them to indulge in "the patriotic act" the chief minister and the cabinet are responsible for it. The BJP leaders still pretend to be ignorant of Modi's administrative activism against Muslims. But that is natural because Modi's acts fit into the anti-Muslim policy of the RSS-controlled party.
There was nothing wrong in the demand for the CBI inquiry although the set-up is only a central government department. Why doesn't the Congress suggest President's rule in Gujarat? What more should happen in the state to indicate that the constitutional machinery to protect the minorities has broken down? Many state governments have been dismissed in the past on lesser grounds. It appears that the BJP is trying to duplicate the Modi policy in the two other states, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, it is ruling.
There is a case for taking stern steps against the BJP which mixes politics with religion. Our secular polity has no place for it. The bill which the centre proposes to bring before parliament talks about banning religious parties. But what about those which operate under non-religious names, but are religious in appeal, like the BJP? Eminent educationist Amrik Singh has brought out a book, Hindu and Muslim Divide in India, to discuss the same question. He comes to the conclusion that the RSS has revived its 1925 agenda of polarisation, when the organisation came into being.
He argues that the BJP which is a political arm of the RSS has intensified its efforts to widen the gap between Hindus and Muslims because it finds the two communities coming nearer to each other despite the BJP agenda.
I recall when I attended Mahatma Gandhi's prayer meeting soon after reaching Delhi from Sialkot in Pakistan he said that "Hindus and Muslims are my two eyes." How does Modi's government or, for that matter, the BJP's parochialism measure up to that observation?
None from the Gujarati community on the whole, living in India or abroad, has ever raised his voice against the lawless and soulless state. Their conscience does not prick over the violence in 2002 because they believe that after the "burning of some sewaks" on a train at Godhara, everything that the Modi government does is justified. Every Gujarati, man or woman, must introspect and hail either Nathuram Godse who killed Mahatma Gandhi or denounce the Modi government to uphold the honour of Gandhiji. The rest is a matter between the Gujaratis and their conscience.
Kuldip Nayar is a former Indian High Commissioner to the UK and a former Rajya Sabha MP.
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