Culmination of Eight Months of Save Democracy Campaign in Gujarat
by Shabnam Hashmi, December 22, 2007
In December 2006 a colleague of mine and I started a journey from the Dangs in South Gujarat and traveled to Kutch covering on the way almost all the districts. The mission was simple: to meet civil society groups and friends and ask them to join hands to defeat the communal forces in the coming elections. Many of whom we met thought we were crazy and Modi was invincible and the opposition too weak. Many of these were old Gandhians, who felt absolutely betrayed by the only alternative that existed in the state and felt dismayed at the communalization of the opposition itself.
Our intention initially was to put up a resistance at the ground level irrespective of what the opposition looked like. For us it was clear that the results were very crucial and they will have an impact on the future politics of this country.
During the eight long months that the Anhad team of young volunteers worked round the clock, the most interesting and challenging were the last ten days in Modi's own constituency.
Anhad during its almost a year long 'Save Democracy Campaign' covered 630 villages ( Three Youth Aman Karwans traveled across 25 districts covering 4-5 villages everyday, performing, singing, holding public meetings, screening films and distributing leaflets exposing the myth of Vibrant Gujarat, one lakh copies of the preamble of the Indian constitution were distributed , thousands of people signed the pledge to uphold the values of the constitution), organized three major Youth Conventions attended by thousands of young people, the process involved selection of delegates through a debate competition, then training the selected ones into public speech and sensitizing them to all basic political and social issues, Anhad organized the first public screening of Parzania, organized innumerable demonstrations, seminars, workshops in various parts of Gujarat, produced innumerable kinds of leaflets dealing with issues of democracy and exposing the myth of Developed Gujarat,
various posters, organized various music concerts and cultural evenings, culminating the Gujarat level programme with a motorcycle rally by 25 youth covering 22 district headquarters addressing media conferences and holding rallies and distributing leaflets. All these efforts were supported by over 20 Gujarat based organizations, networks and fellow activists and friends.
We conducted a small survey on December 1 and 2nd in Maninagar, Modi's constituency and the immediate response was to move into the constituency for the last 10 days of the campaign.
The decision was not easy because even though the earlier campaigns were also not risk free (and during these campaigns the activists were attacked in three different locations) but for the Maninagar campaign I wanted everyone's opinion and consent.
I explained to everyone that we could be attacked, injured, arrested at any time during these ten days. All the young Anhad activists emboldened by the success of the campaign across Gujarat were too enthusiastic to plunge into action.
We immediately left for Mani Nagar-Sanjay Sharma, Chandu Patel and Iin search of an office. I did not want to operate from Anhad's Ahmedabad office as it was half an away from Maninagar and we wanted to be there all the time. After a day's search we found an office near the Bhairav Nath Mandir, a small shop, enough to accommodate ten mattresses at night. Immediately computers, tables, banners, stationary etc were shifted and we started working for the launch of the campaign. We decided to start our work with the release of an appeal to women to defeat the forces of hatred as the atmosphere of hatred had engulfed the whole society and worst hit were women with the crime rate going up everyday against them. The appeal was signed by ten women and we organized a small launch ..Opened an exhibition on the status of women, released the appeal, Mallika Sarabhai, Ila Pathak, Sheba George and Sofiya Khan came and spoke at the meeting. We released a CD of peace songs sung by children from across India. The launch was attended by almost 500 people from around our office and covered well in the media.
We printed one lakh copies of a special leaflet for the citizens of Mani Nagar exposing the myth of development. The ten days that we spent there our young volunteers reached out to 80,000 households directly distributing the leaflet, talking to people, sharing with them their sorrows and conditions.
We were shocked to see the condition of Mani Nagar. Mani Nagar has five wards: Maninagar, Amraiwadi, Hatkeshwar, Bagh-e-Firdous and Khokhra. Total voters in Maninagar are 3,28,000. The conditions under which the poor live is no different from the worst slums that the reader might have visited. A Chief Minister who boasts of the highest development in his state can not provide the basic necessities of life like toilet and water to the people of his own constituency is shameful.
On December 8th, 2007 we decided to organize a youth meeting and a cultural evening at Dakshini Chawk. This place is the BJP stronghold within Maninagar and doing a programme against Modi in Dakshini was unheard of.
Sachin Pandya, Sanjay Sharma and I went to Dakshini Chawk around 11.10am to instruct the decorator and the sound engineer to start the arrangements for the evening programme.
As we stood there waiting for the decorator a white Maruti 800 arrived, there was a BJP scarf tied to the mirror inside. Our few posters were on notice boards at Dakshini Chawk and hundreds of leaflets had been distributed for the programme on the evening before. A man, who we were later informed was Parag Naik, came out from the car, very aggressively moved towards Sanjay took a leaflet, tore it off and threw it on the ground. I told him gently that it was easier to tear than to join. He moved towards me menacingly and started shouting, using extremely filthy and abusive language and threatening to repeat what was done to women in 2002. It was clear to us that we had to leave immediately from the spot.
We came back in the afternoon and with the help of friends who stood guard started the work. While the work was on ,Sanjay and I had to go back to office to finish some last minute arrangements. After sometime the PI (in Gujarat PI is like SHO of a police station) came and asked Sachin about the programme and while he explained the PI said:, ' agar koye lafda hua to sabko dekh loonga'. Sachin objected and said that we had the permission both from the Special Branch as well as from the corporation. He repeated,'ek ek ko band kar doonga'.
The programme went off well, a strong pro democracy programme asking people to defeat the forces of hatred. Mallika Sarabhai's group performed, she spoke, Digant Oza spoke, Gauhar Raza recited a poem, young speakers Manoj Sharma, Manisha Trivedi, Dev Desai, Sachin Pandya spoke, Sanjay Sharma and Keshu Bhai sang movement songs. There was stone throwing which we overlooked. After the programme the whole BJP gang surrounded us, shouting and abusing, we managed to leave, leaving all our exhibitions and banners at the venue. The choice was between getting physically attacked or leaving the stuff behind. Later the decorator charged us for a number of broken and missing chairs.
I filed a complaint against Parag Naik to the Police Commissioner next day for the morning incident. I asked in my complain if this can happen to a member of the National Integration Council , then what must be the condition of an ordinary person, who dares to dissent?. Nothing happened to him.
Our door to door campaign continued. Every morning three teams of 8-10 volunteers left and delivered the leaflets at doorsteps. In the evening everyone together went to the major crossings distributing a second leaflet. Late evenings were spent in organizing small corner meetings.
We sought permission to organize two more public meetings on 10th and 12th. The permission was not denied but it never came till well past the meeting timings so that we could not hold the meetings.
We asked for a permission to take out a rally on 13th. It was denied on the pretext that it will disturb law and order situation in Maninagar.
On 13th we organized a corner meeting at Hatkeshwar circle, sang secular, democratic songs, distributed roses to people and asked ten questions related to Mahatma Gandhi and the freedom struggle and the winners were given the Video CDs of Lage Raho Munnabhai. It was a great success. We then moved to the next circle and did a similar programme near the Khokhra circle.
While we were singing a song, suddenly Parag Naik appeared again. Parag Naik and his BJP goons again attacked us near Khokhra ciclethis time manhandling one of our fellow woman activist they physically attacked, hit her on the chest, twisted her arm, caught her by the neck and threatened to tear her clothes, forcibly took away her camera and took out the memory card, kicked at a panel with Gandhi's photograph and a quotation, threw away the roses which we were distributing, use highly objectionable and abusive language. As we tried to leave we were surrounded in smaller groups. A media photographer from a major English daily was bashed up and his roll taken out.
We faxed a complaint to the Police Commissioner. The media photographer decided not to file a complain. I reported the matter to his paper -well known English daily. They did not deem it fit to report.
On 14th morning three of our young activists Paresh Desai, Dharmendra Rathore and Sanjay Raval were inserting leaflets in the newspapers at 3am when they were surrounded by Parag Naik and his goons again, BJP goons called the called police and illegally detained all three of them, impounded the Anhad vehicle and the leaflets. They were released only after 13 hours. A FIR was registered against Anhad under for illegally distributing the leaflets!
The details of the all the attacks were faxed to the media. We organized a Dharna on 14th at the Police Commissioner's office and gave him a memorandum. Parag Naik kept on moving freely and even the day we sat on a dharna outside commissioner's office he came and parked his car behind our vehicle to show that he is above law.
Next morning all Gujarati newspapers reported: 'three Anhad activists were arrested for distributing illegal leaflets and a case has been registered against Anhad. A Delhi vehicle belonging to the organization has also been impounded. Anhad is a Delhi based organization headed by Shabnam Hashmi' . (As all the activists were Gujarati and 'Hindu' it was important for the media to establish a non-Gujarati and a 'Muslim' connection. )
The English media refused to report. When one paper did after I spoke to the editor it printed the police version.
A DCP came to the office after Police Commissioner's intervention, recorded my statement refused to record anything beyond the 8th incident as it was not under his purview. Nothing has moved after that.
On 16th December we again spent the day in Maninagar. Modi reached Mani Nagar around lunch time, perhaps first time in five years, went to 16 different localities in 4 hours asking people to vote for him.
Today a very well respected journalist has written an article on how even the police are not with Modi and RSS has deserted him and poor Modi is fighting the battle all alone. Where is he alone? The police, the local administration, the industrialists, the local media and even a major chunk of the national media stand with him.
The people who are not with him are: the poor and the marginalized; the activists, the social reformers, artists, film makers, writers, poets, intellectuals, people who still believe in the dream that we saw in 1947, people who will give their lives to save the values of the Indian Constitution.
Those who are eulogizing Modi and not taking any chances just in case he comes back have totally forgotten the power of the poor, illiterate and marginalized citizens of this country. They have forgotten that people of India have rejected authoritarian rule many times in this country.
Poor and the marginalized do not have to see the development on television screens and news paper pages, they live and experience it. According to the latest NSS Report on "Household Borrowing and Repayment, around 21 % of rural population in Gujarat spend less than Rs.12 per day to survive and around five percent population manages with even below Rs. 9 per day.
Modi is losing and his government is going. But his political defeat in elections is only the first step. The struggle to reclaim the hearts and the minds of the people is much more difficult. Will you join us ?
'Sabse Khatarnak Hota Hai Murda Shanti se Bhar Jana
Na Hona Tadap Ke Sab Sahan Kar Jana
Sabse Khatarnak Hota Hai Hamare Sapnon Ka Mar Jana'
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