MARGIN SPEAK

march 17, 2012 vol xlviI no 11 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
10
Gujarat 2002
and Modis Misdeeds
Anand Teltumbde
Ten years after the killings in
Gujarat, Narendra Modi has
neither expressed regret nor has
he been held accountable for
those mass deaths. Where do we
go from here?
J
ust thinking of it, a shiver runs
down my spine. I had my own
brush with how the Hindutva gangs
carried out the abominable organised
killing of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002. It
was 4 March 2002, just ve days after it all
began. Like anybody else, disturbed by the
gory tales coming out from Gujarat, but
with the bravado of a civil rights activist,
I rushed to Ahmedabad, the city that I
had loved as a student of the Indian Insti-
tute of Management (IIM) Ahmeda bad.
The ight had just about 10% occu-
pancy. The airport did not show any sign
of untowardness but as I was driven into
the city, the scars of the previous three
days began appearing with increased
frequency. As planned, I took one of my
Muslim friends, well-bred and well-
placed, an aristocrat of sorts, to take me
to the disturbed areas. My driver did not
quite understand what I was up to and
spoke of his fears but maintained an
uneasy cool. On our very rst round, we
were intercepted by a gang of some
20-odd people that hurled a volley of
questions. Mustering all my strength, I
managed not to show any nervousness
and asked them what they would do if I
was a Muslim. There was a little commo-
tion. My driver intervened and told them
in Gujarati that I was a high ofcial coming
from Mumbai. They could have reacted
anyway they liked, they could have dam-
aged the car, they could have assaul ted us
or even gone beyond. Somehow they let
us go with a warning to be careful.
The makeshift burial grounds which
had been loosely lled and sheltered
scores of corpses of innocent men,
women and children; the blank stares of
the onlookers who had escaped that
fate; the community camps with hun-
dreds of uprooted families who had lost
everything and lay there half-starving
with swarms of ies; the busy volunteers
managing the television anchors while
looking after the needs of inmates; and
half-burnt houses within sight that re-
minded them of their lost worlds. These
are the memories. Camp after camp, one
worse than the previous one with even
more gory stories made us almost sense-
less. The afternoon meeting at IIM with
the students who were infused with a
humanitarian spirit and the meeting
with activists at Prashant where I got to
see some of the gory pictures like of a
heap of half-burnt bodies of children
that made me burst into tears. It was too
much to take. The evening meeting at
the Behavioural Science Centre enli-
vened the sagging spirit, seeing scores of
people daring all the odds and organis-
ing rehabilitation work. Chief Minister
Narendra Modi was providing palpable
proof of his being behind the genocide,
as everybody believed, by deantly
keeping his government away from the
scenes of devastation. It was only after
the world began expressing its indigna-
tion at his misdemeanour that he began
the patch-up work.
No Shame, No Pain
Scores of fact-nding teams visited
Gujarat and brought out gory details of
the tragedy. All of them were unani-
mous in holding the state government
and Narendra Modi, personally, as being
responsible for this unprecedented human
tragedy. In May 2005, the government
informed the Rajya Sabha that 254
H indus and 790 Muslims were killed in
Gujarat in the post-Godhra riots of 2002.
A total of 223 people were reported miss-
ing, 2,548 sustained injuries, 919 were
rendered widows and 606 children were
orphaned during the riots. Notwith-
standing the fact that these gures have
been vehemently disputed by the acti-
vists, the Hindu fatalities mostly per-
tained to the adivasis and dalits, who
were used as the foot soldiers in this car-
nage (which multiplies the crime of the
Hindutva forces), and the property des-
troyed mostly belonging to the Muslims.
If Modi had been a non-partisan chief
minister, as the Constitution mandates
him to be, he should have expressed
Anand Teltumbde (tanandraj@gmail.com) is a
writer and civil rights activist with the
Committee for the Protection of Democratic
Rights, Mumbai.
MARGIN SPEAK
Economic & Political Weekly EPW march 17, 2012 vol xlviI no 11
11
g enuine regret for having failed to arrest
such a wanton destruction of lives and
property. Instead he and his minions
kept repeating their nauseating linkage
between the organised carnage in the
state and mysterious burning of a coach
of the ill-fated Sabarmati train on 27
February 2002. The persistent orches-
tration of this irrationality, neither Modi
nor BJP realised, was exposing their guilt
instead of covering it up.
Even after facing several embarrass-
ments from ofcial and unofcial en -
quiries, the courts and worldwide indig-
nation, Modi continues to justify the
genocide with his mischievous mech-
anics that it was a mere reaction to
the action in Godhra. The centrally-
ap pointed Banerjee Commission had
concluded that Godhra was an unfortu-
nate accident. The report, which was
promptly challenged by the state gov-
ernment, need not be taken at face value
but if one goes by who beneted from
the Godhra deaths, there remains scope
to suspect that it could even have been
planned by the Hindutva forces. After
all, it was the subsequent mass killings
of Muslims that won Modi landslide vic-
tories and brought him huge political
mileage so as to be projected as a future
prime ministerial candidate. Godhra thus
presents three equal possibilities: one, it
was an accident; two, it was a criminal
act of some Muslims; and three, it was
a conspiratorial plan of the Hindutva
forces themselves.
Lies of Vibrant Gujarat
Though unconnected to the 2002 kill-
ings, another lie that Modi has systemati-
cally built up over the past decade to
build a shield around him is that he made
Gujarat prosperous and vibrant. This
helped to castigate those who demand
justice for the 2002 victims as being
against the people of Gujarat and to
dodge the issue altogether by saying for-
get and move on. Closing down relief
camps, abruptly Modi declared all clear
and in 2003 launched the biannual
extravaganza called the Vibrant Gujarat
Summit. By offering investors all kinds of
things in a true nawab style, he got many
businessmen to shower praises on him
and project him as true prime minister
candidate. Huge sums were publicised as
committed investments in the memo-
randa of understanding but as the right
to information queries by activists re -
vealed, the actual materialisation re -
mained at a paltry 25%, barely on par
with Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. In
2003, Gujarats 20 out of 25 districts g-
ured in the list of 447 backward districts
identied by the Planning Commission,
the top place being Dangs of Gujarat.
The state contributed six districts to the
50 most backward districts in the coun-
try. Gujarat ranks 17th among the 18
larger states in terms of budgetary allo-
cation to the social sector despite its mis-
erable social development indices.
Modi unleashed a massive PR exercise
to project himself as the builder of
vibrant Gujarat. The fact remains that
Gujarat was already amongst the most
industrialised states. Two decades back,
the annual growth rate of Gujarat was
between 12% and 13%, almost double
the national average of 6% to 7%. Today,
it is 11%, marginally above the national
growth rate. By opening the coffers of
the state for industrialists to loot, it has
immensely contributed to the making of
the richest billionaires in the country
but has left the common man high and
dry. According to the India State Hunger
Index 2008 of the International Food Pol-
icy Research Institute, Gujarat is shock-
ingly ranked worse than Orissa at as low
as the 13th among 17 major states, just
above Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar
and Madhya Pradesh. Anaemia in Gujarat
shows an alarming rise. The percentage
of women suffering from anaemia in
Gujarat has risen from 46.3% in 1999 to
55.5% in 2004 (Third round of National
Family Health Survey 2006) and that of
children from 74.5% to 80.1%. As state
Congress president Arjun Modhwadia
claimed, 16,000 Gujarati workforce inclu-
ding 9,829 workers, 5,447 farmers and
919 farm labourers committed suicide
during Modis tenure.
Sadbhavana Salt
Without an iota of remorse, Modi
enacted his sadbhavana drama on the
eve of the 10th anniversary of the 2002
genocide without ever visiting any of its
victims. Oblivious to the ghettoisation of
Muslims in Ahmedabad that he cata-
lysed and people still reeling in fear of a
communal conagration, he picked up
comprador elements from Muslims, dal-
its, Jains, Sikhs, Christians, etc, to road
show his communal harmony. It was
nothing short of rubbing salt into the
wounds of thousands of victims, who
still crave for justice. It is inconceivable
that Modi will ever pay for his sins. We
have such a proven system that works
perfect for the class of moneyed and
powerful but still keeps the masses
hopeful. Ten years of legal battles have
thrown only specks of justice that have
been favourable to him. In a case led by
Zakia Jafri, widow of slain Congress
former MP Ehsan Jafri, who was killed
along with 66 others in Gulberg Society,
the Supreme Court-appointed Special
Investigation Team (SIT) did not nd any
evidence against 62 accused and their
mastermind Modi. So it will be else-
where, the testimony of the suspended
Indian Police Service ofcer Sanjiv Bhatt
notwithstanding. Modis misdeeds go
beyond the 2002 genocide. There is the
case of Hiren Pandya, whose family has
raised questions about who the real
mastermind behind Hiren Pandya is.
There have been many encounters in
Gujarat of the alleged terrorists who
were out to kill Modi. In one such case in
which I was associated with a fact-nd-
ing mission is widely believed to have
been stage-managed: the killing of
19-year-old student, Ishrat Jahan, along
with two others. The case stands opened
up and is being investigated by the SIT
but the question is whether justice will
ultimately be done. One can surmise that
most of the so-called terrorist attacks
were also the fabrications, the plots that
served the strategy of Modi-like unscru-
pulous politicians.
The question is, where we go from here?
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