[Marxism] Five Years after 2002 Gujarat Pogrom

[Sukla Sen <suklasenp@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

[The article though interesting and informed has a
number of inaccuracies and serious flaws. 

Quote 
Some 60 Hindu chauvinist activists perished in the
Godhra train fire. 
Unquote 

In Godhra train fire, accidental or not, the death
toll was 59 - 58 almost then and there, and another
one a couple of days later. More importantly, all were
not VHP activists. The dead included ordinary
passengers as well. 

Quote 
In 2005 he [i.e. Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi]
was honoured for leading the "best-governed" state in
India by the Congress Party- connected Rajiv Gandhi
Foundation. A think-tank created to honour former
Congress Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, the Rajiv Gandhi
Foundation's trustees include the current Congress
Party president, Sonia Gandhi, Indian Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister Chidambaram.
Unquote 

Just compare this with the following report from the
Indian Express: 

Quote 
After being asked by Rajiv Gandhi Foundation
chairperson Sonia Gandhi to get all research papers
vetted by her executive committee, Rajiv Gandhi
Institute for Contemporary Studies director Bibek
Debroy has resigned. 

Gandhi?s instruction follows Debroy?s report on
economic freedom in Indian states which gave top
ranking to Gujarat. The report was cheered, celebrated
and publicised by Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra
Modi. Unquote 

But as the saying goes, the sting is at the tail. 

Quote 
Last but not least, were the Congress leadership to
dig into the BJP's role in fomenting the Gujarat
pogrom or the 1992 razing of the Babri Masjid mosque
in Ayodhya, there is no doubt the BJP would retaliate
by clamouring for an inquiry into the Congress Party's
own culpability in the 1984 anti-Sikh massacre. In
other words, the two principal parties in the "world's
most populous democracy" have a secret understanding
to bury each other's foul communal crimes. 
Unquote 

The plain fact is that there were several judicial
enquiries into 1984 Sikh massacre that followed the
assassination of the then Indian Prime Minister India
Gandhi by one of her bodyguards, a Sikh, presumably as
an outcome of the grievous hurt caused to the Sikh
psyche by the storming of the Golden Temple - the most
sacred place and symbol for the Sikhs, by the Indian
Armed forces - again consisting of many Sikhs,
ostensibly to flush out, and eliminate, the armed Sikh
separatists who had taken refuge there as a safe
haven. 

As a consequence of the report submitted by the last
one, one Central minister, Jagdish Tytler, had to
resign. A few cases against Congress MPs Sajjan Kumar
and Jagdish Tytler and Dharam Dass Shastri,another
party leader, have been reportedly reopened. This is
over and above the consequences of the reports of the
earlier commissions and routine court cases. A very
senior Congress leader HKL Bhagat had to suffer
political exile along with Tytler, Sajjan Kumar and a
few others for quite a while. This is of course not to
mean that this was any adequate punishment for the
crimes allegedly committed by them. And the courts in
due course of time exonerated them. Moreover, of late,
a compensation of Rs. 5 lakh has also been announced
for the nearest kin of a victim. 

Similarly, both judicial enquiry and court cases are
going on in case of the Gujarat carnage as well.
(Similar is the case with Babri demolition.) Again
there is a deliberate attempt at a cover up. But
through the intervention of the NHRC and the Supreme
Court some remedial measures, again far from adequate,
have been taken. Indian civil society, which is one of
the defining features of a democratic political order,
played, and is playing, a major role in securing
relief and justice for the victims in both the cases
in the teeth of deep State apathy and vicious
antipathy. This is a point which needs be adequately
factored in. 

What, however, sets 2002 distinctly apart from 1984 is
neither the fact of State complicity nor the scale of
violence. In both the cases the State had been deeply
complicit. And the scale of violence in 1984 was
arguably even higher. 
But it is the political use of both the events that
marks them apart. 
As a consequence of 1984, HKL Bhagat, Jagdish Tytler,
Sajjan Kumar et al ? the public faces of the violence,
were virtually disowned by the Congress Party. They
had to suffer political exile. 
As the outcome of Gujarat 2002, Narendra Modi, the
Chief Minister of the State and the acknowledged
mastermind, emerged as the leading mascot of the BJP
for carrying out the pogrom against the Muslims. 

Two decades after 1984 massacre, a Sikh from the
Congress has become the Prime minister of the country.
And he publicly apologised for 1984. 
Even today, the BJP is engaged in vicious anti-Muslim
campaign and in the process has fallen foul of the
Election Commission for producing and distributing
hate campaign stuff in the form of a CD. And the BJP
leaders refuse to show any sign of remorse. This is
over and above the fact that a large number of Muslims
are yet unable to go back to their homes.

Sukla] 


http://asiantribune.com/index.php?q=node/5270

Five years after 2002 Gujarat pogrom: While the
victims languish, the perpetrators go unpunished
Wed, 2007-04-11 01:23

By K. Nesan and Kranti Kumara ? World Socialist Web
Site

Despite the passage of more than five years since the
February-March 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in the Indian
state of Gujarat, not a single one of the principal
perpetrators of this horrific crime has been punished.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Muslims who were
driven from their towns and villages by roving bands
of Hindu supremacist thugs still languish in relief
camps without electricity or running water.

There is much evidence to show that leading figures in
the Hindu-supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
(which headed India?s Union and Gujarat governments in
2002) and its Hindu-chauvinist allies?the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, literally National Volunteer?s
Association), Bajrang Dal (Hindu youth organization)
and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu
Council)?fomented and organized the carnage in
Gujarat, which resulted in the slaughter of more than
two thousand Muslims and left tens of thousands of
others homeless and jobless. (see ?India: further
evidence Hindu-supremacist BJP culpable in Gujarat
pogrom?)

One of the chief abettors of the massacre was Narendra
Modi, then as now Gujarat?s chief minister.
Notwithstanding his role in inciting the violence and
ensuring that security forces took no effective action
to protect Gujarat?s Muslims, Modi not only continues
to head Gujarat?s government and to serve as one of
the principal leaders of the BJP at the
national-level. In 2005 he was honoured for leading
the ?best-governed? state in India by the Congress
Party-connected Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. A think-tank
created to honour former Congress Prime Minister Rajiv
Gandhi, the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation?s trustees include
the current Congress Party president, Sonia Gandhi,
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance
Minister Chidambaram.

The Congress Party portrays itself as a bulwark of
secularism and an implacable opponent of Hindu
chauvinism. Yet despite heading India?s United
Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition government for
the past three years, it has not seen fit to use the
resources of the state to mount a serious
investigation into the Gujarat pogrom so as to lay
bare the role played by the Hindu supremacist right
and various security forces and punish the guilty.

......

Five years on, Gujarat?s Muslims continue to live in
fear and misery. The state government has made a show
of refusing to accept relief money from the central
government, even as tens of thousands of Muslims have
been condemned to live in squalor in relief camps.
Those Muslims who have returned to their hometowns and
villages in the years since the pogrom have frequently
been forced to make ?concessions? to their Hindu
chauvinist tormentors and must live under the constant
threat of renewed Hindu supremacist violence.

.......

In other words, the CPM and the CPM-led Left Front
will ritualistically condemn the UPA for its
complicity in the continuing persecution of Gujarat?s
Muslims, but will continue to provide the UPA with the
parliamentary votes it needs to remain in office, all
the while fobbing off on the masses the claim that the
UPA is the only credible means of blocking the BJP?s
return to power.

There are several reasons that the Congress Party
cannot and will not act against the BJP. The
sympathies of significant elements within the
Congress, especially in Gujarat, lie not with the
Muslim victims of the 2002 pogrom but rather with its
instigators. In the December 2002 Gujarat elections
the Congress mounted a campaign that even sections of
the press derided as ?Hindutva-lite.?

The Indian bourgeoisie?s second party, the BJP, has
played a pivotal role in implementing the neo-liberal
socioeconomic reform program pioneered by the Congress
government of 1991-96 and continued by the current UPA
coalition. The Congress relies on the BJP?s support in
pressing forward with the bourgeoisie?s ?reform?
agenda in the face of widespread popular opposition,
even while using it, with the help of the Stalinists,
as a right-wing foil, as a means to intimidate the
working class and toilers into rallying round the
Congress-led UPA as the ?lesser evil.?

Third, the failure to indict and convict any of the
principal perpetrators of the Gujarat pogrom has
underscored that wide layers of the police and
judiciary are sympathetic to the noxious Hindu
supremacist doctrines spouted by the BJP and the RSS.
The UPA government fears that were it to mount a
serious inquiry into the Gujarat pogrom and its
cover-up, it would come under attack from elements
within the state and, even more importantly, that such
an inquiry could destabilize the state institutions
that underpin bourgeois rule by shedding light on the
extent to which they have been overrun by fascistic
elements.

Last but not least, were the Congress leadership to
dig into the BJP?s role in fomenting the Gujarat
pogrom or the 1992 razing of the Babri Masjid mosque
in Ayodhya, there is no doubt the BJP would retaliate
by clamouring for an inquiry into the Congress Party?s
own culpability in the 1984 anti-Sikh massacre. In
other words, the two principal parties in the ?world?s
most populous democracy? have a secret understanding
to bury each other?s foul communal crimes.

- World Socialist Web Site -



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