Gujarat 2002: The Long Shadow

by  Bina Srinivasan
 [28 February 2007]

I walk the same streets.  Minus some houses.  I smell the same air.  Minus some smells.  And life goes on.  It stretches interminably for some.  

For others, it is a vibrant Gujarat.

A few days back I had a bright idea.  Let's stop investments coming into Gujarat, I thought, and then we will make a dent.   I called up friends, fellow passengers in this journey past the long dark night.  I told them this is what we can do.   And the minute I said my phone is probably tapped, they dropped the phone.

My idea was only a pipedream.  How can I – one puny individual - stop the might of lucre, how can I, halt the flight of global capital?   Even as I said it to my friends, in frenzied anger, bordering on hysteria, I knew it could never happen.

What was disappointing was the way in which people begin to censor themselves.

For those of us who have lived in Gujarat and will continue to do so, the struggle is intense.   It is an everyday matter.  Our lives are made up of the many stories that are a lived reality for so many thousands, as we watch helplessly.  And sometimes not so helplessly, as we make our way towards multiplexes that have indulged in yet another act of self-censorship by turning their backs on Parzania -  the film that portrays the saga of a family whose child went missing in the 2002 violence in Gujarat (just my luck that I stumbled into a relative of the family in the most 'innocuous' of places. This relative insisted I should talk to the father of the child.   I died many small deaths that evening.  What do you say to a father who has been looking for his child for the last five years?).   And yet we walk towards those multiplexes, in appreciation of an art that is called Bollywood these days.

No problem with that, but there is another bit of the story that is being left out here.  That is what causes concern.

How is it possible that one slice of creativity is denied audience, while others are allowed to capture the imagination?   Somebody called it 'selective democracy'.  I think, this is the complete absence of democracy.

The name of the game, my friends, is fascism.  It has nothing to do with democracy.

This is how consent is woven out from coercion, or the threat of it.  And believe me, women know this so well.   So many thousands of women live through this.  Yet, when it becomes a form of governance, it reminds those of us unfortunate enough to have memories, of a time when the decimation of an entire community was the rule, the rationale and the reason.  

So much for trying to keep historical truth afloat.  In times when history is itself suspect, when history coalesces into mythology seamlessly, there are some of us who begin to doubt our sanity.

Is it better to just go along with this?  Is it better to resist?   Who decides, who bears the brunt?

Let me come to the point.  It is now five years since Gujarat 2002.   The searing memory of those days are now overwhelmed with the reality of a community so besieged, so pushed to the wall, it does not bear thinking of.  And the little everyday injustices, the small instances of 'normalcy', the taken-for-grantedness of the prejudice – they lurk everywhere.   They hide behind a 'vibrant' Gujarat, they seek shelter in what is euphemistically called urban development, they conceal themselves in the vocabulary of capital, they proclaim themselves from Special Economic Zones.  

There is no peace, I am sorry.  No justice either.   Newspapers come out with stories of 'communal harmony'.  What is that animal?  Who is it?  Communal harmony?   Can anybody point it out to me, please?  What zoo does it live in?

I know that humanity exists.  In the pores of the lives of the 'little people'. The real people, I call them.   They live, they try to live, as they used to.  They move on, they struggle.  But we all know what it means.   Its what they call an uphill struggle.

You only have to go to one basti in Ahmedabad, one relief colony, one 'resettlement colony' and the truth comes tumbling out like a stream bursting at the seams, like a flow of tears, like an unending nightmare.

When the state abdicates its responsibilities, horror stories ensue.  People are not allowed to go back, the insecurity is enormous, the guilty are at large.   So on and so forth.  But the Hindu Rashtra is only carrying out its 'dharma', its duty.  That is the agenda we saw unfolding much before 2002.   That is the agenda we see fractionally fulfilled today.

But.

Its time to call a spade a spade.  Religious fundamentalism is fundamentalism is fundamentalism.   And it is everywhere.  Patriarchy is patriarchy is patriarchy.

So now it is beginning to cut both ways. I take the risk here of saying that even the religious groups that have provided relief post Gujarat 2002 are guilty, some of them, or at least some individuals within them.   

If truth has to prevail, it has to first see light of day.  And there are no big truths and small truths.   The truth is the truth.  Big or small, it can be as bitter.

So, women are being exploited, they are being forced to take to sex work.  They are being forced outside their homes by their relatives, their immediate community, in many instances.   That apart, there are many other tales untold, of having been duped, cheated and robbed of the money they received as compensation for death of kin, of the loans they got as victims of the violence in 2002.   Tales of being threatened by people of their own community. 

Key words: people, of  their own, community.

So much for charity.  So much for relief.

I know the context in which Gujarat happens.  You don't have to tell me about the nature of the state in Gujarat.   I know about the revamping of textbooks, the setting up of special programmes for Dalits and adivasis, the POTA arrests, ad nauseam.

But.

There is another angle of exploitation.  Another angle of religious bigotry that is also happening.   I am not willing to condone it.  A man whose house has been attacked twice in 2002, says to a community that women should be given some training in business, and is told by a cleric that, 'this work is "haram" ', we cannot ask our women to do that.' 'But sex work is even more "haram" ', he says helplessly.   He is angry, he is infuriated, to use his own words.

He is alone.  Almost alone.    

With these words I know I will fall in between two stools.  Ah, well. Maybe my place is in between two stools.   The view is bleak from here, but at least it gives you the truth.

As I live through the political wilderness of Gujarat, I wonder.  What is to happen, where will it all end?   Will it end at all?  Flying in the face of such adversity, there are moments of exhilaration.  Just the sheer defiance of it.   The rebellion it entails.

Sometimes there is fear.  Cloying, stinking fear.  

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