[sacw] SACW #2 | 19 May 02 [Sri Lanka / Post Gujarat riots India]

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire Dispatch #2 | 19 May 2002
http://www.mnet.fr

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1. Sri Lanka: 'Illiberal' peace? (Jayadeva Uyangoda)
2. India: A prayer for peace (Nighat Gandhi)
3. India: Gujarat debate: The NDA's ethnic cleansing (Jayanthi Natarajan)
4. India: Golwalkar and the BJP (Neena Vyas)
5. India: Members of Parliament's letter to the Home Minister re 
Gujarat Rehabilitation
6. India: Who Will Punish The Guilty? Sabotage of Judicial System in 
Gujarat (Batuk Vora)
7. India: The Rediff Interview / Ghanshyam Shah
__________________________

#1.

Daily News (Colombo)
Saturday 19 May 2002

'Illiberal' peace?
by Jayadeva Uyangoda

A particularly complex problem of Sri Lanka's present peace process 
has now entered the center of political debate. It concerns the fate 
of the people of the North-East when the province is sooner or later 
subjected to the LTTE control under the proposed interim 
administration.
Many human rights groups have expressed serious doubts about the 
wisdom of the very idea of an interim administration under LTTE 
hegemony because of its likely disastrous consequences for human 
rights, democracy, pluralism, accountability and the rights of the 
regional minorities. The UTHR in its latest report has once again 
dramatically highlighted these concerns by branding this negative 
trajectory as 'totalitarian peace'.
At the heart of this debate is a profoundly complex issue: how should 
the Sri Lankan state in search of peace handle the militaristic LTTE, 
which has also joined the peace process on its own terms? In the 
current debate on the peace process, many critics continue to 
characterize the LTTE as a 'fascist' entity with its own uniquely 
unreformable qualities.
They do it with good reasons. The enduring commitment to the goal of 
a separate state, the unwavering belief in the efficacy of the 
military path to achieving that goal, subjugation of political 
options to military objectives, ruthlessness in the deployment of 
violence, terror and deception as means to power, and the calculated 
disregard for even elementary norms of democracy, human rights and 
pluralism are often posited to be some key characteristics of this 
unique movement called the LTTE. These certainly are also some of the 
key features that have distinguished the LTTE from all other militant 
Tamil groups.
The question with which the Sri Lankan state is confronted at present 
concerns making peace with an illiberal oppositional entity.
The 'totalitarian peace' thesis describes the outcome of that peace 
for the people in the North-East provinces once the LTTE gains 
control of the region under the proposed interim administrative body. 
The way in which many human rights activists problematize this peace 
dilemma seems to assume that totalitarian peace could be the 
inevitable outcome of an unequal political exchange between a "weak 
liberal state" and a "fascist" entity. It posits that the weak 
liberal state is on the way to capitulate before the regional fascist 
force and that that capitulation would mean the state abdicating its 
political responsibilities for the citizens living in the region.
A slightly different trajectory can also be mapped out to theorize 
the outcome between the present political engagement between the 
government and the LTTE. In that reading, the present exchange 
between the government and the LTTE can be interpreted as one between 
a 'relatively illiberal state' and an 'essentially illiberal' 
regional entity. Its worst outcome is most likely to be some form of 
'illiberal peace', which may well be a transitional phase in Sri 
Lanka's emerging process of state formation.
It also appears that there are no alternatives to this transitional 
phase unless there emerges a new political force in Tamil society 
that is not only democratic and pluralistic, but can also effectively 
replace the LTTE. But, there is hardly any space for such a change to 
occur in Sri Lankan Tamil politics as long as the Tamil society
continues to be crushed under the weight of war and violence. 
Meanwhile, the LTTE's essentially illiberal character has been 
largely concretized under social and political conditions of 
protracted war. The war has destroyed the social foundations of the 
Tamil polity and they cannot be easily repaired. In class terms, the 
Sri Lankan Tamil society in the North-East has been atomized and torn 
asunder. A total economic collapse, population displacement, 
out-migration and the absolute destruction of commerce, trade and 
manufacture have ravaged its class structure. At present, there is no 
class center of gravity in that society.
Nor is there a civil society as such. If at all, it exits 
underground, or abroad. As some anthropological studies on the 
Eastern province indicate, the only pockets of community autonomy 
remaining in the North-Eastern society, even with a limited political 
space to function, are linked to the church, the kovil and the 
mosque. In my own visits to these areas, I have also found how the 
religious community has survived as the only functional form of civil 
society. The impact of all this on the political society of Sri 
Lankan Tamil community has been quite harsh.
Indeed, the Sri Lankan and Indian states as well as the LTTE have 
directly contributed to the collapse of the Tamil political society 
in the island's North-East. Parallel with this continuing process of 
social dislocation for about two decades has also been an acute 
political crisis, as characterized by the collapse of the Sri Lankan 
state in the Northern and Eastern provinces. When the state there 
collapsed, the LTTE and a few other Tamil paramilitary groups began 
to run the bare, coercive functions of the state primarily though 
open violence.
Professor Charles Tilly's classic characterization of the early state 
as a protection racket has a remarkable application to these 
contemporary conditions of Sri Lanka's North-East. As many recent 
examples from Africa, the ex-Soviet Union and Yugoslavia demonstrate, 
in the absence of the formal state as well as in the conditions of 
civil war and the collapsed state, predatory networks for taxation, 
extortion and protection come to replace the agencies of the state. 
It is quite interesting to note that the agencies of the state as 
well as guerilla groups, the latter claiming to represent the 
interests of the people, have been sharing these predatory functions, 
with a great deal of rivalry and competition for many years.
The UTHR situation reports have extensively documented this 
phenomenon of 'state as a protection racket' under conditions of 
protracted civil war. The above indeed presents a formidable 
challenge which any project of peace in Sri Lanka's Tamil society is 
certain to confront. Indeed, one infinitely complex task involved in 
a comprehensive peace project is the restoration of the formal Sri 
Lankan state in the two provinces while re-introducing liberal 
political institutions as well as practices.
Such a journey from the collapsed state to a 'liberal state' is a 
profoundly difficult one. It requires the incorporation into the 
formal state structures of a range of competing agencies of power, 
violence, extortion and protection rackets. At one level, there 
already exist rudimentary structures of two competing states that are 
not 'liberal' by any means - the military-administrative structures 
of the collapsed Sri Lankan state in the region and the 
military-administrative structures of the LTTE-led quasi state.
In a social sense, both are quasi states in the North-East and their 
anticipated negotiations for co-existence and mutual accommodation 
would carry immense risks for both sides. At another level, there 
exists the less difficult task of dealing with the agencies run by 
the local and international donor NGOs as service delivery networks. 
They constitute a quasi civil society in the North-East. The fear 
among many is that the LTTE would try to incorporate this quasi civil 
society too into its political structures, leaving no room for social 
autonomy. These apprehensions clearly indicate that the post-MoU 
state formation process in Sri Lanka's North-East is quite serious 
than many of supporters as well as critics of it might want to 
acknowledge. Thirdly, the new political structures in a 
post-settlement process, if they are to be sustained as integral 
entities of the Sri Lankan state, need to locate themselves in some 
social-class foundations. Arrangements for post-civil war political 
power without a class supporting the new order may run the risk of 
being tenuous and transitory.
For a post-conflict 'liberal' political order in the North-East to 
sustain itself, it will need the backing of a Tamil regional 
bourgeoisie that is organically linked to the Sinhalese bourgeoisie 
and the Sri Lankan state. All these represent a historical agenda 
that is hard to fulfill in the short run for any society that is 
emerging from a protracted civil war. Indeed, historical conditions 
cannot be created overnight. This problem constitutes a key dilemma 
of the liberal peace agenda in post-civil war societies.
But, should the people in the North-East and Sri Lanka endorse and 
tolerate an 'illiberal' peace? Answers to this question appear to 
divide many civil society activist groups in Colombo. A constructive 
approach would be to conceptualize the post-civil war peace and state 
formation in transformatory terms. The idea of transformative peace 
could offer a creative way out from the divisive debate on 'liberal 
peace' vs. 'totalitarian peace'.
A transformatory peace agenda can focus on a broad political program 
for re-constituting the state not merely in the sense of restoring 
the state in the North-East, but also reforming the Sri Lankan state 
in general. This view could be easily anchored on the premise that a 
further democratized state in Sri Lanka would provide a greater 
impetus for post-conflict democratic state formation in the 
North-East.
Indeed, the present debate on the interim administration, which 
remains rather thin in quality, can be widened when it is linked to a 
broad process of transformatory peace and democratic state formation. 
Restoration of the state in the post - MoU North-East immediately 
requires the setting up of non-coercive state structures that are to 
perform the so-called normal functions of the state - taxation, 
service delivery, law and order and so forth. In this sense, the 
interim administration should be seen as a major step towards 
creating civilian institutions in Sri Lanka's post-civil war 
North-East.
But, there is the negative possibility of the LTTE subjecting it to 
its military-coercive apparatus and transforming it to suit its own 
long-term political objectives. This is a point being made in Colombo 
by many critics of the MoU. If the LTTE is to perform civilian 
functions of the state through an interim council, that transition 
could ideally be effected through a series of negotiated treaties 
between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE, if necessary 
supervised by the international community.
Actually, there is no need for mediation-negotiation process to 
produce new results only at the big Bangkok meeting. In meaningful 
conflict resolution, mediation, negotiation and accord-making are 
continuing processes that can occur at multiple levels.
In fact, the Sri Lanka's ethnic politics has once again entered a 
phase of consultation, negotiation and deal-making - a period of 
multi-track negotiations. Ethnic political leaders, international 
bankers, bus operators, labor contractors and investors - they all go 
Vanni to negotiate their interests. The government must utilize this 
opening to consolidate its political engagement with the LTTE through 
a series of multi-level negotiated accords.
As the National Peace Council has already proposed, human rights 
protection arrangements should be integral to such treaties with the 
LTTE. If the present MoU can survive the emerging challenges for some 
time to come, accords with the LTTE, with greater international 
supervision and monitoring, could provide democratic and political 
safeguards of considerable value.
Meanwhile, in the absence of immediate and effective domestic options 
to check the LTTE's totalitarian politics while facilitating the 
democratic state formation in the North-East, further 
internationalization of the political solution might not be a bad 
idea.
_____

#2.
The Hindu, 19 May 2002 | Magazine
A prayer for peace
NIGHAT GANDHI was in an ashram in Karnataka when Godhra and the 
subsequent mayhem in Gujarat took place. A Muslim, married to a Hindu 
from Gujarat, she offers a prayer for the future of her children and 
the country.
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mag/stories/2002051900090100.htm

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#3. The Hindustan Times, 19 May 2002

Gujarat debate: The NDA's ethnic cleansing
Jayanthi Natarajan
http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/190502/detFEA08.asp

_____

#4.

Golwalkar and the BJP

- Neena Vyas
The Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, virtually disowned the 
pro-Hitler views expressed by "guruji" M.S. Golwalkar, a former 
`sarsanghchalak' of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, in the Rajya 
Sabha on May 6, but did not explain why in almost every office of the 
Bharatiya Janata Party, and now, in several ministerial offices at 
the Centre (including Parliament House), his portraits hang alongside 
those of Mahatma Gandhi and B.R. Ambedkar. After all, the German 
Government offices today surely do not hang portraits of Hitler nor 
does the BJP decorate its offices with pictures of Osama bin Laden.

The fact is that both Mr. Vajpayee and the Union Home Minister, L.K. 
Advani, grew up at the feet of "guruji" who is still revered as the 
most influential of all RSS heads who gave the organisation - and the 
BJP, the political arm of the RSS - its so-called "ideological'' 
moorings and formed the young minds of Mr. Vajpayee and Mr. Advani 
during their impressionable years.

Mr. Vajpayee dismissed Golwalkar's openly fascist views as "his own 
(`weh unke apne vichar the')" and added that the BJP had "nothing to 
do with the book (`us pustak se hamen kuch lena-dena nahin hai')" and 
that his party "had never given its stamp of approval (`sangathan ne 
kabhi un vicharon par mohur nahin lagayi')" to those views. But he 
did not say when and where had the BJP (or the Jan Sangh) distanced 
itself formally from the views of Golwalkar.

The question that needs to be asked loudly is why it has taken Mr. 
Vajpayee all of 60 years to distance his party from what Golwalkar 
had said? Why is it that in spite of his criminally obnoxious views 
he is revered by the Sangh Parivar and considered to be the guru of 
all gurus? In fact, contrary to what Mr. Vajpayee said, the BJP has 
so far never repudiated Golwalkar's views, let alone denounce them.

A close look at Golwakar and a comparison of his views with what the 
RSS, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal are saying almost 
everyday establishes the fact that the views of the Sangh Parivar are 
no different from those of Golwalkar.

And this is what "guruji" had to say in `We and Our Nationhood 
Defined': "To keep up the purity of the race and its culture, Germany 
shocked the world by her purging the country of the semitic races - 
the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here...a good 
lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by." The Sangh 
Parivar insists that all Hindus are of Aryan origin, and denounces 
historians who suggest that Aryans came from Central Asia at a later 
date to push the Dravidians to the South.

His "formula" for nationhood was "five unities" - geographical (a 
common country), racial (all people belonging to one race), religious 
(all `nationals' must follow the same faith), cultural (the same 
culture) and linguistic (a common language). And he admitted that in 
India the "knotty problem" was religion and language. The "language" 
problem was resolved by (falsely) suggesting that there was a unity 
since all Indian languages were derived from a common root language - 
Sanskrit. Golwalkar's views on the "five unities'' perhaps explains 
the old Jan Sangh slogan, "Hindi, Hindu, Hindusthan".

The only problem left, according to Golwalkar, was that of the 
religious minorities. The answer to the question why the Sangh 
Parivar activists even today see themselves as the only true 
"nationalists" and look upon Christians and Muslims as "traitors" can 
also be found in Golwalkar.

This is what he said: "In Hindusthan, the land of the Hindus, lives 
and should live the Hindu nation...only those movements are truly 
`national' as aim at re-building and emancipating from its present 
stupor the Hindu nation...All others are either traitors and enemies 
to the national cause..."

And finally, here was Golwalkar's solution to the minorities problem: 
the "foreign elements" (Christians and Muslims) may "live at the 
mercy" of the "national race (Aryan Hindus) as long as the national 
race may allow them to do so and to quit the country at the sweet 
will of the national race. That is the only sound view on the 
minorities' problem. That is the only logical and correct solution."

The frightening thing is that this is exactly what has happened in 
Gujarat - the minorities have been told that there is no place for 
them there and that they are free to go to Pakistan.

Even in the Parliament, when the Muslim MPs get up to speak, the BJP 
backbenchers are often heard saying, "Go to Pakistan".

Courtesy : The Hindu

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#5.
C-701, Swaran Jayanti Sadan,
Bishamber Das Marg,
New Delhi-110001

May 18, 2002

Dear Home Minister,

It is reported that some of the relief camps in Gujarat are about to 
be closed. A letter written by Shri Bharat Bharot, a Minister in the 
State Government has been made public. In fact some camps were closed 
following an order of the Collector of Dahod to the Mamlatdars of 
Dahod, Jhalod and Limkheda. We demand that no relief camp should be 
closed until appropriate infrastructure is provided for 
rehabilitation of the inmates. The victims are asked to return to 
their homes which were destroyed by the mobs and do not exist any 
more. Furthermore, they are attacked by the neighbours and there are 
pamphlets in wide circulation exhorting Hindus not to employ Muslims 
and to boycott muslim shops and businesses. In such circumstances 
where will they return to? There is indeed, a devious plan of the 
State administration to shift these victims as far away from 
Ahmedabad as possible and out of the public eye.

We urge Government to spell out clearly the amount of compensation 
packages to the victims, the criteria for eligibility and the 
timeframe for paying the compensation. There are a number of cases 
where victims have been given cheques worth Rs.200 and Rs.300 where 
their entire house has been destroyed. A person cannot even open a 
bank account with such amounts and they are not sufficient to buy 
even a door much less any sort of house.

We demand that the rule that calls for a death certificate or a 
corpse in order for the next of kin to qualify for compensation 
should be waived. This rule was waived for the victims of the 
earthquake. In the present case many bodies have been burnt or 
buried in mass graves making retrieval impossible.

We urge you to direct the State Government of Gujarat to 
take immediate action as per the above suggestions so that the 
confidence of the people is restored and a measure of normalcy 
returns to that beleaguered State.

We and most members of Parliament would like to contribute to this 
relief effort with funds available to us under Member of Parliament 
Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS). Government may permit us to 
do so. The situation in Gujarat is indeed a national calamity.

Yours sincerely,

Sd/- Eduardo Faleiro
Sd/- Prof. Ram Gopal Yadav
Sd/- Prof. Ram Deo Bhandary
Sd/- Justice Ranganath Misra
Sd/- Mirza Abdul Rashid
Sd/- Smt. Sarla Maheshwari
Sd/- Dr. Arun Kumar Sarma
Sd/- Shri Kuldip Nayyar
Sd/- B.S. Ramoowalia

For any correspondence or clarification in the matter please contact 
Shri Eduardo Faleiro, M.P. at C-701, Swarna Jayanti Sadan, Dr. 
Bishamber Das Marg, New Delhi-110001

____

#6.

WHO WILL PUNISH THE GUILTY?
SABOTAGE OF JUDICIAL SYSTEM IN GUJARAT
by Batuk Vora

-A recent (May 18) gesture of Narendra Modi in going
on a promising spree with a list of assurances to the
minority community is not yet taken seriously by a
large section of Modi-watchers and the peace-craving
citizens of Gujarat, accustomed as they are with dual
meaning of his words and declarations.

"Religious shrines destroyed will be rebuilt through
voluntary agencies", was, for instance one of his
promises. That means, about 236 demolished and burnt
mosques, dargahs, mazaars (figure surveyed statewide
by Combat Communalism magazine of Mumbai) statewide,
will be rebuilt. It is not clear what kind of NGOs
as he has not clarified. Experience of Kutch victims
of some of the NGOs is not so pleasant. "Rebuilt" also
means flattened and tarred with asphalt, which has
been done on quite a few Dargahs and mosques at
Ahmedabad. They have become totally unrecognizable
places. Will the old shrines be rebuilt on them as
they were 'architecturally and spacewise'

'State' and 'district level' women's committees (3
women in each) would be probing the assaults on women,
was another promise. Which kind of women? Would the
women belonging to Durga Vahini of Sangh Parivar be
excluded from such committee because of many of their
members 'names appearing as accused in FIRs' Would the
NGOs be given any fund for this purpose? Nothing is
clear right now. Why not recognize those women who
made independent enquiries and collected a host of
testimonies of surviving women?

What is missing from this list is the assurance to
allow punishment to all the accused in FIRs, to
include all those names which were not accepted by
police in rural areas and only word written in FIR was
'a mob'! Many FIRs in rural area mentioned local
police inspectors and even collectors as accused
(according to the copies of FIRs acquired by
Communalism Combat). Will any legal action against them
follow?

In this context, such a situation is vindicated by the
latest threat issued by Panchmahal leaders of Sangh
Parivar to hold a massive rally at Godhra or some
other place around to demand the release of all the
Hindu accused lodged in custody for various
congnizable offences registered against them,
including rape, looting, killing, burning of the
properties and people. State BJP leadership has been
put in a fix by such a development, as those militants
of Panchmahal refused to obey the state president
Rajendrasingh Rana's instruction not to hold such a
rally. Such a threat includes storming of police
station and courting arrest by one lakh people!
Testimonies from the rural survivors gathered by an
all India women's independent panel and NGOs relate
extreme forms of sexual violence and the police
complicity with them.

A lot has been said and visualized on the Gujarat
communal carnage in the media and parliament. But very
little focus has come on the actual method adopted by
police leading to the violation of constitution ,
right under the aegis of Narendra Modi and his Sangh
Parivar colleagues in the cabinet.

Giving his crisp comment, A. P. Rawani, former chief
justice of Rajasthan High Court, recently told this
writer at Ahmedabad that "You take out the article 14
from the constitution and the rule of law is rendered
dead. That is exactly what has happened during the
communal genocide here." He took out a small pocket
sized constitution from his briefcase and read out the
article: Equality Before Law - the state shall not
deny to any person equality before the law or the
equal protection of the laws within the territory of
India.

An unambiguous right to equality before law has been
granted in this article, so much so that even a
non-citizen of India too, if falling victim to a crime
in India, gets the same equality. Once a person or
group of people informs the police on any kind of
congnizable offence (schedule 1 of the CPC gives all
the details about such offences, which, includes
criminal conspiracy and causing injury to other person
or damage to any property. Police can arrest such
persons without warrant and the offence is
non-bailable) orally or in writing, police is bound to
provide protection and a judicial action within 24
hours. Once this article is ignored, entire concept of
the rule of law turns into as dead a statute as dodo.

In order to expose the actual method police adopted
here during the carnage, let me cite here a concrete
FIR (first information report) registered at Petlad
police station, Kheda district, on an incident on
March 30, 2002. After the local police arrested 103 of
the rival groups of Muslims and Hindus (FIR
No.27-2002) which clashed against each other following
a death of a Muslim youth, whose father too was
arrested. When dealing with the bail applications of
both groups, police released all ?unarmed? Hindus on
bail while 24 out of 63 Muslims were denied bail as,
according to the police version, they carried all
kinds of weapons such as ?pipes, swords, Kerosene
bottles, axes, Dharias, fire douses, etc.? No Hindu
rioter carried any weapon! The principle of the
equality before law was wantonly violated.

Sabotage of the administrative machinery became clear
when the recently removed city police commissioner
(after Mr Gill took over as an ?advisor? to the chief
minister) P.C.Pandey told in an interview given to the
Times of India on March 15 that, about 100 police
officers were transferred within Ahmedabad city before
the Godhra incident; and "I was overruled when I
refused to bring the dead and charred bodies of Kar
Sewaks from Godhra on February 27." Actually this
created an angry wave of genocide to start with at
Ahmedabad.

Another instance: Javed Khan Pathan and 12 other
accused were arrested at Ramol, near Ahmedabad, before
a month for violation of curfew order. Pathan?s friend
advocate Piyush Shah, a Hindu advocate was physically
prevented by a few other Hindutva advocates from
filing a bail application. Other Muslim advocates were
too physically prevented to do so and their chairs and
tables at old Hingh Court building were burnt down,
which have not been restored even now.

Chief Minister had called a meeting of top police
officials on 27th Febrary, who told them 'not to use
any force' on the next day of Gujarat Bandh called by
the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and supported by the ruling
BJP. This was revealed by Julio Rebero, one time top
cop visiting Gujarat at that time. As an example of
how the police behaved, two trucks were burnt down
with their drivers in front of the new high court
building on Sarkhej-Gandhinagar highway on Feb. 28
when charred bodies of Godhra victims were brought to
the nearby hospital. About 30 policemen are always
stationed there in the High Court oremises and a
police post too existed half a kilometer from high
court near Sola. They all just watched the gory
killings. They were clearly briefed to ?let the anger
of Hindus? be vented and watch.

No preventive arrests, or even after the slaughtering
of more than 2,000 people all over the state, neither
the conspirators among the Hindu hardliner
organizations nor any leader have been arrested or
booked. Modi will have to come out clean first and
then only some resemblance to peace will come. THE END

_____

7.

Rediff.com, May 1, 2002
http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/may/01inter.htm

The Rediff Interview/ Ghanshyam Shah

Political scientist Ghanshyam Shah has studied India's minorities -- 
Dalits, Muslims and tribals -- for over 30 years. Professor Shah, 64, 
who earlier headed the Centre for Social Studies in Surat, currently 
teaches at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.

He shared his experiences with Senior Editor Sheela Bhatt to provide 
us an understanding of the Gujarat riots. The first of a two-part 
interview:

What was your first reaction when you heard about the Godhra incident?

I was numbed. I thought it is some kind of terrorist act. We didn't 
know at that time that karsevaks were on the train. It didn't require 
any great intelligence to predict that there would be repercussions. 
By evening we came to know about the Vishwa Hindu Parishad bandh. We 
were sure this would lead to a series of riots in Gujarat. Godhra was 
such a shocking incident.

Any person with a little knowledge of Gujarat could predict on the 
evening of February 27 that Godhra would lead to unprecedented riots. 
For two reasons. First, the event itself; second was my reading of 
[Gujarat Chief Minister] Narendra Modi. I was sure this man would 
aggravate it. Ten years ago, [political scientist and thinker] Ashish 
Nandy interviewed Modi. Nandy was shocked after the interview. He 
said Modi is a textbook fascist.

We had an acute sense of helplessness because we knew it was futile 
to talk to anyone in the government in Delhi. Everything was an 
action replay of past riots. Many editors invited me to write, but I 
could not. What was new to write about?

What were your findings about the 1969 riots in Gujarat?

One, it was planned. Second, the state Congress-O government led by 
Hitendra Desai was ill-equipped and indifferent. For three full days, 
the state government could not control the situation. The military 
had to be eventually deployed. Shoot-at-sight orders were issued. In 
1969 I remember Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who was then in the Opposition, 
asked in Parliament, 'Who started the riots in Gujarat?' I asked in 
The Times Of India how do you decide who started the Gujarat riots?

I reconstructed the starting point. Six months before the riots a 
communal tempo was built up in Gujarat. Events like the 1965 war with 
Pakistan, shooting down of Chief Minister Balwantrai Mehta's plane, 
Shambhu Maharaj's anti-cow slaughter movement were used to raise 
nationalist and anti-Pakistan rhetoric in Gujarat. A few months 
before the bloody riots of 1969 the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh 
arranged a camp in Ahmedabad where they formed a Dharma Raksha 
Samiti; through it the VHP got its agenda.

In Ahmedabad more than one lakh mill workers were retrenched. In 
Delhi, instability within the Congress intensified. All these 
contributed to the 1969 riots. In a number of areas a list was 
prepared of Muslim homes and they were burnt down. The Government of 
India instituted the Reddy Commission to look into the 1969 riots. 
The commission said the riots were planned. It said there is a 
possibility of the RSS and Jan Sangh's involvement. At that time the 
Muslims were not as well organised as they are now. Now you can see 
planned retaliations by the Muslims.

In 1969 the country was shocked because these were the bloodiest 
riots after 1947. In Ahmedabad alone, 700 people were killed, the 
majority of them Muslims who belonged to the working class. The 
rioters who killed Muslims and burnt shops were skilled. The majority 
of participants in the 1969 riots were from outside Gujarat, mostly 
from Uttar Pradesh. But that probably is not the case today.

At that time [Congress-O leader] Morarji Desai said, 'We were caught 
unawares." They never imagined this could happen in Gujarat. After 
such an experience any chief minister would have kept the state on 
alert on February 27 itself. But the opposite happened. Bharatiya 
Janata Party workers were on the streets to see that shops remained 
shut on February 28. Some ministers were on the streets, guiding the 
crowds.

What are the contrasts and similarities in the 1969 and current riots?

The Congress-O government was ill-equipped to handle the riots and 
was in search of an alibi. [Chief Minister] Hitendra Desai told 
editor B G Verghese that the 'foreign hand' was behind these riots. 
He showed Chinese currency. When Verghese asked him about the use of 
such currency in Gujarat, Desai had no answer.

Inefficiency and indifference were seen in the 1969 riots. Some kind 
of bias against Muslims was certainly there, but the government of 
that time was not party to the riots. Congressmen were not present in 
the mobs on a large scale. They didn't stop the riots, but they 
didn't ignite it. Just before the 1969 riots in Gujarat, [Jan Sangh 
leaders] Balraj Madhok and Vajpayee spoke. Madhok was provocative 
while Vajpayee spoke about the 1965 Indo-Pak war. He spoke about 
Indian nationalism against Pakistan. He raised the people's 
sentiments against Pakistan by talking about rashtra bhakti (national 
faith) just before the 1969 riots. I have noted the impact of both 
speeches on the popular psyche in my studies.

Today, the BJP is very successful in selling communalism by merging 
it with nationalism. The BJP has communalised Gujarat in the name of 
nationalism. The recent riots were State-sponsored. That changes the 
whole scenario. Rioting was legitimised in society. The rioters knew 
nothing would happen to them. Once the mobs got legitimacy from the 
State, everything collapsed. In 1969, one newspaper printed a story 
about the rape of Hindu women who were killed and whose breasts were 
cut off. The newspaper later denied the story. It happened the same 
way this time! The same newspaper printed the story and later denied 
it.

In 1969 I met the reporter who wrote the story about dead women's 
breasts being cut off by the Muslims. He said he had heard rumours 
and printed it. Two days later he printed a denial, but it was too 
late. This time too it created havoc. A Doordarshan reporter was 
following another story last month about the women allegedly abducted 
by Muslims in Godhra. She got a call -- almost threatening -- from a 
VHP supporter not to follow up that story.

How do you look at the Gujarat riots of 2002?

Look at how the BJP built up their support in recent years. In the 
1969 riots Jan Sanghis were involved. In the 1973-74 Navnirman 
Andolan [started by Jayaprakash Narayan] Jan Sanghis took part and 
penetrated society further. I have written a book on the Navnirman 
agitation. I know for sure that Jan Sanghis tried to communalise the 
movement and penetrate society. But intelligent students didn't allow 
them to have their way. When the Babubhai Patel Cabinet in the state 
inducted three Jan Sanghis, they started influencing the government.

In 1985, the anti-reservation agitation turned communal. That is a 
well-known fact. In 1990 the Advani rath yatra intensified the 
communal influence on Gujarati minds. The Congress never seriously 
applied its mind to combat the spread of communalism. They were 
appeasing Muslims and sometimes Hindus too, but not sincerely trying 
to become the bridge between the communities. As a result, for the 
last 5, 7 years, the RSS has been institutionalized in Gujarat. It is 
a de facto part of the government.

Saffron rule has been institutionalized in Gujarat. VHP and Bajrang 
Dal activists have a right to enter police stations and dictate. They 
are considered the boss. The Bajrang Dal wants to dictate the 
morality of society. There was a communal riot in Bardoli because a 
Hindu girl married a Muslim boy. It is not acceptable to the Bajrang 
Dal.

The government in Gujarat has issued an order asking all 
inter-community marriages to get registered. A few years ago in 
Ahmedabad, a lady from the Barot community married a Muslim. The 
couple was harassed by Bajrang Dal and VHP activists. She was taken 
into police custody and later found dead in the VHP office. How did 
this happen? This is not hearsay, it has been reported. It shows the 
police is working under their [the VHP's] influence.

Don't you think Muslims have stereotypical images of Hindus in Gujarat?

That is a problem, but things have not happened overnight. It started 
in the 18th century. When the British established their rule, there 
were riots in Surat in 1788. The only difference in the riots before 
1850 were that the riots occurred between two neighbourhoods who 
happened to be Hindu and Muslim. It was never between the two 
societies, meaning all Hindus or all Muslims were not united to fight 
each other. The concept of Indian nationalism that emerged later 
polarized Gujarati society.

Along with that came community biases. The community bias of Muslims 
against Hindus; Banias against Brahmins. When I grew up I had a 
certain bias against Brahmins. My father had a partnership with a 
Brahmin and we had a very bad experience. So I thought oh, Brahmins 
are like this. I had the same feelings for Patidars [Patels]. We are 
all bonded with prejudices and biases. We have innumerable proverbs 
denouncing the communities. This is bound to be there. You will find 
the same kind of biases amongst the British against the French and 
vice-versa.

We are habituated to talk in categories, that is a problem. And how 
these categories intensify depends on the openness and closeness of 
society. If society is relatively closed, interaction is relatively 
less; that society avoids self-analysis; does not have enough 
non-communal organisations; does not know more about the third 
alternatives and will have many more biases.

Amongst the Muslims they have biases against the Hindus. Relatively 
speaking, Muslim society is a closed society. Illiteracy, its 
minority status and such factors contribute to it. We cannot dismiss 
the fact that it is not as open as Hindu society. This is because 
Hindus have had more exposure than Muslims in India.

The dominance of religious leaders and religious education is much 
more intensive amongst Muslims than in Hindus. Brahmins and Banias 
have had more exposure than the so-called lower class. Though I don't 
believe it, many find Brahmins and Banias more modern and secular 
compared to the poor because their third or fourth generations have 
enjoyed good education. A person who lives in a village will have 
interaction with his community or class, and that makes the 
difference.

To be continued...

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