Imagine Gujarat in March 2002. What if the bloodthirsty mobs in Baroda
had found Irfan Pathan or Zaheer Khan? What if Mohammed Kaif lived in
Naroda Patiya, Ahmedabad? Would there be a resurgent Team India now? Or
what if Sania Mirza’s home was Gulberg society, where ex-MP Ehsan Jafri
was not just brutally killed, but according to eyewitnesses, "even his
body could not be found, just some bones and other parts"? What if Ustad
Bismillah Khan was a resident of posh Paldi, home to the prestigious
National Institute of Design and the ransacked Delite Apartments? Would
his shehnai have been silenced forever and his home reduced to ashes?
What if Ustad Zakir Hussain had a home in Gandhinagar? What if...

"We do not want the Muslims to shift to Pakistan. They can live here, as
a part of our family, like our brothers, but like younger brothers. They
must learn to respect us as there are 800 million of us and they are
only 150 million" - Retired Professor Ghanshyam Joshi of the Pavagad
VHP, swaying gently on his swing explains his final solution very
nicely, during one of the many conversations I had with him in 2002
while shooting my film. Somehow his words are more chilling than the
rabble-rousing speeches I first heard from Uma Bharti and Sadhvi
Ritambara in 1990-91 and a decade later from the surgeon-turned
demagogue Praveen Togadia. The next day, one of his party workers
explains even more gently - "we just want these Muslims to first shift
out of Gujarat and then we will see what to do with them".

At the Don Bosco school in Ahemdabad, between 350-400 Muslim children
are asked to leave. Their teacher, Pramod Kumar Kul, is very matter of
fact - "they weren’t good students, just interested in somehow finishing
school and then learning spray painting etc", summarily dismissing all
those young kids who had giggled and smiled the day before while talking
to me about becoming a doctor or an engineer or a teacher. At the
’National School’ inside a ghettoised part of the city, seven-year old
Shahrukh Khan, though has different ideas - " I will study and join the
police as then I’d be able to help people during riots". Little does he
realise that in Modi’s Gujarat, you are most likely to get a punishment
posting if you happen to discharge your constitutional obligations to
try and curb the slaughter of innocent women and children. Ask R B
Sreekumar or the SPs and DCPs shunted out of Kutch, Bhavnagar,
Banskantha and Ahmedabad city’s zone 4. Invent conspiracy theories
involving Muslims, ignore the Gujarat State Forensic lab’s reports that
suggest an absence of hydrocarbons ( i.e., petrol, diesel or kerosene)
inside S-6, allude to flimsy evidence based on confessions by
history-sheeters, slap POTA charges on a 100-odd people and possibly
earn a commendation for meritorious service! Innuendos and insinuations
triumph - but isn’t anyone interested in giving us the truth behind the
gory deaths at Godhra?

Much of the Gujarat violence is justified in the name of the 59 people
who died inside coach S-6 of the Sabarmati Express. But the late
Jyotiben’s family - husband Bharat Panchal and daughter Shefali do not
want any revenge to be taken in their name. Dr. Girishchandra Rawal,
retired government servant, who lost his wife, tells me Godhra should
not have been used during the elections - "Religion should never be
mixed with politics, that’s the cause of our recent troubles". He then
asks me a question - "Railway is a government body. Wasn’t it their duty
to protect passengers?" Certainly, Dr. Rawal, more so because media had
reported trouble along the Sabarmati Express route a couple of days
before the Godhra incident. The Faizabad-based daily Jan Morcha,
specifically published a report about violence at the Rudauli station in
UP. Intelligence agencies had echoed these concerns. Yet, Nitish Kumar,
Advani and Modi failed to bolster security for the train and its
passengers along the entire route. Reinforced RPF presence inside the
train and on platforms would have helped save the 59 karsevaks who died
and prevent the manhandling of Siddiq Bakar, the tea vendor and the
16-year old Sophiya Sheikh at the Godhra platform, the two incidents
that triggered stone pelting at Signal Falia. Yet, does any of them
emulate the former Railway Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, own moral
responsibility and resign?

The Ministers and MLAs deny any involvement in the genocidal violence;
yet their cellphones mysteriously make their way into Naroda Patiya and
sites of other massacres. Senior Ministers are found directing police
operations inside the Police Control Room to ensure their ’mobs’ have
immunity and in some cases, active help from the cops. The MP from the
Gandhinagar constituency does precious little to contain violence in his
own constituency. He also happens to be the Deputy Prime Minister and
the country’s Home Minister at the time. On election results day in
2002, Advani looks into TV cameras and comments on the BJP election
campaign - "I think it is unique that the party decided not to raise the
Godhra issue...because we did not want to create that kind of
climate...it is remarkable". Just a few days earlier, I shoot a speech
by Bhupendra Singh Solanki, the BJP MP from Panchmahals. Says he - "This
election is not about development...the issue is Godhra...Everyone knows
that even in America, England and Delhi!". The Congress remains silent,
though there is both scope and precedent for legal action - after all,
Bal Thackeray was disenfranchised on similar grounds! Hindutva
ideologues first deny any horrific violence, then deny state complicity
and finally deny their cynical exploitation of the Godhra tragedy for
electoral gains. Haren Pandya, the only Minister from the Modi
government to testify before the Citizen’s Tribunal provides some
insights into the State’s involvement in the carnage. He is shot dead a
few months later, under what can only be euphemistically termed as
“mysterious circumstances”.

Report any of this and earn the sobriquet -“enemy of Gujarat” or “human-rightswallah-out-to-defame-Gujarati-asmita”! NDTV’s coverage of
the carnage so infuriates Modi that he orders a black out of their
signal for several days. “60 Hindu girls abducted from Sabarmati Express” headlines a prominent Gujarati daily on Feb 28, 2002, fuelling sexual
violence against Muslim women, only to retract the report a couple of
days later in a tiny paragraph buried in the inside pages. Modi
personally expresses his high appreciation for the newspaper’s
restrained coverage in the ’best traditions of journalism’; Times of
India, Indian Express and other national dailies do not receive a
similar letter of commendation from him.

Prof Bandukwala, whose home was destroyed by the very people who invited
him to deliver the Savarkar Memorial lecture on Feb 26, 2002, tells me -
“Gandhi was an accident that happened to Gujarat”. I attribute it to
anger and despair, but it sets me thinking - Would Bapu have embraced
Modi as the “chhotey Sardar Patel”? Could the Mahatma have ever imagined
that the gates of his Sabarmati Ashram would be shut to those who sought
shelter at the height of the carnage? What would he have thought of his
Congress - of some of its members equally complicit in communal attacks,
of its president who failed to visit her own ex-MP’s home, the site of
his brutal hacking or of the myriad ’intellectuals’ who failed to raise
their voice against Moditva? Would he have been proud of Vali Gujarati’s
flattened mazaar or Ustad Fayyaz Khan’s desecrated tomb? Of the
kathakars and Godmen who failed to condemn the killings and preach
peace? Or of Mallika Sarabhai’s persecution? Or the Gaurav Yatra?

At the karsevak anniversary meeting on Feb 27, 2003 in Pavagad, the
local leader exhorts the crowd - "Buy only from Hindu shops, use only
Hindu rickshaws and raise saffron flags from your shops". He has police
protection! In village after village, Muslims are unable to return home,
their shops and fields taken over by people who should’ve been behind
bars for driving them away in the first place. In cities and towns,
informal ghettos have sprung up, children speak of being afraid to cross
the ’border’ to go to their schools. Would Mahatma Gandhi himself have
been safe in his own Gujarat?

So, who do the people of Gujarat turn to? A partisan Legislative? The
Executive - IAS and IPS officers - intent on serving its political
masters - the very same bunch of IAS and IPS officers who crawled when
asked to bend, barring a few notable exceptions? Or that last bastion of
hope - the state Judiciary?

According to the Editors’ Guild report on the Gujarat carnage - "Two
serving Muslim Judges of the Gujarat High Court, Mr Qadri and Mr Akbar
Divecha were threatened and had to flee their homes. The residence of
one was attacked and burnt. A Hindu brother judge who offered him a safe
haven in his own home was reportedly the recipient of threatening
calls". A senior lawyer insisting on anonymity speaks of hindutva in the
Judiciary and cites examples of many BJP or VHP sympathisers appointed
as public prosecutors or judges in the last decade! I attend a trial at
the Godhra court - a courageous Muslim woman has decided to seek justice
for the horrific rape and killing of her daughters. An ace lawyer, an
ex-BJP MP, represents the accused. The Public Prosecutor, an erstwhile
partyman, seeking justice on behalf of the Muslim woman as her lawyer
hasn’t seen it fit to even meet her though she is a key eyewitness!
Later, many of us read the Gujarat High Court’s remarks against Teesta
Setalvad and Mihir Desai with a mix of horror and resignation;
thankfully, the Supreme Court expunges them. Still later, the Zaheera
Shaikh drama is played out, the SC steps in again and terms her a “liar”.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh created history by apologizing to the
nation for the 1984 anti-sikh carnage during his speech in the
Parliament. But, honestly, do you see M/s Sudarshan, Advani, Togadia and
Modi apologizing for the genocidal violence in Gujarat? Instead, they
speak of janadesh - the peoples’ mandate; Modi is now flying high on the
back of his triumph in the Ahmedabad municipal elections and his earlier
sweep of the Gujarat assembly elections. But does an electoral victory
legitimise evil? After all, Hitler did win the German elections!

Former Prime Minister Vajpayee preached rajdharma to Modi, but himself
shunned all advice to practice what he preached, deliberately ignoring
counsel from the President of India. Said the late K R Narayanan in
March 2005 in an interview to Malayalam monthly Manava Samskriti - "I
met him personally and talked to him directly. But Vajpayee did not do
anything effective...I feel there was a conspiracy involving the state
and central governments behind the Gujarat riots"

Is Gujarat 2002 a turning point in our recent history? Can politics of
hate and intolerance be the basis for the creation of a harmonious
society and a robust democracy? You decide...