Understanding India’s secular politics through the prism of Gujarat communal massacre

Understanding India’s secular politics through the prism of Gujarat communal massacre By Maitreya Buddha Samantaray1 & Kirthi Jayakumar2 Narendra Modi, the Chief Minister of Gujarat, India, is projected as the Bharatiya Janata Party‟s (BJP) mascot and presumed Prime Ministerial candidate for the next general election, scheduled to be held in 2014. As the BJP is one of India‟s leading political parties and a principal opposition at the central level, Narendra Modi‟s projected role holds a lot of significance. Some unofficial surveys in recent months have put Narendra Modi ahead of the Congress party‟s likely Prime Ministerial candidate, Rahul Gandhi, in terms of popularity. Modi continues to enjoy the most substantial share of power in the BJP‟s repertoire of candidates. Gujarat has displayed a significant ability to fight adversity – a capacity that has in fact enabled it to go ahead with a large number of developmental initiatives. But does this eliminate the pitfall of Gujarat‟s 2002 communal unrest from India‟s memory? Do the crests in the form of development obliterate the troughs in the form of a horrendous past?

Gujarat‟s dark underbelly lies in the Godhra carnage, the unabashed violence that followed thereafter and the alleged involvement of the state in an act of genocide. Observers who were witness to the event and to the horrors that unfolded across the state in the aftermath, were shocked by the government‟s decision to dissolve the state assembly. The dissolution of the state assembly indicated that the violence was a result of the insecurity of the BJP after being defeated at the rural and urban municipal elections in 20013.

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Maitreya Buddha Samantaray is an Asia intelligence analyst with US-based iJET Intelligent Risk System (www.ijet.com). He has worked for several globally renowned risk management companies. Prior to venturing into corporate security profession, he was a journalist with the Indian Express in India‟s Jammu and Kashmir.

2 Kirthi Jayakumar is a Lawyer, specialized in Public International Law and Human Rights, operating out of India. She has worked as a UN Volunteer, specializing in Human Rights research in pertinence to issues in Africa, India and Central Asia and the Middle East. (Views expressed the article are purely personal.)

3 Roshni Sengupta, „Communal violence in India: Perspectives on Causative factors; economic and political weekly, May 14, 2005. P- 2046.

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A special court in Ahmedabad city has recently found 32 people – including a serving legislator of the ruling BJP, Maya Kodnani – guilty of premeditated violence in the massacre of 99 Muslims in Naroda Patia locality alone during the riot. This is a landmark judgement because in India the instigators of communal violence are almost never held accountable. However, the Supreme Courtappointed special investigation team (SIT) recently gave a clean testimony to Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi on allegations of his involvement in the 2002 riots4.

From the minority to the majority In February 2002 a group of radical Muslims attacked the Sabarmati Express train at Godhra5, killing 58 Hindu pilgrims, including 25 women and 15 children. Victims were returning to Ahmedabad after participating in a Hindu religious ritual at the holy city of Ayodhya - the traditional birthplace of lord Rama in Uttar Pradesh State. The Court later convicted 31 people for the crime.

Retaliatory attacks were prompted across the state, where 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed, and over 200 people were reported missing6. The violence included systematic targeting of Muslim families and the lynching of entire neighbourhoods. Pamphlets propagating an economic boycott of Muslims by Hindu patriots were also circulated7. Houses and buildings belonging to Hindus were burnt in Muslim dominated areas after the first spate of killings. Hindu boys were arrested for trouble-making under lighter sections of law, and let off more easily, than their Muslim counterparts who were routinely beaten up and arrested for rioting or attempted murder 8. The worst affected in this period were the inhabitants of Godhra, and the Northern, Central and North-Eastern portion of Gujarat9.

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Full text of the SIT Report on the Gujarat Riots. http://ibnlive.in.com/news/full-text-sit-closure-report-on-gujaratriots/256419-3.html 5 Godhra case: 31 guilty; court confirms conspiracy rediff.com, 22 February 2011 19:26 IST. Sheela Bhatt, Ahmedabad.

6 "790 Muslims, 254 Hindus perished in post-Godhra". Times of India (India). 11 May 2005. Retrieved 4 February 2011.

7 Dionne Bunsha, Stoking the fires in Gujarat, Frontline, April 12, 2002, P. 29.

8 Vipul Mudgal, Reign of Terror, The Hindustan Times, April 9, 2002.

9 Paul R. Brass (2005). The Production Of Hindu-muslim Violence In Contemporary India. University of Washington Press. pp. 385–393.

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The torching of the Sabarmati Express was a dastardly act, which every sane Muslim will condemn.

However, the state took a curious approach towards the critical issues of governance in the aftermath of the Godhra attack. Godhra, which has a population split evenly between Hindus and Muslims, has a long history of communal strife. It is the only Indian town which in 1980-81 implemented a year-long curfew following communal riots10. Given this, maintaining public peace and ensuring the safety of the citizenry should have been paramount. Instead the government‟s approach found its vilest – and clearest – expression in Chief Minister Modi‟s alleged explanation of his government‟s programme in terms of the “every–action–has–a–reaction theory” – the suggestion being that the Muslim community must inevitably pay for the killing of the Hindus in the Godhra incident.

To follow this logic for a moment: according to Modi, because the riots were a response to a horrific and immoral act at Godhra, they are somehow less morally reprehensive. Nothing morally justifies the kind of behaviour we saw in Gujarat11. It shows the irresponsibility of the state government in not being vigilant enough after the Godhra incident had occurred. If the Gujarat carnage was a natural reaction as claimed by the state government, then Godhra, the scene of the train attack, should logically have witnessed the most violence. The state government‟s claim of controlling mob violence in 72 hours would actually translate as the government giving a clear three days to the hooligans to loot and plunder.

Contrary to the Modi government‟s claim, violence continued even beyond 72 hours12. While four agencies, the Anti–Terrorist Squad, CID (Crime), the Godhra police and the Government Railway Police worked overtime on the Godhra case, the identification of those behind the post–Godhra massacre started rather late. A systematic effort was made by some dubiously conscientious policemen to bail out the few who were named in the First Information Report (FIRs).

Charges were also made against the Chief Minister himself, for ordering the transfer of several erstwhile senior officers who were firm in handling the Hindu mobs, to less important posts. Last year, the Gujarat government also suspended senior police officer Sanjeev Bhatt, three days after he told the Supreme Court that the state government, which is meant to prosecute those accused of the communal riots of 2002, had actually been leaking information for use in their defence.

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Investigating Godhra, The Hindu, March 10, 2002.

Gujarat: Cause And Effect, The Hindustan times, April 21, 2002, P-10.

12 It was State-Sponsored carnage, The Hindu, March 13, 2002.

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Secularism countering insanity?

Any Chief Minister, who remained staunchly committed to the quintessence of their oath under the secular Constitution of India, and to scrupulous conduct, would have made efforts towards the depoliticization and de-communalization of the Godhra incident, and then followed it up by implementing post-conflict reconstruction and principles of transitional justice. Narendra Modiâ€&#x;s case is a prime example for how

this paradigm can be altered without fearing any serious

repercussions

His response betrayed a political strategy to project the tragedy at Godhra as an international conspiracy targeted against the Hindu community. The ulterior motive was plain and simple: to achieve electoral dividends through Hindu communal mobilization. When people are emotionally charged, they are able to be manipulated easily and more so in a country where religious conceptions are vast enough to govern and cover every aspect of life, right from birth until death and where its myriad believers are very proud of their faith and are iron-fisted when it comes to maintaining their religious identities. Past history did warrant that often these emotionally charged people shout down those who are less emotionally charged or rational thinking sections of society.

It is no wonder, therefore, that while there was a furore calling for Modiâ€&#x;s ouster, after successive victories of the BJP, the voices against Modi have quietened down.

It was the unwillingness to recognize that a victim is a victim regardless of whether she is a Hindu, a Muslim, a karsevak (Hindu devotee) or a haji (religious Muslim) that eroded the true essence of Indian secularism. It was, is, and will always be immoral to dehumanize a victim just because they were Karsevaks. The Gujarat killings have been referred to by our so-called secular alternative as Hindutva's laboratory experiment, a pilot project on whose success is hinged plans to carry out cultural cleansing operations throughout the country. Had the secular front been fair to the majority community, they would have seen the other side of the coin – that the Godhra train fire itself can be treated as a laboratory experiment of fanatic Muslims in India. While they deem the Godhra violence not to be communal, the post-Godhra violence is described as communal riots.

Indian political establishments mostly see minorities as a vote bank to be appeased at any cost.

Almost everybody on every side of the argument relating to Gujarat holocaust has been using cause and effort rhetoric to morally validate their positions.

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To some, since Ayodhya was the cause, the effect was Godhra. The Ayodhya issue cannot be viewed from Babri Mosque demolition in 1992 but must be taken back to the time when late then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had allowed the locks of the mosque to be removed, defying court orders. It is since then that Ayodhya took centre-stage in leaders‟ agendas. Indira Gandhi's cry of "Hindutva in danger" at the VHP's Ektmata Yagna (a religious ritual) against religious conversions in 1981, the anti-Pak jingoism that she had whipped up after the 1971 war, Rajiv Gandhi‟s flagging off of his 1989 election campaign from Faizabad district where Ayodhya is located - were all attempts that vitiated harmony in some form or the other. But in any case, killings are not justifiable irrespective of provocation and religious identities.

India’s brand of secularism India has had a long tryst with sectarianism and communal differences. But what underlies these differences? Is it a mere antagonism between religions? Or can one construe them as a product of deeper divides? From outrageous nihilism towards the incidents involved on part of the cynic who wishes to be far from the madding crowd, to vote-bank politics where politicians capitalize on divide and rule to be able to ensure their continued possession of office, there are several ramifications. Terrorism too, it appears, takes a page out of the book of buried anger and hatred, and rears its ugly head in the form of vengeance. The 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat had reportedly radicalized and instigated Abu Jundal, one of the handlers of the 26/11 Mumbai attackers, to join the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terror group to take revenge on India.

A secular state, in handling a highly religious social group has to keep proving that it guarantees the freedom of religion. It should necessarily deal with the individual as a citizen irrespective of its religion, and should constitutionally be disconnected from a particular religion. It should not seek either to promote or intervene with any religion or religious practice. In the name of fostering equal respect for all religions and ensuring a practice of tolerance towards all religious communities, what we have achieved is reconciliation of multiple communalisms. At best, India‟s brand of secularism has been an inadequately defined attitude of goodwill towards all religions. None of the political parties have sincerely tried to build bridges between the majority and minority communities.

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Conclusions The quintessence of a secular state will be reduced to a travesty, a derisive mockery, if it cannot protect the life and property of citizens from the yoke of communal violence, be it from the majority or minority. Conscious citizens should always be vigilant against majoritarian jingoism of right wing Hindu groups and their political affiliation and hollow pseudo-secular rhetoric of forces that are keen to appease minority at any cost and at times don‟t hesitate to appropriate majority interests by populist measures if required. Minorities have every right to live as equal citizens of the country with full security and dignity. The majority community has to be magnanimous in its attitude and approach towards the minorities. It should not expect the minority to live on the majority‟s alleged goodwill. Simultaneously, the minorities should be sensitive towards genuine feelings of the majority community. A secular state must champion the integrationist approach, sometimes symbolized by a salad bowl. Every citizen despite being integrated into the mainstream of nation should also keep their identities intact in matters of religion, caste or any other such characteristics dear to a community. Enlightened citizens must oppose religious nationalists advocating an assimilationist approach symbolized by a melting pot. Religious nationalists don‟t want the democratic government to become an arrangement in which majority rule is counter-balanced by a system of secure enjoyment of minority rights.

Old dogmatic ideas of sovereignty as being a status that gave a country the right to treat its citizens as it liked has now changed. The international community can now express legitimate concern over official or demonstrative state-sponsored violation of human rights, transcending sovereignty‟s rigid considerations, under the rubric of The Responsibility to Protect. At any rate, this responsibility devolves on external forces only in the event that the internal force is incapable or unwilling to handle the violations. Inability or wilful inaction of a state to check violation of human rights is now being considered by the international community as equal to violation of human rights by the state itself. The perpetrators of violence must be punished, however influential they may be. The national ethos would have to be uncompromisingly secular and democratic if India is to provide an encompassing umbrella under which diverse ethnicities, religious and linguistic groups can coexist and fulfil their distinctiveness. Culture cannot survive if it attempts to be exclusive.

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