/II.
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article1498267.ece
United by victimhood, divided by ignorance
Jyoti PunwaniGujarat's Muslims and Hindus need to meet each other head on, breaking the walls of prejudice built since 2002.
Will anyone have the guts to bring the families of those who died in coach S-6 of the Sabarmati Express on February 27, 2002, face to face with those who were acquitted of the crime last week? Lost in the joy of the men freed after nine years in jail was the suffering of the families of those who died on the train. But there was at least one Muslim I spoke to who mentioned the Hindus who met a horrible death that morning. "Please, no celebrations, there are victims on that side too," Saeed Umarji pleaded with the media thronging his home to meet his father, Maulana Husain Umarji, acquitted of the charge of being the mastermind behind the so-called train-burning conspiracy.
His plea to journalists was ironic because it is thanks to the media that the 70-plus maulvi became the monster that he remains now in the eyes of most of those who lost family members on the Sabarmati Express. The acquittal of 63 accused in the train burning case has annoyed them, but it is for the Maulana that they reserve their anger, citing his "role" in inciting the mob — as reported by the media. The tragedy is that the role played by the Maulana was exactly the opposite. It was only he who, after the burning of the train, expressed regret on behalf of his community, repeatedly and publicly. Again, he alone restrained the young Ghanchi Muslims whose blood boiled at the sight of raped and battered Muslims pouring into the relief camps in Godhra during the massacres which followed the Godhra train-burning, and who itched to retaliate against the police for their continuous combing operations in Muslim localities after the incident.
Convey Saeed Umarji's message of sympathy to Harishbhai Dabhi, who fell ill with shock after his 69-year-old mother Jeeviben's burnt body was brought home from the Sabarmati Express, and all you get is a cynical retort about the Maulana's "wealth" — quoting the media again. Mr. Dabhi is so upset with the Godhra judgment that he threatens self-immolation if all the guilty are not punished. "What happened to the rest of the mob?" he asks.
Used and ignored
Used by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, ignored by the Congress, Mr. Dabhi's anguish stems from the knowledge of his own powerlessness. "Shouldn't we have been kept in the loop in this case?" he asks angrily. "But we were told nothing — how the inquiry was conducted, who testified … This old man," he pauses, pointing to his 82-year-old father, "would vote for a donkey if it stood on a Congress ticket. The Congress thought all those returning from Ayodhya on that train were BJP supporters. They forgot there were Dalits among them too."
It's not just the Dalits the Congress forgot. It forgot even its own votebank. When Muhammad Husain Kalota, the Congress Mayor of Godhra (now acquitted), was arrested four days after the train burning in an obviously political move, the party kept quiet. Its silence became deafening when Maulana Umarji was arrested a year later — he had ensured that the party got the Muslim vote in Godhra in the crucial December 2002 Assembly election. But in the next elections, the Congress was back to its games. Its State president, former RSS man Shankarsinh Vaghela, declared in Godhra that the VHP had burnt coach S-6. In one stroke, he delivered the Hindu vote to the BJP and ensured that Gujarat's Muslims would never acknowledge their co-religionists' act of arson. Indeed, the theories propounded by them about the incident would be funny if they weren't indicative of a dangerous state of denial. Either those burnt inside S-6 — by the VHP, of course — were already dead, corpses from some morgue were piled into the train by the VHP, or, they were just beggars picked up from here and there, for, the conspiracy theorists declare, not a single kar sevak died.
Continuous propaganda
At the other extreme is the VHP's continuous propaganda that the burning of S-6 was a conspiracy aimed at Hindu passengers. But though the fast track court judgment upholds this theory, the VHP is fuming since for it, Maulana Umarji remains the mastermind. The Maulana avoided the media after his release; and in a meeting with this writer a few days later, spoke only about his life in Sabarmati jail — Baba Ramdev's yoga classes; the Gita recitations that would go on alongside those from the Koran; the scrupulous medical attention he was given. Nothing political was remotely touched upon. Yet, the VHP now spreads the canard that the Maulana thanked the UPA government as soon as he was acquitted.
If at all any role can be ascribed to the UPA government, it was that its Central POTA Review Committee recommended in 2005 that the incident was neither a conspiracy nor an act of terrorism, hence POTA could not apply to it. This opinion was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2008 and, more importantly, the Gujarat High Court in 2009. And, despite POTA being revoked, very few of the accused got bail during these nine years. Many of their children had to give up dreams of college to support their families.
Perhaps if the families of the Sabarmati victims met Inayat Jhujhara, picked up on his way home from his government job on February 27, 2002 itself, with his office keys in his hand; or tea vendor Siddiq Bakr who was assaulted by the VHP passengers at the Godhra station for his refusal to say 'Jai Sri Ram,' and whose complaint the police refused to lodge, they would accept the innocence of those acquitted. Perhaps if Ahmedabad's Muslims were to venture into their city's neighbourhoods and meet Kirit Kumar Sukla, a giant of a man who developed blood pressure after his 'Ba' was burnt on the Sabarmati Express, or the soft-spoken Prafullaben Soni, who cried all day on February 22, not on hearing the judgment, but because it was on that day nine years ago that she last saw her husband and son alive (both were burnt on the train) — they would know the enormity of the crime committed at Godhra on February 27, 2002.
But who would want this wall of ignorance between the two sides demolished? Saeed Umarji would, but his priority is to see his father closeted in his family, away from the heavy burden of leadership Godhra's Ghanchis are waiting to place on him. Dr. Sujaat Vali, Godhra's well-known gynaecologist, would but his priority is to build bridges first between his own town's Hindu and Muslim youth, something he's been doing tirelessly since 2002. There are far more powerful players in Gujarat who can only gain from strengthening this wall.
Fortunately, other walls are crumbling. The VHP's 2002 plan to boycott Muslims economically failed in Godhra; business partnerships between the two communities are as strong as they were before 2002. "We realised there's nothing to fight about," said BJP supporter Kishorilal Bhayani, wholesale grain merchant, whose business depends on the Bohra traders. The town's Muslims, mostly in the garage and transport business, used to gripe about their area being singled out for load-shedding. Today, Godhra gets power from the newly set up Madhya Gujarat power company, which ensures uninterrupted power supply and decentralised payment of bills. Muslim business is booming. As all over Gujarat, in Godhra too, Muslims are today determined to educate themselves; even the families of those arrested are sending their children to school.
Finally, in a master stroke, Narendra Modi chose Godhra to celebrate Republic Day in 2009. Not only did the neglected town get new roads and a huge sports complex, on the night of January 26, the politician hated the most by Muslims drove through Polan Bazar, Godhra's main Muslim area, shaking hands with the crowds that can be found there every night.
Did this gesture wipe out the fear that has ruled the town's Muslims after 2002 – the fear of being picked up if they spoke out for their community? Did it make their 'leaders' stop bending over backwards to please the VHP? No. It did, however, make them feel, for a brief while, that they belonged.
(The author is a freelance journalist.)
II.
Just a few days ago, separate courts gave their verdicts in two important cases. In Mumbai, the Bombay high court confirmed the death sentence on 26/11 terrorist Ajmal Kasab while a day later in Ahmedabad, a special court held 31 people guilty of burning a coach of the Sabarmati Express at Godhra railway station in 2002.
There are subtexts in both these judgements. In the Kasab trial, the high court upheld the acquittal of two Indians accused of being part of the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT). In the Godhra court, the sessions judge acquitted 63 people — more than double the number convicted, for lack of evidence. These sub-texts tell their own story, a story that does not speak well of many of our institutions.
Take the Kasab case first. The only surviving member of the Pakistani terrorist team that attacked Mumbai in 2008, he has been lodged in a high security cell with no expense spared on looking after him. In spite of his indisputable guilt, the prosecution produced over 600 eyewitnesses to buttress its open-and-shut case, thus delaying it for over two years. But the message India wanted to give the world is that our laws are fair, there are no distinctions between people. The acquittal of the two Indians accused of abetting the conspiracy, further reinforces that claim.
If only the Godhra verdict did so too! On the face of it, the judgement seems to contradict itself. As we now know, 31 people were convicted for criminal conspiracy, while 63 were acquitted. Significantly of the 63, there were two people, Maulvi Hussain Umarji and the then president of the municipality, Billal Hussain Kalota, who were accused to be the main conspirators. If your main conspirators are innocent, how can you have a conspiracy?
As it happens, the whole Godhra story is shrouded in confusion, with three theories emerging from the scenario. The first theory is that the fire started from inside the coach. This is not entirely implausible, because the coach was grossly over-crowded and on a long journey many people travel with stoves and beddings which make for a lethal combination. The second is that the conflagration began after a spontaneous fight erupted between the Hindu kar sevaks on the train and Muslim vendors on the platform, a culmination of days of tension between the two. In this confrontation, stones and burning rags were thrown and the latter started the fire in the compartment. The third theory is that the burning of the compartment was a result of a pre-planned conspiracy.
The court has upheld the last theory even while freeing Umarji and Kalota. This is the theory that suits the Modi-led BJP government, as the crowing reaction of a party spokesman to the verdict showed. It suits the party because it acts as some sort of justification for the days of state-abetted carnage that followed in Gujarat which killed 1,800 people. This is also the theory supported by the Nanavati commission appointed by the Gujarat government in 2002.
A second commission headed by another former Supreme court judge (UC Banerjee), which was appointed in 2004 by Lalu Prasad as railway minister when the UPA government came to power in Delhi, contradicted this saying that the fire in the coach started accidentally from inside. It based its findings on forensic evidence and accounts of railway officials and eyewitnesses who deposed before it. This particular theory has been supported by a number of journalists who were in Gujarat at that point. One of them was a resident editor of a national daily and till today he reiterates that railway officials present at the Godhra station on that day told him that there was absolutely no possibility of a conspiracy.
Who does one believe? Does the truth bend with your political affiliations? Shouldn't judicial findings be based on facts which are not coloured by prejudices? Whatever the answers to these questions, one fact is incontrovertible: 55 of the 63 people acquitted were denied bail for the duration of the trial, which was an agonisingly long nine years. In short, 55 innocent people lost nine years of their lives, years which no compensation can return. Careers, reputations and families have been shattered. Who is responsible for this? The police who insisted on denying bail? The prosecutors who fought for this denial? The judiciary which acceded to these requests?
As it happens the Godhra court's verdict relies heavily on the confessions of the accused included those later retracted. Shouldn't the court have looked into the value of confessions obtained in jail? You can't ignore what happened in Malegaon. There young Muslim men were made to confess to a crime they did not commit. Nine of them have spent more than four years in jail and the only reason they are now free is because Swami Asimananda had a change of heart and confessed that it was a group of RSS pracharaks who were behind the attacks.
You might well ask, why does our system go so far out of its way to be fair to a known foreign terrorist like Kasab, while terrorising its own citizens with a perverted justice? It's a question loaded with irony for us, but full of tragedy for those falsely implicated in crimes they did not commit.
Anil Dharker is a Mumbai-based author and columnist
The views expressed by the author are personal
--
Peace Is Doable
--
Palash Biswas
Pl Read:
http://nandigramunited-banga.blogspot.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment