They didn't start the fire
http://www.dailypioneer.com/secon3.asp?cat=\edit3&d=EDITS
Unkaa khoon khoon, hamara khoon pani?
(Is their blood blood, ours merely water?) This melodramatic enquiry from a
Hindi film protagonist championing the cause of the economic underdog in the
1980s sprang to mind as one absorbed media reactions, largely scripted by Hindu
secular-liberal intellectuals, to the carnage that travelled from the charred
Sabarmati Express at Godhra on February 27 to the streets of Ahmedabad the
following day.
Gujarat was "burning", "innocents" were
dying, there was "arson and loot" on the streets-all this on February
28; all references to the manner in which the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP)
fashioned its response to the carnage on Sabarmati Express. The singling out of
Muslims is indeed unforgivable. But was the 2000-strong Muslim mob, which should
forthwith surrender its membership to a club called human civilisation,
"innocent" in its decision to attack a bogey-full of Ramsewaks because
the latter committed the crime of singing bhajans on their way back home from
Ayodhya?
Secular
defendants of the Muslim cause in India promptly pronounced the Ramsewaks guilty
of "provoking" a bunch of miscreants
into medieval barbarity? Apparently the sewaks had committed a crime serious
enough to invite a retribution that reminded some of us of the terrible days of
Partition, of bogeys being locked from the outside as countless Hindus,
particularly women and children, went up in flames. Then, February 28 brought
news of attacks on Muslims, Muslim shops, Muslim restaurants, Muslim places of
worship, etc, etc; not one report on Godhra the previous day even hinted at the
fact that the 58 Ramsewaks, sent to their deaths in cold blood, were victims of
Muslim violence; that it was a targeted attack on the Hindu community. Those who
perpetrated the Godhra massacre were merely identified as a bunch of
"miscreants" of a "particular community" who set a train
afire, never mind if their impotent rage killed 25 women and 14 children out of
a total of 58.
So
much for media squeamishness when it comes to calling a spade a spade. Quite
clearly, a nation obliged to preserve its secular credentials, on the basis of
its august foundation, is often forced to do so at a cost unacceptable at least
to some of us. Violence is condemnable. That is a trusim. But then simple
truisms lend themselves to extremely subjective, prejudiced, and partisan
interpretations when it comes to the question of communal tension in this
country. If violence against Muslims is condemnable, so is brutalisation of
Hindus. What was indeed the provocation for snuffing out 58 innocent Hindu lives
in a gory carnage, an act that was bound to invite retaliation? If tears must be
shed for the loss of Muslim lives, they must in equal measure be sapportioned
for the Hindus. Certainly, action and reaction must both be judged by the same
scale.
Those
attacked on the Sabarmati Express were not masons carrying construction material
to Ayodhya, in defiance of the law of the land. Even if they had been, they
should have invited retribution from law-keepers, not lawless barbarians. The
country's "secular" brigade, a section that Muslims of the kind who
attacked the Sabarmati Express must remain eternally indebted to, lost no time
in issuing indifferent "violence-is-condemnable" statements. Worth
noting however were warnings highlighting the immense threat the VHP posed to
the country's internal security and secular harmony. For this section, Muslims
continue to be the victimised community, even if that "victimisation"
stems from grave physical provocation of the Godhra variety. One section even
extended a dangerous and patently subversive theory, of the kind the Pakistani
President voices when an Indian aircraft is hijacked; that Godhra may have been
a VHP subplot in the Ayodhya saga.
Would
Gujarat have burned had the Sabarmati Express not been set on fire? The Hindu
secular intellectual would insist Godhra was a result of the VHP's growing
belligerence. For this section of opinion it is as
marvellously simple to flog Hindu fundamentalism as it is intriguingly difficult
to identify its Muslim equivalent. For others less committed,
however, the manner in which the Muslim mob at Godhra chose to respond to the
VHP's defiance over Ayodhya is not humanly, ideologically, socially or civilizationally
justifiable. Strangely, in a world where opinion-makers are not shying away from
talking about Islamic fundamentalism, in India voices are quick to rise against
Hindu fundamentalism but not against the one which constitutes its Muslim
equivalent. If the evil of fundamentalism is to be condemned, the condemnation
must be honest, comprehensive and total.
Admittedly,
the VHP's intransigence on the Ayodhya issue was waiting to step out into the
open. In this, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) must take its share of the
blame. It is after all the party that once rode the Hindutva vehicle, the mandir
issue catapulting it to national recognition. Political expedience of the kind
that arises out of running a coalition Government at the Centre subsequently
dictated the BJP's move away from a regressive Hindutva agenda. The delinking,
eminently desirable in a party that was to head a Government at the Centre,
however ought to have been engineered in a manner the party did not lose control
over a fringe like the VHP that always carried with it the potential of going
berserk, in no small measure owing to a sense of alienation from and betrayal by
its erstwhile political patrons.
The
recently-concluded elections in Uttar Pradesh proved that the mandir has ceased
to be an issue in the State. At the national level too, Ayodhya was hardly a
concern. Given the dictates of a globalising world, the BJP successfully shed
the negative connotations of being a "Hindu nationalist party" that
the international media painted it as till the other day. What this
metamorphosis did not take into account however was the fact that the mandir
issue would fester and rear its head at a future date, a time when the BJP
leadership would be expected to exercise the necessary control. However, not
having carried the Ayodhya issue to its conclusion, logical or otherwise, the
BJP is now left battling rebellion from the VHP, mounting criticism from its
political allies and detractors alike, while facing an unfortunate test of its
leadership's credibility, a leadership that is left "appealing" to the
VHP, instead of ordering it, to desist from violence. The situation to say the
least is grim.
It
may take days for the fire in Guajrat to be doused. For the moment it has caused
substantial damage to India's secular credentials. Only a month ago, one sat in
Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres' office at the Knessett in Jerusalem,
savouring the veteran leader's compliments on how India was a model of secular
harmony, a democracy which admitted a 140 million Muslim component in its
billion-strong population. Secular India is under attack today. As much from
Hindu fundamentalists who swear by a temple no one seems to particularly want,
as from those Muslims who consider carnages like Sabarmati Express a fitting
response to that fundamentalism.
Ironically
for the country's leadership, the Gujarat carnage comes at a time when it was
revelling in Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's discomfort over reining in
the jihadis he had painstakingly nurtured till only a while ago. Deja vu?
***
"Salim
Abdul Gaffar, vice-president of the Youth Congress, lead the frenzied mob".
"How
come there were 2000 people awaiting outside the Godhara station waiting with
Petrol at 8 am in the morning."
|