India has witnessed many an acts of
communal violence. Starting from the Jabalpur riot of 1961 to the
last major one of Kandhmal (August 2008). Many an innocent lives
have been lost in the name of religion. Amongst these the Gujarat
carnage is a sort of marker. It came in the backdrop of massive
Anti Sikh pogrom of 1984, the anti Muslim violence of post Babri
demolition and the horrific burning of Pastor Graham Steward
Stains in Kandhmal. It was a quantitative and qualitative
departure from the other major carnages which have rocked the
country.
To begin with the burning of Sabarmati S 6 coach was cleverly
projected to be an act done by neighboring Muslims and in turn the
violence was directed against the Muslim population of Gujarat, on
the ground that the Hindu sentiments are hurt. The section of
Hindu community was deliberately incited by the decision of state
to take the burnt bodies of victims in a procession, against the
advice of the collector of the city. The Bandh call given by VHP
created the ground for violence. Here the social engineering was
at its display, and dalits and Adivasis were mobilized to unleash
the violence against the hapless innocent Muslims, accompanied by
the propaganda which demonized the Muslim community as a whole.
While in earlier acts of violence, the state police have been an
accomplice and the silent onlooker to the violence, here a sort of
active collusion of state machinery and the communal forces was on
display.
The BJP ruled state Government had unrestricted run in the state
as the Central Government was being ruled by BJP led NDA and the
other allies of BJP were too enamored by the spoils of power to
spoil the broth by speaking out. Modi had already instructed the
officials to sit back when the Hindu backlash will take place. The
leading light of socialist movement, George Fernandez, went to the
extent of taking the violence against minority women in the stride
by saying that rape is nothing new and it happens in such
situations. What more was needed for the rioters to run amuck and
to central BJP leadership to let the things go on. The pattern of
violence against women was particularly horrific, targeting at
their reproductive organs and shaming them to no end.
While the architect of Gujarat pogrom Narnedra Modi kept saying
that violence has bee controlled in three days, and central BJP
leadership patted him for this, the matter of fact was that
violence went on and on painfully for a long time, uncontrolled
and unrestricted. The attitude of the BJP controlled state was
pathetic and showed the religious bias in relief and
rehabilitation work. The compensations given to minorities were
abysmally low, state quickly retreated from the refugee camps on
the ground that the refugee camps are ‘child production centers’,
hitting the minorities where it hurts most. The biases against
them were on full display. The atmosphere was created by communal
forces in such a manner that the riot victims could not go back to
their houses as the people in their areas demanded a written
undertaking from them, that they will withdraw the cases filed in
the context of violence and that they will not file any cases.
Most of the police as machinery either refused to file the FIRs or
if registered they kept enough loopholes for the criminals to get
away. It was in this atmosphere that the process of getting
justice became a close to impossible task. The communalized state
apparatus, the attitude of police and judiciary led the Supreme
court to direct the shifting of cases away from Gujarat.
The investigation against Narendra Modi by the state police was an
impossible task and so the Special Investigation team was
constituted. Unfortunately, that also did not help the matters.
Accompanying all this violence and attitude of state government
the minorities started feeling extremely insecure. They were
boycotted in trade and other social spaces. The result is the
sprawling slum of Juhapura as the symbol of polarization of
communities along the religious lines. The total dislocation of
the monitories created multiple problems at the level of education
and sources of livelihood for the minorities.
The religious polarization and section of media has created a Halo
around Narendra Modi, while strictures against him are coming by,
about his failure to protect places of religious worship of
minorities, the malafide intentions of state in filing cases
against social activist Teesta Setalvad, many another cases are
still pending, crying for justice for the victims of Gujarat.
Having consolidated the section of majority community behind him,
assured of their ongoing support, Modi started the high profile
propaganda about development and has been trying to distract the
attention from the havoc which he has wrought in the state. The
big capitalists are finding the state of Gujarat as a happy
hunting ground for massive state subsidies, so the media
controlled by them is singing praises and modulating popular
opinion in his favor, creating a larger than life size image,
development man, in order to suppress his role in the violence
against minorities.
In this dismal scenario, there have been many an examples of
victims and social activists standing for the cause of justice and
doing the practically impossible task of getting justice for
violence victims despite all the efforts to turn them hostile and
protect the guilty of the communal crimes. While the massive
propaganda and state policies are trying to turn the minorities
into second class citizens, there are efforts which have gone on
simultaneously to retrieve the democratic values in the face of
such adverse intimidating situation created by the communal
forces.
Lately, apart from Court judgments, the civil society
response has been picking up and the civil society is trying to
overcome the stifling situation and trying to make its voice
louder. While we are nowhere close to what should ideally be there
in a democratic set up, the responses of civil society and social
action groups are noteworthy in the matters of getting justice for
victims and in the matters of recreating the liberal space which
has been undermined by the communal forces. Times alone will tell
if democratic values will be successfully brought in this ‘Hindu Rashtra in one state’
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