Has Gujarat Tackled its Dark Past?
By Ranjona Banerji
2012-02-29
Is it time to forgive
and forget what happened in Gujarat 10 years ago? Is a decade enough to heal
all the wounds, wipe all the tears, bury all the pain, dissipate all the rage
and decide that punishment and retribution are ungracious sentiments in a state
which is booming economically and is upheld as poster child of industrial
growth? Is money even better than kindness or regret or generosity or
compassion at removing all signs of suffering?
It's a tough call.
Estimates of the number of people who died vary between 1,500 and 2,000 since
the terrible attack on the Sabarmati Express at Godhra on February 27, 2002.
Most of the people who died in the train were kar sevaks returning from
Ayodhya, where the Vishwa Hindu Parishad was building a temple to replace the
Babri Masjid demolished by them and others in 1992. Most of the people who died
in the retaliatory riots were Muslims. Society in Gujarat is very easily
polarised on caste and religious lines. Is it then fair to blame only Narendra
Modi, who had just become chief minister a few months before, after Keshubhai
Patel had to be removed on allegations of inefficiency and corruption in the
terrible earthquake of 2001? Did Modi and his government bear any
responsibility at all to stop armed mobs from roaming the streets of cities,
towns and village, targeting shops, business establishments and houses which
belonged to Muslims?
Blissful Oblivion? One
of the biggest tragedies of the riots is that civil society believe that the
government did no wrong in sitting still while citizens were being attacked
Did the police and the
civil administration have any role to play in maintaining law and order and
providing help to those who were being attacked?
One has to ask these
questions over and over because those who want to 'forget' like to pretend that
the riots and the deaths are constructs of imagination, conjured up by evil
'secular' people who want to 'malign' the good name of Gujarat, its Chief
Minister Narendra Modi and its people. What a bizarre line of thinking. It is a
government's job to protect its people and to provide restitution and justice
when they are harmed. This responsibility is not limited to people of a certain
colour or caste or religion or class or ideology or gender.
Anyone at all is free
to point out that a particular government has failed in its duty -- we do it
all the time.
Yet when it comes to
Gujarat, the general right wing argument is that some wicked secular people
(the worst insult religious bigots can come up with) cooked the whole thing up
and now won't let it rest. One of the biggest tragedies of the Gujarat riots is
that civil society -- within and outside Gujarat -- believe that the government
did no wrong in sitting still while citizens were being attacked -- even if
they were largely Muslim.
Surely, the argument
ran, any Muslim that was killed in light of the deaths of 58 Hindus on the
Sabarmati Express was a justifiable death? Why then is anyone surprised every
time we learn that Hitler's Mein Kampf is a best-seller in India? No one
gloried in the death of the 'other' better than Hitler.
Luckily for India,
this kind of thinking is not as strong or prevalent as it was in Gujarat in
2002. Maybe it no longer exists in Gujarat any more either -- I have not been
back there in 2005. Maybe Gujarat has truly decided to forgive and forget.
Maybe it is easier for people to live with social polarisation than confront
the demons left behind by those riots.
Or maybe, when you
forgot to accept your past, it is likely to come back and haunt you again and
again. And that, surely, is a terribly price to pay.
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist.
Source: Mid Day,
Mumbai
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-politics/gujarat-tackled-its-dark-past/d/6767