What happened in Godhra — about which there are different and conflicting versions — was a barbaric act and deserves to be unequivocally condemned. Ironically, however, without so much as a second look or any investigation, the Muslim community was blamed. As for the Hindu activists’ behavior, their drunkenness and molestating of both Muslim and non-Muslim women has been neither questioned nor reported.
If the demolition of Babri Masjid is a permanent blot on the BJP’s political record, the carnage in Gujarat has now besmirched its administrative record forever. It is a failure of gigantic proportions which cannot but shame any government. There was a photograph on the front pages of many newspapers showing a young man in Ahmedabad, his face racked with terror, holding his palms together and pleading for help from the police. His gesture spoke not only of the trauma of ordinary people but also of the indifference of the authorities whose job is was to protect them. The young man was forced to beg for his life in a country that has made the right to life a touchstone of its democracy. How far has India fallen!
The barbaric acts that killed some 58 passengers on the Sabarmati Express — most of them Hindus returning from Ayodhya — and the backlash of violence which they triggered are clear and disturbing indications of explosive communal tensions. They are the direct consequence of the VHP’s provocative and destructive campaign for the construction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya. Who are the real culprits? Could they have vested interests and could they have acted with tacit support from the country’s power brokers?
Following the incident on Feb. 27 when the Hindus on the Sabarmati Express were killed, large-scale violence and stabbings were reported in Godhra, Ahmedabad and Baroda. The dead included women and children. Riots began and soon spread to villages and smaller towns. In addition to Ahmedabad, violence was reported in 35 other cities and towns which were placed under curfew. Non-official figures put the death toll from the riots at more than 2,000.
Early on Feb. 28, there were reports of mobs attacking Muslims throughout Gujarat as the police stood by. Neither the Indian prime minister nor the Union home minister — whose constituency is Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar — instructed their party colleague the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, to bring the situation under control. Later that day, Vajpayee met RSS leaders to discuss not what the VHP activists were doing in Gujarat but the Ayodhya issue; finally, after some 70 people had been killed, the Cabinet Committee of Security met and decided only that the army should be placed on alert. The two days of inaction exposed the government’s singularly inept and slow response to the emergency and raises disturbing questions. True, any administration would require time to react to a sudden and potentially explosive development. The Narendra Modi regime, however, showed little signs of coming to grips with the situation even as late as Feb. 28. The field was thus left to rampaging mobs which appeared to have a clear design in the targets they chose — shops and houses owned by Muslims — in revenge for the Godhra incident. Had the government acted on simple common sense and prevented the mob from assembling at the station, the tragedies could likely have been averted. A responsible government should have acted against all provocateurs, increased security and dealt ruthlessly with all those who took the law into their own hands. Given the enormity of the Godhra incident, the state government would have been justified in asking Delhi to deploy the army. In any case, the state should have erred on the side of caution rather than on that of inaction. Far from anything that might have been logically expected, Modi made statements saying that he understood the people’s anger at the Godhra incident. He should have realized that such ambiguity was exactly what the bloodthirsty mobs needed. And on Feb. 28, they went wild with targeted killings, arson and looting. Policemen looked the other way when incidents as bad as the Godhra killings were repeated all over the state. The police who should have been using all their weapons against criminal elements in the streets of Ahmedabad and other towns, did nothing except look the other way. At the same time, the civilian administration was doing nothing. However one views the situation, there was a colossal leadership failure. Has the entire Gujarat law enforcement apparatus been politicized and communalized? This is the only way to explain the state BJP regime’s deliberate lack of firmness in containing the violence. There was also an inexplicable delay in calling in the army. Nothing illustrates the role of the police better than the statement by the police commissioner that the police “are not insulated from the general social milieu. When there’s a change in society, the police are part of it and there’s bound to be some influence.” The commissioner continued that he was helpless because his men were as much a part of the religiously divided society as the thugs who were on the rampage!
In Ahmedabad, those who covered the first major communal riots in 1969 said there were administrative failures then but there was no failure of intent. The civil service continued to function and the communal virus had not affected the police. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi rushed to Ahmedabad; Governor Shriman Narayan also went and the two communities were thus reassured. Gujarat’s descent into chaos is a direct result of the provocative politics which has been pursued in the state for several years.
Starting with attacks on Christians soon after the BJP assumed power, Gujarat has been a tinderbox because of the aggressive tactics which Hindu activists were allowed to follow by an indulgent administration. It has become the habit of officialdom to look the other way when Hindutva activists go on the rampage. Since the VHP has shown no genuine inclination to defuse the crisis in Ayodhya, the situation in Gujarat is likely to remain highly volatile for the foreseeable future.
The simple fact is that the government is a part of the problem. The BJP once claimed that it could provide a riot-free government. Now the falsity of that claim has been thoroughly exposed.
— Mohammed Hanif Lakdawala is a journalist based in Bombay.