NEW DELHI, 8 May — A Gandhian’s plea to end the blame game and work for peace in violence-hit Gujarat found no takers at a discussion in the capital involving journalists, academics and intellectuals.
Several in the audience who heard Rajiv Vora’s appeal for calm and restraint said first the guilty should be booked and then only peace could be restored in the western Indian state.
Over 900 people have been killed in sectarian violence targeting Muslims that has been raging in Gujarat since end February.
Vora, a social worker with the voluntary group Gandhi Peace Foundation who has visited the affected towns twice, said civil society and the rule of law had completely collapsed.
He was speaking at a discussion "True story of Godhra" at the India International Center here late Monday.
Speaking in Hindi at a gathering of about 200 people, Vora said: "There comes a time in history, when silence is the best weapon. During the Hindu-Muslim violence in 1946, Gandhiji said it is silence where truth resides."
"It is difficult to locate the truth. People are passing judgment after a day’s visit to Gujarat. The media in Delhi should restrain itself from irresponsible comments because every act here affects the reaction from one community or the other in Gujarat."
Co-panelist Brooke Unger, a Delhi-based journalist with The Economist, said if the central government had punished the perpetrators of previous sectarian violence, the situation would not have been so bad this time. Unger, who has been working in India for the last three years, said: "Though the body language of the Gujarat government clearly indicated that they were supporting the perpetrators of the post-Godhra violence, there has been lots of misquoting and misreporting in the media as well."
Well-known journalist Praful Bidwai said: "You cannot separate the sectarian violence in Gujarat from its political aspect. The government has been indoctrinating hate in the name of religion for the last four years. While Godhra was a spontaneous incident, the post-Godhra violence was organized by well-groomed cadres of the Hindu right."
"I don’t want to talk of peace without the dismissal of Narendra Modi."
Another furious woman, who had worked for victims living in refugee camps, stood up to say: "How will you convince the women who have been mass-raped and their families burned in front of them?
"How will you convince the relatives and neighbors of the pregnant woman whose fetus was taken out and burned in the fire? How can you talk of peace without justice?"
"All peace lovers and Gandhians closed their doors when Gujarat was burning." Mohandas Gandhi, who led India’s freedom movement against the British, was also from Gujarat.
