British envoy to India Sir James Bevan’s politically significant decision to travel to Nagpur on Election Day in an apparent bid to enlighten himself to the nuances of voting system in the world’s largest democracy has raised a few eyebrows.
Defying protocol, he accepted the hospitality of Nitin Gadkari, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate from Nagpur constituency rather unabashedly. Nagpur incidentally is the headquarters of the Rashtriya Sayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which happens to be BJP’s ideological parent and invisible remote-controller of the party’s prime ministerial aspirant Narendra Modi. Some believe there is more to this trip than meets the eye especially because the envoy had a fairly long private conversation at Gadkari’s residence, a stone’s throw away from the RSS office in Nagpur.
And it is an open secret that the RSS is trying to consolidate its grip over the democratic institutions in the country, that too with the sole objective of turning India into a Hindu nation. The BJP and its fraternal groups have openly advocated assimilation of minority Muslim and Christian population into the Hindutva fold. The Hindutva Brigade has overtly threatened to expunge minorities if they do not drape themselves in the shade of saffron and embrace the depraved and communal ideology. Indeed, what made a foreign diplomat — representing a nation that claims to work for practical realization of Human Rights throughout the Commonwealth and the globe — rush to a BJP candidates’ residence on Election Day is a big question that has started stirring every mind.
Had it been a study tour, as Sir Bevan has explained publicly, the Election Commission of India should have made appropriate arrangements for his visit and stay in Nagpur. So, the logical question that comes to the fore is whether Britain has started taking undue interest in the election process of its former colony and even trying to manipulate its outcome in favor of Modi? Unfortunately, David Cameron’s government, which recently co-sponsored a resolution against the Sri Lankan government at the United Nations Human Rights Council for failing to prevent a massive human rights abuse in the South Asian island nation during the ethnic conflict, has exposed itself badly. Cameron, despite his oft-repeated concerns on human rights, has shown more enthusiasm in preserving the business interest of British investors in India rather than ensuring justice for the hapless victims of the 2002 Gujarat pogrom.
Maybe Cameron’s Conservative Party somehow believes that a tumultuous India under Modi will offer a better strategic leverage to London so far as South Asia is concerned and serve the British business interest more appropriately. Hence, Foreign and Commonwealth Office Minister Hugo Swire had no qualm in proudly declaring that in British national interest London will upgrade its relationship with Modi despite the presence of a scathing fact-finding report on the Gujarat riots prepared by the British High Commission in 2002. So much damning were the attached evidences that even the then Prime Minister Vajpayee and his man Friday Brajesh Mishra were left perturbed.
The report could have led to the indictment of Modi in British court on charges of complicity in mass murder and abetting genocide had the Indian government not used its influence astutely. Prepared by First Secretary Peter Holland, the report had the following nerve-racking observations. Firstly, the principal objective of the 2002 communal conflagration in Gujarat, that took 2,000 innocent lives, was intended to remove Muslim influence from large parts of the state. Muslim-owned property and establishments were deliberately targeted consequently. Secondly, the violence was pre-planned and lethal weapons stockpiled accordingly. Alternative arrangement for flashpoint was ready in case the “Sabarmati Express Mission” did not yielded result. Thirdly, the civil and police administration was under specific instruction to remain idle till further order. The ghastliness of the genocide had even prompted the then Spanish envoy to describe Gujarat as a “state gone berserk.” Former US Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca was terrified by the gruesome events and termed the carnage as “horrible and chilling”.
Indeed, not many humane Indians will ever forget those nauseating days of ubiquitous chaos and rioting when barbarous rioters had ripped pregnant women and flung the fetus into fire. Intriguing it is that the western nations, who claim monopoly in championing the cause of human rights across the globe, have gone all out to embrace the man behind the darkness in Gujarat by sacrificing human rights at the altar of commercial consideration. Do the leadership of these western countries and even China and Japan not know that the Gujarat massacre is one of the worst pogroms committed against minorities anywhere on earth under state-patronage and that it was designed not only to teach Indian Muslims a hard lesson but also to alter the demography of the state? Besides, Modi’s administration refused to setup relief camps for the hapless victims. Is it not a deliberate discrimination against religious minorities that the world has pledged to fight?
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