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Day of the Bully

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The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. — Milan Kundera.

PM Vajpayeeji wants Indian Muslims to forget Gujarat and forgive for he who forgives is nobler than he who is forgiven. Whether he would also like the Supreme Court of India, the National Human Rights Commission and millions of Hindus who do not approve of the sangh parivar’s hate politics to forget, he does not say. And, forget the dead and the gone, what about the thousands of Gujarat’s devastated Muslim survivors, who have received no compensation worth the name and who still face severe socio-economic boycott? Vajpayeeji has forgotten about the Rajdharma he once reminded Narendra Modi of.

Advaniji, his No. 2 for whom Indian Muslims are obviously nothing but the ‘Pakistan within’, the communal climate within the country has never been better because there are signs of improved relations between the two countries. What happens to Indian Muslims if Indo-Pak relations were to deteriorate for whatever reason? Advaniji is silent on that.

Venkaiahji, the BJP president, has suddenly remembered that his grandfather was named after a Muslim saint! What does he think of his party and government’s determination in newly captured MP to rename the sangeet academy named after one of India’s greatest classical singers, Ustad Alauddin Khan, because "Alauddin was a Bangladeshi"! Or what does he have to say to the Muslim who was nearly lynched by the Saffron Brotherhood and whose garage was razed to the ground by the civic administration last week simply because he fell in love with a Hindu woman who loved him too? We do not know.

Nonetheless, we have in the last few weeks witnessed the sorry spectacle of a number of Muslim leaders proclaiming ‘Lab baik!’ (‘Here we come!’) to the Saffron call. By getting Vajpayee to release a Hindi translation of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s commentary of the Quran in the presence of a visibly uncomfortable Advani, in front of TV cameras, Najma Heptullah has established the Saffron Brotherhood’s love for all things Muslim. Arif Mohammed Khan’s, "I am surrendering to the sangh parivar" was more straightforward.

We must question the motives of the self-seeking Heptullahs and Khans who, having enjoyed power and pelf in secular India for decades, now seem to be acting like vultures, fattening themselves on the carcass of the very community in whose name they speak? But, what of ordinary Muslims with little chance for self-aggrandisement who, too, are starting to line up in front of Saffron Gate (‘Advani ke ghar pe Hajiyon ka hujoom!’)?

Should one take solace in the fact that, after all, only a small number are switching over? Or, should secular India not feel truly ashamed and ask itself an honest question: When the Bully batters and badgers the weak and the vulnerable and there is none to speak out against the tyranny, what does the victim do? So why be surprised if groups of Muslims here and there make peace with the Enemy.

For the opportunist Heptullahs and Khans who seek "better prospects" using "surrender" as alibi, we need have nothing but contempt. But political parties who project themselves as the torch-bearers of Indian secularism must hang their heads in shame for having taken India to where Hindutva wants it to go: "The goodwill of the majority can be the only guarantee of the minority’s security." (RSS soon after Gujarat).

Back to Vajpayeeji and his fellow swayamsevaks. So, what’s new? You are offering a "new deal" to India’s Muslims – education, employment. Isn’t this exactly what the BJP, under the presidentship of Advani had sworn to deliver to Muslims at its national meet in Goa 10 years ago (April 1995): Taleem (education), Tijarat (employment), Tanzeem (organisation).

Even better: "The BJP will protect (Muslim) lives and they will enjoy equal justice," Advani had promised Muslims during a press conference in Ahmedabad in January 1993. In June 1997, he reiterated in elegant prose his promised "to create a riot-free, violence-free and discrimination-free India when the BJP comes to power at the Centre".

Those were mere promises. What Muslims actually got on the ground was unprecedented hate crime whose "chief author and architect" (‘Crime Against Humanity’, Concerned Citizens Tribunal) was none less than Advani’s own blue-eyed boy, Narendra Modi. Clearly, the offer now stands revised: Forget "equal justice", accept the "protection" of the Bully.

Vajpayeeji wants Muslims, and the rest of India, to forget Gujarat. For a glimpse of what they can expect under Saffron Raj in the near future, please read the chilling report in this issue of Angana Chatterji on Orissa.

With elections in the offing, our cover story this month focusses on the aspirations and demands of other weaker and vulnerable sections of society for whom not just the BJP but most of the political class has little time: children, women, dalits, tribals.

— EDITORS.

Archived from Communalism Combat, February-March 2004. Year 10   No, 96, Editorial

Togadia checkmated

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A collective bid by political parties and civil society organisations compels the Madurai police to pre-empt the VHP’s hate agenda in the city. But through subsequent ‘retaliatory’ acts against human rights defenders, the same police provide proof of Amma’s growing affinity for the sangh parivar

"Whoever,

a) By words either spoken or written or by signs or by visible representation or otherwise, promotes, or attempts to promote, on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, caste or community or any other grounds whatsoever, disharmony or feelings of enmity, hatred or ill-will between different religions, racial, language or regional groups, caste or communities or,

b) Commits any act which is prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony between different religious, racial, language or regional groups or caste or communities and which disturbs or is likely to disturb the public tranquillity,

c) …shall be punished with imprisonment which may extend to 3 years or with fine or with both." (Sec. 153 IPC).

In the first week of August 2003, People’s Watch – Tamil Nadu, a human rights monitoring initiative engaged in human rights education, got wind of the probable visit of Praveen Togadia, international general secretary of the VHP to the temple city of Madurai on August 30. Having witnessed from far the orgy of violence that has taken place in several states in west and north India, and the deep enmity and ill-will that has been promoted among communities which were otherwise living in peace, People’s Watch decided to undertake the onerous responsibility of initiating action for public awareness.

I wish to share this experience with you, not as a great achievement, not because it is something unique, but because we would like to be a part of the larger community of victims who have lost their lives, lost all their possessions and who will now almost never be able to go back to their ancestral homes because of "communal violence".

The first opportunity that came our way was a public meeting held on August 14, 2003, as part of the campaign against POTO in Tamil Nadu. While speaking from that stage, I urged the city’s police administration to play their role in maintaining law and order and ensuring that the proposed visit of Togadia to Madurai city on August 30 would not even border on any incitement as defined in the IPC. The message did reach the government through their intelligence units which covered that meeting. But the visit did not take place.

The next occasion to once again raise the issue was in September, when the Indian Lawyers’ Association of Madurai held its district conference. During my felicitation at this conference, I mentioned Togadia’s proposed visit and not only got the conference to pass a resolution calling upon the district administration to initiate action, but also got functionaries of several civil society organisations in Madurai to come together to form a Joint Action Platform.

In all such initiatives, there is always a problem about who gives the initial call. Being an organisation working to uphold the rule of law and to put in practice and actualise the constitutional mandate, especially those contained in the Preamble of the Constitution, People’s Watch initiated the first discussion meeting in Madurai city, urging that civil society organisations in Madurai come together to tackle a visit to the city by a notorious person.

The meeting, in which several district secretaries of political parties, trade unions, Dalit organisations, women’s organisations, concerned citizens, NGOs and human rights organisations participated, was held in September. The meeting unanimously resolved to constitute a Joint Action Council Against Communalism (JACAC) in Madurai city and agreed on a common action plan in the backdrop of Togadia’s visit to Madurai, rumoured to take place on September 21.

The meeting unanimously elected as its president, Dr. B Parthasarathy, a former college principal and college teachers’ unionist, who had also served as the vice-president of the AIFUCTO. The actions planned were:

a) To present a petition to the commissioner of police anticipating Togadia’s visit and requesting that the distribution of trishuls be prohibited at any of his public functions;

b) Planning of black flag demonstration in the city on September 21;

c) In case Togadia did not visit Madurai as expected on September 21, to conduct a series of eight street corner meetings, starting with the first one opposite the district court buildings on September 22 and thereafter two meetings every day from September 22 to 25, culminating with a grand human chain in which all political parties, students, trade unions and NGOs in the city participated on September 26.

This was the quiet resistance that civil society organisations were valiantly putting together. The JACAC in Madurai city had hardly been able to consolidate its initial efforts when, towards the second week of October, the city was ripe with announcements followed by press releases that Togadia was to participate in the ‘Thevar Guru Pooja’ on October 30. This is the birth anniversary of Pasumpon Thiru Muthuramalinga Thevar, the leader of the Thevar community, a very powerful backward community in the state, which now enjoys the unbridled support of the ruling Jayalalitha government. This is the community which has in the past and again recently exhibited, particularly in south Tamil Nadu, a deep animosity to our Dalit brothers, leading to very serious caste clashes in the years 1995–97.

The culmination of this hatred has been successful efforts by these community leaders to ensure that since 1996 the seats of presidents and ward members in Keeripatti, Pappatti and Nattarmangalam in Madurai district were either not contested, or if they were contested and won, they were not occupied by Dalit presidents at all, thus shaming the 73rd and 74th Amendment to the Constitution which our country boasts about.

Realising the frenzy and the deep sensitivities that would prevail on Guru Pooja with lakhs of members of the Thevar community observing the day, the JACAC decided to oppose any attempt by Togadia to communalise Madurai using the Guru Pooja as an occasion and further communalise the Thevar community as well. At the same time, we did not wish to hurt the deep cultural sensitivities of the Thevar community by opposing the visit of a person coming to the city to pay homage to their leader and to participate in the Guru Pooja at Pasumpon, 100 km away from Madurai and thereafter address a public meeting in Madurai city.

The JACAC met the leaders of all political parties to convince them of the need to speak out. Simultaneously, JACAC urged political parties led by Thevars to publicly issue statements distancing themselves from Togadia and also urged representatives of the Thevar community observing the Guru Pooja not to be carried away by the VHP’s designs.

The JACAC also addressed a public meeting on October 27 in which leaders of all political parties and civil society organisations in the city participated. They condemned Togadia’s proposed visit while making clear that the protest must not be seen as having anything to do with his proposed participation in the Guru Pooja celebrations on October 30. The police, too, was informed accordingly.

On the morning of October 27, all local newspapers carried news of Togadia’s proposed plan to distribute trishuls to young children during the public meeting that he was to address in Madurai city at a ground belonging to the civic corporation of Madurai. Sensing extreme danger, the JACAC immediately decided to approach the officials for legal redress. They addressed a joint petition to the commissioner of police, the district collector, the municipal commissioner and also the governor of Tamil Nadu.

The petition referred to provisions of Sections 153(a), 153(b), 295(a), 298 and 505(1) & (2) IPC and prayed the following:

a) that any public meeting at Tamukkam ground which Togadia addresses should not at any point of time violate the provisions of the IPC and the organisers of the said meeting should give an undertaking to the effect that no distribution of trishuls shall take place at the meeting;

b) that on his arrival in the city Togadia should give a personal undertaking that he will not address any meeting inciting violence in any form and specifically that he will not engage in the distribution of trishuls anywhere in the city;

c) the petition also sought police protection for the public meeting organised by the JACAC on the night of October 27.

Representatives of political parties and trade unions and I personally met the police commissioner, the district collector and the municipal commissioner and presented our petition to them. It is pertinent to mention the reaction of the police commissioner when members of the JACAC met him as it reveals the mindset of our police. It shows how in our fight against communalism and our effort to uphold the promises of the Preamble of the Constitution, law enforcement officials are very often the greatest block to our efforts.

The commissioner of police (COP) was struck by a sentence in the first para of the petition which stated, "the JACAC strives to preserve communal harmony and peace within the city and to this end wishes to strengthen the hands of the district administration as well as the commissioner of police". His immediate response was that the police did not need anybody’s support to maintain communal harmony and peace. He emphasised that the police was capable of doing this on their own.

Thereafter, looking directly at me, he asked whether the offer to strengthen the hands of the police was a permanent gesture or a temporary one. To this I responded saying that the all of us present before him were people who would stand by the police whenever they upheld the rule of law!

On reading the petition further and the provisions of section 153, he once again remarked, "Nobody can promote anything u/s 153." Saying this, he looked at me again and I responded by saying, "That is what the IPC states." Adopting a who-are-you-to-tell-me-what-to-do attitude, the commissioner finally assured us that he would take a balanced view since there were several parties involved in the Guru Pooja on October 30. To this, we said, "Sir, there may be several parties and perhaps you consider us only one among them, but what we are focussing on is the question of the rule of law."

The public meeting on the night of October 27 was addressed by various leaders of the JACAC, asking the COP, who is statutorily responsible for law and order in the city of Madurai, either to perform the duties expected from him and which in the present context had specifically been brought to his attention by the JACAC, or else provide the JACAC an opportunity to move the Madras High Court for suitable remedies.

On the morning of October 27, on behalf of the JACAC, I requested Communalism Combat to share with us their collection of news clippings concerning efforts in different parts of the country to deal with the issue of hate speech and the distribution of trishuls. By the next morning, over 200 pages of news clippings were down-loaded and these were also presented, along with our petitions, to the concerned authorities. Thus, a clear message was given to the law enforcement officials that the JACAC meant serious business.

On the morning of October 28, the COP passed orders under Section 41(a) of the Madras City Police Act banning the distribution of trishuls in the city on October 30 and the same was served on Muruganji, the organiser of the public meeting that Togadia was to address. The collective effort by civil society organisations who believe in upholding the rule of law thus bore fruit and the distribution of trishuls was averted. The meeting which Togadia finally addressed, numbering around 2,000 people in the city, was devoid of his usual venom and spite.

Activists of the JACAC attended the meeting and recorded the communal venom spewed by Muruganji, who addressed the meeting prior to Togadia. The JACAC has put the COP on notice to register a criminal case against him, failing which we shall be forced to move the Madras High Court to obtain an order directing the COP to register a case.

It is such legal efforts in different parts of the country which could ultimately challenge the powers that be to put a check on hate speech and the militarisation of society. But we have to be prepared to pay the necessary costs.

The COP, Madurai, participated on October 28 in a Public Hearing on ‘Violence Against Women’ in which People’s Watch – Tamil Nadu was instrumental in presenting several cases of gross instances of violence against women in custody (domestic as well as police), cases involving oral sex by police, custodial rape, murder, various forms of torture. As the DIG of Police, Madurai, a position that he additionally holds, the COP engineered a police raid on our premises at 7.30 a.m. on November 5 that lasted for about 1½ hours. The raid was ostensibly to search for two accused in a case of dacoity!

Of course, the police went back empty-handed. Now it is the turn of human rights organisations from all over the country to petition the National Human Rights Commission and the National Commission for Women, urging them to intervene against injustice to human rights defenders. Fighting against communalism in Jayalalitha’s land is not without its attendant costs.

Archived from Communalism Combat, November 2003 Year 10   No. 93, Grassroots

India: Where mass murderers go unpunished

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1984: Anti Sikh Riots
 
In the last several decades, various regions of India have suffered from outbreaks of massive mass violence. The impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators of such wide-scale organised crime has raised important questions about state accountability in the world’s largest democracy.

Major players and perpetrators of internal conflict, particularly communal conflict, anti-Dalit pogroms and violence against sections of the tribal population have all, equally speaking, enjoyed impunity. This impunity pervades different organs of the state: first, in preventing the outbreaks of such violence (the singular failure in checking mobilisation of non-state actors who espouse violence to openly arm their squads, and in arresting perpetrators of hate speech and incitement to violence are some examples); second, in registering and investigating these crimes fairly and following due process of law; third, in prosecuting the perpetrators and punishing the guilty; and fourth, in acknowledgement of the mental and physical trauma and harm in terms of measuring acknowledgement and reparation of the crimes.

Gujarat 2002 and the uphill task that the justice struggle has taken for victims of the carnage (see CC, November 2003) is the last among a long line of sorry tales that speak of undelivered justice. The chief minister of the state, Narendra Modi, (re-elected after the pogrom, on December 15, 2002) and six cabinet ministers have been directly indicted for their involvement in mass crimes by testimonies (sometimes but not always translated into FIRs) of eyewitnesses and survivors and Crimes Against Humanity, the two-volume report of the Concerned Citizens Tribunal—Gujarat 2002. The international general secretary of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Dr. Praveen Togadia, has also been named. Senior members of the state police service and civil service were also directly named and indicted for overt or covert violation of the IAS/IPS service rules, Indian criminal law and the Indian Constitution. The levels of impunity related to the Gujarat carnage are staggering if we revisit those named and identified by victims as perpetrators. In all, 88 persons from the police and bureaucracy stand indicted, including then chief secretary Subha Rao, home secretary Ashok Narayan and DGP, K Chakrovarty.  From the political class, 730 persons have been named and identified as perpetrators of mass crimes by this report. Many of them are members of the ruling political party and its affiliate organisations.

The justice process for victims of the post-demolition violence that rocked Bombay in 1992-93 has also similarly floundered with utter contempt being shown for issues of accountability and impunity by political actors of varying political colour and dispensation. Similarly, be it Bhiwandi-Bombay-Jalgaon in the late sixties or many other bouts of communal conflict that followed, impunity has been the norm and accountability utterly absent.

From the decade of the sixties, when the first rounds of communal violence began to erupt post-Partition and Independence, individuals and organisations identified and named by official judicial commissions of inquiry investigating the crimes have enjoyed utter impunity, be they political leaders or men in uniform. In turn, this disregard for accountability by the world’s largest democracy has resulted in the crimes themselves being regarded with greater and greater impunity by the State and by society in general. By the decade of the eighties and nineties, these crimes, shaped by this impunity, had assumed the character of full-fledged pogroms, be it Delhi 1984, Meerut-Maliana 1987 or Bhagalpur 1989. Gujarat 2002 was the full-blown version of state sponsorship and perpetration of a carnage that had clear elements of genocide.

On the periphery of these bouts of internal conflict are conflicts like Punjab, Kashmir and many states of the north-eastern region of India that have also been characterised as separatist movements. In these situations, the Indian State has often taken stringent counter-measures to quell the violence using violence. State actors have been documented as having perpetrated human rights abuses, committing excesses under the guise of restoring peace. Few, if at all, have been penalised to date.

The irony of the fact is that India, hailed for being the world’s largest democracy, has both seriously faltered on the issue of impunity for mass crimes while adopting a close door policy on human rights discourse and international scrutiny in these areas. Like the USA, the world’s most developed democracy; India refuses to ratify the need for an International Criminal Court (ICC). Though India has signed the International Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment on October 14, 1997, it has failed to ratify it.

India is, however, signatory to a number of UN declarations and instruments, including the UN Charter of 1945, the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, acceded to on July 10, 1979.  Signing these treaties under international law and practice necessarily means criminalising  (legislating or bringing under the purview of Indian law) the crimes enlisted under these declarations and treaties. This, too, India has not done.

Punjab
The Working Group (of the United Nations) on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, established in 1980, reported large numbers of enforced disappearances, attributing primary responsibility to the Punjab police. The Working Group also held that officers of the Punjab police acted with virtual impunity, disobeyed judicial orders, even ignored writs of habeas corpus and intimidated family members of disappeared persons so as to make them refrain from making complaints. The Group’s 1996/97 report also mentioned the disappearance of Jaswant Singh Khalra after he filed the petition regarding illegal cremations in the High Court, alleging that many of the cremated had been arrested by the Punjab police.1

The government of India turned down an application by the Working Group to visit the country so as to discuss the matters with the competent authorities and to meet the representatives of the families of the disappeared. The representatives of the Indian government told the working group that “given the fact that the allegations of disappearances have drastically fallen in the last three years, coupled with the government of India’s commitment to investigate the old cases”, the suggestion of the Working Group regarding a visit to India is “inappropriate and unnecessary.” The government also stated that the matter of illegal cremations was now before the Supreme Court, which had instituted an inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation. The report concluded with the observation that under Articles 14 and 7 of the UN Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance adopted by the General Assembly on December 18 1992, the government of India was under obligation to “prevent, terminate and punish all acts of enforced disappearance.”2

The 1997 report by the Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nigel S. Rodley, renewed his “outstanding request for an invitation to visit the country…” whose refusal was a matter of concern.3   This report focussed on widespread and systematic use of torture by the Punjab police. It said:

“By a letter of 28 April 1997, the Special Rapporteur informed the Government that he had received reports indicating that the use of torture by police in Punjab was widespread. The methods of torture reported included beatings with fists, boots, lathis (long bamboo canes), pattas (leather straps with wooden handles), leather belts with metal buckles or rifle butts; being suspended by the wrists or ankles and beaten; kachcha fansi (suspension of the whole body from the wrists, which are tied behind the back); having the hands trodden upon or hammered; application of electric shocks; burning of the skin, sometimes with a hot iron rod; removing nails with pliers; cheera (forcing the hips apart, sometimes to 180 degrees and often repeatedly, for 30 minutes or more); and the roller method (a log of wood or ghotna – a heavy pestle is rolled over the thighs or calves with one or more police officers standing upon it); and insertion of chilli peppers into the rectum.”4

In the same period, the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions appointed by the Commission on Human Rights in August 1982, reported widespread practices of arbitrary executions carried out by the security forces. The 1997 annual report concluded that “despite the existence of legal provisions for the prosecution of human rights violators” there was de facto impunity in India. The Rapporteur also reiterated his interest in visiting the country, which he had already expressed in three earlier letters.5

The decade of political violence in Punjab has left behind a large number of victims who are still seeking justice. These people are trapped in a web of fear, rumour and myth. They need to be released from the psychology of victim-hood.

What was the government of India’s response?  Mrs. Arundhati Ghose, then India’s Permanent Representative at the United Nations Office in Geneva, told the Human Rights Commission that it should adopt a cooperative rather an adversarial and “spotlighting” approach. Ms. Ghose said that instead of undertaking direct investigations, the Commission should work only in consultation with the government. She declared: India had a broad range of guarantees built within its constitutional system to safeguard human rights, and did not require foreign intervention: India’s respect for human rights was rooted in its ancient philosophy and culture and, even in the modern context, predated its accession to the United Nations. The tough stand taken by Ms. Ghose received praise in the Indian press, some of them greeting her as the “Iron Lady” for her capacity to “look the western bullies in the eye.”6

The disdain of the Indian State for public and international accountability has been, in a sense, matched by the ineffectiveness of international players despite treaties, conventions and other mechanisms enacted to hold states accountable.  In the process, lives such as that of Jaswant Singh Khalra and several other human rights activists and lawyers, who have disappeared while trying to expose the truth, were also lost.

Today, the survivors and the families of the disappeared in Punjab have been, since 1997, engaged in a life-exhausting and fruitless pursuit of accountability and justice in this matter before the NHRC. The critical issue of the mass cremations of the disappeared in the Amritsar district of Punjab (2098 cremations) is pending before the NHRC for adjudication on the critical issue of what constitutes (quantity and quality) reparation. Interestingly, the discourse takes place while even due acknowledgement of the crimes is challenged.

 What has so far remained a futile struggle for acknowledgement, justice and accountability has been tirelessly documented in a recent publication, Reduced to Ashes.7  It is a story that reveals the contradictions between the constitutional law, as a conceptual framework, and the rule of law as the emanation of power, a pragmatic enterprise run by the Political Establishment whose realities are as banally brutal as noble are its constitutional professions.

In the interim report of the Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab (CCDP) published in July 1999, and its summary later published by SAFHR as a paper in 2002, the author, Ram Narayan Kumar, discusses the suicidal bereavement of Ajayab Singh, a fifty-five year old sarpanch of a village in Amritsar district who took poison and died inside the Golden Temple on July 7, 1997, after writing an “epistle in black ink” to explain his reasons. His eldest son, Kulwinder Singh, a public servant associated with village administration, had disappeared after having been taken into police custody at a check-post across Amritsar’s railway station on December 20, 1991. The life-exhausting and fruitless pursuit of accountability and justice, which lasted more than five-and-a-half years, finally broke Ajayab Singh’s spirits. His thirty-five year old married son with three young children, disappeared into the jaws of the Punjab police, and Ajayab Singh could not do anything to establish that his son’s life had not been a chimera. The State’s power of denial obliterated this life retrospectively. The constitutional guarantees of human rights and the rule of law seemed to have no meaning. Ajayab Singh’s epistle in black ink said, “self-annihilation is my only way out of a life that leaves no scope for justice.” Ajayab Singh’s is not an isolated example. The CCDP’s survey of 838 incident-reports of enforced disappearances, conducted in the period of one-and-a-half years from November 1997 to May 1999 and published in their July 1999 Interim Report, shows that 222 relatives of the victims died under trauma. In 500 of 838 incidents, the surviving relatives report morbid psychological effects, including clinical insanity. It is in this situation that they have been waging an accountability and impunity struggle before the National Human Rights Commission. Significantly, in this recently published treatise that painstakingly documents the “inner landscapes” of expectations of the victim survivor families, in spite of their experiences of State atrocities, they are not riveted to notions of revenge. They only seek acknowledgement, reparation of wrong to the extent that is legally feasible and the end of impunity.

Reduced to Ashes: The Insurgency and Human Rights in Punjab is the final report of the Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab (CCDP), which focusses on human rights abuses that occurred in the period from 1984 to 1994. It is an attempt to tell the truth about political killings, enforced disappearances, torture, arbitrary arrests and prolonged unlawful detentions that became the stock-in-trade of the anti-insurgency operations in Punjab. It reveals the complex denial by the state agencies and their defenders and the institutional participation in the scheme of impunity. It does not take sides on the political guilt or innocence of the victims, eschews rhetoric and, significantly, stays clear of the quicksand of political solutions. The report, however, lays bare the parallelism of the rhetoric of rights and the reality of extreme human rights abuses that bedevils the Indian democratic paradigm.

Interestingly, the inquiry being conducted by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, in the disappearances and illegal cremations in Punjab, has also floundered deeply. Every attempt to bring justice to the victims, reform the institutions in order to achieve transparency, structural equality and democracy, has been frustrated by powerful persons linked with the previous administration that perpetrated the horrible abuses in the mistaken belief of defending the integrity of the state. Their demand for amnesty has found support in the highest quarters of the Indian government. On August 19, 2001, the union home minister spoke at a function organised by the Hind Samachar group of newspapers at Jalandhar, to announce that the government was “contemplating steps to provide legal protection and relief to the personnel of the security forces facing prosecution for alleged excesses during anti-insurgency operations” in Punjab, Kashmir and the north-eastern provinces of India. According to a report in The Asian Age, the union home minister indicated “some form of general amnesty” and suggested that “forces deployed to combat terrorism anywhere in the country must be given special rights and powers”.

KPS Gill, former director-general of Punjab police, welcomed the move and, according to a story in The Indian Express, repeated his charge that the cases against police officers “were based on concocted evidence by the investigating agencies acting under undue and extra-constitutional pressures”. The home minister’s announcement was hailed also by the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Congress party, which promised to “withdraw all the cases against the innocent cops” if voted to power. The subsequent state assembly elections in Punjab returned the Congress to power, and its government in the state is led by Amrinder Singh, the scion of Patiala royalty who converted the issue of amnesty to police officials into an election pledge. It is in this context and the declared positions on impunity by both the state and the union government that the NHRC will, in the case of the illegal cremations pending before it, have to weigh the evidence of human rights crimes offered in the CCDP report. Only then will it be able to proceed in the matter of abductions leading to illegal cremations by the Punjab police in Amritsar district.

The decade of political violence in Punjab has left behind a large number of victims who are still seeking justice. These people are trapped in a web of fear, rumour and myth. They need to be released from the psychology of victim-hood. The data contained in this report shows troubling levels of impunity within the state and central administration. For example, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), India’s premier investigative agency, failed to seriously and properly investigate the matter of illegal cremations as entrusted to it by the Supreme Court in 1995. At the conclusion of their investigation, the CBI submitted three lists of identified, partially identified and unidentified cremations conducted by the police. These lists reveal several discrepancies. The CBI failed to identify persons it could easily have identified from complaints filed by victim families, interviews with them, police records and press reports; it duplicated records and listed persons who had been cremated by their families, not by the police; and it failed to properly investigate the cremations of additional persons reported as having died in the same encounters and also the cremations of others listed under the same police reports. Thus, it did not go beyond the police records to examine the actual extent of illegal cremations in Amritsar district.

The report also shows how the police regularly and openly flouted legal procedures for arrest and search. The police failed to respond to families’ requests for information regarding the abducted persons; they extorted money from victim families and they travelled outside their jurisdiction to capture people. The volume documents the prevalence of custodial torture and traces the patterns of its use against family members, the police’s destruction, expropriation or damage of property belonging to victim families and the complicity of the judiciary in ensuring impunity for custodial torture and death.

Not surprisingly, the defenders of impunity in Punjab have been vocal against the human rights litigation that seeks accountability and restitution of hideous abuses of power. On June 8, 2001, KPS Gill published an article in The Hindustan Times titled “Man in Uniform Demands Justice”. The article argued that “those who risked their lives in the defence of the State” are being subjected to “a humiliating process of prosecution in a multiplicity of cases that were intentionally and maliciously lodged… as a strategy of vendetta by the front organisations of the defeated terrorist movement”.  Gill asked: “How long will men continue to fight and to die for India if no one in the country speaks for the men in uniform? Can the power of the State survive the erosion of the confidence and authority of those who protect it?”

This rhetoric of morale and the national security is evidence of attempts to thwart the process of accountability. In his foreword to a book titled Human Rights and the Indian Armed Forces, Gill criticised the “systematic adoption of human rights litigation as a weapon against agencies of the State by criminals and by violent groups who themselves reject democracy and seek the overthrow of lawful and elected government”. According to him: “An overwhelming proportion of public interest human rights litigation is today being initiated by front organisations of criminal conglomerates and of virulent underground terrorist movements in a systematic strategy to harass and paralyse security forces and the police.”8

Kashmir
The conflict in Kashmir has left thousands dead. Human rights abuses have continued unabated. The Kashmir conflict not only continues to raise the spectre of war between India and Pakistan, but it also continues to produce serious human rights violations against Kashmiri civilians and those living in Jammu and Ladakh regions: summary executions, rape and torture. Both the Indian military and armed groups commit human rights abuses. There is a systematic pattern of human rights abuses and a regime of impunity that the Indian government has used to eliminate what it views as a security threat by any means necessary.

A humanitarian crisis of sorts exists in Kashmir. Kashmiri civil society seeking to address urgent issues and Kashmiri groups that have eschewed violence but continue to politically campaign for independence, have found an ever-narrowing space to work within. Their situation has rarely been covered by international media, and 13 million Kashmiris are isolated from the world as their society continues to be torn apart by the ravages of the conflict.9

Physicians for Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other international human rights groups began reporting on human rights in Kashmir in the late eighties. A number of reports were published expressing deep concern at human rights abuses committed on all sides, particularly a systematic pattern of human rights abuses and impunity by the Indian government.

But the Indian government has banned international human rights groups like Amnesty International from visiting. Even the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) was banned for a number of years and was only permitted limited access to officially listed prisons and Joint Interrogation centres to ensure the fair and humane treatment of the thousands of imprisoned Kashmiris. ICRC operations in Kashmir are severely curtailed by a very restrictive Memorandum of Understanding with the Indian government which does not permit unfettered access, unannounced visits to detention centres, or access to the “unofficial” prisons and detention centres.


Courtesy: Dar Yasin, AP

Given that international human rights groups have not been permitted to visit Kashmir, the primary responsibility of human rights documentation, research and advocacy has fallen on local Kashmiri actors. It has been a lonely and dangerous endeavour for those who have taken up this important work.  For the most part, Kashmiri society was not adequately prepared to contend with the crisis of human rights issues which has dominated life in Kashmir since the early nineties. Proper human rights work has not been adequately addressed and understood by Kashmiri political groups involved in an independence struggle. At the beginning of the nineties, many Indian human rights organisations visited Kashmir and documented the human rights situation through their reports. Groups from South India, such as the Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberty Council (APCLC), also documented the human rights situation in Kashmir, but these reports were dismissed by the government of India as misleading and intended to “demoralise” the army.

Within Kashmir, the Kashmir Bar Association and the Jammu Bar Association also did some documentation but this did not meet professional standards. One organisation that documented the human rights violations in Kashmir over the past decade was the Institute of Kashmir Studies (IKS). Founded in 1992, the IKS brought out 40 publications and studies on human rights within Jammu and Kashmir. However, since many IKS office-bearers were affiliated with a right-wing political party, independent observers have questioned the reports of the IKS as it was accused of politicising human rights issues. After the detention of its chairman in November 2002 under the Public Safety Act, the president of Jamaat-e-Islami took over the responsibility of IKS. Soon after the detention of its chairman, the president of Jamaat suspended the activities of IKS. Thus, political forces interfered in the human rights work of the IKS, while the credibility of the well-researched IKS reports were impacted by perceived involvement of the very same.

Today, the Public Commission on Human Rights (PCHR), an independent organisation of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (CCS), is documenting the human rights situation on a monthly basis. Besides an Informative Missive called the Kashmiri Women’s Initiative for Peace and Disarmament (KWIPD), a constituent of CCS, through its quarterly magazine “Voices Unheard”, documents and disseminates information on violations against women and children.

Thousands of people have been the victims of enforced disappearances by the government. Another CCS member, the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), has brought together hundreds of Kashmiri families whose members have been the victims of Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (EID) by the Indian government. The APDP is a collective campaigning organisation that seeks truth and justice on this severe human rights issue in Kashmir. Recently, in April 2003, APDP organised a world wide hunger strike coordinated in different cities across the world, pressing for an end to disappearances, prosecution of perpetrators, and appointment of a commission to probe into all enforced disappearances. Despite wide participation, this protest went unreported in the mainstream Indian media.

Many eminent human rights defenders have lost their lives while espousing the cause of human rights in Jammu and Kashmir. After the assassination of human rights activists HN Wanchoo, Dr. Ashai and Dr. Guroo, things became especially difficult for human rights defenders. Many who had joined the human rights efforts in the early nineties disassociated themselves from the campaign feeling intimidation from the Indian State and militant groups. In many ways, the local human rights movement was neutralised after the assassination of Jaleel Andrabi on March 23, 1996, with the alleged involvement of Indian counter-insurgency squads. It was at that time that Washington based Asia Watch (of Human Rights Watch), a world wide human rights organisation, described Kashmir as the most dangerous place in the world for human rights defenders.

Impunity is granted to the security forces under Section 6 of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) which reads as: no prosecution, suit or other legal proceedings shall be instituted except with the prior sanction of (the) centre, against any person in respect of anything done or purported to be done in exercise of the powers conferred by this Act. There are innumerable cases in which army officials have carried out liquidations and assassinations of non-combatant Kashmiris, but no action has been taken against them. This has occurred notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s directive that, while deciding the legal validity of the AFSPA, complaints against armed forces must be investigated.

Political impunity sustains itself on an institutionalised lie. When it comes to political assassinations, the perpetrators are convinced they have better served their country by torturing, killing, or making the enemy disappear, and all this convinces them that they are unaccountable and have license to do anything in the name of patriotism and the “territorial integrity of India.”  

The whole system of human rights violations functions on the basis of impunity, of which legal impunity is one facet. Another facet is political impunity, which sustains itself on an institutionalised lie. When it comes to political assassinations, the perpetrators are convinced they have better served their country by torturing, killing, or making the enemy disappear, and all this convinces them that they are unaccountable and have license to do anything in the name of patriotism and the “territorial integrity of India.”   

The very concept of impunity under international human rights and humanitarian law is encapsulated in the UN Principles on Protection and Promotion of Human Rights Through Action to Combat Impunity, 1997. This set of principles voices the victims’ right to the truth, to have knowledge of the atrocities, and to remember the crimes. They also enumerate in some detail the need and functioning of Public Commissions to examine such mass crimes and to protect witnesses and their testimonies. Most significantly, they articulate the right to justice for the victims. Principle 19; Safeguards Against the Use of Reconciliation or Forgiveness to Further Impunity, states that “There can be no just and lasting reconciliation without an effective response to the need for justice; an important element in reconciliation is forgiveness, a private act which implies that the victim knows the perpetrator of the violations and that the latter has been able to show repentance.” Principle 20; Duties of States with Regard to the Administration of Justice, succinctly sums up the concept of Impunity under International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law. “Impunity is a failure of States to meet their obligations to investigate violations, take appropriate measures in respect of the perpetrators, particularly in the area of justice, to ensure that they are prosecuted, tried and duly punished, to provide the victims with effective remedies and reparation for the injuries suffered, and to take steps to prevent any recurrence of such violations. ”

Tragically, the Indian State has near-institutionalised impunity when it comes to the committal of mass crimes.
Note: The struggle for justice for victims of the Gujarat 2002 carnage and the attendant impunity was widely covered by us in last month’s cover—Godhra Re-visited and The Long Road to Justice. Hence this month’s cover concentrates more on the two other regions that were subject matter of the conference. 

(This report captures most of the issues raised at a recent conference held at the Harvard School of Public Health on Human Rights and Impunity – Towards Accountability in India. It relies heavily on the background papers presented by three regional activists – Ram Narayan Kumar on Punjab, Pervez Imroz on Kashmir and Teesta Setalvad on Gujarat. Justice JS Verma, former chairperson of the NHRC was the keynote speaker at this conference jointly sponsored by the Harvard School of Public Health (FXB Centre for Health and Human Rights), Harvard Committee on Human Rights, Harvard Law School, MIT Programme on Human Rights and Justice. The conference was organised after initiatives taken by Indian professionals living in Boston and Cambridge).

Footnotes
 1 E/CN. 4/1996/38, Commission on Human Rights, Fifty-second session, Report of the Working Group on Enforced on Involuntary Disappearances, paras 236-240; E/CN. 4/1997/34, para 181—from Background Materials by Ram Narayan Kumar for the Conference
 2 Ibid, paras. 31, 184, 249, 251
 3 /CN. 4/1998/38, 24 December 1997, Observations
 4 E/CN. 4/1998/38, 24 December 1997
 5 E/CN. 4/1997/60, December 24 1966, Report by the Special Rapporteur, Bacre Waly Ndiaye, Para. 96; 228
 6 www.webpage.com/hindu/960831/22/2520a.html – ; CCPR/C/76/Add.6 17 June 1996, para 4-14, 18-19, 50    
 7 Reduced to Ashes: The Insurgency and Human Rights in Punjab published by SAFHR in 2003
 8 Air Commodore Ran Vir Kumar & Group Captain B. P. Sharma, Human Rights and the Indian Armed Forces: A Source Book, Sterling Publishers, New Delhi, 1998, pp. xiv – xv
 9 Background Materials authored by Pervez Imroz, Srinagar for the conference

Godhra revisited

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The burning alive of 59 passengers in coach S-6 of the Sabarmati Express in Godhra on February 27, 2002 was used to justify genocidal violence against Gujarat’s Muslims. Now, 19 months later, families of the victims of the gruesome tragedy in Godhra complain that they, too, were taken for a nasty ride by the very leaders who pretended to be their saviours
 

It was on Dussera day, October 5, 2003, that four families who had lost their wives and mothers in the mass burning inside coach S-6 of the Sabarmati Express at Godhra on February 27 last year, made their pilgrimage for justice to Mumbai. Addressing a packed press conference in the metropolis the same evening, they told the country of the cynical way in which they had been made unwitting pawns in the politics of hatred. (On being approached by family members of the Godhra victims, the Mumbai-based Citizens for Justice and Peace had promised legal help to them, just as it had earlier extended support to Zahira Shaikh and her family in the Best Bakery massacre case).
 

Suddenly, the images of the charred and burnt bodies of the passengers in that hapless coach, images that have been played and re-played over the past 19 months, became real and approachable once again, as grief-stricken and broken families spoke out bravely against their political manipulation. Their determination to risk the wrath of the political masters in Gujarat, to take such a stand even while they would continue to live in Ahmedabad, above all, to petition the Supreme Court of India for a transfer of the Godhra trial along with the retrial/trial of the Best Bakery and other key cases outside the state is itself a measure of the strength of their convictions.
 

Their demand for a trial of the Godhra case also outside the state became stronger after some of them had been physically prevented from giving an honest testimony before the Nanavati-Shah Commission on September 18-19. Before their travel to Mumbai, local members of the VHP had tried to threaten and cajole them against their decision to seek the CJP’s help. But they were determined to come. And courageous too.
 

Through the mass media, they also appealed for an immediate end to yatra politics, cautioned their country men and women against being drawn to such programmes and demanded an inquiry into the collection of huge funds in the name of the Godhra victims by the sangh combine.
 

Dr. Girishbhai Rawal, 82-years-old, is a singularly brave man. Sudhabehn (76), his wife died a horrible death in Godhra, by burning and asphyxiation. "When you are young, there is romance and desire," he told me, "but when you reach our age there is something more precious. There is harmony and sharing. I have lost the harmony of my existence," he said, as tears rolled down his weathered cheeks for the first time.
 

Girishbhai faced a second tragedy soon after losing his precious Sudhabehn. On April 16, 2002, he lost his 42 year old son Ashwinbhai Rawal. Ashwinbhai, the local Bajrang Dal chief, was stabbed to death in a communal killing in Ramol. Repeated appeals by local residents to the state and city police to put up an effective police chowkey in the area had gone unheeded.
 

Before her tragic death, Sudhabehn was associated with the Khoja Council of the Aga Khan Foundation, working with children of all faiths. Neither she, nor her husband, nor her 18-year-old grand-daughter, Khushboo, nor her widowed daughter-in-law, Belabehn, ever shared the hatred and venom that the VHP-BJP-RSS-BD brand of politics espouses.
 

Khushboo brought tears to many eyes during the press meet in Mumbai when she said without a trace of artifice, "My father was drawn to the politics of Hindutva. But none of the rest of our family is enamoured of it. The building of the Ram temple is not as important as communal harmony and peace. The coming yatra must be stopped. People must realise that there is only death, destruction and violence after such activities."
 

Dr Rawal, in his cogent and articulate affidavit filed in the Supreme Court of India, has clearly stated that the failure of the VHP-BJP to bring back the yatris safely had to do with the intemperate and abusive behaviour of the kar sevaks on their way to, and while returning from, Faizabad-Ayodhya. He has also clearly stated that under the current regime in Gujarat, the chances of free and fair investigation and trial are remote; unless the trials are shifted outside of Gujarat, justice will not be done.
 

No honest inquiry into the tragedy is taking place, the reports of forensic experts who have stated that 60 litres of inflammable liquid simply could not have been flung from outside into the compartment given the topography of the area, are being buried and denied, the affidavit has said. "We have been used; Godhra has been used to justify violence against our own people in every nook and corner. Is this Hinduism? It is not. I feel ashamed."


From Left to Right: Bharatbhai Panchal with daughter Shefali in front; Belabehn Rawal, Dr. Girishbhai Rawal; Khushboo Rawal with Prakashbhai Chodagar behind; Sharadbhai Mhatre. In front row, Dhawal and Harsh

The families of Dr Girishbhai Rawal, Sharadbhai Mhatre, Bharatbhai Panchal and Prakashbhai Chodagar all lived in Janata Nagar, Ramol, a communally sensitive area of Ahmedabad city. Each family has lost a female member.
 

Sudhabehn, Malabehn, Jyotibehn and Nilimabehn (Amibehn) were religious-minded, mutual friends. None was a member of the VHP-BD or the BJP. They had simply been attending the VHP-organised satsanghs every Saturday in their housing society and who felt that the VHP’s plan to take people to Ayodhya offered them the chance of a free religious pilgrimage; that too in each other’s company. Neetabehn Panchal, a leader of the Durga Vahini, was instrumental in enthusing them for the yatra from which they never returned. In all, 10 women from Janata Nagar died in the mass arson.
 

Sharadbhai had been reluctant to let his wife undertake the journey to Ayodhya. But with a chance to make a religious pilgrimage, that too with close friends like Jyotibehn and Amibehn, she was adamant. He now has two children to raise without a mother.
 

"We realise now how we and others have been made pawns in the VHP and BJP game. They say things, use abusive and offensive language. This upsets the tranquillity of local areas and people get fooled and drawn to this. I have plied rickshaws for a living for years but never thought about the religion of my passengers. They say such things to trap people into joining them. That is all," says an angry Bharatbhai, who now faces the task of bringing up 16-year-old Shefali and his younger son, Dhawal, all alone. Bharatbhai is suspicious about why none of the leaders of the BJP and VHP, who had encouraged innocent believers to make the yatra and accompanied them, suffered any injury on that fateful day.
 

"For years, Hindu and Muslim children, as also little ones of other faiths, have always been ferried by us in our rickshaws to and from school. This was true about Ahmedabad and the rest of Gujarat. But today’s Gujarat is no longer the Gujarat we had known and lived in. Never before has Gujarat been so demeaned as by this regime. There is distance and hatred everywhere. Is this the way to treat our own people? Cutting up people, burning and killing them? As Gujaratis, how can we be proud of what happened to young girls and women in Gulberg society, in Naroda Pattiya?" These are the words of Prakashbhai, simple and reticent, but clear and firm in his convictions.
 

The clear-cut prayers of these families in their appeals to the Supreme Court are:

  • A ban on future Ayodhya yatras, especially the one planned from October 15, 2003. (The appeal was filed before that date);
  • Adequate reparation and compensation – material, psychological and physical – to all victims of the Godhra and post-Godhra violence, from the VHP, BJP, Gujarat government and railway ministry, irrespective of caste, creed and community and with total impartiality;
  • Investigation into the source of funds and their utilisation by the VHP and the BJP received in the name of the Godhra victims;
  • The immediate transfer of the Godhra inquiry, as also inquiries into the Naroda Pattiya, Gulberg and other major massacres, outside Gujarat and conducted in the immediate vicinity of the Supreme Court.

For over five-six months before the press conference in Mumbai, I, as a CJP representative, had met members of the aggrieved families to share their pain and sorrow. In the process, I developed an understanding of how simple and religious-minded Hindus were mobilized and how thereafter the tragedy itself and the trauma of the families of the deceased was cynically manipulated by the VHP-BJP-BD-RSS combine to justify the ‘retaliatory’ carnage that was orchestrated in Gujarat last year.
 

Listening to each one of them accounts reveals a tale of the cynical manipulation of basically good and honest people for a sinister political scheme that feeds on their individual loss, pain and suffering to conjure up an imagery of the perpetual victim (Hindu) of (Muslim) violence. The testimonies of the aggrieved families of the Godhra burning, contrast sharply with the utterances of saffron leaders on Godhra. There was pain, grief and sorrow in their accounts over the deaths of their near and dear ones. But there was no trace of hatred, no suggestion of ‘revenge’ against the entire community of Muslims. In fact they were categorical that the torching of the train at Godhra was the work of anti-socials who must be caught and severely punished but for which all Muslims must not be blamed.

This in sharp contrast to what VHP leader Togadia said in an interview to the Gujarati weekly, Hotline on March 2: "This has never happened in the history of independent India. Hindu society will avenge the Godhra killings. Muslims should accept the fact that Hindus are not wearing bangles. We will respond vigorously to all such incidents". It even stands in sharp contrast to Vajpayee’s speech in Goa in April: "Wherever there are Muslims, they do not want to live with others (who practise different faiths). Instead of living peacefully, they want to preach and propagate their religion by creating fear and terror in the minds of others.’’

The tragedy took place between 8 and 8.20 a.m. on February 27. The official version until 7 p.m. that day called the tragedy an "accident". In his official statement on the incident in Parliament at 2 p.m., Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee also described the tragedy as an accident. The collector of Panchmahal district, Ms Jayanti Ravi had maintained the same view throughout the day.

It was only after 7 p.m. that evening that Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi, began looking at the ‘ISI-conspiracy in Godhra’ theory. This was all that was needed to launch what was obviously a carefully orchestrated genocide in at least 16 of the 24 districts of the state. Thereafter, the image of the burnt S-6 coach and the bodies within were used and reused for mass mobilization, especially to harvest votes in the Gujarat state elections.

The way the Godhra inquiry is being conducted is in itself reason for the apex court to intervene and examine events. Dozens of people are arrested under POTA which was not even in force on the day of the tragedy. The Act, notified for Gujarat only the day after the tragedy, cannot be invoked against the Godhra accused.

Blatantly illegal methods of detention and injection of serum for questioning have been used by the authorities investigating the Godhra incident. Instead of keeping aloof from the investigation, the prosecution (the state of Gujarat) appears to be dictating the conduct of investigations (see accompanying story).

The family members of the Godhra victims are today openly challenging the calculated manipulation of the death of their near and dear ones to justify the massacre of a few thousand innocents. Their voices force us to re-visit Godhra and reflect on the tragedy that not only took 59 innocent lives, but was also used to butcher another 2,500 innocents. In the seemingly pointless cycles of violence and counter-violence that threaten peace today, voices such as these, if heeded, may help us reverse this cycle. For that to happen, however, enough of us have to be listening. 

Archived from Communalism Combat, October 2003. Year 10, No. 92, Cover Story 1
 

The Long road to justice

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The interventions of the Supreme Court in the Best Bakery case so far have rejuvenated faith in the institutions of Indian democracy. But reparations for the genocide in Gujarat, punishment of the perpetrators and masterminds of mass violence and the putting in place of institutional safeguards against future crimes against humanity are not yet in sight
 

Nearly 19 months after the genocidal violence that rocked the western Indian state of Gujarat, searing questions that the tragedies have raised related to justice and rehabilitation remain completely unanswered. Issues of state accountability in instances of mass violence, independent policing, adequate reparation and the response of democratic institutions such as the judiciary to such crimes hang suspended in mid-air, as the proverbial shortness of public memory hampers the best efforts to keep some of these issues alive.
 

What happened after Gujarat 2002? The voluminous report of a Concerned Citizens Tribunal comprising of senior jurists and other prominent citizens recommended, among other things, the establishment of a Statutory National Crimes Tribunal that must evolve a new jurisprudence drawn from the International Law on genocide.1  It also argued for urgent reforms in the Indian police force. Drastic reforms in the Indian police system that included independence of the law and order machinery, and ensured representation and diversity had also been recommended as far back as 1981 by the officially-appointed National Police Commission.2 
 

Today, judicial matters related to the genocidal violence in Gujarat have been brought centre-stage through two pivotal cases currently being heard in the Supreme Court. The fact that this has happened at all is due in large measure to the initiatives taken by the statutory National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) since the justice process in the state was systematically de-railed.3  This has been backed by a gritty Mumbai-based citizens group, Citizens for Justice and Peace, that has set for itself the task of continuing the struggle for justice and reparation for the victim survivors, however tough or tortuous this effort may be.
 

Efforts are alive through these judicial interventions to move the criminal trials of the worst carnages outside the state of Gujarat.4  The argument for turning over both the investigation and conduct of the criminal inquiries to an area outside the control of chief minister Narendra Modi and the state administration under him has been made since the start of the carnage last year, both by the NHRC (April 2002), as also through several public interest litigations filed in the Supreme Court in April 2002 itself.5  If these had been heard judiciously and promptly by the apex court when it was first approached last year, concerns related to the utterly subverted and paralysed local atmosphere in the state of Gujarat would have been met and more promptly answered.
 

Unfortunately, the judicial record in dealing with such mass community-driven carnages remains pathetic. Sikh widow survivors of the 1984 pogrom against their community in the country’s capital following the assassination of former prime minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards continue the battle in vain for justice that evades them even 19 years later6 .
 

Similarly, Muslim family members of the 53 young males shot dead in cold blood in Meerut-Hashimpura, a town in western Uttar Pradesh, in 1989 still hope that justice will be done7 .
 

The recent conviction of Dara Singh and associates for the burning alive of Christian pastor Graham Staines and his two sons in January 1999 in Orissa is a rare case of a sessions court punishing those guilty of communally driven crimes.
 

Most pertinently, the attempts of these and many more such survivors to see justice done decades after the crime are living testimonies to the fact that human beings need to believe and find justice for unspeakable crimes before peace and reconciliation can be brought about. A failure to respond to this cry for justice renders a system vulnerable; torn from within by festering wounds and hurts that do not heal but in fact create their attendant aberrations. This is the unfortunate reality in India today.
 

The sensation created by young Zahira Shaikh’s brave admissions at a press conference in Mumbai (July 7, 2003) recounting the threats, intimidation and manipulation that she and her family was subjected to and that resulted in the witnesses lying in court and the acquittal of all the accused, propelled the NHRC into appealing to the Supreme Court of India for a retrial of the Best Bakery case outside Gujarat. This was a rare step taken by the NHRC. (see CC, July 2003).
 

Though fact-finding reports and media exposures had dealt with political manipulation by the Modi government in its dealings with the police and the appointment of pliant public prosecutors, it was only after the Best Bakery issue brought matters centre-stage that their conduct has begun to be closely scrutinised.
 

In another related matter taken up by the NHRC, Bilkees Yakoob Rasool, a victim of sexual violence, was given special legal assistance when the NHRC referred her case to prominent lawyer Harish Salve. Here, too, the SC issued notice to the Gujarat government, pulling up the state police for improper investigations. This is one of the rare cases of an FIR being registered in the matter of sexual assault and violence in Gujarat. Over 150 such cases have been reported but these crimes do not even figure in police records.
 

Not merely that. Nine other ongoing investigations and trials, including the Godhra investigation, are also marked by similar threats and intimidation of witnesses and subversion of evidence. In the Ode (Anand district) trial where over 23 persons were massacred, key eye-witnesses have not been examined.

The Best Bakery case apart, in the nine other major carnages where the judicial process is still on, the subversive manner of investigation and the continuing threats and intimidation of witnesses bode ill for the process of justice. 
 

In the Gulberg society massacre, it was only after the outrage generated by the Best Bakery case that the repeated complaints of eye-witnesses about threats and intimidation by the Ahmedabad city crime branch have been taken seriously.8 

Since November 2002, witnesses in the Gulberg case have been petitioning and making written applications for proper investigations, also complaining that proper statements have not been recorded. There is no response from the authorities and the matter keeps getting adjourned.
 

In short, the Best Bakery case apart, in the nine other major carnages where the judicial process is still on, the subversive manner of investigation and the continuing threats and intimidation of witnesses bode ill for the process of justice.9  These issues were comprehensively brought up before the apex court during the last hearing on October 17, 2003 and the Gujarat government has finally been forced to respond to them substantially.
 

Despite being severely exposed in the public eye in the Best Bakery incident, the Gujarat government waited until after the NHRC had moved the Supreme Court of India (August 1, 2003) before it filed an appeal against the acquittals in the sessions court in Vadodara (August 7, 2003). In between, on August 5, 2003, the Gujarat Bar Association passed a unanimous requisition against the NHRC’s moving the SC and demanded that the former withdraw its special leave petition! The frivolous nature of the appeal that did not even make the prayer for a re-trial led Chief Justice VN Khare to pass severe oral strictures against the government on September 12. Clearly this appeal in the High Court was being used as a tactical ploy to limit the SC’s interventions. During the hearing on October 9, the SC appointed senior counsel and former solicitor general of India, Harish Salve, as amicus curae (friend of the court) to assist the court on the points that had arisen.
 

During this ongoing battle two affidavits were filed by the Teesta Setalvad of the CJP. The astounding facts contained in them made Salve point these out to the court on October 17. While one related to the highly suspect nature of the ongoing investigations in nine major massacres, the other related to three major carnages in which acquittals had taken place in October 2002 and yet the state of Gujarat had not even appealed against these judgements.
 

In what were clearly three of the worst carnages—87 persons were burnt alive in the Limadiya Chowkey, Kidiad, incident, while over 70 persons were butchered and burned in two separate carnages in Pandharwada village, Panchmahal district—the Gujarat government effectively ensured acquittals of all the accused, through the appointment of public prosecutors with questionable political backgrounds and wilfully negligent investigations.
 

In all three instances, senior and elected functionaries of the BJP are indicted as accused. (In the Kidiad incident, the elected BJP MLA, Kalubhai Hirabhai Maliwad has been named as the main mastermind of the massacre).10  The malafide intent of the state can be gauged from the fact that no appeals have been filed by the Gujarat government for over a year.
 

The conduct, or misconduct, of the Gujarat government has been brought centre-stage before the Supreme Court, through the NHRC’s writ petition and transfer petition, and the special leave petition and impleadment applications filed by the CJP. It is to be hoped that when the apex court begins to deal with the issues raised in these and related matters, a comprehensive look and intervention of the consequences of the state-wide genocide becomes possible.
 

Without this, the struggle for justice to the victim-survivors of the Gujarat genocide remains narrowed down today. The weight of the system being battled against places the painful choice before the petitioners of picking and choosing the cases even in their struggle for justice. With the magnitude of what happened in Gujarat receding from public memory; the legal battles being waged today are constrained to be limited to getting justice for only those victim-survivors of the carnage where over a dozen persons were butchered and slaughtered.
 

What of the individual innocent victims, such as minors who were shot dead by an unaccountable police? What of the girls and women who were killed after brutal sexual violence? What about those who somehow survived and are now forced to live in the same villages where the crimes were committed?11 

Courtesy: indiatoday.in
 

What of the 10,000-odd homes that were destroyed so thoroughly that the pathetic Rs 5,000–Rs 40,000 paid in compensation – that too, only to a fortunate few – is barely enough to pick up the threads and start living again? What about the reparation for the businesses destroyed and the agricultural lands seized? Despite the fact that the Prime Minister had announced Rs 150 crore in central aid for victim survivors, the Gujarat government remains adamant in not even disbursing the available, though highly insufficient funds.12 
 

No less than 1,16,000 persons were internal refugees, thrown out of home and hearth, living in relief camps for over seven months last year. During this period, the Gujarat government refused to give them food, water and medicines despite their constitutional obligation to bear the cost of this internal displacement. Here again, it took legal interventions in the Gujarat High Court before the government was forced to act. Two writ petitions were supported by CJP, which included flying down a senior lawyer from Mumbai since the atmosphere was so communally surcharged in the state that few wanted to appear in defence of victims from the minority community!13  As a result of this legal intervention, at least Rs 10 crore had to be paid out from the State government coffers to the relief camp organisers.
 

It was the incident of the mass burning of 58 passengers on board the S-6 coach of the Sabarmati Express, returning from the temple town of Ayodhya, which was used to justify the mass crimes committed in the state-wide carnage that claimed no less than 2,500 lives and economically and culturally crippled the Muslim minority. (The economic loss to the community was estimated at no less than Rs 4,000 crore and this did not include irreparable damage to or loss of homes and agricultural lands that have been usurped after Muslims fled the villages where they were a small minority).
 

The reason that the well-tested term genocide was used by us14  and later the Concerned Citizens Tribunal to sum up what happened in Gujarat was because these and other jurisprudentially tested criteria for genocide were evident in the crimes against humanity in Gujarat. No less than 200-300 Muslim women were subjected to brutal sexual violence and no less that 270 mosques and durgahs (religious and religio-cultural shrines) were desecrated and then destroyed.
 

The calculated and state-sponsored attempt to ravage the dignity of a community was evident. Article 2 c) of the UN convention on genocide specifies – "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part." Therefore, the fact that every single Muslim was not forced to flee for threat of slaughter (sic) is no defence against the genocide charge, as attempted both by the Gujarat chief minister and his close supporters among the top echelons of the BJP leadership in New Delhi that leads the National Democratic Alliance government.
 

Hate speech and hate writing not merely preceded the carnage but actually made the carnage possible. The violence in Gujarat in 2002 was preceded for some months by the systematic distribution of poisonous material, some anonymous, that systematically spewed hatred and venom against the Muslim minority in the state. Even during the orgy of violence, thousands of these pamphlets could be found. Some advocating systematic economic boycott of Muslims even carried the address of an office of the VHP15 . Others that were even more graphic and vicious advocated mutilation and rape.16 

The issue of hate speech and its intent, and the non-prosecution of offenders, is the subject matter of one of the writ petitions filed in the apex court. Speeches made by Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi and the VHP’s working president, Ashok Singhal, were brought to the attention of the court. As is only to be expected, no FIRs have been registered or investigations launched against either of the two personalities. The attitude of our authorities and democratic institutions to the abuse of freedom and perpetration of hate speech has become pivotal in the struggle for a peaceful and sane polity.17 
 

Many of these issues will remain alive as the battle continues in the Supreme Court for justice. The petitioners will try their best to ensure that various aspects of the state-sponsored genocide get addressed by the Supreme Court of India. Many hopes have been raised by the proceedings so far. It is to be hoped that the institutions of democratic India will live up to them.

Refrences

 1 Crimes Against Humanity, Volume II, Long Term Recommendations – Concerned Citizens Tribunal Report; Tribunal headed by Justice VR Krishna Iyer and with members like Justice PB Sawant, Justice Hosbet Suresh, KG Kannabiran, KS Subramaniam, Aruna Roy, Tanika Sarkar, and Ghanshyam Shah.

 2 Ibid; section on Recommendations—Police

 3 NHRC Report and Recommendations during and after last year’s carnage in Gujarat proved particularly embarrassing for the State

 4 Plea in the SLP filed by the NHRC, dated August 1, 2003 and the SLP(Criminal) filed by CJP, Teesta Setalvad and Zahira Shaikh dated August 8, 2003 in the Supreme Court of India

 5 Two petitions filed by DN Pathak and others and Mallika Sarabhai and others prayed for the transfer of key cases to the CBI and Investigations in these through this Independent agency

 6 Darpan Kaur, a Sikh widow who lost 12 family members and even filed a First Information Report with the police against former Congress minister HKL Bhagat was first offered a bribe of Rs 25 lakhs and when she refused, was even beaten brutally. She has refused to give in.

 7 The FIR in this crime was filed by a police officer of the rank of SP in his own name, Vibhuti Narain Rai who today is the IG of Uttar Pradesh

 8 Affidavits filed by witnesses in the Supreme Court give details of this

 9 Second affidavit filed in the SC by Teesta Setalvad on October 17, 2003 enlists the details

 10 Teesta Setalvad’s affidavit, as Secretary CJP, in the Supreme Court of India which was mentioned by amicus curae, Harish Salve and to which the Gujarat government have been directed to file a reply by October 31, 2003

 11 CCT, Volume II, Short Term Recommendations of Reparation, Relief and Rehabilitation

 12 A pending PIL filed by Vijay Tendulkar of the CJP demands an account of the fund disbursal and the establishment of a joint committee to monitor funds and their distribution. This is still pending.

 13 Aspi Chinoy along with Suhel Tirmizi argued the matter for over five hours before the Judge actually appointed a committee and thereafter passed orders that made the state government liable to make good the damages to the organisers of relief camps.

 14 Communalism Combat’s special issue was entitled Gujarat genocide 2002, March-April 2002

 15 Pamphlet Poison, Gujarat Genocide 2002, Communalism Combat March-April 2002

 16 Ibid

 17 The criminal writ petition against Narendra Modi and Ashok Singhal has been filed by Alyque Padamsee, Valjibhai Patel, BG Verghese and Teesta Setalvad and is still pending.

Archived from Communalism Combat, October 2003. Year 10, No. 92, Cover Story 2
 

Godhra: Who’s afraid of facing facts?

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Shubradeep Chakrovarty
 
Why is the VHP so disturbed by my film Godhra Tak—The Terror Trail? asks independent film-maker Shubradeep Chakrovarty, who had to face saffron wrath when he organised a press screening of his film in Ahmedabad recently.

"There is no previous video documentation of the trail of terror, of the behaviour of the kar sevaks to and from Faizabad. In this documentary, I tried to follow the entire route of the first batch of kar sevaks from Gujarat to Ayodhya and back. We documented the terror unleashed by them en route and also the incidents at Godhra railway station on February 27, 2002.
 

"In fact, one of the kar sevaks, Maheshbhai Jayantilal Shah, admits on camera that kar sevaks misbehaved at Rudauli and that their subsequent behaviour at Godhra was provocative. Maheshbhai is not any kar sevak. His name is in the list of witnesses produced by the prosecution and therefore he cannot be disowned. The kar sevaks’ misconduct is all documented in the video format, including the stabbings by kar sevaks at Vadodara after the Godhra tragedy. Visual documentation cannot be denied, it has its own power and reach and this is what disturbs the VHP.
 

"The Godhra incident itself has been scientifically de-constructed in the film. Dr VN Sehgal, who was professionally engaged by me to investigate the topography, build-up, scientific details of the Godhra incident, is a top-rate professional. He is former director, Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Delhi and a member of Interpol. In the film, I explored with him the merits of the conspiracy theory given by the prosecution and VHP alike.
 

"Dr Sehgal demonstrates in elaborate detail how it was physically impossible for 60 litres of inflammable liquid, necessary for a fire of this intensity, to have been flung by the crowd of Muslims gathered around Signal Falia where the train had stopped. (Incidentally, the Ahmedabad-based Forensic Science Laboratory had also reached a similar conclusion earlier). He also explains that the nature of the fire suggested that it was caused by petrol and that this petrol was stored between seats 46 and 72 of the compartment since that portion of the compartment floor is badly gutted. Why petrol was being transported at all is a question that remains unanswered".
 

Incidentally, the one-hour film also has interviews with Praveen Togadia, (international general secretary, VHP), Vinay Katiyar (BJP president, UP) and Dr. Jaydeep Patel (general secretary, VHP Gujarat) and kar sevaks.
 

After completing the film, Chakrovarty held private screenings in Delhi and also at the recent South Asia Film Festival in Kathmandu. On October 20, 2003 a similar private screening, planned at Hotel Nalanda on Ellis Bridge, Ahmedabad was prevented after the hotel owners received threats from the VHP. The venue was then shifted to Khet Bhavan where a group of 10 VHP activists also sat through the screening. But immediately thereafter, led by a VHP activist who is a doctor by profession, they abused and threatened the film-maker. The film-makers ordeal continued for over half-an-hour in front of the press. He was then forcibly made to speak to a senior VHP leader in Ahmedabad who fortunately asked that Chakrovarty be allowed to go. But over the next days attempts were made through various channels in Ahmedabad to seize the tapes and CDs of the film. Chakrovarty had to escape to Mumbai where Communalism Combat organised a press screening of his film on October 23, 2003.
 

Interestingly, thousands of cassettes depicting the sangh parivar’s version of the truth behind Godhra have been shown around in Gujarat and across the country to justify the post-Godhra violence. They were also used to garner electoral support in the Assembly polls in Gujarat last year. These cassettes not only depict unsubstantiated versions but also generate ill-will between communities. But in no part of the country have they attracted the long-arm of the law.
 

Copies of the film are now available on VHS. Inquiries can be made at shubhradeep@rediffmail.com, or at sabang@vsnl.com

Archived from Communalism Combat, October 2003. Year 10, No. 92, Cover Story 3
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Ahimsa, not arms

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The advertisement issued by the department of information and broadcasting, government of India, on Gandhi Jayanti day is mischievous

The minister of information and broadcasting, government of India issued an advertisement
on 2nd October 2003, in almost all newspapers in which Gandhi was quoted as having said: “I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should in cowardly manner become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonour.”

We were horrified to see the advertisement issued by the government of India on Gandhi Jayanti, quoting Gandhi on the need to take up arms rather than suffer dishonour. The mischievous intent of the advertisement is obvious. Given its preoccupation with reinventing histories to suit its agenda and the discomfort of living with the internationally-famed Gandhian legacy of non-violence, it is no surprise that the present government should choose a line from Gandhi’s writings, totally removed from its context, to prove that even the great Apostle of Peace endorsed violence in the name of nationalism.

The quote used in the advertisement is a line from Gandhi’s article in Young India dated August 11, 1920, titled, ‘The Doctrine of the Sword’. The article was written by Gandhi in the wake of countrywide violence following the passing of the Rowlatt Bills and the Jallianwalla Baug massacre in 1919, and centred on the call for non-cooperation from August 1, 1920. It sought to explain his concept of non-violent non-cooperation, and the spirit of non-violence itself. The article, unlike its misrepresentation by the line used in the advertisement, is devoted to the real possibility of non-violence as a political strategy, and its moral significance.

The opening sentence of the article reads: “In this age of the rule of brute force, it is almost impossible for anyone to believe that anyone else could possibly reject the law of the final supremacy of brute force.” Gandhi goes on to explain how violence can be resorted to where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence. However, the real intent of the article is made clear in the sections following the line quoted in the advertisement issued by the government on Gandhi Jayanti: “But I believe that non-violence is infinitely superior to violence.”

Gandhi goes on to explain how violence is resorted to by the helpless, whereas the people of India should not see themselves as being helpless. The advertisement could just as well have quoted his other famous lines in this article: “I am not a visionary. I claim to be a practical idealist. The religion of non-violence is not meant merely for the rishis and saints. It is meant for the common people as well. Non-violence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute. The spirit lies dormant in the brute and he knows no law but that of physical might. The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher law, to the strength of the spirit; or, I am not pleading for India to practise non-violence because it is weak. I want her to practise non-violence being conscious of her strength and power. No training in arms is required for realisation of her strength. We seem to need it because we seem to think that we are but a lump of flesh. I want India to recognise that she has a soul that cannot perish and that can rise triumphant above every physical weakness and defy the physical combination of (the) whole world.”

Perhaps the most apt quotation that could have been used to honour Gandhi in these conflict-ridden times would have been one of the closing lines from the same article: “India’s acceptance of the doctrine of the sword will be the hour of my trial.” More than 80 years later, this is precisely what is coming about: we seem to be accepting the doctrine of the sword, subverting Gandhi’s ideals to legitimise an agenda of violence. That this is now being done even through an official agency of the government like the department of I & B, is a shame and a tragedy. Gandhi could only have grieved if he were alive today.

(The above statement was issued jointly by human rights activists Rohit Prajapati, Nandini Manjrekar, Anand Mazgaonkar, Johannes Manjrekar, Trupti Shah, Deeptha Achar on October 4, 2003).

Archived from Communalism Combat, October 2003 Year 10   No. 92, Saffronwatch

Ram, Ram’ to VHP now?

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Hindu masses now realise that the sangh parivar’s temple movement is a political movement, not a religious one. Sensing the public mood, even sants and mahants whom the VHP had relied on to gain legitimacy for its agenda are now deserting its bandwagon

To stop the VHP’s ‘Ayodhya March’ and ‘Sankalp Abhiyan’, the UP State Road Transport Corporation suspended its bus service and UP’s chief minister Mulayam Singh appealed to the central government to suspend trains passing through the temple town. Roadblocks were set up in many districts throughout the state and section 144 was imposed on Ayodhya and Faizabad towns. Still, over 35,000 people were arrested for defying the prohibitory orders.

Judging by these criteria, one would have to conclude that even today the VHP is a major force to control, for which the state must combine tact along with the deployment of its coercive machinery. It has a nationwide presence, enjoying the protection of the RSS and the indulgence of the BJP. This is not surprising for the BJP alone reaps the full political benefits accruing from the VHP’s activities. That is why the Prime Minister and the deputy prime minister felt the need to appeal to the UP government to trust the VHP’s assurances of peace.

Why do the PM and the DyPM have such faith in the VHP, specially considering that VHP leaders Ashok Singhal, Praveen Togadia and Giriraj Kishore keep putting them and their government constantly in the dock, criticising and condemning them much of the time? Does their faith in the VHP stem from the latter’s written assurances to the UP government in 1989 to keep their shilanyas programme peaceful and to abide by the court verdict? But do those promises have any meaning today? In 1992, the VHP promised that its proposed kar seva would only be a symbolic one.

But the entire world knows what it actually did in Ayodhya on December 6. Is it not the case that along with leaders of the VHP, even deputy prime minister LK Advani and minister for human resources development Murli Manohar Joshi are among the accused, facing trial for criminal offences?

The PM and the DyPM must also know that in swearing by Ram all the time you destroy the solemnity and seriousness of that pledge. When the BJP formed a government in UP for the first time in 1991, chief minister Kalyan Singh and his entire cabinet had visited the disputed spot in Ayodhya and pledged: “We swear by Ram, this is where we will build the temple.”

Even today, Vajpayee continues to swear that he is a swayamsevak above all else. But now, even VHP leaders accuse the man who has been in the PM’s chair for over six years of being unreliable, a breacher of faith and an opportunist who uses Ram’s name purely for political gain.

Whatever Vajpayee and Advani might say about the VHP, if popular enthusiasm for its public meetings, processions, demonstrations and other such activities are taken as the yardstick, one would be forced to conclude that the popularity of the VHP is on the decline. Arguably, the only purpose of its public shows now is to regain public confidence for its own political ends.

Let’s take a closer look at the recently concluded/aborted ‘Ayodhya March’ and the ‘Sankalp Abhiyan’. In 1992, there were far greater impediments placed in the way of kar sevaks trying to reach Ayodhya. All train and bus services to Ayodhya were suspended, all roads leading to the town were blockaded and the number of those arrested ran into lakhs. Despite all this, over 26,000 made it to Ayodhya. But this time the story was different.

When Ashok Singhal and other kar sevaks were being arrested at Karsevakpuram, not a single sadhu or sant from Ayodhya was to be seen with them, nor could one find even one of their names in the list of those detained. Could it be that the sadhus and sants of Ayodhya have become disenchanted by the VHP? If the print and the electronic media are anything to go by, even those sants and mahants whom the VHP claimed as its own are now issuing anti-VHP statements. Many even categorically asserted that they are now in no doubt about the game the VHP is playing.
This is the sole reason why, despite being present in Ayodhya, the president of the Ramjanmabhoomi Nyas stayed away from the “do or die” action of the VHP. His participation in the next day’s token protest rally was also mere tokenism, for he had already opposed the Bharat Bandh call given by the VHP and had also stated that the kar sevaks, too, were to be blamed for the police lathi-charge on them.

The VHP leadership is unable to explain why the sants who were with their movement earlier have now started deserting it. The basic reason is that people now clearly recognise that the temple movement is not a religious but a political movement. So much so that even some VHP leaders today feel the need to distance themselves from the agitation. People like Mahant Nrityagopal Das and Mahant Avaidyanath criticised the decision to stage a Sankalp Sabha at Karsevakpuram when such programmes had already been conducted in the national and state capitals.

The fact is that terms such as Ram mandir, Ayodhya, kar seva, kar sevaks, Ram bhakt and Ram sevaks have all been coined in recent years with the sole intent of generating mass appeal. The problem is that the VHP is now finding it difficult to regain mass confidence in the authenticity of its agenda. And sensing the public mood, even sants and mahants whom the VHP had relied on to gain legitimacy for its agenda are now deserting its bandwagon.

(The writer is editor of the Hindi daily, Jan Morcha, published from Faizabad).

Archived from Communalism Combat, October 2003 Year 10   No. 92, Ayodhya

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