'Dial M. Modi for Murder'
'Modi: the Butcher of Gujarat'
- The Times of India
The embers of the Godhra aftermath have not been extinguished, yet another
round of killing has begun. Call it a character assassination -- for nothing
less
than the humiliation, disintegration and disembowelment of a Chief Minister,
the ruling political party, the vernacular press and an entire population
is
incessantly being pursued. Exhibit A -- the headlines at the start of this
article.
Presented as a foregone conclusion, sections of the Indian media cavalierly
usurp the role of judge, jury and executioner. Libelous accusations are
being
concocted; a wicked application of Newton's Law is fraudulently attributed
to
Modi ad nauseam despite repeated denials.
Yet, all of this is just a fraction of an ongoing orgy, and the usual suspects
are
joining the party --a desperate Opposition and a devious intelligentsia.
Rather
than douse a runaway inferno, these characters continue to pour an acrid
fuel
on the Godhra aftermath. While a nation thirsts for calm and reconciliation,
democratic dysfunction sees a shrill Opposition shatter parliamentary protocol
and any governmental function. Six days of a nation's life held hostage
to a
maneuver so benignly called Rule 184. Opposition members, and some of the
ruling alliance, heap the basest of accusations, the most abusive of insults,
and
demand what they perceive as the biggest prize of all -- Modi's head.
Absolutely unsubstantiated indictments continue to implicate Modi and his
government as puppeteers directing destruction within their own constituencies
(more on this later).
Yet, all the ugly maneuvering, the spurious accusations, parliamentary
inaction
and the ignominious grandstanding -- though eminently revolting -- are,
in
some way, acceptable. The English press can continue wielding their overt
left-wing political agenda. The Jawaharlal Nehru University hangers-on
can
continue with their inanities. This is India and its diverse citizenry
dealing with a
searing tragedy. Very much as an individual traverses the stages of grief
from
denial to acceptance, so too will a shattered India find its bearing, make
its
peace and move forward. For the agenda is full. Commissions formed in
Gujarat are to commence investigations. Arrests have been made in Godhra
and during the aftermath. Undoubtedly, only the surface has been skimmed:
too many more are to be apprehended. Even The National Human Rights
Commission of India has made its uninvited visit and placed very public
recommendations for consideration. Ahmedabad has dealt with this before
--
before Godhra, before the BJP came to Gandhinagar, before 2002 -- and
Ahmedabad always limps back.
But if all of this is not enough, in the midst of a national catharsis,
now comes
the invasion from abroad. The international news media that had piled on
early
with their Indian colleagues, left for some time, and suddenly returned
over the
last week. A pathetic NRI Muslim group in West Yorkshire, England is
shopping around Europe for a makeshift international court to hang Modi;
yes,
there are even statements of feigned diplomatic concern from the United
Kingdom, France and others in the European Union massaging their own
Muslim constituencies. A common thread binds this unholy alliance -- the
Human Rights Watch (HRW) report on Gujarat, published April 30, 2002.
Authored by a Smita Narula, the report, subtitled 'State participation
and
complicity in communal violence in Gujarat', is breathlessly touted by
media
outlets to corroborate the one accusation they cannot prove -- Modi, his
government and his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), are solely
responsible for the Gujarati violence. From Godhra to Ahmedabad, there
is
only one family of culprits and they are to be 'exposed'.
I was drawn to this report for this very reason. For as the personal
accusations reached a crescendo over the last 6 weeks, despite my
compulsive search of all accounts from Gujarat, I had not seen any
substantiation to the charge that the State government carried out the
attacks
on Muslims. Of course, there is no dearth of accusations -- and the headlines
in the Indian press, never known for the mastery of subtlety, skip words
like
“complicity” and just accuse Modi of murder. Yet here was a report from
a
foreign organization, no less, that confidently declares state participation
and
complicity in the massacres. Now I had read the 1999 report on Kashmir
by
the HRW, an amalgamation of Indian Army human rights abuses that failed
to
devote even a sentence to the plight of Kashmiri Hindus. I was eager now
to
understand what this inexplicably often-quoted organization had to say
of
Gujarat.
So I downloaded this now infamous report (at
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/india/gujarat.pdf) with great anticipation
--
perhaps this was the definitive report, the Holy Grail, so many sought
to
accurately accuse the BJP. Ah, but I expected too much. Scanning the
summary I realized quickly that this document owed its genesis to the same
biases, the same perverse equations and the very same sources that had
vitiated the atmosphere in Gujarat for eight weeks prior.
Ostensibly written as an account of a tragic, maniacal orgy of murder,
this
75-page report evolves into nothing more than a politically charged and
hopelessly biased self-serving account. There are 327 footnotes of which
over
150 references are none other than the English newspapers widely known
for
their partiality. Over 20 references belong to the Times of India, now
infamous for editorializing Hindu fault in the Godhra massacre. The Asian
Age,
Telegraph, The Hindu, Outlook Magazine, and a sundry list of other
publications spawned from the identically vicious false-secular ideology
round
out the list of 'credible' sources. Even more difficult to comprehend are
6
separate references attributed to the South China Morning Post -- dare
not
ask when it became a respected authority of Gujarati news. Thus we have
to
look no further to understand the fountainhead of this report's strategy.
But I
did choose to read further.
The report, then, begins with an arrogant list of “recommendations” to
the
Government of India, India's trading partners, and for good measure,
international lending institutions like the World Bank. Over 75% of this
list
calls for the involvement of United Nations agencies from the investigation
to
implementation of the HRW agenda -- a clear challenge to the legitimacy
of
the Indian government.
But if the striking audacity of the recommendations from the start of the
report
is insufficient to set the tone, more is yet to come. The first salvo without
which
this report would not exist -- the Godhra train burning -- merits exactly
1
paragraph on page 13. That's correct -- 3 sentences out of 75 pages describe
the killing of innocent Hindus that sparked a national nightmare. The remainder
of the Godhra chapter exhaustively quotes Celia Dugger of the New York
Times and Rajiv Chandrasekaran of the Washington Post and their
long-exposed, sadistic, blame-the-Hindu victim journalistic gymnastics
(examine the bias of these reporters in Ramesh Rao's article at
http://www.sulekha.com/column.asp?cid=179723).
So while 3 pages of this chapter spend more time denouncing POTO than the
death of 60 innocents, the following 6 pages (pp. 15-21) exhaustively detail
spine-chilling personal accounts of the equivalent number of Muslim innocents
killed in each of the Naroda-Patia and Gulmarg Society areas of Ahmedabad
in the aftermath. There is no parity when one speaks of murder, but couldn't
the HRW agenda spare a few condoling words of empathy for the dead
Hindus?
As I focused on the accusations of state complicity, once again only innuendo
filled page after page. The initial act of state complicity? The unmitigated
gall
of the Gujarat government to call a bandh to mourn the mayhem of Godhra.
Seeking further evidence of state complicity? See page 22. Reported is
that
spray-painted on a wall was, 'Andar andar ki baat hey, Police hamare
saath hey'. That's right, graffiti on a wall is the standard to what defines
evidence in this report. Repeated mention is made of “computer lists”
specifying Muslim businesses. But not a shred of evidence is presented
that
these lists were generated by government officials.
The police are repetitively implicated as colluding with rioters during
the
massacres based on victim accounts. Clearly police in Ahmedabad were often
unable to control the mayhem in the early hours: over 30,000 rioters were
reported to have attacked Gulmarg Society alone. And certainly despicable
individuals in the police, inexcusably blinded by the rage of the moment,
may
have participated with the rioters in the first 24 hours. There is no evidence
or
accounts, however, in the report -- due to no lack of trying -- of systematic
police or state complicity despite a vast media presence at the time or
from
the interviews since. In its haste to blame the government, the report
again
overlooks the facts of rapid police deployment and the massive police firing
that disproportionately killed Hindu rioters: 90 companies of the State
Reserve
Police were called in on February 27, 2002 itself, and over 3,900 rounds
of
ammunition killed close to 100 rioters. The Gujarat Police overlook a
population of 50 million (that would rank as the 22nd most populous country
in the world) and have largely succeeded in keeping violence at a minimum
within one city since the initial days of madness.
Perhaps none of the distortions and none of the insidious lies expose the
HRW
agenda as clearly as chapter 6 on page 39. Entitled 'The context of violence
in
Gujarat', this chapter is the ultimate in political ham-handedness. Incredibly,
the entire history of communalism in Gujarat is attributed to the rise
of the
Sangh Parivar. If the rest of the 73 pages of anti-Sangh hatred are not
enough,
though utterly unrelated, almost 2 pages are devoted to anti-Christian
violence. Keep in mind again that the Godhra train killing merited 1 paragraph!
It is nothing less than criminal to overlook the infamous, and far more
extensive, riots of 1969, 1985, 1989 and 1992 that preceded BJP rule in
the
state. Gujaratis are well aware that the last decade of communal peace,
before
Muslim leaders staged a premeditated attack on that calm in Godhra, was
a
rare chapter in recent history.
I could go on about the report's selective respect for only the FIRs filed
by
Muslims, of its distortions about police transfers (all were promotions),
paucity
of Godhra victim interviews, etc., etc. But there can be no doubt now that
the
crocodile tears seek only the political annihilation of a rival. Murder
and
mayhem in Gujarat was moral bankruptcy incarnate -- but the borrowers span
the spectrum of Indian polity -- there is no monopoly. Caste-based,
vote-bank politics, nefarious external elements infiltrating the local
communities, and a hellish history must be reconciled and re-mediated to
assure long-term calm -- not 75 pages of anti-Indian hearsay focused on
the
political destruction of a popularly elected party. Not a shred of evidence
links
Modi or his government to substantiate a single conclusion in this report.
The
reliance on the Indian English press by HRW and its ilk is clear, and I
can only
hope the media will awaken to how it was manipulated for anti-national
ends.
Why do I devote this article to a report written by an insignificant
paper-pusher with no journalistic integrity securely sheltered in New York
City? This report is a convenient summary of a rampant dogma among circles
immersed in a modern day political witch-hunt. A witch-hunt aimed at
discrediting an opposing ideology -- it is tantamount to an arrogant rejection
of
Indian democracy, Gujarati electoral intelligence and due process. For
evidence of immediate repercussions, just wait until the next session in
the
United States Congress when the shrinking, yet shrill, India-baiters begin
spewing their venom India's way. You can count on them being armed with
the HRW report making its way through Washington.