To begin with the burning of Sabarmati S 6 coach was
cleverly projected to be an act done by neighboring Muslims and in turn the
violence was directed against the Muslim population of Gujarat,
on the ground that the Hindu sentiments are hurt. The section of Hindu
community was deliberately incited by the decision of state to take the burnt
bodies of victims in a procession, against the advice of the collector of the
city. The Bandh call given by VHP created the ground for violence. Here the
social engineering was at its display, and dalits and Adivasis were mobilized
to unleash the violence against the hapless innocent Muslims, accompanied by
the propaganda which demonized the Muslim community as a whole. While in
earlier acts of violence, the state police have been an accomplice and the
silent onlooker to the violence, here a sort of active collusion of state
machinery and the communal forces was on display.
The BJP ruled state Government had unrestricted run in the
state as the Central Government was being ruled by BJP led NDA and the other
allies of BJP were too enamored by the spoils of power to spoil the broth by
speaking out. Modi had already instructed the officials to sit back when the
Hindu backlash will take place. The leading light of socialist movement, George
Fernandez, went to the extent of taking the violence against minority women in
the stride by saying that rape is nothing new and it happens in such
situations. What more was needed for the rioters to run amuck and to central
BJP leadership to let the things go on. The pattern of violence against women
was particularly horrific, targeting at their reproductive organs and shaming
them to no end.
While the architect of Gujarat pogrom Narnedra Modi kept
saying that violence has bee controlled in three days, and central BJP
leadership patted him for this, the matter of fact was that violence went on
and on painfully for a long time, uncontrolled and unrestricted. The attitude
of the BJP controlled state was pathetic and showed the religious bias in
relief and rehabilitation work. The compensations given to minorities were
abysmally low, state quickly retreated from the refugee camps on the ground
that the refugee camps are ‘child production centers’, hitting the minorities
where it hurts most. The biases against them were on full display. The
atmosphere was created by communal forces in such a manner that the riot
victims could not go back to their houses as the people in their areas demanded
a written undertaking from them, that they will withdraw the cases filed in the
context of violence and that they will not file any cases. Most of the police as
machinery either refused to file the FIRs or if registered they kept enough
loopholes for the criminals to get away. It was in this atmosphere that the
process of getting justice became a close to impossible task. The communalized
state apparatus, the attitude of police and judiciary led the Supreme court to
direct the shifting of cases away from Gujarat.
The investigation against Narendra Modi by the state police
was an impossible task and so the Special Investigation team was constituted.
Unfortunately, that also did not help the matters. Accompanying all this
violence and attitude of state government the minorities started feeling
extremely insecure. They were boycotted in trade and other social spaces. The
result is the sprawling slum of Juhapura as the symbol of polarization of
communities along the religious lines. The total dislocation of the monitories
created multiple problems at the level of education and sources of livelihood
for the minorities.
The religious polarization and section of media has created
a Halo around Narendra Modi, while strictures against him are coming by, about
his failure to protect places of religious worship of minorities, the malafide
intentions of state in filing cases against social activist Teesta Setalvad,
many another cases are still pending, crying for justice for the victims of Gujarat. Having consolidated the section of majority
community behind him, assured of their ongoing support, Modi started the high
profile propaganda about development and has been trying to distract the
attention from the havoc which he has wrought in the state. The big capitalists
are finding the state of Gujarat as a happy
hunting ground for massive state subsidies, so the media controlled by them is
singing praises and modulating popular opinion in his favor, creating a larger
than life size image, development man, in order to suppress his role in the
violence against minorities.
In this dismal scenario, there have been many an examples of
victims and social activists standing for the cause of justice and doing the
practically impossible task of getting justice for violence victims despite all
the efforts to turn them hostile and protect the guilty of the communal crimes.
While the massive propaganda and state policies are trying to turn the
minorities into second class citizens, there are efforts which have gone on
simultaneously to retrieve the democratic values in the face of such adverse
intimidating situation created by the communal forces. Lately, apart from Court
judgments, the civil society response has been picking up and the civil society
is trying to overcome the stifling situation and trying to make its voice
louder. While we are nowhere close to what should ideally be there in a
democratic set up, the responses of civil society and social action groups are
noteworthy in the matters of getting justice for victims and in the matters of
recreating the liberal space which has been undermined by the communal forces.
Times alone will tell if democratic values will be successfully brought in this
‘Hindu Rashtra in one state’