GUJARAT AFTER GODHRA: REAL VIOLENCE, SELECTIVE OUTRAGE

(Har-Anand, Delhi, December 2002)

EDITED BY

PROF. RAMESH N. RAO & DR. KOENRAAD ELST

Introduction by Koenraad Elst

In the Gujarati town of Godhra, on 27 February 2002, a Muslim mob set on fire a train wagon carrying passengers returning from a Hindu pilgrimage to Ayodhya, killing 58. This incident ignited a cycle of communal violence affecting much of the state of Gujarat, which remained in a state of crisis or at least unease for six months. More than a thousand people (about 800 Muslims and 250 Hindus) were killed in riots, and many more rendered homeless and forced to seek shelter in refugee camps. Strangely, the effective cut-off date for this period of tension was another violent incident: on 24 September 2002, two Muslim terrorists entering the Hindu Swaminarayan shrine of Akshardham in Gandhinagar. The events of Godhra and Aksardham define the time-bracket of the present study.

This book presents a collection of reports from and comments on the crisis provoked by the Godhra pogrom. The focus of their attention is as much on the media coverage of the events as on the events themselves, for if any event ever showed up the nexus between physical violence on the streets and verbal violence to the truth, it certainly was the Gujarat crisis. Several recurring observations by the authors may be summarized thus:

(1) There is an acute problem of double standards. The extremely brazen-faced application of double standards in the name of secularism was a ubiquitous feature of the media's reporting and comment on the Gujarat riots. By now the complaint that "you secularists weren't half as indignant, in fact entirely uninterested, when a quarter million Hindus were cleansed from Kashmir" is entirely worn out and boring, but only because it remains unanswered and hence in need of being repeated.

(2) There is a problem of crass rumor-mongering. It is all very well for intellectuals in their air-conditioned offices to bemoan the unbelievable impact of either mean-spirited or silly rumours in the genesis of communal riots among the common folk. But in this instance, in their own reports on and analysis of communal violence, factual data were just as shamelessly replaced with invention, rumors and conspiracy theories. In this respect, religious extremists such as the Shahi Imam have behaved themselves better than the secularist campaigners who pose as the guardians of modernity and the scientific temper. Arundhati Roy risked the international fame she so clearly cherishes by going public with blatant lies about atrocities against named Gujarati Muslim women who turned out to be either non-existent or abroad at the time of the riots. Perhaps a fiction writer can afford this, but the news media with their deontology of accuracy and objectivity made themselves guilty of similar howlers. Internationally influential media like the Washington Post copied from an Islamist website rumors about Hindu provocations behind the Godhra carnage, falsely claiming a Gujarati journalist as source, and never publishing a correction when the journalist in question denied ever having put out such a story. With such media, who needs rumors?

(3) The failure of the state makes people desperate: The Indian people are frustrated at the state's inability to protect them. In this respect, it doesn't seem to make much difference whether India has a Congress or Janata/Samajwadi or BJP government. And though Indian governments of every stripe have modernized their security apparatus and intensified their anti-terrorist efforts, the development of technology makes it unlikely that the authorities will win this stand-off any time soon. For a determined guerrilla fighter, it becomes ever easier to work ever bigger destruction with ever lighter equipment. While this is no reason to give up the struggle against terrorism, it highlights the need of a more radical solution: either a political agreement which will satisfy the terrorists to the point of making them lay down their arms (as advocated by most secularists, who insist on "dialogue with Kashmiri militants" and the like), or a decisive strike against the political and logistical bases behind the terrorist frontlines, combined with an ideological offensive against their justifying assumptions.