WHAT I SAW AND HEARD IN SEPTEMBER 2002
By Raju Rajagopal, Hindus for Human Rights (HfHR)
I was part of an NRI delegation representing various organizations from the US, which went to India in September 2002 on a non-partisan humanitarian mission to see for ourselves the aftermath of the anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat.
I was at the time President of Coalition Against Communalism (CAC), a loose collective of activists in the SF Bay Area, who had come together following the Gujarat mayhem. We traveled to Gujarat, Delhi, and Hyderabad to explore what we could do for the victims and to support initiatives for communal harmony. We met a wide cross section of civil society, including the victims of the unprecedented violence, NGOs caring for them, community groups, businessmen, academics, religious leaders, politicians, and the media.
Nishrin, daughter of the slain ex-Congress M.P., Ahsan Jafri, was part of our delegation. We were ably supported on the trip by Shabnam Hashmi, now heading Anhad, Delhi, Nawaz Kotwal who was then with the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), Delhi, and is now with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). And by Teesta Setalvad, who successfully led several major court cases on behalf of the victims, and doggedly pursued the larger accusation against Modi by Zakia Jafri, Nishrin’s mother, at the Supreme Court. The interactions with President Kalam were facilitated by Admiral Ramdas.
What we saw and heard in those days of infamy twenty-one years back are still fresh in my memory. I wrote a detailed report of our group’s visit, which can be found here: http://ektaonline.org/nrisahi/resources/publications/AriseAwake!.pdf
I made several subsequent visits to Gujarat to help with the rehabilitation of the victims and to participate in communal harmony events. In 2004, I led the Promise of India (POI) initiative, with an international appeal to speak up for Indian democracy. The POI Appeal was endorsed by over 200 notable signatories and 230 organizations from 29 countries. Gagan Sethi of Janvikas (who later led the Bilkis Bano mass rape case to success) and Gandhian, late Nirmala Deshpande, were of great help during these visits, with the latter introducing me to former Prime Ministers and Presidents.
Here are some of my recollections of the interesting encounters from those visits:
Sonia Gandhi, Congress President: Stoic and unresponsive throughout our presentation, until someone mentioned the role of Congress cadres in the Gujarat mayhem. She seemed defensive. Gave us no other feed-back on our pleas, other than to privately condole Nishrin for her father’s gruesome murder.
Chief Minister Modi: Refused to meet us. We also found out from NGOs that he had not visited a single camp or spoken to a single Muslim victim. Late in 2004, I was back in Gujarat when Modi unveiled his grand strategy: Projecting his own guilt upon the entire population of Gujarat. Something like, “They say that you raped Muslim women and burnt Muslim children.” “Did you?” “Did you?” NO! NO!! repeatedly came the audience reaction, louder and louder, as he egged them on. This “projection strategy” is now in full swing, as we see any legitimate criticism of his human rights record being turned into an attack on India and on the Indian economy.
President A.P.J. Kalam, President of India: Listened closely to our written appeal. No immediate response, but later on we heard that he wanted to visit some of the camps for the victims, but was dissuaded by the Modi government from visiting any Muslim camps. Later, the President issued a proclamation for the success of the Promise of India Conference that I had organized in Delhi in January 2004.
Salman Khurshid, Congress: When we asked him about the possibility of his party demanding the dismissal of the Modi government for mis-governance, he responded: When an Aspirin is enough why go for surgery? I wonder if he regrets the “soft Hindutva” approach of his party, which has since helped the BJP move India’s secular democracy into the ICU.
Shankarsinh Vaghela, Gujarat Congress: Self-indulgent and unresponsive. Seemed to acknowledge the participation of Congress party cadres in the “riots.” He bragged about how he knew the RSS mindset very well (presumably, he was a Swayamsewak) and joked that the only real solution, referring to Hindu nationalists, were “encounter killings.” We were, of course, shocked!
President Narayanan: Signed the POI Appeal and supported our initiative.
Former Prime Minister, V.P. Singh: Signed the POI Appeal, but spoke mostly about the Mandal Commission report and how it had been mis-interpreted and maligned.
Former Prime Minister, I.S. Gujral: Also signed the POI Appeal and later inaugurated the POI conference in Delhi.
Former Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao: He supported us but would not sign the POI Appeal. You’re from America, right? Americans are very good at coming up with solutions. Do you have an answer to our communal problems? He also spoke of his plan as P.M. to identity the poorest districts in India and support them heavily to improve their health. That may not be a priority for the BJP government, he rued.
Chandrababu Naidu, Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh: He listened to my PowerPoint Presentation about the implications of the Gujarat pogroms to the nation and our appeal to him to walk out of the NDA government as a mark of protest. No response other than a Thank You.
Justice J.S. Verma, National Human Rights Commission: His earnest support for justice to the victims of the Gujarat pogroms was critical in the months ahead. When he accepted my invitation to the POI Conference, he indicated to me that he had some regrets about his decision equating Hindutva with Hinduism, when he was in the Supreme Court.
Chunibhai Vaidya, Gandhian: Seemed very supportive of our mission. But he also commented: Shouldn’t Muslims be more sensitive to Hindu sentiments by not selling chicken on the main roads?
Editors of Gujarat Samachar: Defended their support for Modi and their negative coverage of the slain Congress M.P., Ahsan Jafri. When Nishrin challenged them, they got aggressive and demanded to know what Jafri saab had done for the Kashmiri Pandits. Recognize their come-back? It’s now become a standard retort of Hindu nationalists to anyone who questions their attacks on Muslims.
P.G.J. Nampoothiri, NHRC Rapporteur: As a former Commissioner of Police, Ahmedabad, he knew many of the people in Chief Minister Modi’s administration. He told me that ever since he started to work for the NHRC, he wasn’t welcome in those circles any more. When I asked him about widespread fear in the Hindu community about Juhapura, a majority poorer Muslim neighborhood in Ahmedabad, he laughed. How much more Hindu can I be, with my prominent viboothi and all, walking around Juhapura! He said that he had never once felt threatened.
Sunil Gavaskar, P.T. Usha, Dhanraj Pillai, and Deep Sethi: They all came to Ahmedabad (organized by Gagan Sethi) to inaugurate a communal harmony sculpture and to preside over a friendly cricket match between Hindu and Muslim teenage girls. What sticks in my mind are two things. When I was introduced to Dhanraj, I had no clue that he was one of the successful captains of the India Hockey team. Later, when I was traveling alone with Gavaskar in a car, I really wished that I had known a lit bit more about cricket and his career to start a conversation! Two hours of one-on-one with one of India’s greatest cricket players, and I had nothing to say to him! In a postscript, we heard that the beautiful sculpture that Gavaskar had unveiled in the town of Kalol had been hauled back to a corporation shed. Apparently, there was no room for communal harmony in Modi’s Gujarat – not even a sculpture.
Press Conference in Ahmedabad and Vadodara: Some hostile reporters kept asking what we had done for the victims of the Godhra train carnage and why we had not met them. The fact of the matter was that the Indian Railways had still not published the list of the dead, as there were some doubts whether some of them were pilgrims coming from Ayodhya. When we responded that we would have been happy to meet the families of the dead and were willing to even share some of the funds we raise, they backed down.
Zahid Ali Khan, Editor of the Siasat Daily in Hyderabad: Very supportive. Hosted an all-vegetarian dinner at his home in my honor, but I did not have the heart to tell him that I was not a vegetarian. He had some interesting ideas for promoting communal harmony, including a pledge by Muslims to replace beef in their menus with buffalo meat.
I would be remiss if I also did not mention that the only prominent leaders who had spoken out against the Gujarat pogroms were, Siddharth Varadarajan of Time of India; Anu Aga, Chairperson of Thermax Industries; I.G. Patel, former Reserve Bank Governor; and Cyrus Guzder, a business leader and now with Ashoka University.
***
Some of the people we met in 2002 have passed on. Others have moved on to other things. But I can’t help but wonder if any of them would have done anything differently, had they foreseen the situation today under Prime Minister Modi.
It is for them to ponder over. But certainly, Hindus who stand for a secular India, especially activists among them, should ask themselves if they ought to have spoken up more forcefully as Hindus to prevent the domination of the religious realm by Hindu nationalists.
The creation of Hindus for Human Rights is a belated acknowledgement of our collective failure to assert our Hindu voices for a secular India.