It is now five years since Gujarat plunged into moral darkness. A darkness that was so thick that even five years could not erase it. A darkness that was so deep that it has now entrenched itself to become a part of the Gujarati society. It has infected so deeply that a majority of people in Gujarat are in a complete denial of this.
It is a moral darkness because for many people there is not even an acknowledgment that something utterly inhuman happened five years back. Reading through the comments put by readers on Internet forums or in reply to the articles on Gujarat pogrom one will find that they consistently pose the question ‘Who started it?’ or they attempt to hide it under the plight of Kashmiri Hindus or other issues which are unrelated! It is a tribal mentality. Just because a bunch of hooligans torched a train compartment (an assumption which has been questioned) unjustly killing more than 50 people it is given as the justification by so many in Gujarat and the right wing for the rape and massacre of thousands of Muslims. This sort of logic is an anathema to any justice system or to any major religion. Not only that, but it is the murder of the very teachings of the religion that they who justify these acts claim to profess. What more shameful would have been than to hear the then Prime Minister of India Mr. Vajpayee, in the BJP conclave after sensing the mood of the gathering, saying ‘But who started it?’ In other words the former Prime Minister put a collective guilt on 140 million Muslims of India for the utterly inhuman act of a mob in Godhra! So much from the Prime Minister of a country of more than a billion people!
Though I personally think that Vajpayee was driven by political motives and he did not agree with many in his party but there are times when you have to take a moral ground which is rooted in your own traditions. He would have learnt something from Mahatma Gandhi, a Gujarati, who in the toughest situations picked up the moral position that he was convinced about and then stood by it. His fasts-unto-death, which were to strive for issues that were often completely against the public mood, make it evident. When the country was burning at the time of partition his strong stand brought in a sense of sanity in many parts particularly in Bengal.
That takes us to the party that talks about standing by the ideals of Gandhi. Congress has recently been shown the door in Uttaranchal and Punjab. A few weeks before that it got the drubbing in Maharashtra Municipal elections. The factor that is being ignored in the Maharashtra defeat is the Muslim vote factor. The state Congress had to pay by taking unprincipled stand on a few sensitive issues. The investigation in the Malegaon blasts has been skewed. Secondly, even though the TADA cases in the Mumbai blasts are going on in full steam right now (and that is how they should be), no one hears about the Sri Krishna report. It needs to be seen in perspective that the systematic damage to the life and property of the Muslims in Mumbai happened even before the Mumbai blasts. The scale of damage was even wider than the Mumbai blasts. But while the progress on one has happened there is almost no progress on the other. Perhaps Congress is too afraid to open the cupboard full of skeletons from its own rule.
The same confusing message came when recent violence happened in Gorakhpur. While the violence was still going on the state unit of the Congress was more inclined in deriving political mileage from the situation. The Central Government took a strong position and sent in paramilitary forces but the local unit did not act in any way that is worthy of mentioning.
What Congress needs to understand is that for the Indian Muslims security of life and property is the most important priority. Now that priority is for all, but in other cases it is taken for granted that it will be there. The Indian Muslim has to consciously think about it and it has got inbuilt in the psyche. The ghettoization of the Muslim communities across the country is a symptom of this feeling. It is evident that two Chief Ministers, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Laloo Yadav, who were involved in mere tokenism, were still voted by Muslims time and again just because they gave a sense of security. Maintaining law and order is the basic function of an administration and the surprising part is that it is this that often becomes too much to be asked for. If you maintain that with an iron hand and bring to task whoever breaks it, whether he is a Hindu or a Muslim, you set the right expectations. There needs to be a consistent policy of zero tolerance for violence. That will be good politics not bad politics.
It will be naive on the part of Congress to think that the message from one state is not heard by people in other states. Gujarat is an example. Any party that supported BJP was drubbed aside by the Muslim voters. Ask Chandra Babu Naidu. Congress needs to introspect and take the moral high-ground at times without thinking about the politics involved in it. The Congress high-command needs to send this message to its state units in Maharashtra and Gujarat and to all the rest. We want a Congress that not only follows Manmohonomics but also that remains rooted in Gandhian principles sans rhetoric. People are intelligent enough to separate rhetoric from sincerity. Then only they will vote for Congress with full conviction instead of a Mulayam or a Laloo.
It is sad that in United States where the Black History Month is being commemorated and many are highlighting Martin Luther King’s ‘pilgrimage’ to Gandhi’s Gujarat as his tribute to non-violence, in the same Gujarat we have a Chief Minister who continues to rule over a majority which has lost part of its moral compass somewhere. A state where extra-constitutional force have a upper-hand in stopping, boycotting or banning voices which do not follow their lines. They can stop a Parzania or a Fanaa just because they did not like the movie or the actor. This is not democracy but fascism under the skin of democracy. And we know from China that societies without respect for true democracy can be economically successful. Gujarat confirms that even further. But we need to understand that as a nation we take pride that we are the biggest democracy on the planet. The Gujarat pogrom five years back was a blot. The healing can start only with an acknowledgment by one and all. Then only many can see the monster that is sitting dormantly and will be able to defeat it. Indian did this successfully with the 1984 anti-Sikh violence and it can do this again with the 2002 anti-Muslim violence. But it is perhaps too much to ask for from many of those who have in the past glorified the Nazis and Hitler!
Source: http://indianmuslims.in/remembering-gujarat-and-lessons-for-congress/
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