Burnt beyond recognition

They couldn’t make out a Hindu from a Muslim. They cried when they were hungry and laughed when they were fed. And how secure they felt in the lap of their mother. Nobody saved them, nobody could, not even their mother. They were burnt alive, some 50 children in Gujarat, their cries muffled by a rush of fire. They were India’s tomorrow, which lies in ashes, beyond recognition.

What is recognisable is the religious frenzy. It is familiar. I have seen its ugly face during Partition when I travelled from my home town, Sialkot, to Amritsar. Hindus killed Muslims and Muslims killed Hindus. There were the same pain-etched faces in both communities — men and women, fear-stricken, with their belongings huddled on their heads. Even then, the children were burnt or cut into pieces. There is something pathetic about us in the subcontinent. Children and women are our first target. Is it because they cannot retaliate? Or is it because in killing the weak we feel brave?

Even during the Partition riots, the authorities were the worst culprit. They were divided on the basis of religion. There is no difference even after so many years. With all their pledges to uphold the Constitution, which says in its preamble that India is a secular, democratic republic, government officials are generally contaminated. Religion, not duty, comes first.

Gujarat has witnessed scores of instances where the police force has connived in the rioters’ violence. It did not act because it would have meant punishing members of its own religion. The police chief had no compunction in saying that his men were affected by ‘the milieu’. When protectors themselves get involved, the fate of victims can well be imagined. And Chief Minister Narendra Modi defends a force which the BJP government saffronised long ago.

The army was called in, but late. For two whole days the BJP-led government at the Centre kept saying the army had been alerted when it should have been out there on the streets. The Congress government had done the same thing in 1984 following Indira Gandhi’s assassination. The army was not called when it should have been. Three thousand Sikhs were butchered in daylight. Understandably, Home Minister L.K. Advani did not go to Gujarat. But George Fernandes, who did, did not speak a word against the failure of the government. In fact, his rationalising of the delay in stationing the army was indefensible.

The fact is that the BJP government in Ahmedabad and the BJP-led government in Delhi failed miserably. Both in anticipating the disaster and in dealing with it. They allowed the extremists to take the law into their own hands. No person would condone or justify the Godhra incident, where fundamentalist Muslims burnt 54 men, women and children in a train compartment. But the government should not, in any way, appear to treat what has followed the attack at Godhra as a natural human reaction or backlash.

Chief Minister Modi should have submitted his resignation for the failure to control the situation. He should do it now. If not, the Centre must dismiss him. For lesser reasons, state governments have been asked to quit. Why not the Modi government? The Centre, blatantly partial, is ruled by the NDA, a coalition of 24 parties, not by the BJP alone. Where is Chandrababu Naidu, of secular credentials fame? He is conspicuous by his silence.

Something has gone wrong with Gujarat. The state where Mahatma Gandhi, an apostle of Hindu-Muslim unity, was born and where his Sabarmati Ashram still radiates gentleness and peace, is today a communalised cauldron. It is unbelievable that the state which touched sublime heights during Gandhi’s Dandi march sank to such ridiculous depths as when L.K. Advani led a rath yatra from the Somnath temple.

In fact, Advani’s yatra marked the beginning of the assault on India’s secular polity. It sowed the seeds of hatred. The nettle of communalism was the natural growth. The tragedy is that leaders like George Fernandes, Sharad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan, who once stood against militant Hindutva, are now the loyal servants of the BJP. Such duplicity of secular elements has only strengthened the communal forces.

India’s struggle for independence was secular in character. Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and Parsis, all fought shoulder to shoulder. Despite the parochial approach of the Muslim League, the then Congress was nationalist in its attitude. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the frontier Gandhi, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah, the Kashmir Gandhi, fought as bravely and relentlessly against English rule, as did Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel and Subhash Chandra Bose.

Had the Hindu Rashtra been India’s aim, it would have established it after winning independence. With the 80 per cent Hindu population in the country, there was nothing to stop it from doing so. Instead, the most democratic and secular constitution was adopted. That represented the ethos of our national movement and what India stood for.

I recall when I was briefly Indian High Commissioner at London, I met Margaret Thatcher, then UK prime minister, after her return from Moscow. She said that Gorbachev told her the Soviet Union was slipping from his hands. Thatcher told him to go to India and learn how people there had lived together for centuries despite differences of religion, region and language. She asked me if I could explain such a phenomenon.

I told her that we in India did not think that there was only the black and white. We believed there was a grey area. We were extending the grey area all the time. A spirit of tolerance and accommodation guided our society. I wonder what I would have told her after the carnage in Gujarat. The job of missions abroad must be much more difficult because of the briefing by the BJP-led government.

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