By Manmath Deshpande
THE verdict on Godhra train burning that convicted 31 people has seen muted reactions from the Congress Party and the media. But to understand the entire pseudo-secular reactions on Godhra right since February 27, 2002, one must go back to 2002. An analysis of "Pseudo-secularists on Godhra" will reveal all the problems of our self-proclaimed secularists not just on Godhra, but on all issues.
On February 27, 2002, a well-armed mob of Muslims roasted 59 karsewaks returning from Ayodhya in Godhra. Vir Saghvi, Chief Editor of The Hindustan Times wrote a wonderful self-confessed article titled "One Way Ticket" on the reaction of self-proclaimed secularists on the gruesome roasting of Hindus by Muslims in Hindu-majority India. He wrote:
"There is something profoundly worrying in the response of what might be called the secular establishment to the massacre in Godhra... A mob of 2,000 people stopped the Sabarmati Express shortly after it pulled out of Godhra station... Some versions have it that the kar sewaks shouted anti-Muslim slogans; others that they taunted and harassed Muslim passengers. According to these versions, the Muslim passengers got off at Godhra and appealed to members of their community for help. Others say that the slogans were enough to enrage the local Muslims and that the attack was revenge...Some things seem clear. There is no suggestion that the kar sewaks started the violence. The worst that has been said is that they misbehaved with a few passengers. Equally, it does seem extraordinary that slogans shouted from a moving train or at a railway platform should have been enough to enrage local Muslims, enough for 2,000 of them to have quickly assembled at eight in the morning, having already managed to procure petrol bombs and acid bombs."
Even if you dispute the version of some of the kar sewaks-that the attack was premeditated and that the mob was ready and waiting-there can be no denying that what happened was indefensible, unforgivable and impossible to explain away as a consequence of great provocation.
And yet, this is precisely how the secular establishment has reacted.
Nearly every non-BJP leader who appeared on TV and almost all of the media have treated the massacre as a response to the Ayodhya movement...
And yet, the sub-text to all secular commentary is the same: the kar sewaks had it coming to them.
Basically, they condemn the crime; but blame the victims.
Try and take the incident out of the secular construct that we, in India, have perfected and see how bizarre such an attitude sounds in other contexts. Did we say that New York had it coming when the Twin Towers were attacked? Then too, there was enormous resentment among fundamentalist Muslims about America’s policies, but we didn't even consider whether this resentment was justified or not....
Why then are these poor karsewaks an exception? Why have we de-humanised them to the extent that we don't even see the incident as the human tragedy that it undoubtedly was and treat it as just another consequence of the VHP's fundamentalist policies?
The answer, I suspect, is that we are programmed to see Hindu-Muslim relations in simplistic terms: Hindus provoke, Muslims suffer.
When this formula does not work-it is clear now that a well-armed Muslim mob murdered unarmed Hindus-we simply do not know how to cope. We shy away from the truth-that some Muslims committed an act that is indefensible-and resort to blaming the victims.
Of course, there are always 'rational reasons' offered for this stand. Muslims are in a minority and therefore, they deserve special consideration. Muslims already face discrimination so why make it harder for them? If you report the truth then you will inflame Hindu sentiments and this would be irresponsible. And so on... When everybody can see that a trainload of Hindus was massacred by a Muslim mob, you gain nothing by blaming the murders on the VHP or arguing that the dead men and women had it coming to them.
Not only does this insult the dead (What about the children? Did they also have it coming?), but it also insults the intelligence of the reader.
There is one question we need to ask ourselves: have we become such prisoners of our own rhetoric that even a horrific massacre becomes nothing more than occasion for Sangh parivar-bashing?"
In other words, on February 27, 2002 it was clear that 2,000 Muslims had roasted the kar sewaks in Godhra, including 25 women and 15 children. So the pseudo-secularists tried to invent imaginary 'provocations'- (which were all self-contradictory) like "shouting anti-Muslim slogans", "not paying for tea and snacks", "pulling beards", "Kidnapping a Muslim girl" etc. As Vir Sanghvi writes, it is impossible for 2,000 people to quickly assemble at 7:45AM having got petrol bombs and acid bombs. Everyone, including pseudo-secularists who invented these concocted 'provocations' insulting the dead kar sevaks, knew that it was a well-planned attack. But since they could not blame Muslims for anything, including roasting of 15 children and 25 women, they decided to kick the dead dog and keep a safe distance from the mad dog.
The pseudo-secularists started a different game after a few days. No doubt, they insulted the dead kar sevaks by making baseless allegation of provocations on them (and they were not alive to deny such third class allegations), but by doing so, the pseudos admitted that Muslims had burnt the train. But some days later, they started raising denying this fact itself, and 'raised questions' (basically, denying the undeniable) like "The fire was set 'from inside'", "Kar sewaks carried inflammatory material with them" and "VHP killed its own kar sevaks to trigger an anti-Muslim wave (a charge also made by many Congress, RJD, SP, Left politicians)".
In the 2002 Gujarat Assembly elections, Godhra was an issue-and rightly so. The more the pseudos tried to attack BJP for the post-Godhra riots, the more they were cornered. Because the moment post-Godhra riots were raised, BJP and VHP raised the issue of Godhra and the pseudos would never admit that 2,000 fanatic Muslims did Godhra or admit that the cause of the post-Godhra riots was not Narendra Modi, but Godhra. The Congress' leaders accused VHP of roasting karsewaks in Godhra and hence the party suffered a crushing defeat in the 2002 elections, because people were angry over Godhra. I personally feel that Godhra has not been raised enough by the Sangh Parivar. The Hindu masses must be made to realise that tomorrow if 59 of them, or their wives, children and other relatives are roasted by Muslims, the self-proclaimed secularists will do nothing to give them justice and use every trick in the book to let the inhuman murderers go scot-free, like they did in Godhra.
In 2005, Lalu-appointed U C Banerjee Committee (as expected) whitewashed the sin of Muslims and said that Godhra was an 'accident' (thereby acquitting BJP, VHP of the charge that they roasted their own kar sevaks). Though fully knowing that the truth, the newspapers tried to defend this as much as possible with new questions being raised "Why did kar sevaks allow themselves to be roasted despite having trishuls?"etc. The fact is, no kar sevak had any trishul, since not a single trishul was recovered from the train. And even if they had, it was impossible to use 4 inch trishul-shaped blunt knives against 2,000 armed people who had swords, petrol and acid bombs and petrol.
When Nanavati Commission (which is a full-fledged commission under the Commission of Inquiry Act, unlike Banerjee Committee which was a departmental committe) said in its report in September 2008 that Godhra was a pre-planned, not of the pseudos would relent and continued to deny the truth. Politicians cannot be expected to change, they have large vote-bank considerations but the media should have known better. Even after the court convicting 31 people, nobody is coming out to tell the truth, blame the attackers instead of the victims, and apologise for lying and making inhuman allegations first on the dead kar sevaks, women and children and then on BJP/ RSS/ VHP and Narendra Modi.
What all this shows. No act from any Muslim, including roasting of children to coal after locking them in a train and pushing them back as they tried to come out, will ever make the media blame any Muslim for any crime. Whether a Muslim attacks VHP rallies, RSS headquarters in Chennai, Nagpur or whether Hindus kill Muslims, the media will always blame the Sangh Parivar.
The media has managed to convince itself that "Reporting Muslim intolerance will inflame Hindu sentiments" and hence Muslim fanaticism should be whitewashed. The reality is exactly the opposite. Muslim suffering should be reported very cautiously as they can very easily take to terrorism in this age of global jehad. The media is guilty of instigating Muslims to terrorism by its inflammatory and biased, exaggerated, one sided reporting of the post-Godhra riots. It was in national interest for the Sangh Parivar to make all attempts to check the media, not just for the sake of BJP, Narendra Modi and Sangh Parivar itself, but also for the sake of the country, since the media lies caused enormous resentment among innocent Muslims making them fanatics. Let us all work together to roll back the media lies on the Gujarat riots (even after Godhra, it was not one-sided) and expose the pseudos on Godhra.
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