Modi’s Pain and Agony 12 years after Gujarat Pogrom

Twelve years after Gujarat’s gruesome, barbarous and unfortunate tragedy, Narendra Modi, Gujarat’s Chief Minister has come out with a statement through his blog that he was “shaken to the core by the grief, sadness, misery, pain, anguish, agony and the absolute emptiness he felt on witnessing such inhumanity”. His personal feelings have come out only after 12 years, that too at the time when he is near the stepping stone to the Indian Prime Minister’s throne. His pain now can only be described as “too little, too late”.

                        He quotes a Gujarat lower court’s verdict as a triumph of truth and portraits it as his victory just like Pinarayi Vijayan, State Secretary of CPM In Kerala said when he was exempted from the list of the accused in Lavallin case. Modi is celebrating the lower court judgment just like Pinarayi and his party celebrated the CBI court judgment. (One of the members of E.Balanandan Committee which probed Lavallin case, a few years ago confided to me that Pinarayi is involved neck-deep in Lavallin scam and he will be undoubtedly punished for this.)  These leaders must know there are other higher courts in India. Mrs. Zakia Jefri, wife of late Ehasan Jefri, Congress MP and the petitioner in Gulbarg Society massacre case has already made it known that she will go in appeal to higher courts.

                        In Gujarat riots Narendra Modi has undoubtedly failed on fifteen counts. 

1) Willfully ignoring messages from state intelligence about violent repercussions of the RSS-VHP organized ‘Mahayajna’ just before the Godhra incident.

2) Deliberately concealing knowledge of the provocative anti-Muslim sloganeering of Kar Sevaks at the Godhra station when Sabarmati Express reached there.

3) Conspiring with VHP to plot and allow reprisal killings all over Gujarat.

4) Brazenly supporting the bandh call of VHP and allowing the streets and public places of Gujarat to be used for mass attacks and violence.

5) Cynically and illegally allowing postmortems out in the open at the railway yard.

6) Personally instigating RSS-VHP men and women at the railway yard at Godhra assuring them that enough time will be allowed to extract a revenge.

7) Directing that the unidentified bodies of Godhra train victims be handed over to Jaideep Patel of VHP to be brought to Ahmedabad where aggressive funeral processions in full public view were allowed.

8) Specifically instructing top police officers not to act and to “allow Hindus to vent their anger”.

9) Preventing the imposition of curfew.

10) Making pretence of verbally calling in the Army on the late evening of 28-2-2002 but not actually allowing its deployment until 3-3-2002.

11) Fourteen out of 25 districts of Gujarat were allowed to burn as Ministers were specifically deputed by Modi to interfere with police functioning and sit in the police control rooms. Those police officers who tried to control violence were given on the spot punitive transfers to send the real political message. Officers who acted in a manner Modi preferred were rewarded with plum government posts or post retirement benefits.

12) Modi allowed violence to continue unabated until early May 2002 when KPS Gill was sent by Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee to the State. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and Central Election Commission (CEC) were misled about the spread and intensity of violence. This was willful subversion of justice system.

13) Partisan prosecutors belonging to RSS-VHP were appointed to ensure that cases were aborted in the womb itself.

14) Hate speeches were indulged in by Modi himself like Becharaji speech made at the top of election campaign on 9-9-2002.

15) Modi is guilty of ordering the destruction of crucial documents including wireless intercepted messages, vehicle logs, police control room records etc.

                        Modi’s own Party’s Prime Minister A. B. Vajpayee rebuked him for his negligence of raj dharma in one of the most haunting events in the collective memory of India. Modi’s present pain and agony to make his access to Indian Prime Ministership easy have evoked anger and skepticism among victims of the Gujarat Pogrom. One of the victims Rupa Mody whose son went missing and was lost after the Gulbarg Society massacre – her story inspired the Hindi film Parzania – described Modi’s letter as “crocodile tears”. She says, “What sort of pain is this that he claims to feel? What sort of pain is it that for 12 years he has not expressed it and now on hearing of a court judgment he decides to express this great pain. The man has a heart of stone and he is not capable of pain.”