Who represents Hindus today?

The violence in Gujarat was the panic reaction of a bad loser

I HOPE you’ve got your just desserts.” My cousin at the far end of the room was shaking with rage. She was not the only one directing her ire at me. There were others in that discussion, mostly friends, who thought I had been excessively optimistic throughout my writing career on how secure India’s composite culture was. Gujarat, they hoped, would have taught me a lesson.

Fascism, by their assessment, was on the ascendant and it was time we abandoned our romanticism about the inevitable success of Indian secularism. Where they seemed to have spotted a clincher was in the general complicity of the state from New Delhi to Ahmedabad in the precise pogroms carried out.

There was not a single face available to US investigators on the September 11 attacks. By sheer persistence they were able to build up something resembling a case against the Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

On Gujarat a thousand photographs, video films are available, bringing out in sharp profile individual looters, arsonists, murderers. Can the authorities show us one arrested person whose face tallies with one of the rioters whose photographs have appeared in every newspaper and magazine?

And look at the scandalous acquiescence of everybody, including the opposition in Parliament, in the hurriedly circulated theory by the state government that Gujarat was a reaction to Godhra. Even the prime minister repeated that theory. Of course, 58 women and children were burnt alive in a compartment of the Sabarmati Express.

But who was responsible for this? A hundred eye witnesses are available, most of them passengers in the adjacent bogey. Their names are available in the railway reservation record. Why has the Central government not followed up this straightforward lead?

This, then, was the drift of the discussion in that drawing room. Since I had travelled to Godhra and put together a piece after talking to officials, policemen, the railway station superintendent on duty at that hour, every testimony only enhanced the mystery about what happened at Godhra. Why had the government not come forward with even a preliminary investigation? The BJP at the Centre was in cahoots with the BJP in Gujarat and the truth about Godhra will never be investigated. My friends had made up their mind.

It was now my turn to speak.

Yes, since so much obvious evidence was available in Godhra and the rest of Gujarat, we must have a credible investigation. Otherwise, the ruling party will lose the coming elections — the local bodies elections in Gujarat next month, state elections next year and so on.

I refuse to accept the proposition that the brutalities perpetrated by a lumpen mob in Gujarat, admittedly led by politicians, was somehow a precursor to a takeover of India by the Hindu right.

How are we going to gauge the Hindu’s political preferences? By his behaviour in Gujarat or by the el- ectoral verdict meted out by him in UP, Uttaranchal, Punjab, Manipur and the two state assembly seats in the very citadel of the BJP, Gujarat. In my book this is the way the Hindu has expressed himself.

Are we going to concede to the mahants trapped in countless property disputes in Ayodhya the undisputed leadership of Hindus? Or should we consider the Shankaracharya of Kanchi, Jayandra Saraswati, the most powerful leader of the Hindus in the religious sphere?

After visiting Ahmedabad, he repeated the statement he had made after the Babri Masjid demolition: Hindus and Muslims must live like Ram and Lakshman. Now, does he represent serious Hinduism or are we going to place Mahant Paramhans on that lofty pedestal?

Further, the Gujarat pogrom brought out the best in Indian journalism. On the front pages of newspapers, edit pages, TV channels, it was Hindu compassion expressing its revulsion against the barbarities. Who must be deemed to represent the Hindu: the arsonists or those who exposed them?

Finally, did the VHP emerge as the upholder of the rule of law or was it the Supreme Court which responded to the spirit of the Maryada Purushottam Ram, in whose name the temple builders have created so much pain?

No, my friends, I disagree with you. I share your hurt, your anger but not your pessimism. By conjuring up visions of a fascist takeover of India, you concede too much to the cruel mobs of Gujarat.

Gujarat represents a diabolical effort to erase from the public mind images of rout and reversal in the recent assembly polls. It was the panic reaction of a bad loser in a state of funk because the future is an abyss.

The electorate in the recent elections, the Shankaracharya, the Indian media and the highest judiciary in the land: these are elements symptomatic of the forces asserting themselves in shaping the future. Not the goons of Gujarat.

But this residual optimism will fade if the government lets itself down once again by not bringing to book the culprits of Godhra and Gujarat. Political mischief makers have set another deadline of June 2 to rake up communal tension. This mischief must be nipped in the bud.

Politics of hate was tried in assembly elections. It did not work. The theory that even more hate will somehow work in Gujarat degrades the people of India.

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