I have been reading Professor Bandukwala’s comments and the readers’ responses to them. The professor must be lauded for his sentiments that Muslims in Gujarat must stand up and forgive their tormentors. At one level, this is the right and proper thing to do. But it is as well to recall that good as he is and as gentle as he is, he is just one of the 500,000 Muslims affected by the riots.

Salma Bibi is another. She asks, “How can I forgive? How can I forget those people from my own village who so enjoyed tearing my family limb from limb and killing them and so enjoyed snatching my baby from my arms before raping me one by one, while all the while I cried and pleaded with them? I said stop, stop, help me please, save me please. Don’t hurt my baby, please. But they killed him even as they raped me. So how can I forgive; why should I forgive?”

There is something beautiful in imagining the victim group rising up collectively, hands outstretched, to embrace the perpetrators and say I forgive you. There’s something ennobling and uplifting in that moment. But who would they go to? To the mass who today spit at them in scorn; who isolate them in stinking ghettos; who watch them live out broken lives each day, without pity or remorse; who won’t let them back into their land and homes and who make sure that every step to justice is subverted and there is agony without end?

What is forgiving really? Does it require giving up the battle for justice? Does it mean there will be no punishment? What a relief that would be for the few who are wriggling hard at court to buy and threaten their way out of getting their just desserts. What a laugh it would be for those who think nothing of telling passing researchers that they have themselves raped, burned and killed — sometimes for the fun of it, sometimes at the behest of others who they knew would protect them to the bitter end, thanks to the thick bonds of guilt that bind them. As thick as the blood on their hands.

There is a chorus of people telling Muslim victims to forgive and forget. The Hindus are telling them, the police is telling them, the courts are telling them, the administration is telling them, their own leaders are telling them, and now we have one more gentle physics professor telling them. People are trying. They have moved on. They have restarted lives. They are settling down. They are trying to move away from their nightmares, to get past the screaming grief and loss. They want peace. Just like Bandukwala.

But there is the peace with honour that justice brings and then there is the peace of the grave. Bandukwala has his beliefs and I have mine.

The writer is director, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative

editor@expressindia.com