CC Malayalam Blog

Join News Letter

Iraq

Peak Oil

Climate Change

US Imperialism

Palestine

Latin America

Communalism

Gender/Feminism

Dalit

Globalisation

Humanrights

Economy

India-pakistan

Kashmir

Environment

Gujarat Pogrom

WSF

Arts/Culture

India Elections

Archives

Links

Submission Policy

Contact Us

Subscribe To Our
News Letter

Name: E-mail:

 

Gujarat: Encounters Of
A Different Kind

By Raju Rajagopal

22 July, 2007
Countercurrents.org

“When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother…when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered.”

Robert F. Kennedy said that in 1968 following the assassination of Dr. King. But he could well have been describing the alarming ascendancy of hate and fear in Indian politics, especially in states like Gujarat.

I’m back in Gujarat talking to community leaders and voluntary organizations about inter-communal relations, more than five years after the Godhra train carnage and the ensuing anti-Muslim pogroms seemed to rip this society apart.

As I walk around Ahmedabad I see signs of economic boom everywhere: upscale office buildings and high-rise apartments, trendy restaurants, and shopping malls by the dozen. As in other leading Indian cities, the upbeat mood of the middle class is palpable.

But behind the veneer of “Vibrant Gujarat” barely hides the menacing face of Hindutva, which spills over into public space almost every day (1, 2), testifying that the state has not only failed to heal the wounds of 2002, but it has also largely succeeded in invisibilizing its Muslims.

Thankfully there are still a handful of activists here who refuse to throw in the towel in their encounters with institutionalized intolerance. This is their story.

Invisibilizing a community

“Shanti j che!” Gujarat is absolutely peaceful and is on the march, declare its leaders as they attribute all negative news on the social front to a secularist conspiracy to defame the state.

But for an average Muslim family, “normalcy” seems to be merely the absence of overt violence: Five years on, the state has yet to express any remorse for its acts of commission and omission. Instead, it belligerently refuses to help uprooted families, whose very existence it denies (3). And, in stark contrast to dozens of Muslims incarcerated without trial for the Godhra train fire, hundreds of Hindus accused of atrocities roam free under the benevolent shadow of the state (4).

Muslim leaders say that it isn’t anymore a question of if societal odds are stacked against their community; but whether, faced with social boycotts and fear of violence, the community is resigning itself to second-class citizenship:

Dr. Hanif Lakdawala of Sanchetana, which works with the urban poor, says that discrimination is so blatant that otherwise nice people have found creative ways to package them: In 2002, schools sent away Muslim children citing “safety concerns” (5). But nowadays, they tell parents that their child may not feel comfortable among mostly Hindu children. The travesty, he says, is that they are wont to offer the same pretext to turn back the next Muslim child who comes along…and the next.

If ghettoization started long before 2002 (6), the pogroms only seem to have accelerated it: It is now virtually impossible for Muslims to live in most parts of the city, Lakdawala says, except in predominantly Muslim neighborhoods (“negative areas” in local parlance) (7). Even Sanchetana was unable to lease office space under his name and had to fall back on a Hindu trustee’s name.

Dr. Shakil Ahmad of the Islamic Relief Committee (IRC), who lives in Juhapura, tells me that this vast neighborhood has minimal civic amenities and woefully inadequate schools (8). Residents complain that it is difficult to obtain utility connections and bank loans -– my auto-rickshaw driver was literally kicked out by a State Bank manager who told him that he does not give loans to Muslims!

If there are some here who would take the trouble to couch their prejudices, there are others who behave as if the state’s gaurav (pride) hinges directly on humiliating the minorities:

During an earlier trip: Prof. J.S. Bandukwala, an outspoken community activist, had shown me a letter from a self-styled Hindutva historian taunting him to convert back to Hinduism. A young Muslim social worker had been asked in a job interview if he knew how to make bombs! And a concerted campaign seemed afoot to push Muslims out of their traditional livelihoods.

Now: Bandukwala not only receives threats from Hindutva activists, but he is also blacklisted by his own community for advocating reforms. Many of the new shopping malls are said to be reluctant to employ Muslims. And, as feared, only Hindu-owned automobile garages have been allowed back in some of the riot-torn areas.

In rural Gujarat, Muslims have been kept out of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (9). And, in the town of Godhra, a prominent doctor says that he was forced to withdraw from a tender after provocative leaflets started appearing across town naming him as an undesirable competitor.

And the list goes on, leaving little doubt that an insidious campaign has been underway here, with the active collusion of state and civil society, to marginalize and invisibilize Muslims.

Secularists who won’t go away

“You can fit all the secularists in Gujarat on the back of two trucks,” my friends used to wryly joke last time I was here. The latest version has the CM’s office opining that one truck would do, as half of them will disappear the moment they sense danger!

But those on the “back of the truck” are in no mood to acquiesce to state-condoned bigotry: Some of them doggedly pursue court cases, believing that without justice there can be no reconciliation (10). Some pursue youth initiatives cutting across religion and gender. Others focus on primary education as the only hope for ridding the society of communal hate.

And, there is near unanimity that working with the poor on issues that they care most about -- jobs, housing, education and public services -- is a more effective way to build bridges than to lecture them on communal harmony.

---

Janvikas was pushed into massive relief and rehabilitation work in the aftermath of the 2001 earthquake. It had barely returned to its grassroots work when the 2002 violence thrust it once again into the eye of the storm. Before rushing in to help, says Gagan Sethi, its outgoing Managing Trustee, they had to first look in the mirror: What was their track-record on inter-community relations? How many Muslims did they have in their own organization?

The answers were disconcerting: some of the staff were themselves ambivalent towards Muslims! And it took a great deal of introspection before the organization resolved that it would not remain silent on the issue of communalism.

Janvikas hasn’t looked back since and has devoted a considerable part of its energy to fighting intolerance:

Its Center for Social Justice (CSJ) provides legal aid to the victims, including to Bilkis Bano, whose gang-rape case was transferred to Mumbai by the Supreme Court. CSJ also supports the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), many of whose post-Godhra rulings were based on its fieldwork.

Janvikas spear-heads efforts to draw national attention to internally displaced families who still can’t return to their villages: 5,000 such families came together in a public rally last year, belying the state’s shameful assertion that there are no such people (11). Their report recently prompted a strong note to Gujarat from NHRC. And a Supreme Court committee also found the families living under “difficult and pathetic conditions.”

The notion of bringing together Hindu and Muslim youth, including some who had taken part in the violence, sounded far-fetched when Gagan first mentioned it to me. But the idea has blossomed into Yuvshakti, whose first major project was Cricket for Peace, which saw religiously-mixed teams from several talukas compete in a serious tournament in 2004-05. The youth movement now works across Panchmahals on community-specific issues (12).

The thought of NGOs working closely with Islamic organizations was also unimaginable a few years back. But, today, even as others go on about the need for madraasa reforms, Janvikas has already taken a baby step -– the first of its kind, I believe -– to bring the teaching of science, mathematics and Gujarati to some of the maktabs in the Kutch, in partnership with Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i-Hind.

As I say goodbye to Yuvshakti volunteers in Halol, I enquire about the status of Cricket for Peace. Local authorities won’t let them use their grounds anymore, claiming that it might spark communal tensions! And the harmony sculpture unveiled by Sunil Gavaskar during my last visit is gathering dust in the municipal office.

Presumably, a friendly game of cricket reaching out to Hindu and Muslim youth is a serious threat to the state of intolerance.

---

Renowned danseuse and social activist Mallika Sarabhai has paid a heavy price for challenging the state in the Supreme Court for its handling of the 2002 violence. Her decision to risk her career and personal safety to help a community in distress had stood in stark contrast to the deafening silence of most national artists.

Last time I was here, Mallika was still fighting the government’s attempt to pin an absurd human trafficking case against her. The charge was eventually dropped; but, in a bit of irony, a BJP MP close to Gandhinagar has just been caught red-handed in a real human trafficking case.

As I catch up with Mallika at Darpana Academy, she asks me if I had run into any BJP protestors on the streets burning her in effigy! The CM is apparently miffed at Doordarshan for agreeing to broadcast Darpana’s path-breaking TV series on social issues (SAT-Television For Change), and he has been leaning on the Planning Commission to pull the plug. The series, billed as “high quality stuff” by Doordarshan staff, is an “unprecedented development communications move,” Mallika asserts.

Despite the intervention of the nation’s highest court, Gujarat seems to miss no opportunity to hound activists like Mallika, who is any day a more fitting ambassador of India’s cultural heritage than those who would accuse her of being “anti-Hindu.” Unfazed, she continues to use her art form to address critical social issues.

It would be a shame if she were driven out of Gujarat by a vindictive government.

---

Dr. Mukul Sinha of Jan Sangharsh Manch (JSM) strongly believes that pursuit of justice must be grounded in grassroots work among the affected communities. He cites JSM’s legal support for dozens of Muslims held under POTA, on the one hand, and its Public Interest Litigation on behalf of Sanklit Nagar, on the other, which resulted in a court order forcing the municipality to service the area. Such work has generated unprecedented camaraderie between poorer Hindus and Muslims, he asserts, even prompting joint action against slum demolitions.

When some of us met Sinha back in Sep 2002 he firmly believed in the principle of Occam’s razor: The simplest explanation for the Godhra train fire –- accidental or caused by a miscreant -- was most likely the right one. He has since become widely known for his single-handed effort at the Nanavati-Shah commission hearings in discrediting the state’s constantly changing conspiracy theory (13).

“Aren’t you legitimizing a body widely seen as a cover for the Sangh Parivar?” I ask.

By staying engaged, he responds confidently, JSM has not only been able to access the state’s “evidence,” but it has also been able to garner the attention of the notoriously communal Gujarati media, which is now beginning to question the government’s credibility: “The Commission doesn’t know whether to keep us in or to kick us out. With us in, they risk continuing exposure of the state; but without us, they lose the only legitimacy they have.”

---

When I first met Rajendra Joshi of Saath, the group was working predominantly in Hindu slum areas of Ahmedabad. The 2002 violence drew it deeper into Muslim areas, where it has been helping some of the victims, with support from NRI groups.

As Rajubhai updates me, I’m particularly intrigued by Saath’s efforts to convince the local power company that notwithstanding the fearsome myths surrounding Juhapura, there were profits to be made here. (“It’s a mini-Pakistan, where men walk around with AK-47’s,” a reporter had sought to warn me in 2002!) Thanks to a grant from USAID, and parallel efforts by IRC and other community based organizations, the initial fee for a power connection has dropped from Rs. 12,000 to about Rs. 2,500! And the company has even set up an office in the area, cutting out exploitative middlemen.

Saath also trains unemployed youth for service jobs in the mushrooming retail sector, with support from the American India Foundation (AIF).

“What about reports of discrimination against Muslims?” I ask.

“With the entry of many non-Gujarati companies,” Rajubhai responds, “some employers just don’t care what religion one belongs to.”

This, the first optimistic note I hear during my trip, gives me pause: Does the much-talked about shortage of labor in the service sector promise a “business solution” to communal harmony -- by taking restless youth off the streets of cities like Ahmedabad?

---

RFK’s rousing 1968 speech, On the Mindless Menace of Violence (featured in the movie Bobby), is still ringing in my ears as I get ready to depart Gujarat after an all-too-brief a visit:

“Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul….Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens.”

I’m immensely grateful that despite threats to their personal safety, there are a few activists here who are determined to bring justice to their fellow citizens and persevere in their struggle to cleanse the society of the politics of hate and violence.

What happens in Gujarat, many believe, presages the future of secular India. But fortunately -– as recent elections show -- a vast majority of poorer Indians, regardless of religion and caste, sense a shared destiny and are demanding that politicians respond to their basic human development needs first. (Images of Muslim groups leading the protests against the proposed Special Economic Zone in Nandigram should be an eye-opener.)

I think it’s only a matter of time before a majority of Gujaratis too conclude that a government that is single-mindedly pursuing the politics of exclusion and conquest can’t possibly serve the long-term interests of their state, despites its claimed economic successes. When they finally manage to put the Hindutva genie back in the bottle, it will have been in no small measure due to the sacrifices of the few secularists on the back of that truck.

---
Acknowledgements:

I am also grateful for the insights of Martin Macwan, who speaks passionately of the shared destiny of poorer Muslims and Dalits; Mukhtar Mohammed, a businessman turned community activist, who continues his relentless efforts to seek justice; Shri P.G.J. Nampoothiri, a former DG of police, and until recently NHRC’s Special Rapporteur in Gujarat, who played a critical role in its Gujarat interventions; Rohit Prajapati and his colleagues at PUCL, who remain the last line of defense against communalism in Vadodara; Father Cedric Prakash, who co-facilitated the Concerned Citizens Tribunal, which came closest to a “Truth Commission” on the 2002 violence; and K. Stalin of Drishti Media, who brought the plight of Dalits to international attention through his award-winning film, “Lesser Humans.”

Notes:

(4) Former IAS officer Harsh Mander successfully petitioned the Supreme Court to reopen more than 2,000 cases that the Gujarat police had summarily closed. His Nyayagarh initiative is pursuing 512 of those cases, resulting in the arrest of over 200 people to date.

(6) Nafisa Barot of Uthaan, which works on women’s and water issues, says that her family was forced to shift homes half a dozen times in six months during the 70’s to escape harassment by neighbors.

(10) Only 13 cases have lead to convictions so far. But even this would not have come about without the tenacity of activists from Gujarat and elsewhere -- efforts by Teesta Setalvad in successfully pursuing the Best Bakery case, despite numerous personal threats and witness tampering, are well known.

(12) Delhi-based Anhad, convened by Shabnam Hashmi, recently organized a youth convention in Ahmedabad and was the first to defy the unofficial ban on the film Parzania.



Leave A Comment
&
Share Your Insights

Comment Policy


Digg it! And spread the word!



Here is a unique chance to help this article to be read by thousands of people more. You just Digg it, and it will appear in the home page of Digg.com and thousands more will read it. Digg is nothing but an vote, the article with most votes will go to the top of the page. So, as you read just give a digg and help thousands more to read this article.



 

Get CC HeadlinesOn your Desk Top

 

Search Our Archive



Our Site

Web

Online Users