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.
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