Warning : If you have a heart , if you have a conscience , if you have feelings , if your heart pains for others , if life means anything to you. PLEASE DO NOT READ MY REVIEW AND THE BOOK..as my review is a hotchpotch of what you’ll find in the book and my thoughts about them
Riots. Not a new word for India and Indians.
Communal Riots. A word most commonly associated with the kind of riots that break out in secular India. In fact this is not a new or rare thing for India at all. The birth of India as a free nation had witnessed possibly the worst communal riots in history. And since then India has never been able to cleanse herself from this poison. And whenever and wherever there has been harmony it is only superficial, The Undercurrents are palpable. Every now and then politicians and/or right wing fundamentalist organizations be it Hindu or Muslim have kept the fire burning. And there have been no dearth of reasons for them to do so. The Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Majsid dispute provides more than necessary fuel to the already burning communal fire.
So , Now I assume we can safely conclude that riots are common thing and there is nothing new about it, that will shock the reader. In fact the most shameful and distrurbing thing is that you and me have become immune to read and hear about 10 people killed or x shops and vehicles burnt down in a communal flare up. Then why read [?] this book
Gujarat : The Making Of a Tragedy edited by Siddharth Vardarajan , A point to note is that this is not a novel , not a even a non-fiction novel hence there are no author(s), This is a compilation of the reports submitted by the various fact finding missions , NGOs , articles submitted by intellectuals , and of course reports extracted from various leading National and local dailies of Gujarat. Siddharth Vardharajan, the chief of the national bureau of Times of India has acted only in the editorial capacity to bring out the chilling horror that was Gujarat 2002.
Then, what is that is so different about the “usual” riots that we hear of and forget and what happened in Gujarat. Why is this different?
Gujarat 2002 : A saga best left untold , a happening which we wish had not happened. A thing we wish will never happen again not in India , not anywhere else. If merely following the happening thru the print and the televised media had shocked you and given you nightmares, the contents of this book will give sleepless nights and haunt your daylights. Chapter after chapter, page after page, lines after line it will instill in you a fear. A fear that what will happen to me, my family if the state and the government machinery is against me with a mob of psychos is already thirsty for your blood.
Yes , This is what was different in Gujarat. (A License to Kill:Nandini Sunder ) The involvement of the state , politicians , rightwing organizations(obvious) , emergency services. Etc etc. There was a clear bias, a clear racial discrimination How unlimited quantities of petrol , LPG cylinders suddenly became available to the rioters. How the victims were deliberately stopped from reaching relief camps.You will be surprised at the degree of organization that went into managing these riots.There was a clear bias in the compensation for the riot-affected also How ministers and officials stage-managed the riots and then boasted about controlling the riots within 72 hours. Reading the book will make it clear that the riots could not have lasted 72 minutes if the government willed. But is was not to be , It was a clear case of state sponsored genocide , Instructions were given to senior most police officers and men in power to turn a blind eye . A well thought out and immaculate plan to punish to make “them” suffer and pay for a sin that they had not done.
Sin ?. what Sin. A Sin of burning, or is it roasting. Nah ! Frying , A sin of <choose your word> 58 people alive in a train at godhra. The Carnage at Godhra : Jyoti Punwani (The First two chapters of the book discuss the cause of this incident and try to frame a time-line. Most of the remaining chapters narrate the horror that followed and analyse the role of the state, the repercussions). This bought out godhra on the world map. This was no doubt a horrible and heinous thing to do and the perpetuators should have got the worst possible punishment. But did they get the worst possible punishment? No. Who then did actually get the most horrifying and barbaric punishment? As usual the innocents of the state. And believe you me, reading this book will show what price , men , women and children, in some cases children just born, and in some more gruesome cases children still in their mothers womb had to pay for having nothing to do with the burning of the Sabarmati Express.
Narratives from the killing fields . Omit this chapter. Tear off the pages. Don’t say you were not warned. This is how a gist of this chapter will look like
Place: Naroda Patiya
Official death count: xxx
Unofficial death count: xxxx
Number of women and girls raped:xxx .
Read about men stripped naked to “check” their religion. Then doused in petrol and set on fire. Women stripped , paraded and raped. Gang raped. Girls as young as 12 or 13 gang raped. By people they knew. Sometimes their neighbors. And then burnt alive. Pregnant ladies raped and the fetus ripped out and then thrown in fire. foreign objects inserted into the private parts of ladies. Steel, small parts of wood have been removed from them at the hospitals and relief camps if some “lucky” lady managed to reached one. The book has quoted victims and many ladies from the women organizations (NGO). I have refrained from using any names.(More about this in the chapter Nothing New :Women as Victims by Barkha dutt i.e if you still have the guts)
One more startling feature of Gujarat 2002 was that the revenge rioting was carried even to the upper strata of the society. Ex Mp’s, Police officials, Even the ex judge of the high court were not spared. Every one is aware of congress MP Mr.Eshan Jafri.
Now just let your imagination run wild, If an ex MP was not able to get protection in spite of unlimited calls to the men in power. How could a man (read Muslim) on the street even dream of safety. Needless to say, Mr.Eshan Jafri was burnt alive in what is now known as the Gulbarg society case.
The adivasis<tribals> who are neither hindus nor muslims. How were they motivated to participate in the riots. Saddest part is that Hindus who saved or sheltered Muslims were also punished. When Guardians Betray : Testa Stelwad . What could have been prevented or atleast stopped from reaching such a peak of obsecenity was intentionally allowed. Statistics from official government and NGOS recorded in this book will show that there was next to none preventive arrests post godhra. The answers that some police officials gave to the victim who approached them frantically for help , the logic that the police have applied to register certain cases of rape and arson will make you seethe.
Cont’d in comments. Sorry please bear….