June 3^rd, 2002

 

          Headlines:

 

·       A Plot From The Devil's Lair (Outlook)

·       Rapes Go Unpunished In Indian Mob attacks (Washington Post)

·       Riots' plan scripted much earlier: PUDR (Times Of India)

·       Police fire at mob in Bhavnagar (www.rediff.com)

 

 

Opinion:

 

·       Ayodhya, the stumbling blocks (Hindustan Times)

 

 

 

 

NEWS HEADLINES

 

A Plot From The Devil's Lair
A late-evening meeting convened by Modi on February 27 ensured mobs a free hand
the next day
Manu Joseph
Jun 03, 2002

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20020603&fname=Gujarat+%28F%29&sid=\
1

 
What exactly happened on the night of February 27 in chief minister Narendra
Modi's bungalow in Gandhinagar? All along there have been rumours of a
late-evening meeting called by Modi on the day of the Godhra carnage in which
he instructed senior police officials to allow "people to vent their
frustration" over the torching of two coaches of the Sabarmati Express during
the VHP bandh the following day.

These rumours have now been confirmed. Information with Outlook shows that a
senior minister from his own cabinet has blown the whistle on Modi. Last week,
the minister deposed before the Concerned Citizens Tribunal headed by former
Supreme Court judge Justice Krishna Iyer. The nine-member tribunal comprising
former judges and other eminent citizens was in Gujarat to record evidence on
who or what may have caused the Gujarat carnage.

Former Bombay High Court judge Justice Hosbet Suresh, who is on the Concerned
Citizens panel and who also heard the deposition, confirms that the minister
did depose before him. He told Outlook: "Yes, a senior minister appeared before
us for 35 to 40 minutes and talked to us about a few things that led to the
Gujarat carnage. Among other things, the minister spoke about the meeting Modi
called on the night of February 27." The minister spoke to the tribunal on the
condition that it would not name him in its final report. Another member of the
panel has also confirmed the minister's deposition.

The minister told Outlook that in his deposition, he revealed that on the night
of February 27, Modi summoned DGP K. Chakravarthy, commissioner of police,
Ahmedabad, P.C. Pande, chief secretary G. Subarao, home secretary Ashok
Narayan, secretary to the home department K. Nityanand (a serving police
officer of IG rank on deputation) and DGP (IB) G.S. Raigar. Also present were
officers from the CM's office: P.K. Mishra, Anil Mukhim and A.K. Sharma. The
minister also told Outlook that the meeting was held at the CM's bungalow.

The minister told the tribunal that in the two-hour meeting, Modi made it clear
there would be justice for Godhra the next day, during the VHP-called bandh. He
ordered that the police should not come in the way of "the Hindu backlash". At
one point in this briefing, according to the minister's statement to the
tribunal, DGP Chakravarthy vehemently protested. But he was harshly told by
Modi to shut up and obey. Commissioner Pande, says the minister, would later
show remorse in private but at that meeting didn't have the guts to object.

According to the deposition, it was a typical Modi meeting: more orders than
discussion. By the end of it, the CM ensured that his top officials—especially
the police—would stay out of the way of Sangh parivar men. The word was passed
on to the mobs.

(According to a top IB official, on the morning of February 28, VHP and Bajrang
Dal activists first visited some parts of Ahmedabad and created minor trouble
just to check if the police did in fact look the other way. Once Modi's word
was confirmed, the carnage began.)

The minister further told the tribunal that two cabinet ministers were present
in the police control room on February 28. They took over the control room and
personally supervised the proceedings. (The names of the ministers, Ashok Bhatt
and I.K. Jadeja, have very often been taken by police sources but till date
there is no FIR registered against them, nor has any police official who was
present in the control room then ever confirmed this allegation).

The minister went on to tell the tribunal that Modi was convinced that since he
started the riots, he would be able to control the violence within a day or
two. But the scale of the violence and the media backlash caught him by
surprise. The more shocking aspect of the minister's testimony, says a tribunal
member, was: "Scores could have been settled in Godhra itself.Perhaps 100
people may have died there on the whole and that may have been the end of it.
But Modi brought the riots to Ahmedabad. He took the riots to rest of the
state."

The riots were not born out of any ideology, according to the minister. It had
a simple political background. The minister told Outlook, "Modi was never a
politician. He was a pracharak, a pracharak whose days were numbered because
unlike others of his status, he was a man who liked the good life. He lived
like a king. Not many liked him. Then one day, we were shocked by the BJP's
defeat in the panchayat elections. And when the BJP lost the Sabarmati assembly
seat and Sabarkanta parliamentary seat, we knew we would lose the general
elections."

That's when Modi stepped in. According to the minister, Modi told the BJP high
command that after all, he was more presentable than Keshubai Patel and he
swore that in the next elections he would bring the BJP back to power. The
minister added that when five and a half months into the job Modi realised his
charm wasn't working, he decided religious polarisation was the only way to
survive. As triggers go, Godhra was a strong one. But anything could have
served as a trigger. There was talk of making an issue of a cow slaughter video
the party had got but that plan was shelved.

Politics was also why the minister decided to squeal. As he himself told
Outlook, it was the victimisation of party workers by Modi that upset him the
most. Said the minister: "After taking all the credit for Hindu awareness in
the state, when pressure mounted on him to cool down, he started balancing the
sheet by arresting party workers."

A 70-year-old BJP leader in Kalol taluka has been arrested on rape charges. As
many as 3,369 people have been arrested so far, many of them grassroots party
workers who are asking their bosses why they are being picked up. In all, 893
FIRs have been filed. One (crime number 195/2002) names VHP leader Jaideep
Patel. BJP MLA Dr Maya Kodanani has been named along with other lower-level
party workers in FIR 197/2002. Police inspector Rawat, who had terrorised
inmates of the Dhariyakhan Gummat refugee camp and was the right hand man of
civil supplies minister Bharat Barot, has been suspended, an event nobody would
have believed in the pre-K.P.S. Gill era.

Discontent is mounting within Modi's cabinet. Revenue minister Haren Pandya had
this to say to Outlook: "No party is just one man. History points that out. We
had a meeting recently of top BJP leaders. Modi was not invited but there was a
huge crowd. There was not a mention of Modi by the speakers but it was still a
very successful BJP meet."

In fact, no one expected the minister to turn up before the tribunal. It is not
a constitutional body and it is not binding on anybody it summons to appear
before it. But the minister walked into a building called Prashant in
Ahmedabad, which houses a human rights organisation. Justices Suresh and P.B.
Sawant, senior advocate K.G. Kannabiran and retired police officer K.S.
Subramanian were present.

When the tribunal releases its findings in mid-August, there will be many
things to make a man who is today called Chhota Sardar feel very small. But as
Justice Suresh says, "Our report will only give the public the right to
information. They'll know what really happened. But that doesn't mean the
guilty will be punished." History agrees.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Manu Joseph In Ahmedabad With S. Anand

 

© 2002 Outlook India.

Rapes Go Unpunished In Indian Mob Attacks
Muslim Women Say Claims Are Ignored

washingtonpost.com

By Rama Lakshmi
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, June 3, 2002; Page A09

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49183-2002Jun2.html

KALOL, India -- Sultana Feroz Sheikh sat motionless, staring at the mud floor
in a dark, windowless room.

Three months ago, as religious riots engulfed the western Indian state of
Gujarat, Sheikh saw her husband and several relatives burned alive. Then, she
said, she was brutally raped by three men as her 4-year-old son wailed nearby.

Sheikh wants to see the criminals brought to justice. But Gujarat police are
routinely refusing to file charges against individuals accused of rape during
the violence in late February and early March, because they say mob violence
cannot be broken down into specific crimes.

"It is difficult to determine who in the mob pelted stones, who raped and who
killed," said police inspector Ramanbhai Patil. Though the riot on March 1 that
claimed the lives of Sheikh's loved ones and resulted in her rape engulfed the
entire village of Kalol, she said Patil has arrested only four men in
connection with the day's events.


The violence then spread throughout Gujarat, where nearly 1,000 people, most of
them Muslims, have been killed in Hindu-Muslim clashes since Feb. 27. That was
the day Muslims launched a firebomb attack on a train carrying Hindu activists,
killing 60. Countless cases of arson, looting, murder and rape have been
jumbled together in what are known as first-information reports, or FIRs.
Police have filed "general FIRs," simply blaming riots on Hindu tola, or mobs,
and refusing to register individual complaints.

Arrests increased markedly after the Indian government appointed K.P.S. Gill --
known as the "super cop" of Punjab state for his work there in the 1990s -- to
assist with law enforcement in Gujarat. Police have arrested about 3,200
suspects in more than 300 cases of attacks against Muslims in Gujarat. The
suspects have been charged with murder, rioting and arson. But advocacy groups
say arrests for rape are still rare.

"The police FIR said that a Hindu mob attacked a Muslim mob," said Sheikh, who
is Muslim. "I am not a 'mob,' I am a woman who was gang-raped by three men. How
can I hope for justice, when they don't even register my complaint properly?"

Farah Naqvi, an independent journalist who is part of Citizen's Initiative, a
fact-finding team that recorded testimony of sexual violence in Gujarat, called
it "a piracy of silence."

"Cases have been filed against the nameless and the faceless," Naqvi said.
"When you register them as mobs, it gives you a basis and an excuse for
inaction. A single, collective FIR cannot take care of all the individual
losses, as the time, loss and place varies. And it is especially true for
rape."

There are no reliable estimates of how many women -- Hindu or Muslim -- have
been raped in the Gujarat violence. According to the Citizen's Initiative
report, however, almost every relief shelter in the state houses people who are
victims of or witnesses to rape, molestation or other types of sexual assault.

Part of the difficulty in gauging the problem, said Sejal Dand, an aid worker,
is that "many women were raped and then killed or burned."

Dand said fear of the police, who have been widely accused of standing idle as
violence peaked, discouraged women and witnesses from reporting crimes for
days. When the victims and witnesses finally did file reports, police often
asked them to omit the names of influential men, Dand said.

In addition, in India's conservative and inward-looking Muslim minority of 130
million, even talking about rape is a matter of deep shame and stigma.

In the village of Fatehpura, aid workers reported, a Hindu mob dragged 30 young
women into full public view, sexually assaulted them and forced them to run
naked. Yet the Muslims of Fatehpura refuse to go to the police or even reveal
the names of the women, fearing no man would marry them, the aid workers said.

"There is a lot of denial on the issue of rape of Muslim women in Gujarat,"
Dand said. Even after citizens groups published reports with women's
testimonies, many officials were dismissive. Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee said in Parliament that reports of sexual violence were "exaggerated,"
and the country's law minister said only two FIRs have been filed for rape in
Gujarat so far.

Sheikh hasn't filed one, because the police wouldn't let her, she said.

Her ordeal began on the morning of Feb. 28, a day after the attack on the
train, she said, when she heard hundreds of angry Hindus marching toward the
Muslim quarters of her home village of Delol, shouting, "We will burn you!" She
and her husband grabbed their son and fled to some wheat fields, where they hid
with a group of other panic-stricken Muslims. Their homes went up in flames.

The Muslims retreated in a milk van the next morning to the nearest town,
Kalol. There, another Hindu mob surrounded them.

"One by one, they pulled out the men from the van and burned them. My husband
was burned alive in front of my own eyes as I screamed and pleaded with them,"
Sheikh said, tears welling in her eyes.

Sheikh said she managed to jump out with her son, then ran toward a nearby
river. Eight men wielding swords chased after her.

"One of them grabbed my hair from behind and pulled me; another snatched my son
away," she said. They threw her down and hit her, and three raped her. "They
were ruthless," she whispered.

Sheikh ran and hid for days before going to a relief shelter in Kalol. Ten days
after the rape, she summoned the courage to go to the police to file a report.

"To my surprise, the police said I cannot file an FIR," Sheikh said. "They said
an FIR already existed for that day's events."

Police officials investigating the Kalol violence said they could not register
two reports for the same incident. Because a general FIR had already been
filed, they said, the most they could do was attach a statement to it.

Patil said Sheikh's case was weak anyway, because she did not undergo a medical
examination until more than 10 days after the alleged rape.

Citizen's Initiative recommends that special courts be set up to hear women's
cases and that their testimony be treated as the basis for legal action if FIRs
are not filed. And the requirement of medical evidence should be dropped, the
group says, because so many women hid for days before going to the police.

Trauma counseling, according to the group's report, is the most urgent need.

For a number of emotionally scarred women now languishing in shelters,
consisting of tents in the scorching heat, simply returning to their homes
could provide the first healing touch. But homecoming is fraught with risks,
too.

Bilkees Rasoolbhai Yaqub, 19, was one of many women gang-raped outside the
village of Randikpura. She is the single witness to many killings and rapes in
Randikpura and has named three men in her police report. Now Yaqub's Hindu
neighbors say they will not allow the Muslims to return to the village until
she withdraws the names of the accused in her police report.

The villagers say her statements are baseless; the police say Yaqub's story
contains inconsistencies and her medical report was negative.

But, asked an anguished Yaqub, "Why would I lie about my rape? Which woman
would invite social stigma upon herself?"

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

Riots' plan scripted much earlier: PUDR

Times Of India,

June 03, 2002.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=11801744

NEW DELHI: The People’s Union for Democratic Rights
(PUDR) report on the Gujarat violence — released here
Saturday — said that the ‘‘whole intent of the pogrom
has been to reduce Muslims to second class citizens in
their own country’’.

It also alleged that the Gujarat riots were not an
outcome of the Godhra incident as the ‘‘planning’’ had
begun much earlier and charged the state government
with involvement in the violence.

‘‘The fact that the Gujarat government supported the
bandh of February 28 and March 1 despite its
experience of largescale violence against Muslims
after a similar bandh in 2000 is evidence of its
complicity in the violence right from the start,’’ the
report said.

PUDR has demanded dismissal of the Narendra Modi
government and a CBI probe into major incidents of
communal violence, and expressed doubts over the Modi
government’s intentions with regard to taking action
against the perpetrators of riots.

The report provides detailed accounts of attacks on
Muslims in villages and small towns.
‘‘The scale of devastation is massive. In almost all
of these places, the houses, household goods, cattle,
implements, shops and factories have been looted and
burnt,’’ the report says.
Calling the government’s rehabilitation policy
‘‘miserable’’, PUDR has pointed out that the amount
for injuries remains discriminatory.

 

© 2002 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.

Police fire at mob in Bhavnagar
rediff.com,
June 3rd, 2002

http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/jun/04train.htm

Police fired at least ten rounds and burst teargas
shells to disperse mobs indulging in arson and stone
pelting in Prabhutalav area of Bhavnagar city in
Gujarat late on Monday night.
However, no one was injured in the police action.

Mobs belonging to two communities began pelting stones
following a power failure in the area and also set a
house on fire.

The situation is under control, police added.

PTI

© 1996 - 2001 rediff.com India Limited. All Rights
Reserved.

 

 

 

OPINION

 

Ayodhya, the stumbling blocks
Iqbal A Ansari
Hindustan Times,
June 4th, 2002.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/040602/detpla01.asp
 
The ‘poorna ahuti yagya’ was observed by the VHP in
Ayodhya on Sunday to mark the culmination of the
100-day ‘Ram naam japs’ to remove the ‘obstacles’ in
the way of the Ram temple construction. Unlike
Jerusalem, the intractability of the Ayodhya issue
does not lie in its being on the faultline of
conflicting Hindu and Muslim civilisations.

For Muslims, no mosque other than those in Mecca,
Medina and Jerusalem enjoys any special status.
Prophet Mohammad observed that the whole world was
like a mosque to him. Its practical implication to
every Muslim is that he can offer his prayer at any
place. No special sanctity attaches to any particular
piece of land or structure.

But does Ayodhya enjoy a special status for Hindus?
Whatever the claims and counterclaims of historians
and archaeologists about the present-day town of
Ayodhya, its strong association with Ram in the minds
of large sections of north Indian Hindus is a
socio-psychological fact. This is reinforced by myths
whose configurations evolved during the 19th century,
to which British colonial-administrator-historians as
well as Muslim chroniclers made their own
contributions.

Why then did Muslims not respond to the earlier offer
of Rajiv Gandhi to get the structure of the mosque
respectfully relocated, allowing a Ram mandir to be
built there, generating in the process immense
goodwill for themselves? Such a proposition did not
become a reality because the idols of Ram were
surreptitiously and wrongly put inside the Babri
masjid on the night of December 22, 1949.

This incident caused great concern to Jawaharlal
Nehru, as reported by Sardar Patel, who advised the
Chief Minister, GB Pant, in his letter of January 9,
1950, that “any unilateral action based on an attitude
of aggression and coercion cannot be countenanced” and
that “such matters can only be resolved peacefully if
we take willing consent of the Muslim community”.

It is a pity that the wrongful dispossession of
Muslims from the mosque got legal sanction, which has
continued till date, sanctified by the Supreme Court
by its majority judgment of 1994.

Regarding the court order for opening the locks of the
gate in 1986, observations made in the BJP’s white
paper on Ayodhya (April 1993) amount to saying that
the course of law in 1986 was not an independent act
of the judiciary based on the merits of the case. What
then makes the leadership of the Babri masjid movement
put absolute reliance on the long-awaited judicial
verdict despite their disappointment with the
judiciary? It is not a case of Muslims reposing
unflinching faith in the fairness of the system of
administration of justice? It is more a case of
desperation.

Emotive issues like cow-slaughter, conversion and
Ayodhya justcan not be satisfactorily resolved by the
law alone. Muslims could have jumped at any
opportunity that offered them an amicable solution —
which is ruled out if the Hindus are exclusively
represented by the front outfits of Sangh parivar.

Post-1986 attempts at dialogue proved abortive partly
because wrong issues were raised. The secular law in
India does not attempt to undo any such historical
wrongs — real or imagined — as was settled in the
Gurdwara/Masjid Shahidganj (Lahore) case by the Privy
Council in 1940.

The offer of a section of overzealous Muslim leaders
to settle the issue in terms of Islamic law and
practice on places of worship contributed to the
confusion of issues and prolongation of the impassé.
The ulema added to the stalemate by pronouncing the
abstract ruling of Islamic jurisprudence — ‘once a
mosque always a mosque’, — contrary to the practice of
Muslim societies, past and present.

Neither the zealous Muslim lawyers nor the ulema in
the Babri masjid movement have publicly discussed how
they have reconciled the conflicting principle of
‘once a mosque, always a mosque’ with the clear ruling
of the 1994 majority judgment that irrespective of the
position in Islamic countries, the Indian State has a
right to acquire any place of worship belonging to any
religion for public purposes — except in case a place
enjoys any special status.

Since the Muslim leadership has been proclaiming its
intention to abide by any verdict of the court, it
must have accepted this ruling of the Supreme Court
that mosques — like temples and churches — can be
acquired for public purpose.

The main reason for negotiated settlement not becoming
a possibility lies in the hijacking of Ram by the
Hindutva forces and appropriating him for building the
temple of a ‘Hindu rashtra’. The issue in Ayodhya is
therefore not the masjid but the idea of Indian
nationhood, the reading of history and the
institutions of law which have failed to protect not
only the Babri masjid but thousands of other mosques
and religious places and lives.

To reverse this process, two conditions need to be
fulfilled. One relates to rescuing ‘Maryada Purshottam
Ram’ from the monopolistic control of Hindutva by
traditionally tolerant Hindus, who want Muslims to
live in peace as equal citizens. The other relates to
the human rights movement and political parties
jointly undertaking a sustained struggle to reform
institutions of rule of law including the judiciary,
so that minorities feel reasonably reassured about
impartial law enforcement and delivery of justice.

The minimum confidence-building measure is to speedily
bring to justice the guilty and compensate the victims
of Gujarat as well as of all previous Ayodhya-related
riots including the Hashimpura killings by the PAC in
1987. Simultaneously, there is a need to expand the
ever shrinking space in national life for Muslims.
Meanwhile, Muslims will be well advised to make the
criminalised extremist groups among them say farewell
to arms and bigotry.

(The writer is a former Professor, Aligarh Muslim
University)

©Hindustan Times Ltd. 1997.