In The Name Of Allah, The Most Beneficent and Merciful
May 11th,
2002
Headlines:
·
8 killed as mobs go on the rampage
in Ahmedabad ( The Hindu )
·
Job lost to riots, porter gave up
life in Hardwar (Indian Express)
· Ahmedabad,
a city divided ( Hindustan Times )
Opinion:
NEWS HEADLINES
8
killed as mobs go on the rampage in Ahmedabad
By
Manas Dasgupta
Army
and Rapid Action Force personnel walking past
burning
shops in the Jamalpur area of Ahmedabad on
Friday.
— AP
http://www.hinduonnet.com/stories/2002051102800100.htm
AHMEDABAD
MAY 10. Eight persons were killed — one of
them
was burnt alive — and 35 injured as violence
erupted
once again in Ahmedabad today even as K. R.
Kaushik
took over as the new Police Commissioner in
place
of P.C. Pande.
The
city witnessed large-scale arson as fire brigade
staff
went on a flash strike late on Thursday night
after
three of their personnel were beaten up and a
fire
brigade ambulance was set afire by a violent mob.
The
strike was called off late this afternoon and the
firemen
resumed duty to douse fires only after the new
Police
Commissioner assured protection to each of the
fire
tenders going to the disturbed areas.
An
indefinite curfew has been clamped in the
Kagdapith,
Gaekwad Haveli, Dani Limda and Kalupur
police
station areas since this morning following
incidents
of bomb blasts, arson, stone-throwing and
group
clashes. Mob set fire to the Laati Bazar (timber
market)
on the Geeta Mandir road this afternoon
causing
great damage.
Police
said there had been "innumerable incidents'' of
bomb
blasts in various parts of the walled city. At
least
one person was killed and dozens were injured.
The
police housing colony in Gaekwad Haveli was
attacked
by a mob which set fire to a police
motorcycle
and snatched a rifle. A police constable
dragged
out of his house, however, escaped.
Four
persons were killed in police firing in Jamalpur
and
the Gaekwad haveli where one person was also
stabbed
to death. A 27-year old fruit trader passing
through
the Kalupur locality was burnt alive by a mob
barely
a few metres away from the Kalupur police
station.
The person going on a two-wheeler was thrown
into
a garbage dump and burnt.
While
one person was stabbed to death near the
Vasant-Rajab
crossing in Kagdapith, another died of
injuries
sustained in a bomb blast in Raikhad. Police
opened
fire in the Raikhad, Jamalpur and Kagdapith
areas
repeatedly as violent mobs of rival communities
regrouped
and attacked each other. About 100 shops and
cabins,
two-wheelers and houses were set ablaze in
different
parts of the walled city which also
witnessed
a stabbing spree. Five persons sustained
stab
injuries while 30 were injured in stone-throwing.
In
a late night reshuffle of the top police brass, Mr.
Pande
and almost his entire team of officials were
shifted
out of the city following a meeting between
the
Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, and his security
advisor,
the former Punjab police chief, K. P. S.
Gill.
Mr. Pande was succeeded by the Additional
Director-General
of Police (CID Crime), Mr Kaushik,
who
was also looking after the investigation into the
Godhra
train carnage, but has no experience of heading
a
police commissionerate. Both the Joint Police
Commissioner,
M. K. Tandon, and the Additional
Commissioner,
Keshav Kumar, who was brought to
Ahmedabad
a fortnight ago, were also transferred and
their
places would be taken over by two young
officers,
Satish Sharma and Satish Verma.
In
an apparent attempt to ward off the criticism that
police
officials from the minority community have been
marginalised,
A.I. Sayeed, Joint Director, State
Police
Academy, was appointed the Security Advisor to
the
Chief Minister. Sayeed would hold this post as an
additional
charge.
The
changes were announced immediately after the fire
brigade
went on a flash strike plunging the city into
chaos
even as arsonists had a field day. The firemen
went
on a strike after three of their personnel — who
had
taken an ambulance to the Raipur Chakla to rescue
the
sons of two fire officers allegedly kidnapped by a
mob
and beaten up, — faced the mob fury. The firemen
were
dragged out of the ambulance which was set afire
and
were beaten up. As the news reached the Danapith
fire
headquarters, the entire staff collected at
Raipur
and struck work. The strike was later called
off.
Copyright
© 2002, The Hindu.
Job
lost to riots, porter gave up life in Hardwar
Shefali
Nautiyal,
Indian
Express.
http://www.indian-express.com/full_story.php?content_id=2503
Ahmedabad,
May 10: When 41-year-old Surendra Vitthal
Bedi
and his son jumped into the Ganga in Hardwar a
few
days ago, no one would have thought that they were
victims
of violence in Gujarat. But Bedi and his son
were
victims of Gujarat’s violence, albeit indirectly.
Bedi,
a porter, used to cycle 5 km everyday and hitch
a
20-km ride from Geratpur to Maninagar where he
worked
at a provision store earning Rs 25 a day.
Following
violence, the Muslim shopkeepers shut shop
and
Bedi became jobless. He could do nothing except
wait
for the violence to end.
His
wife, Renuka Bedi, said, ‘‘After the owner closed
his
shop, Surendra tried to find work, but couldn’t.
He
would leave every morning, but return home saying
he
couldn’t find any work. We had no food in the house
for
many days.’’ Ultimately, hunger forced the family
to
sell off every bit of Renuka’s jewellery. ‘‘We were
surviving
on whatever jewellery I had,’’ Renuka says.
Conversant
with Sanskrit, Bedi thought of trying his
luck
at Hardwar and left with his 12-year-old son two
weeks
ago. However, there too, he found no work.
Frustrated
and disappointed Bedi first killed his son
and
then committed suicide.
©
2002: Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd. All
rights
reserved throughout the world. © 2002:
Ahmedabad,
a city divided
Raveen
Thukral
Hindustan
Times,
(Ahmedabad,
May 10)
http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/110502/detNAT05.asp
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There
are two cities here. On one side of the
Sabarmati
river, smoke billows from a burnt jhuggi
cluster,
and police vans patrol the deserted and
curfew-bound
streets of the walled city. Fear and
suspicion
shadows the faces of the people there.
On
the other side is the usual bustle of a weekday:
restaurants
and shopping malls are crowded. A
McDonald's
outlet is full of young people; others
queue
up for the Hrithik Roshan starrer "Na Tum Jano
Na
Hum" at the multiplex on Ashram Road. Barely a few
kilometres
away in the Dilli Darwaza area you can see
the
scared faces of women attempting to peep out from
half-open
windows.
In
Dilli Darwaza and Shahi Bagh the charred remains of
shops
and business establishments are evidence of the
violence
that has scarred these areas. Police
officials
say there has been a change in the modus
operandi
of the rioters. While mob attacks and clashes
between
the two communities had dominated earlier, now
the
attacks are against selected targets, under cover.
The
police refer to the reported burning of six people
in
different parts of the city in the last four days
to
support their theory.
Friday's
incident in the Kalupur area where one person
was
surrounded by a mob of 100 people and burnt alive
is
yet another indication of the selective and planned
killing
that is now taking place, officials say.
A
tour round the curfew-bound areas of Kalupur,
Gomtipur,
Astodia, Raipur and Jamalpur, which have a
high
concentration of Muslims, shows no sign of
improvement
in the situation. Even with heavy
deployment
of police and day curfew people in these
areas
live virtually like prisoners.
With
shops remaining closed for most of the time in
the
past two months due to curfew, business has come
to
a standstill for hundreds of shop-owners in the
walled
city. Daily wage-earners have also been badly
hit.
Abdul
Rashid Sheikh, who has been staying in a relief
camp
for the last two months, accuses the police and
the
local administration of being hand in glove with
the
rioters.
So
deep is the communal divide that the two
communities
do not trust each other even in hospitals.
Members
of one community go to V.S. Hospital on one
side
of the Sabarmati and members of the other go to
the
Civil Hospital across the river.
©Hindustan
Times Ltd. 1997.
OPINIONS
The
violence of sovereignty
By
Himadeep R. Muppidi
The
Hindu.
http://www.hinduonnet.com/stories/2002051100331000.htm
How
shameless must a political leadership be to object
to
the concerns of foreign Governments while
deliberately
ignoring (when not justifying) the
continuing
carnage under its own administration?
AS
THE killings continue in Gujarat, it is astounding
to
hear the Indian Government deplore the concerned
calls
from fellow Governments around the world as
"foreign
interference". It appears equally ridiculous
to
hear the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, say
that
India does not need any lessons in secularism
from
the "West". India has, in the past, been fairly
scrupulous,
and rightly so, about asserting its
sovereignty
in international affairs. But rarely has
it
defended state sovereignty on such pathetic and
blatantly
anti-humanitarian grounds. This defence is
not
only ethically flawed but also geo-politically
short-sighted.
The
fundamental responsibility of a modern democratic
state
is to secure, at the least, the physical well
being
of its citizens. In Gujarat, however, we have a
situation
in which the state machinery is the primary
source
of terror, insecurity and violent death for its
citizens.
Rather than dismissing the State Government
and
ensuring the safety of its nationals, the Central
Government
is busy proclaiming its sovereign rights
over
the nation.
But
is "sovereignty" really the primary issue here or
is
it the state-sponsored slaughter of Indians in
Gujarat?
How shameless must a political leadership be
to
object to the concerns of foreign Governments while
deliberately
ignoring (when not justifying) the
continuing
carnage under its own administration?
Should
we discount the concerned voices of the
Canadians,
the Swiss or the European Union because
they
happen not to be fellow nationals — even in the
face
of the brutalities of completely home grown,
thoroughly
"nationalist" goondas? Is "sovereignty", as
a
right of the state, so precious that it needs to be
shouted
out over and above the carefully ignored
screams
of dying women, men and children in Narendra
Modi's
Gujarat?
It
is worth asking if the humanitarian concerns of
other
states really represent a threat to the nation's
sovereignty.
Maybe the concerns of the "foreigners"
come
laced with a hidden politics. But is that
politics
more deplorable and more of a threat to India
than
the amoral calculations through which the Modi
administration
and the BJP, by all accounts, not only
connived
in the killings but also sought to benefit
electorally
from its bloody harvest?
What
is truly wretched in this situation is not the
concern
expressed by other Governments but the
continuing
callousness and indifference of the Indian
Government
towards the suffering of its own citizens.
It
appears that the Indian Government wants its
economy
and society to be globalised but not
necessarily
its humanitarian impulses. If so, it is
clearly
headed in the wrong direction.
Caught
up, as it has been, in the euphoria over the
"war
on terrorism", the Indian Government does not
seem
to have read the fine print of globalisation too
closely.
Here is what Richard Haass, Director of
Policy
Planning for the U.S. State Department, had to
say
about "sovereignty" in a recent interview in The
New
Yorker (April 1, 2002): "Sovereignty entails
obligations.
One is not to massacre your own people.
Another
is not to support terrorism in any way." The
ruling
party seems to have latched onto the second
dimension
and somehow forgotten the first.
But
this amnesia about the ordinary responsibilities
of
the modern state can carry a heavy burden. As Mr.
Haass
notes: "If a Government fails to meet these
obligations,
then it forfeits some of the normal
advantages
of sovereignty, including the right to be
left
alone inside your own territory. Other
Governments,
including the United States, gain the
right
to intervene." The Indian Government has gone
out
of its way to demonstrate to the West its capacity
for
behaving "responsibly". Whether it is the
modification
of domestic patent laws or the offering
of
bases in the fight against "terrorism", it has
sought
to assure the West that it is a reliable and
trusted
partner, possibly even a servile one. National
sovereignty
did not seem to weigh heavily in such
decisions.
But,
absurdly enough, sovereignty becomes an issue
when
the massacre of its own citizens is involved. The
report
of Syeda Hameed and others titled "How the
Gujarat
massacre affected minority women'' makes for
chilling
reading in terms of the systematic violence
against
women. It shames the Government and all of us.
But
that shame is a worthy sentiment only if it
compels
the Government into prosecuting the guilty. Of
what
use is a shame that is worried only about how it
looks
abroad? Rather than railing at the West, it
would
be worthwhile for the Government to demonstrate
a
sense of responsibility for the lives of its own
citizens.
Maybe even a little servility would be in
order.
The Government is, after all, the people's
servant
and not its benevolent ruler, as the misguided
concept
of raj dharma seems to imply.
It
is conceivable that the Indian Government feels its
newfound
"natural ally'', the United States, will
shield
it from these global pressures. But in the
contemporary
world order, states, however powerful,
are
not the only actors affecting the international
system.
NGOs, international courts and diasporas
affect
global politics in powerful ways. As the Third
U.N.
Conference Against Racism in Durban demonstrated,
Dalit
groups achieved a significant level of support
in
global civil society by publicising their
oppression
as an issue of racism. Faculty from my
college
who attended the conference came back with a
heightened
awareness of these issues and that
awareness
has translated into course offerings,
lectures
and student activism. That is all to the
good.
What
is morally flawed and politically foolish in this
context
is for the Government to place itself against
these
progressive currents in the name of national
sovereignty.
If a Henry Kissinger himself is busy
running
away from international courts, then how safe
are
a Modi, an Advani or a Vajpayee?
There
is a lesson here also for the more brand
conscious
CEOs such as Chandrababu Naidu who keep the
NDA
Government in power. Mr. Naidu has successfully
marketed
himself internationally as a Chief Minister
focussed
on clean governance but his opportunistic
secularism
could sink his brand quite rapidly. Large
institutional
investment funds increasingly base their
investment
decisions on criteria of global social
responsibility.
NGO activism on a range of issues
(from
furs to carpets to diamonds to footballs) is
powerful
enough for the U.N. Secretary-General, Kofi
Annan,
to have initiated a new "Global Compact" that
brings
together corporations, unions and NGOs to
promote
responsible corporate behaviour on the basis
of
universally accepted principles.
A
self-respecting, truly democratic political
leadership
would seek to ensure the rule of law. It
would
dismiss the Modi administration and work with
organisations
in national and global civil society to
stop
the slaughter of innocent citizens, identify and
arrest
the guilty and put them on trial. Before the
rest
of the world demands it from them or, worse, does
it
for them. But these are not things one can claim
with
garv (pride) about Mera Bharat Mahaan, either as
an
Indian or as a Hindu or as a concerned human being.
(The
writer is Assistant Professor, Department of
Political
Science, Vassar College, New York.)
Copyright
© 2002, The Hindu.