May 17^th, 2002

 

          Headlines:

 

·       Gujarat under-policed, says Gill  (Times Of India)

·       NRIs collect funds for riot victims (Times Of India)

·       Gujarat economy improving, says Modi (www.rediff.com)

·       Bigger Rajkot haul: 170 swords now (Indian Express)

·       ‘I will get justice for the raped women even if I have to die for it’ (Indian Express)

·       Madhavpura roots for suspended cop (Times Of India)

·       Film on Godhra glosses over riots, blasts media, NHRC (Indian Express)

·       JD-U leader quits over Gujarat (Hindustan Times)

·       Old neighbours, new address for riot-hit (Indian Express)

·       Life limps back to normal in Gujarat (Times Of India)

·       Goa speech was ‘corrected’: PM (Times Of India)

 

Opinion:

 

·       Media did it? (By Darshan Desai, Indian Express)

·       From Pokhran to Gujarat (By Praful Bidwai, Hindustan Times)

 

NEWS HEADLINES

 

Gujarat under-policed, says Gill
PTI

[ THURSDAY, MAY 16, 2002 11:27:03 AM ]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Articleshow.asp?art_id=10048145

 
AHMEDABAD: Gujarat Chief Minister's Security Advisor K P S Gill has
said that the communally hyper-sensitive state of Gujarat has
remained under-policed.

"In Himmatnagar itself with a population of 21 lakh, there are only
900 police personnel spread over 19 police stations. With this, one
can say that Gujarat is truly under policed," Gill remarked. He added
that his experience was the same in Ahmedabad too.

On the issue of alleged 'saffronisation' and 'communalisation' of the
state police force, he said: "I am aware of the issue of
saffronisation ..... but that needs a much closer look than one had
in few days." The top cop added that "police personnel perform after
orders from their seniors and if there is something wrong it is at
the top level only".

He said the visit to the Sabarkantha district headquarter Himmatnagar
was part of the initiatives to acquaint himself about the state of
security and policing in the remote parts of Gujarat and he intended
to visit other parts too.

The former Punjab DGP, however, said he was "cent per cent confident"
that things can be improved.

Asked about his readiness to accept the assignment and whether it had
to do with his "pro-Hindu" image vis-a-vis his stint in Punjab, Gill
said that the allegations did not really bother him.

"In Assam, they charged me with being pro-minority and pro-Bengali,"
he remarked.

Copyright © 2002 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.

NRIs collect funds for riot victims
PTI
[ THURSDAY, MAY 16, 2002 11:30:56 AM ]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=10048416
 
NEW YORK: A US-based organisation of non resident Indians has
launched a campaign to collect $1 million for the relief and
rehabilitation of victims of the communal riots in Gujarat.

NRIs For Secular and Harmonious India said it plans to help in the
rehabilitation of 100,000 riot victims staying in more than 100
refugee camps across the state.

At its recently-concluded meeting, the group set up a national
steering committee to coordinate its fund-raising efforts.

Copyright © 2002 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.

Gujarat economy improving, says Modi
rediff.com,
May 17, 2002.

http://www.rediff.com/money/2002/may/17guj.htm

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi on Friday
rejected reports that the Bharatiya Janata Party's
image and Gujarat's economy have taken a beating due
to the recent riots, saying, in fact, both have begun
to improve.

During the past one month alone, proposals for
investments worth Rs 55 billion have come from abroad,
he said.

Asked whether the riots had hampered the flow of
foreign direct investments in Gujarat and India, as
feared by the Confederation of Indian Industries, the
chief minister replied in the negative.

''No. Not at all. Actually, you must note that a
businessman or an industrialist never decides about
his ventures on a random basis. He takes into account
all the relevant factors, the market-friendliness,
peaceful industrial environment, purchasing capacity
and the business acumen of the people,'' he said.

(c) 2002 rediff.com. All rights reserved.

Bigger Rajkot haul: 170 swords now
Express News Service

http://www.indian-express.com/full_story.php?content_id=2827

Rajkot, May 16: Following up on an early morning
seizure yesterday of swords from a Junagadh-bound
jeep, Rajkot police raided a yard near the Chotila bus
stand in the night and seized another cache of swords,
knives, and guptis packed in gunny sacks.

Police said 170 swords, 470 knives, and 457 guptis —
worth some Rs 1.87 lakh — were found in the yard of
the Chauhan brothers.

Mansukh Patel, a Bajrang Dal activist arrested in
connection with the seizure from the jeep had said he
had procured the swords from the Chauhans. Two persons
were arrested in connection with the Chotila seizure.

Police said that Prabhubhai and Channabhai Chauhan had
been dealing in swords for the last five years, and
would sell them to any buyer.

Meanwhile, first class judicial magistrate S.M. Soni
on Wednesday rejected the five-day police remand plea
for Mansukh Patel, a Junagadh-based Bajrang Dal
activist arrested by Rajkot police on Wednesday for
violating the public notification banning carrying of
arms.

Around 99 swords and 200 sharp weapons or guptis were
seized from Patel while he was enroute to Junagadh in
a hired jeep. The remand application for Channabhai
Chauhan, a shopkeeper in Chotila from whom Patel had
purchased the weapons, was also rejected as the charge
against both was only of violating the notification.

‘‘Police wanted remand of the duo to get to the root
of the weapons consignment but since there was no
strong evidence, they were booked only under Section
144 for violating the notification,’’ said
Commissioner of Police Upendra Singh.

Though bail has been granted, police can interrogate
Patel for two days — Thursday and Friday — for six
hours from 11 am to 5 pm. Singh said they could also
be summoned at any other time later.

Police Inspector in Detection of Crime Branch K.N.
Patel, who argued on behalf of Rajkot police, said
that in view of the tension prevailing in the state,
the police through the remand wanted to know why the
consignment was sent and the source of the money used
to buy the weapons.

Patel added that as the police could not prove that
the weapons were used or going to be used for any
illegal purpose, the remand plea was rejected.

Patel’s and Chauhan’s lawyer Piyush Shah argued that
there was no need for remand as the police had already
recovered weapons from the duo and the seized weapons
were meant for self defence.

The court accepted the bail of driver Dinesh Hasmukh
Vekaria, a 17-year-old youth, and his case has been
transferred to juvenile court, said K.N. Patel. During
cross-examination today, Manshukh Patel told police
that he had paid Rs 10,000 to Chauhan of which Rs
5,000 was his own money and the rest came from a
friend.

Besides the Rs 10,000, Patel said that he still had to
Rs 15,000 to Chauhan for purchasing weapons. ‘‘We will
cross-examine Patel to find out whether the funds came
from some organisation,’’ said inspector. Junagadh
Superintendent of Police S.S. Trivedi said Patel, an
active member of the Bajrang Dal, had no criminal
record.

Reacting to the seizure of arms, Bajrang Dal convenor
Surendra Jain said the state police had started
‘‘acting tough’’ with VHP and Bajrang Dal activists
under the influence of Muslim and secular leaders.
‘‘The police are trying to frame VHP and Bajrang Dal
leaders in false cases,’’ he alleged.

© 2002: Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd. All
rights reserved throughout the world.

 

‘I will get justice for the raped women even if I have
to die for it’
Indian Express

http://www.indian-express.com/full_story.php?content_id=2842

Jannatbibi says she saw women being raped and killed
in Naroda Patiya, her testimony results in first FIR,
first arrest in rape case in Ahmedabad
Shefali Nautiyal

Ahmedabad, May 16: One woman’s courage is responsible
for the first arrest in the first rape case to be
registered in Ahmedabad. But for Jannatbibi Kallubhai
Sheikh, the arrest of Ratilal Rathod alias Bhavani
Singh, who is accused of murder, rioting and raping
five women in Naroda Patiya on February 28, is hardly
cause for cheer yet.

‘‘I am going to do everything I can to see this man
behind bars, even if I have to die for it,’’ says
Jannatbibi. Rathod, a 50-year-old Ahmedabad Municipal
Transport Service driver, was remanded to judicial
custody today.


I saw him rape, kill those women: Jannatbibi (right).
Express photo
Jannatbibi, who says she witnessed the rape and murder
of women during the February 28 Naroda Patiya
massacre, filed a complaint in the case, submitted
written statements and even travelled to New Delhi to
plead her case.

‘‘From the very first day, I have been telling
everyone that I saw this man killing people and raping
not less than five young women. I gave a written
statement to the Crime Branch, I filed a complaint at
the Shah Alam police chowki. And when Sonia Gandhi
came here, I gave her a written statement as well,’’
she says.

Jannatbibi met the President and several ministers
during her New Delhi visit. ‘‘There too, I told
everyone that I could identify the rapists and
murderers. I repeatedly named Bhavani Singh in Delhi
too.’’ She says she recognised Rathod since he lives
with his family in a housing society behind Naroda
Patiya. But she only knows him as Bhavani Singh. ‘‘I
don’t know any Ratilal Rathod, his name is Bhavani
Singh,’’ she says. ‘‘I didn’t know the rest, but we’ve
seen Bhavani Singh several times.’’

According to Jannatbibi, it was Bhavani Singh who
surveyed their homes and gave the green signal to the
rest of the mob that was waiting outside. It was
Jannatbibi’s testimony that helped bring to light the
brutal murder of Kausar Bano, the eight-month pregnant
woman who was dragged out of her home, whose stomach
was torn open with a sword and whose foetus was burnt
before her eyes.

‘‘Many of us who were hiding saw the brutal murder,
but we were so frightened we could not come out to
help,’’ says Jannatbibi.

‘‘When we visited Naroda Patiya after a few days, I
met Singh’s daughter, there, looking bright and
cheerful in a salwar kameez. She said, ‘Aao paani
piten hain (Come, we’ll serve you water)’. I told her
‘bahut paani pilaya tum logon ne (you people have
given us enough water)’. She just laughed.’’

© 2002: Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd. All
rights reserved throughout the world.

Madhavpura roots for suspended cop
SOURAV MUKHERJEE
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
[ FRIDAY, MAY 17, 2002 12:49:16 AM ]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=10103857

 AHMEDABAD: Police resorted to nine rounds of tear-gas
shelling to disperse an irate mob which looked bent
upon attacking the police commissionerate in Shahibaug
on Thursday. A police jeep too was damaged by angry
residents who were upset over the suspension of the
inspector of the Madhavpura police station.

The incident was not a renewal of communal violence
but an expression of people's support for police
inspector GC Rawat of the Madhavpura police station.
Rawat was placed under suspension on Wednesday for
alleged insubordination and incongruity in riot
investigation.

That was not all. Madhavpura remained under a
self-imposed curfew and people stayed indoors to
protest against the punishment to Rawat.

Egged by political motivation, such popular support
for policemen found failing in their duty during the
riots, is common not only in Ahmedabad but also in
other parts of the state. On March 18, police
inspector of Naroda KK Maisurwala was transferred
after he was charged with "assisting rioters" who had
killed 91 and rendered many homeless, at Naroda. A day
later, the then city police commissioner PC Pande
could not effect Maisurwala's transfer. Soon after the
order was issued, a crowd of 2,000 people gathered
around the police station chanting Ram dhun, a lady
threatened to immolate herself and another threatened
to fast unto death if the order was not withdrawn.

Prominent BJP leaders too had pitched in to stall the
transfer. Maisurwala could be shifted to the city
traffic department only on March 31. MLA of Naroda
Assembly segment, Mayaben Kodnani, however told TNN:
"It is unfair to say that the people's protest against
police transfers is politically motivated. Such
impromptu bandhs cannot be effected by any political
party. The strength in voice of the masses should not
be discounted."

The suspension of the Sabarmati PI Prakash Mehra on
April 8 - following anarchy inside Sabarmati Ashram
premises and police attack on media persons - too had
seen the local 'thana' being gheraoed by an irate mob.

On May 13, when superintendent of police of
Panchmahals district Raju Bhargav transferred police
inspector of Godhra town police station K S Trivedi,
the local BJP unit had come to his rescue.

Trivedi was charged with defying Bhargav's orders to
arrest certain political leaders involved in the
communal riots in Godhra town that followed the
burning of the Sabarmati Express on February 27. The
BJP's executive body of Panchmahal district demanded
reinstation of the PI at Godhra and removal of the
Bhargav.

Copyright © 2002 Times Internet Limited. All rights
reserved.

Film on Godhra glosses over riots, blasts media, NHRC
Express News Service

http://www.indian-express.com/full_story.php?content_id=2831
 
New Delhi, May 16: A 40-minute film on the Godhra
attack, Gujarat Ki Vedana, screened today picked on
the media for biased reporting. Home Minister L.K.
Advani, who was expected to attend, did not turn up at
the screening.

The film based on video footage of interviews with
Godhra eyewitnesses and victims, was screened at the
Mahadev Auditorium.

In the audience were Minister of State Chaman Lal
Gupta, Gujarat Heavy Industries Minister Vallabhai
Kathuria and Balbir Punj, MP.

The three-year old Council For International Affairs
and Human Rights made the film that indicted the
media, particularly the English language press,
National Human Rights Commission and the
administration. The film never moved beyond Godhra as
most victims talked of events leading to the attack.

An orthopaedic surgeon in Ahmedabad is shown
complaining against the NHRC in the film. ‘‘Justice
Verma did not have time for us. He was here to promote
himself through the press conferences he held,’’ he
said. Others talked of the horror of surviving the
inferno that the train turned into. Twenty minutes of
the film’s span showed firemen narrating how some
people prevented them from reaching the burning train.


Some others blamed ‘‘the burning of the Sabarmati
Express’’ on ‘‘ISI propaganda planned by the
jehadis’’. The film glosses over the horrors that
followed the Godhra attack. I-B Ministry officials
washed their hands off it and put the onus on the Home
Ministry.

‘‘The Mahadev Auditorium comes under the I-B Ministry.
But anybody is free to book it for a price.

The Ministry is not responsible for the film’s
contents because it is assumed the film must have
obtained censorship clearance before the screening,’’
an I-B official said.

Not just the film, a field report on Godhra and After
urged the Centre for an independent commission to
examine the role of the media, both electronic and
print, during the Gujarat communal violence.

© 2002: Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd. All
rights reserved throughout the world.

JD-U leader quits over Gujarat
Hindustan Times,
May 17, 2002

http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/170502/detNAT03.asp

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Janata Dal (United) general secretary Mohan Prakash on
Thursday quit the party attacking the Vajpayee
Government on the Gujarat issue amid indications that
he might join the Congress.
Describing as "shameful" the response of Vajpayee and
Chief Minister Narendra Modi to the situation in
Gujarat, he said in New Delhi that he was not only
quitting the party but bidding goodbye to socialist
politics "which has lost its relevance".

He alleged that some of the prominent leaders of the
erstwhile Janata Dal had now floated "private limited"
parties to serve their interests.

HTC, New Delhi

©Hindustan Times Ltd. 1997.

Old neighbours, new address for riot-hit
Meghdoot Sharon
Indian Express.

http://www.indian-express.com/full_story.php?content_id=2823

Ahmedabad, May 16: Gandhi’s river is turning out to be
the last refuge for victims of both communities in a
violence-hit area of Ahmedabad.

Since the past few days, those living in chawls along
the Sabarmati have been moving with bags and
belongings into the dry river bed, hoping that bombs,
burning rags and stones won’t be able to follow them
there.


The river-bed they feel is safe as bombs, burning rags
and stones can’t be hurled that far. Express photo
The Sabarmati stretch between Khanpur Chhapra and
Ambema Mandir Chhapra is dotted at many places with
wooden beds, makeshift hutments and small sheds.
Around 900 people, most of them staying around Raikhad
Darwaja, have shifted in as the area has been
witnessing violence for the past four-five days. As
the mercury soars, they sit out in the open, without
even a tent over their heads.

Interestingly, the victims belong to both the
communities and had been living in peace till
recently. While Hindus stay in the section closer to
Ellisbridge, Muslims stay at the farther end. They say
they have nothing against each other, but were scared
the rioters who came to Raikhad a few days ago may
return.

At sunset, the place shows frenzied activity as people
get ready to retire for the night. Food is cooked and
beds laid. During the day, many go out for work or to
find shade.

‘‘It is safer here, although the heat becomes
unbearable during the day. At least in the night, we
can sleep peacefully without the fear of being
targeted. The authorities must set up a tent for us in
the river bed,’’ says Lataben Deepakbhai.

Showing a fractured finger on his left hand, Naginbhai
Atmaram, a fisherman, says: ‘‘We were sitting near our
house when a stone landed on my hand. It came from the
tall buildings located near the slum.’’ Another group
of about 50 people staying below Vivekananda bridge
too moved to the middle of the riverbed on Tuesday
saying that someone threw a bomb on their huts from
the bridge.

A little farther in the river bed, the family of
Qayyumbhai Asifbhai has pitched a tent. ‘‘These people
were our neighbours there and now we are living
together here also,’’ he says, pointing at the irony
of the situation. ‘‘We have never fought with each
other, but our houses are soft targets. Since they are
located at a low level, stones and bombs can easily be
hurled on the huts from the neighbouring areas,’’ says
Mohsin.

© 2002: Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd. All
rights reserved throughout the world.

Life limps back to normal in Gujarat
PTI
[ THURSDAY, MAY 16, 2002 2:23:30 PM ]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=10060806
 
AHMEDABAD: Life is limping back to normal in the
violence-ravaged Gujarat, including the worst-hit
commercial capital with no major incident reported for
the third day on Thursday.

In Ahmedabad city, as curfew was relaxed from 6 am to
10 pm in some pockets, a large number of people came
out braving the sweltering heat, giving the cops at
traffic junctions a tough time.

There were traffic jams at a number of spots in the
trading nerve centres Ashram Road, C G Road and
Navrangpura.

Barring stray incidents of arson and looting of shops
by mobs in the Naroda Patia area, the overall
situation was normal, police said.

In Sarkhej and Viramgam towns of Ahmedabad rural
district and Baroda city the curfew was further
relaxed during the day.

Shops and business establishments recorded brisk
business at a number of places.

Copyright © 2002 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved

Goa speech was ‘corrected’: PM
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
[ FRIDAY, MAY 17, 2002 12:27:11 AM ]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=10102739

New Delhi: Hoping to put to rest the controversy
surrounding the allegations he made against Muslims at
Goa last month, Prime Minister Vajpayee has conceded
that his office subsequently ‘‘corrected’’ the
transcript of his speech in order to emphasise that he
was targeting ‘‘followers of militant Islam’’.

Taking note of this ‘‘clarification’’, Lok Sabha
Speaker Manohar Joshi, on Thursday, disallowed a
privilege motion moved by the Congress accusing
Vajpayee of misleading the House by claiming the
‘‘corrected’’ text was what he had actually said at
Goa.

Copyright © 2002 Times Internet Limited. All rights
reserved.

 

 

OPINION

Media did it?
Indian Express,
Why I took a three-day break from reporting Gujarat
Darshan Desai

http://www.indian-express.com/full_story.php?content_id=2796
 
I seldom take leave, and whenever I do, it’s usually
to attend to the rare social chore. But last week I
took a no-reason-at-all break of three days. Not so
much because I was exhausted after constant touring or
had riot fatigue. I was depressed.

This is the first time in 14 years that my honesty and
integrity as a journalist has come into question. Not
just mine, of every sincere reporter, who covered the
Gujarat riots with fear or favour towards none.

I was not depressed that the politician of the day
blamed the worst Gujarat communal frenzy on the
national English media. It’s the tendency of
successive governments to blame the media when the
genie they uncork slips out of their own control.

My predicament was the hate mail pouring in from the
readers and arm-chair Gujarati columnists, who sitting
in Mumbai, dish out pedestrian expletives at us,
specifically the reporters of national English
dailies.

It was perhaps too much for me to expect these
columnists, some dubbed as acclaimed literatteurs, to
have basic human compassion if not sensitivity towards
the issue. One of them, the crudest one, also claims
to be a journalist though he has visited newspaper
offices only to deliver his columns.

In one of his columns, he has even justified the
attack on the media at the Sabarmati Ashram.

That one knows of the many skeletons overflowing from
the cupboards of these columnists is another matter.

I have personally seen some of them jumping into the
lap of the government of the day, whichever party is
at the helm. What is more dangerous is that a large
number of people, most of whom are unaware of the
reality, often believe these columnists, who have been
too lazy to go even to Godhra or to the scenes of the
massacres thereafter.

Both sets of people, thus, take on face value what the
politicians repeat with suffocating frequency.

It was frustrating to find that the readers do not see
the fact, and the columnists do not even wish to, that
many, many more people would have died had it not been
for the media raising the alarm.

In this propagandist criticism of the media, based on
falsities and half-truths, there is a virtual
justification of the killings post-Godhra. There is a
justification for murder. What crime did we, all the
reporters covering the riots, commit in reporting the
facts?

Was it our fault that a huge majority who were killed,
in an unimaginably cruel way, were Muslims?

The common criticism is the media did not report or
condemn Godhra enough. Everyone who read the English
newspapers on February 28 knows that every single
paper had a six-to-eight-column page-one banner
headline and every paper had a leader article
condemning the incident.

All words used in the post-Godhra violence were used
in Godhra also: gruesome, barbaric, inhuman, massacre,
carnage, etc.

But Godhra did not recur. In contrast, a Naroda Patia,
a Gulbarg Society, a Sardarpur, a Pandarwada, a Best
Bakery, still occurs in varying intensity. Is this the
fault of the media? Should we not report it? Did we
plan and execute Godhra, did we ispire the killings
post-Godhra?

All these questions, against the backdrop of harrowing
tales of children tortured, women raped and people
butchered, of which the national English press has
reported only the part that was printable, kept on
pricking me during my three days of leave.

The leave that kept on pushing me towards what I had
intended to leave behind, however, concluded with a
clarity: the truth has to be told, even if you are the
only one saying it. I know I must remain one of those
who still dare report an event as an event — whether
it helps or hurts someone is another matter.

© 2002: Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd. All
rights reserved throughout the world.

From Pokhran to Gujarat
Praful Bidwai
Hindustan Times,
May 17, 2002.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/170502/detide01.asp
 
One of the most perceptive comments on the Pokhran-II
nuclear tests, which occurred this week four years
ago, was made by a peace activist. He said: “They
killed Mahatma Gandhi twice — first in 1948, and again
in 1998.” ‘They’ here clearly referred to the forces
of Hindutva, which fiercely oppose the Gandhian
notions of tolerance, secularism, pluralism and
nonviolence.

Fifty-four years ago, these forces were personified by
former RSS swayamsewak Nathuram Godse, who regarded
Gandhi as effete and effeminate and an appeaser of
Muslims and Pakistan. Today, they are represented by
former pracharak Narendra Modi, and other Hindu
fundamentalists belonging to the BJP, who too regard
Gujarat’s Muslims as Pakistan’s Fifth Column, who
deserve to be killed.

Is the Pokhran-Gujarat connection far-fetched?
Actually, the links go beyond the 1948-1998 analogy.
Thus, the VHP’s first response to Pokhran-II was to
declare that the Hindus had finally “awakened” with
the “Shakti” series of tests, and to demand that India
be formally, constitutionally, declared a “Hindu
State”.

Identically, VHP leader Ashok Singhal now terms
Gujarat’s pogrom of Muslims as signifying, indeed
proof of, Hindu “awakening” or “resurgence”.

Four years ago, the VHP announced it would build a
temple to a new national goddess, “Atomic Shakti”, and
carry Pokhran’s radioactive sands in a rath yatra to
each corner of India. Today, it is reaping the harvest
of the seeds sown by its campaign to build another
illegitimate temple, at Ayodhya, fertilised by kar
sewaks who went there from Gujarat in their thousands.


Beyond such analogies lie deeper, causal connections.
Gujarat was a “Hindutva-only” affair. (That is why the
BJP remains totally isolated on its support for the
pogrom). Pokhran-II too was a parochial,
‘BJP-RSS-only’, thing, not a national enterprise.

The decision to conduct the blasts was not taken in
the cabinet, following a ‘strategic review’ or
consultations with the defence services. As RSS chief
K.S. Sudarshan boasted, it was taken by the Sangh.
Only a handful of RSS-loyal ministers were privy to
it. Indeed, most of our hawkish ‘strategic experts’
did not advocate actual testing. Never known for much
independence, they however duly fell in line on May 11
and spun out fanciful ex-post rationalisations. Four
years on, these appear hollow and fraudulent.

After the 1998 elections, and even before Pokhran-II,
the BJP jealously, doggedly, stuck to its manifesto’s
promise to “reevaluate the country’s nuclear policy
and exercise the option to induct nuclear weapons”,
and imposed it on the NDA’s ‘National Agenda for
Governance’, which repeated it verbatim. Such
repetition occurred on only one other issue:
constitutional review.

It is easy to see that Hindutva’s obsession with
nuclear weapons derives from a certain conception of
power and prestige, and of nationalism. This notion of
power is quite unrelated to security, even
conventional military security.

The BJP-Jan Sangh’s half-century-old demand that India
should go nuclear was made irrespective of the state
of India’s security environment at any point. It is
driven by a neurotic fascination with nuclearism, the
worship of the ability to wreak limitless vengeance
and bludgeon the adversary into submission — by
threatening mass destruction. Power here is equated
with the ability to cause mortal fear, not evoke
respect.

This conception is morally perverse. It makes nonsense
of the ethics of just war, including non-combatant
immunity, proportionality in the use of force, and
avoidance of cruel, degrading and inhuman methods.

One can embrace nuclearism with BJP-style enthusiasm
only by erasing all distinctions between soldiers and
civilians, measured (or well-targeted) and
indiscriminate force, and just and barbaric methods of
warfare. How else can one justify incinerating
millions of people, flattening whole cities at one go,
or extensively poisoning land, air and water with
long-acting toxins (some with half-lives of millions
of years), or inflicting chromosomal damage upon
scores of as-yet-unborn generations?

It is also relevant to ask how one can justify, as
Hindutva does, the slitting of wombs to destroy
foetuses, spearing little babies to death, burning
alive old people, and savaging and quartering women’s
bodies. That is precisely what happened in the Gujarat
massacre, which the BJP and its associates organised
and executed with full State complicity.

When you ‘normalise’ Genghis Khan-level barbarism as
the “natural” logic of action-and-reaction, when you
plot the butchery of innocent citizens because ‘they’,
some members of that false collectivity, did a Godhra
to ‘us’, when you malign Muslims as people incapable
of living with others, when you demonise and
dehumanise a whole community, you follow the same
logic as nuclearism does.

Common to both is the legitimation of genocidal
destruction, of a break in the chain of being, of
unlimited punishment disproportionate to the
threat/crime. Rationalising a pogrom or worshipping
nuclear weapons means banalising evil. Both celebrate
revenge and savagery bordering on genocide.

The BJP’s conception of nationhood involves a warped
notion of grandeur based on the congruence of
pitrabhoomi and punyabhoomi, and privileging of one
ethnic-religious group. Central to it is exclusion,
coercion and violence, as well as false glorification
of India’s past. Hindu nationalism is just as
incompatible with the Constitution and universal
rights as Islamic or Zionist fundamentalism.

The bomb serves this idea of nationhood ideally.
Nuclearism denies the possibility of drawing upon
humane values and life-affirming or cooperative
attitudes. This mindset promotes what are
conventionally known as ‘masculine’ values: lack of
compassion, eagerness to retaliate, violence, and
brutality. No wonder, Hindutva has a compulsive and
obsessive fascination with ‘manhood’ and ‘virility’.
This has nowhere been more evident than in Gujarat.

Central to this muscular, male-supremacist, virulent
nationalism is the idea of ‘sacrifice’ and ‘martyrdom’
— in the cause of mass destruction. The first South
Asian leader who said, “we’ll eat grass, but we’ll
have the bomb”, was not Bhutto. It was Atal Bihari
Vajpayee, way back in the Sixties — with a variation:
eating one chapati in place of two, rather than grass.


Needless to say, the leaders who pledge such
sacrifices on behalf of the people never end up eating
grass themselves. They merely prepare the ground for
profoundly irrational, hysterical ways of
conceptualising security — by severing the people from
the nation.

The causal chain that links Pokhran to Gujarat is
unmistakable. The first mindset evolves seamlessly
into the second. If Gujarat has inflicted
unconscionable damage upon India’s constitutional
order and its claim to pluralism, nuclear weapons have
grotesquely perverted our social and economic
priorities, promoted crude Social-Darwinist ideas of
“survival of the fittest”, legitimised unbounded
cruelty — and degraded India’s security.

Nothing illustrates this better than today’s
India-Pakistan military standoff, born of reckless
brinkmanship, aggravated by a cynical ‘Wag-the-Dog’
calculus, and further compounded by the condemnable
Jammu massacre. There is now a likelihood of “limited”
strikes rapidly escalating into a nuclear standoff.

More than a billion innocent, unarmed civilians in
South Asia have now become hostage to mass-destruction
weapons against which there is, can be, no defence.
Four years after Pokhran-II — and the Chagai tests it
provoked — the nuclear balance sheet looks ugly.
Nuclearisation has had a disastrous social, economic,
political and foreign policy impact. This will worsen
as India bankrupts itself, our social services
collapse, and the State fails, while the people become
insecure, as in Gujarat.

We could not have made a worse Faustian bargain.

©Hindustan Times Ltd. 1997.