© 2002 IANS. All rights reserved.

Relief camps in Gujarat face severe problems
NDTV Correspondent
Sunday, May 19, 2002 (Ahmedabad):

http://www.ndtv.com/template/template.asp?template=gujaratviolence&slug=Relief+c\
amps+in+Gujarat+face+problems&id=25195&callid=1

In Gujarat, there is a new crisis--hunger in relief
camps. It now seems clear that there are more people
living in the camps set up after the communal riots
than the government's estimates. The end result is
that there is not enough food for everyone.

According to the latest Government surveys there are
725 inmates at the Vatva relief camp but organisers
say the number is close to over 1700.

This anomaly led to organisers of seven other relief
camps to approach the High Court, after which the
government has accepted the figures given by the camp
organisers.

Now the organisers of the Vatva relief camp are
planning to follow suit. "The number of inmates in
this relief camp is close to 1700, but we have been
getting food for just 700 people. That too has
completely stopped since May 7. We are not getting
anything from the Government to feed these people.
There is no option left for us but to go to the High
Court," said M K Ajmeri, Organiser, Vatva Relief Camp.

The difference between the figures of the Government
and the camp organisers on the number of inmates in
the relief camps is close to 2500 in Ahemdabad alone.
However, the Government claims these are a part of the
20,000 victims who have gone back home, leaving the
current figure for inmates in relief camps at 5600.
The number of relief camps has gone down from 59 to
47.

The Government also says most camps have a high
floating population and they have done multiple
verifications to reach the correct figure.

"This time also, we have verified many of the camps
and we have done multiple verifications. Each camp has
been covered three times and on that basis we have
taken an average of the figure and that is the correct
figure in our opinion," maintained K Srinivas,
Collector, Ahmedabad.

For the moment, the Government's top priority is
finishing off the surveys and quick disbursement of
compensation money--action that cannot come too soon
for those crowded into relief camps like these.

India laboratory for Hindu ideas: RSS chief
PTI
New Delhi, April 29

http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/300402/dlnat04.asp
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After asking Muslims to reinterpret Islam, RSS Chief KS Sudarshan on Monday
asked the minorities to inclucate the feeling that they shared with Hindus the
same motherland, blood, culture and ancestors and said India was a laboratory
for Hindu ideas.
"The Muslims and Christians have not come from outside. They changed only their
method of worship. We should accept that we share a common blood, culture,
ancestors and motherland. Every one living in India should have that feeling of
unity in diversity. It is imperative for a large section of our populace to
inculcate this feeling," Sudarshan said.

He was speaking after releasing a novel Parasmani, based on the life of RSS
founder Keshav Baliram Hegdewar written by Shubhangi Bhadbhade.

The RSS Supremo described a nationalist as a person who considers every Indian
and everything Indian as "my own."

Sudarshan cited the names of Muslim Hindi poets Abdul Rahim Khankhana and Ras
Khan as examples of "nationalists."

Referring to reports of the RSS "running the Government and creating problems
for it", he said, "it shows ignorance about the working style and functioning
of the Sangh. It stands for the overall development of the nation."

"As Russia was a laboratory for Communism and USA for capitalism, India is the
laboratory for Hindu, social, political and economic ideas," he said.

RSS ideologue Nanaji Deshmukh, Joint General Secretary Madan Das Devi and BJP
spokespersons Maya Singh and Sunil Shastri were among those present at the
function.

At it Bangalore conclave, RSS had asked Muslims to earn the goodwill of the
Hindus for their safety.

©Hindustan Times Ltd. 1997.

Hindus too should fear the RSS: Javed Akhtar
By Anil Sharma, Indo-Asian News Service

Friday April 19, 5:03 PM

http://in.news.yahoo.com/020419/43/1m1c5.html

Bhopal, Apr 19 (IANS) It is not just India's Muslims but even dissenting Hindus
who should fear the shrill Hindu rightwing campaign, warns
lyricist-scriptwriter Javed Akhtar.

"The Hindus should not consider themselves safe from their ire," Akhtar said
Friday during a visit to the Madhya Pradesh capital, referring to the Sangh
Parivar, the coalition of Hindu chauvinist groups led by the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) that Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's Bharatiya
Janata party (BJP) is linked to.

"They (Hindus) should remember that neither (Gujarat Chief Minister) Narendra
Modi nor (Home Minister) Lal Krishna Advani nor the RSS would give them the
freedom to dissent against them," he said. "This is the crux of the problem and
it has to be squarely addressed."

"According to the RSS worldview, the problem is not that we are communal. Their
problem is that we are not communal enough and still live as good neighbours,"
added Akhtar, who is here along with jurists and political figures on a
campaign to promote communal amity.

He said the RSS, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal -- the most
prominent members of the Sangh Parivar - "must be looking up" to the ousted
Taliban militia that had brutally enforced puritanical Islam in Afghanistan.

"If the problem was simply communalism, then the Muslims in Pakistan should be
happy and content for they have driven away all the Hindus. The Afghans under
the Taliban should have been all the more glad, for there were no dissenting
elements. But that is not the case.

"The fundamentalist forces want to stamp out not just the religious minorities,
but they also want to obliterate all forms of dissent. A Hindu Taliban regime
awaits us if we allow the RSS to succeed in its designs," Akhtar warned.

"What has happened in Gujarat is not just a communal riot. It is the complete
breakdown of the law and order machinery and decency," he said, referring to
the sectarian violence in the western state that has claimed nearly 850 lives,
mostly Muslims, since February-end.

However, Akhtar saw a silver lining. "Communalists -- minority as well as
majority -- now realise that their game is up. The people have seen through
their devious plan and will not fall into their trap."

He attributed the violence in Gujarat to the Hindu rightwing's desperation at
the fact that its affiliate BJP had not won a single election since it came to
power in New Delhi at the head of a multiparty coalition four years ago.

He also did not spare the "secular" political parties.

"They have taken a stand that minority communalism is better than majority
communalism. They have agreed to put up with minority communalism, whereas the
reality is that the Jamaat-e-Islami is more at ease with the Vishwa Hindu
Parishad and the Bajrang Dal."

"Of late, the secular parties have started realising that it is not proper to
court the Shahi Imam in order to appease the Muslims," he added, referring to
the head cleric of India's largest mosque in New Delhi.

Copyright © 2001 IANS India Private Limited. All rights Reserved.
Copyright © 2002 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

OPINION

Life and death: the pseudo-patriot way
May 19th, 2002.

Dilip D'Souza

http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/may/18dilip.htm

Question: what's one thing that happened within hours
-- I mean that, hours -- of the terrorist atrocity in
Jammu early on May 14? A dude somewhere in netspace
fired up his computer and fired off email randomly,
copy to me, saying: "Where are the human rights
organizations to cry for [the victims]? Arent the
people killed have some rights of being a human or you
don't even consider them humans? You guys are
encouraging terrorist to kill more people and I blame
this killings on your head as you are the part of the
gang. you have blood of innocent people on your hand
and God (if he really is) will never forgive you
guys." [Verbatim]



That's right. Apparently the man's first thought -- I
mean that, his first thought -- on hearing the news
was to use it to hammer villainous human rights
organisations and scummy journalists. To be sure his
abuse reached them even before the news itself did. To
wallop them for not "even considering them human",
before they even knew people had been killed.

At least with this scummy journalist, I have to admit,
he succeeded in his endeavours. Trying to lick a tough
problem at my software job, I was oblivious to news
for much of that Tuesday. The dude's message was the
first I heard of the Jammu crime. I read his words and
understood that I was being blamed for murders -- "you
have blood of innocent people on your hand" -- I
wasn't even aware had happened.

Nor was his the only such message -- it was only the
first. Many others have since floated in, just as
willing to flail at human rights organisations,
pseudo-secularists, journalists like me.

But in truth, when I then did read the news, the blame
from these letter-writers was hardly the issue any
more. Instead, I was revulsed by this latest horror.
Men who kill like that, the men who send them to kill
like that, deserve no better themselves. After
September 11, I wrote these words in a column: I hope
they get these guys. I hope they get the sick bastards
who conceived this inconceivable horror.

After the massacre in Jammu, I feel that again. To
tell you the truth, I have been feeling it again and
again. More of that in a bit.

The next day, my prime minister told Parliament that
"this issue [the killing in Jammu] cannot be taken up
on partisan lines. There are no two views about the
fact that what happened was a heinous incident."
Starting from there, we now hear the talwars [swords]
rattling, the cries to make war on Pakistan getting
louder. For, the evil of Pakistan, the desire to "act"
against that country, are issues which define
patriotism for our politicians, whatever their stripe.
And that definition is the mirror image of sentiments
on the far side of the border. Left to themselves,
these patriots in two countries will lead us all -- a
fifth of humankind, here on this subcontinent -- into
mass carnage, widespread destruction and nuclear
nothingness. That's patriotism for you.

So before gangs of pseudo-patriots -- whether the
email jockey sort or the fire-breathing politician
sort -- do their worst, let's try to think some things
through.

It was heinous. There is no other way to describe what
happened in Jammu. Over 30 innocent Indians, including
several women and children, died. So if a massacre
like that outrages us enough to make us sink
"partisan" differences and demand "action", what would
a massacre of over a thousand innocent Indians,
including large numbers of women and children, do?

Think it through, really. Burning 58 people alive in a
train carriage? Burning dozens in cornfields? Slicing
a ten-year-old girl into pieces as her best friend
watches? Raping and then murdering women? All of
these, and much more, happened in Godhra and several
other parts of Gujarat. As horrifying as the Jammu
massacre is, in what way is any of what happened in
Gujarat any less horrifying?

And there is at least one way in which it is,
arguably, more horrifying. The people who set Gujarat
on fire were not some shadowy armed Pakistanis who
were themselves shot dead eventually. They were
perfectly ordinary Indians, most of whom have resumed
their ordinary Indian lives. That is, in Godhra and
Ahmedabad, the killers could very well have included
your nearby ration-shop owner, your local optician,
your friendly neighbours who lend you a few spoons of
sugar when you run out. The people who burned your
brother, or raped and killed your daughter, or slashed
your father into bloody bits, are the people whom you
lived with every day, whom you must live with every
day even now.

If comprehending that, if killing like that, is not
enough for us all to look beyond our "partisan lines",
to unite and demand "action", I don't know what is.

Yet in Godhra and the rest of Gujarat, where killing
just like that has happened for two-and-a-half months
now, we are mired indeed in partisan differences. I'm
weary of reading the letters and articles that say,
explicitly or in smooth sophistry, that the Indians
who died in Gujarat deserved what they got. Whoever
they were, they no more deserved to die than the 30 in
Jammu did: yet who among us would suggest that the 30
deserved death and not immediately be buried in
outrage?

And far from demanding action, we are actually
rationalising away the slaughter. It was "inevitable",
it "had to happen", it was the result of "general
frustration" and an "apartheid" that's apparently in
force in India: how many times have you read phrases
like that applied to Gujarat? [What would you think if
you read a column that made out that the Jammu
killings happened because of "general frustration"?]

Besides, we've watched another bankrupt government
order that meaningless favourite of bankrupt
governments throughout our history, a commission of
inquiry into the slaughter in Gujarat that hasn't
begun its inquiry yet anyway. Not that any of us
expects it to result in any punishment whatsoever when
it is done. If it is ever done. For the killings in
Jammu, they demand war. For the killings across
Gujarat, they institute an inquiry.

What are we to make of all this?

As far as I can see, in the face of every one of these
atrocities, there's only one place for each of us to
start: with the hope that they get the sick bastards
who conceived this inconceivable horror.

No, I have no patent on that line. I use it only to
underline the point that whether in Godhra, or in
Ahmedabad's Naroda-Patia, or in Jammu, they are indeed
sick bastards. Period. If we want an end to the
violence that is destroying us, there is no
alternative but to see the men who destroy us that
way. There is no alternative but to see anyone --
Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Pakistani, and especially
Indian -- who kills innocent Indians, or goads others
to kill innocent Indians, as a terrorist. Treat them
that way. Period.

If we get around to seeing them like that, perhaps we
will stop finding excuses for their crimes, stop
"inquiring" endlessly and fruitlessly. Perhaps we will
instead punish them -- all of them -- swiftly and
severely. As the sick bastards deserve.

Which leaves the letter-writers, like the dude whose
prose I began this column with. Does it say something
about where we are, where we have reached, that whole
sets of Indians lie in wait for one kind of atrocity,
leap to fire off letters to a list of whipping boys,
me included, and then subside again into surly
indifference?

I don't really know. But I don't really care either.
Pseudo-patriots interest me minimally.

Copyright (c) rediff.com.

The Business of Separatism
By Harish Khare

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2002/05/15/stories/2002051500031000.htm

Source: The Hindu
Dated: 15th May 2002.

The Hindutva variety of politics of exclusion and intimidation leads not only
to their political isolation but also results in economic marginalisation of
the Muslims.

LAST MONTH. On way to New York via Amsterdam. At Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji
International Airport, a young man seeks help in completing the disembarkment
form handed out by the KLM staff. The young man is from Surat and we
effortlessly fall into airport-talk. He tells us he is in the diamond industry
and is on his way to Antwerp. The talk naturally drifts towards the on-going
communal violence in Gujarat. The young man, let us call him Himanshu Patel,
is unambiguous about the culpability for the eruption: "The Mohammedans".
Unhesitant and assertive. But is the unending violence not harmful to the
business community? "Of course, it has hurt; but the Mohammedans have no
businesses to worry about."

At Amsterdam; in the line for boarding the plane to New
York. Quite a respectable sprinkling of Indian passengers.
The gentleman ahead of us, another Gujarati, is nervous as he watches the
post-September 11 security drill of
subjecting passengers to intimidating questions. The
nervous businessman from Rajkot begins talking about the
violence back home; he concedes that all businessmen find themselves having
to fork out not insubstantial "donations" to VHP volunteers. All for the
"protection" of the Hindus from the enemy, with a capital M. "Everyone pays
it; who wants to say "no", which businessman wants to risk trouble from these
guys," says the Rajkot man.

The two conversations, away from the communal heat of
Gujarat, perhaps sum up the economic dimension of the
divide between Hindus and Muslims. In the context of
Gujarat, a number of business leaders had spoken up -
before and after the recent CII gathering in New Delhi -
against the violence, lamenting about the erosion in the
foreign and domestic investor's confidence. But none of them talked about the
total and ever-increasing business divide between the Hindus and the Muslims.
For all the talk of political partnership, electoral equality, even the
so-called "appeasement" by the so-called pseudo-secularists, the Muslim
community has been gradually eased out of productive spheres of economic
activity. This perhaps is more true of Gujarat, but other parts of the country
are no strangers to the divide. It is not a coincidence that Azim Premji is the
only big-time Muslim corporate name.

Apart from a few honourable exceptions, almost all big and not-so-big
corporate houses have an unofficial policy of keeping the minorities out,
especially the Muslims. Not
because the captains of industry are bigots or communal; it is the practical
way of doing things, they will explain. It is all a question of a comfort
level between the employer and the employee. In small cities, business
transactions are not just economic exchanges between two rational players
operating a super-rational "market", but a trade-off in obligations and trust.
Not surprising that a Hindu businessman in Ahmedabad or Surat prefers to trade
credit or goods or inside information with someone he explicitly "trusts"; and,
since there are no social linkages with the Muslims or other requisite social
sanctions which can be brought into play in case of a breach of faith, he finds
himself unwilling to undertake an economic transaction with the Muslims.

Perhaps a Muslim can be a consumer of economic goods but he cannot be a
business partner. Thus we have a situation in cities such as Ahmedabad where
the economy is controlled almost entirely - up to 98 per cent
- by the majority community; the Muslims, who constitute
about 14 per cent of the city's population, find themselves
shut out of the economic life of the city, and confined to
extremely low-paying, dead-end business activities. It is this situation of
extreme economic marginalisation that in the past lured young men into the
profitable world of
bootlegging, gambling and other minor vices. And, this
flirtation with the quasi-illegal employment generated a
plethora of negative images, which was easily exploited by
the "defenders" of the majority community.

On the other hand, the lumpens who band themselves into
outfits such as the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu
Parishad find they can make a fast buck out of hawking their hatred. The Shiv
Sena, in and around Mumbai, already provides a working model; the victims of
extortion are none other than the petty Hindu businessmen. Now, because there
is a friendly Government in Gandhinagar, the VHP and the Bajrang Dal have
established a highly profitable network of extortion. Apart from the fact that
a businessman has to make "donations" for the "Hindu cause", he also
instinctively finds himself having to purge his business and trade links of all
Muslim interactions. Of late, the VHP terror network is reportedly being used
to ease out Muslim employees in the Hindu business establishments.

In practical terms, this convergence of the BJP's anti-Muslim politics, the
aggressive "frontal organisations", the growing distance between the
overwhelmingly dominant Hindu businesses and the Muslims means that even in the
era of high economic growth, the economic marginalisation of the minority
community becomes progressively more acute. In times of violence, someone
decides to target even those few activities such as highway hotels, bakeries
etc., the Muslims are allowed to operate. A large community, thus locked up in
economic marginalisation, becomes an easy prey either to the "Islamic"
brotherhood or to zealous "secular" defenders.

The result is that the Muslim community is practically denied any opportunity
to join the economic mainstream.

Perhaps the most harmful consequence of the irrevocable
distancing between the Hindus and the Muslims in the
economic sphere will be the slow death of the incipient
Muslim middle class. Given the level of distrust of the Muslims - kept alive
by aggressive votaries of Hindutva - the employment space for the educated or
professionally trained Muslim is increasingly getting shrunk. As it is, even in
the best of the times there is always an on-going struggle over economic
resources and opportunities, and all kinds of prejudices and biases creep into
the employer's calculus; for example, even after the Mandal revolution, the
so-called merit-centric professions such as law, medicine, journalism etc.,
continue to be loaded against the "lower order".

The danger is that the new "modified" mindset would make it politically
acceptable to include the Muslims in the existing informal arrangement of
built-in discrimination in formal and informal economies. It would mean that
the objective conditions for the growth and consolidation of a Muslim middle
class - progressive, modern, enlightened - get diluted. This dissipation of a
middle class has been hastened now that the Indian state is no longer an
important source of employment; and the "free and competition-driven" economy
is virtually closed to the Muslims. The minorities are already shut out of the
so-called "mixed" neighbourhood; and, if the VHP has its way the Muslims
students would be eased out of schools and colleges as well.

The Hindutva variety of politics of exclusion and intimidation leads not only
to their political isolation but also results in economic marginalisation of
the Muslims. Yet, ironically enough, the Muslims masses are berated for not
rejecting their traditional leaders and for refusing to join the "mainstream";
whereas in practise, they are gradually being shut out of the economic
partnership. The victim is being blamed for being the victim.

FARCE FOLLOWS THE TRAGEDY
FROM ASHIS CHAKRABARTI

Ahmedabad, May 19:

http://www.telegraphindia.com/

 After the pogrom, the great “action” farce. Intense
pressure of national public opinion may have finally
forced the Narendra Modi government to reluctantly put
up a show of “action” against Sangh parivar activists
leading the carnage in Gujarat, but it is doing
everything in its powers to reduce it to a farce.
Although everyone visiting the Shah Alam relief camp
was told that Bhawani Singh, a Gujarat state transport
bus conductor, led the worst killings at Naroda-Patia,
he was picked up by the police only early last week,
over two months after the incident. Some of the “Ram
sevaks” who were on the Sabarmati Express at Godhra
when it was burnt and soon after went on the rampage
in nearby areas were also picked up last week.

So far, some 250-odd activists of the BJP, the Vishwa
Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal have been rounded
up in this show of action after the reshuffle in the
police earlier this month.

But these are small fish. None of the big fish,
including ministers Haren Pandya, who allegedly led
the mob attack at Paldi, and Bharat Barot, Naroda MLA
Mayaben Kodnani or the VHP general secretary Jaidip
Patel, against whom seemingly irrefutable evidence is
available, has been touched.

Also, BJP youth wing leader of Vadodara, who is known
to have organised the printing and distribution of
thousands of copies of hate campaign “directives”
against the Muslims much before the Godhra killing of
the “Ram sevaks”, goes scot free.

But not catching the big fish is only a minor part of
the farce. A bigger subversion is taking place with
the first information reports filed with the police
and the investigation procedures. In most cases of
violence, the police have either refused to accept
FIRs or insisted that the attackers be identified as
“mobs” and not as individuals, thereby rendering them
virtually ineffective.

All possibilities of fair inquiries and justice for
the victims are being sabotaged by transfers of police
officers crucial to investigations.

Thus, V.M. Parghi, the deputy commissioner of police
of Ahmedabad city, who was in charge of the
investigations into the worst brutalities at
Naroda-Patia and the Gulbarg housing society, has been
shifted. His transfer follows those of additional
commissioner of police Surolia and many other officers
whom the government does not trust enough.

Then comes the calculated sabotage of the legal
judicial procedure. Ridiculously, most of the lawyers
appointed by the government as public prosecutors to
frame the charges are civil lawyers, with little or no
experience of criminal cases.

Obviously, their chargesheets, as and when they come,
will fall far short of the requirement for conviction,
says a lawyer, one of the few who have braved threats
to their lives to take up cases for victimised Muslim
families.

“Even a leading lawyer like Girish Patel was
threatened,” says the lawyer who is unwilling to be
identified.

The “action” farce, therefore, is not amusing. In
fact, fear still stalks most people willing to fight
state terror.

“Soon after the riots in the 1990s, we were able to
organise peace conventions in the open where thousands
of people participated. This time, not one such
meeting could be held publicly even two-and-a-half
months after the killings. Such is the atmosphere of
fear,” says Hanif Lakdawala, a well-known doctor, who
is a leading member of the Citizens’ Initiative, which
is independently probing the killings.

Right now, though, Muslim organisations and civil
rights groups are more worried over the process of
relief and rehabilitation. The government wants to
close the camps as early as possible, although
conditions are not quite right for the refugees of
violence to go back to their homes, particularly in
areas around Ahmedabad.

Gujarat High Court has allowed the camps to be there
up to May 31. The schools reopen next month and
parents of both Hindu and Muslim students are afraid
to send their wards to schools in areas dominated by
the “other” community.

Despite Modi’s claim of normality returning to the
state, insecurity and the fear of fresh violence still
hang heavy on Gujarat.

Copyright, ABP Limited