Gujarat polls: a challenge to one’s intelligence

What has happened in Gujarat from February 2002 is a nightmare, the like of which independent India has not seen. The India of our dreams is...

What has happened in Gujarat from February 2002 is a nightmare, the like of which independent India has not seen. The India of our dreams is a land where our diverse collective heritage thrives with equality and justice. Gujarat apparently projected that dream for many decades. For most people, it was a ‘peaceful’ state, the state of the Mahatma, where people lived with a fair degree of peace and women, especially, found the freedom to move without fear, and where investments flowed in.

The planned genocide that followed Godhra has left Gujarat economically weak and fighting to preserve its progressive image. In the frenzy of the genocide and the deliberate infusion of communal violence in politics, the goals of development, poverty eradication, health and education for all seem to occupy only token (if any) space on the state’s agenda. Investors are leaving and people are heading towards a period of unemployment.

Communal hatred has been fanned. Those who perpetrated acts of cruelty and violence in the name of religion are not against one group, but against humanity. What happened in Godhra was a tragedy. What followed was unprecedented planned genocide. Deliberate promotion of unlawfulness by those who govern has the dangerous potential of shaping a sick society.

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I was a member of the Concerned Citizen’s Tribunal and heard hundreds of testimonies. I have never been affected more nor seen the future of this country’s agenda for equality and justice more jeopardised. It is critical that the enormity of the tragedy of a state’s complicity in crime be perceived, and we as citizens move from our proverbial passivity to take matters into our hands.

As an ex-civil servant and a social activist, I am appalled by a government that turned traitor to betray its own people, denied them law and order, right to life and property. The onus of this massive disaster lies with a government that did not do its duty by its people and the Constitution. A government’s absolute lack of conscience cannot be condoned by the electorate. In many of the testimonies we heard, the refrain was not of hatred but of sorrow. No matter how badly affected they were — a woman had lost 19 members of her family — the people did not ask for revenge, but for a return to rationality. They wanted to have a government which functioned with justice, for a return to ‘normalcy’.

The biggest tragedy has been the sowing of hatred for the paltry reward of political gain. These acts have been condemned by those who are compassionate human beings. Recent history stands witness to the fact that state complicity in crimes against humanity cannot stand vindicated for long.

The Gujarat elections are an important moment in our history, and we have the power to reshape our destinies. I see our doom in the indifference of so called civil society. It is critical for us to speak out. Do not bring back to power those who held office and destroyed the basis of constitutional democracy and governance.

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For we reap as we sow. Those who break principles of humanity for political opportunism, will not hesitate to break them again to re-establish themselves by destroying another imaginary enemy. In the logic of a politics based on hatred, a victim has to be found again and again. And that victim, tomorrow, could be you.

The writer was awarded the Magsaysay Award