Author: Vir Sanghvi
Publication: The Hindustan Times
Date: February 28, 2002
There is something profoundly worrying
in the response of what might be called the secular establishment to the
massacre in Godhra. Though there is some dispute over the details, we now
know what happened on the railway track. A mob of 2,000 people stopped
the Sabarmati Express shortly after it pulled out of Godhra station. The
train contained several bogeys full of kar sewaks who were on their way
back to Ahmedabad after participating in the Poorna Ahuti Yagya at Ayodhya.
The mob attacked the train with petrol and acid bombs. According to some
witnesses, explosives were also used. Four bogies were gutted and at least
57 people, including over a dozen children, were burnt alive.
Some versions have it that the kar
sewaks shouted anti-Muslim slogans; others that they taunted and harassed
Muslim passengers. According to these versions, the Muslim passengers got
off at Godhra and appealed to members of their community for help. Others
say that the slogans were enough to enrage the local Muslims and that the
attack was revenge.
It will be some time before we can
establish the veracity of these versions, but some things seem clear. There
is no suggestion that the kar sewaks started the violence. The worst that
has been said is that they misbehaved with a few passengers. Equally, it
does seem extraordinary that slogans shouted from a moving train or at
a railway platform should have been enough to enrage local Muslims, enough
for 2,000 of them to have quickly assembled at eight in the morning, having
already managed to procure petrol bombs and acid bombs.
Even if you dispute the version
of some of the kar sewaks - that the attack was premeditated and that the
mob was ready and waiting - there can be no denying that what happened
was indefensible, unforgivable and impossible to explain away as a consequence
of great provocation.
And yet, this is precisely how the
secular establishment has reacted.
Nearly every non-BJP leader who
appeared on TV on Wednesday and almost all of the media have treated the
massacre as a response to the Ayodhya movement. This is fair enough in
so far as the victims were kar sewaks.
But almost nobody has bothered to
make the obvious follow-up point: this was not something the kar sewaks
brought on themselves. If a trainload of VHP volunteers had been attacked
while returning after the demolition of the Babri masjid in December 1992,
this would still have been wrong, but at least one could have understood
the provocation.
This time, however, there has been
no real provocation at all. It is possible that the VHP may defy the government
and the courts and go ahead with the temple construction eventually. But,
as of now, this has not happened. Nor has there been any real confrontation
at Ayodhya - as yet.
And yet, the sub-text to all secular
commentary is the same: the kar sewaks had it coming to them.
Basically, they condemn the crime;
but blame the victims.
Try and take the incident out of
the secular construct that we, in India, have perfected and see how bizarre
such an attitude sounds in other contexts. Did we say that New York had
it coming when the Twin Towers were attacked last year? Then too, there
was enormous resentment among fundamentalist Muslims about America's policies,
but we didn't even consider whether this resentment was justified or not.
Instead we took the line that all
sensible people must take: any massacre is bad and deserves to be condemned.
When Graham Staines and his children
were burnt alive, did we say that Christian missionaries had made themselves
unpopular by engaging in conversion and so, they had it coming? No, of
course, we didn't.
Why then are these poor kar sewaks
an exception? Why have we de-humanised them to the extent that we don't
even see the incident as the human tragedy that it undoubtedly was and
treat it as just another consequence of the VHP's fundamentalist policies?
The answer, I suspect, is that we
are programmed to see Hindu-Muslim relations in simplistic terms: Hindus
provoke, Muslims suffer.
When this formula does not work
-- it is clear now that a well-armed Muslim mob murdered unarmed Hindus
- we simply do not know how to cope. We shy away from the truth - that
some Muslims committed an act that is indefensible - and resort to blaming
the victims.
Of course, there are always 'rational
reasons' offered for this stand. Muslims are in a minority and therefore,
they deserve special consideration. Muslims already face discrimination
so why make it harder for them? If you report the truth then you will inflame
Hindu sentiments and this would be irresponsible. And so on.
I know the arguments well because
- like most journalists - I have used them myself. And I still argue that
they are often valid and necessary.
But there comes a time when this
kind of rigidly 'secularist' construct not only goes too far; it also becomes
counter-productive. When everybody can see that a trainload of Hindus was
massacred by a Muslim mob, you gain nothing by blaming the murders on the
VHP or arguing that the dead men and women had it coming to them.
Not only does this insult the dead
(What about the children? Did they also have it coming?), but it also insults
the intelligence of the reader. Even moderate Hindus, of the sort that
loathe the VHP, are appalled by the stories that are now coming out of
Gujarat: stories with uncomfortable reminders of 1947 with details about
how the bogies were first locked from outside and then set on fire and
how the women's compartment suffered the most damage.
Any media - indeed, any secular
establishment - that fails to take into account the genuine concerns of
people risks losing its own credibility. Something like that happened in
the mid-Eighties when an aggressive hard secularism on the part of the
press and government led even moderate Hindus to believe that they had
become second class citizens in their own country. It was this Hindu backlash
that brought the Ayodhya movement - till then a fringe activity - to the
forefront and fuelled the rise of L.K. Advani's BJP.
My fear is that something similar
will happen once again. The VHP will ask the obvious question of Hindus:
why is it a tragedy when Staines is burnt alive and merely an 'inevitable
political development' when the same fate befalls 57 kar sewaks?
Because, as secularists, we can
provide no good answer, it is the VHP's responses that will be believed.
Once again, Hindus will believe that their suffering is of no consequence
and will be tempted to see the building of a temple at Ayodhya as an expression
of Hindu pride in the face of secular indifference.
But even if this were not to happen,
even if there was no danger of a Hindu backlash, I still think that the
secular establishment should pause for thought.
There is one question we need to
ask ourselves: have we become such prisoners of our own rhetoric that even
a horrific massacre becomes nothing more than occasion for Sangh parivar-bashing?