Author: Kanchan Gupta
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: May 31, 2005
A few days before Parliament's Budget
session came to an end, PTI circulated a story based on Minister of State
for Home Affairs Sriprakash Jaiswal's reply to a Rajya Sabha MP's question
on the 2002 riots in Gujarat.
The details provided by Mr Jaiswal
in his reply were in total variance to the outrageous claims of the Congress
and its Leftist allies, especially the CPI(M) to which we have been subjected
for the last three years. Perhaps that is the reason why India's "secular"
media, given to aggressively arguing in favour of citizens' right to information,
did not pick up the PTI story.
Since the Minister's reply provides
some interesting facts that deserve to be placed in the public domain,
it would be in order to reproduce the salient portions of the PTI report:
The Central Government informed
the Rajya Sabha that 254 Hindus and 790 Muslims were killed in the post-Godhra
riots in Gujarat.
Minister of State for Home Affairs
Sriprakash Jaiswal said a total of 223 people were reported missing and
2,548 sustained injuries during the riots in 2002.
He said the Government paid Rs 1.5
lakh to the next of kin of each person killed and Rs 5,000, Rs 15,000,
Rs 25,000 and Rs 50,000 for the injured. The amount for the injured was
based on the extent of injury, the Minister added.
The Minister of State for Home Affairs
in the Congress-led UPA Government has pegged the death toll at 790 Muslims
and 254 Hindus. Yet, these figures are not reflected in the propagandist
pronouncements of those who claim to champion the cause of India's Muslims.
More often than not we come across
absurd claims of "thousands of Muslims butchered by Hindu fanatics in Narendra
Modi's Gujarat". This is a lie that has been repeated ad nauseam since
that terrible day when Hindus travelling by Sabarmati Express where roasted
alive after their coach was set ablaze by Muslim fanatics.
It has been repeated the most by
India's Marxists who subscribe to the Goebbelsian tactic of repeating a
lie till in the popular perception it comes to be identified as the truth.
And, it is on the strength of such
contrived truth that the Marxists make preposterous claims. For instance,
the claim made in a recent editorial in the CPI(M) propaganda journal People's
Democracy that the communal violence in Gujarat was "the worst in modern
Indian history".
In one grand sweep, the CPI(M) has
brushed aside the far more horrendous riots that have resulted in far more
gruesome blood-letting. We do not have to go too far back in "modern Indian
history" to locate some of these riots.
The massacre in Malliana has been
forgotten; brutal memories of the riots in Meerut have been obliterated.
The nightlong slaughter of Muslims at Nellie in Assam, which witnessed
suckling infants being snatched from their mothers' arms and being speared
to death, has been erased from the secularists' record of "modern Indian
history".
Stomach-churning details of the
Bhagalpur riots - Muslims were killed, buried in fields and cauliflower
and other winter vegetables planted over the rotting cadavers - no longer
feature in the secularists' collective conscience. The anti-Sikh pogrom
that followed Indira Gandhi's assassination is not even talked about any
more: More than 4,000 Sikhs were murdered, many of them by placing burning
tyres around their necks.
Each of these massacres of innocent
men, women and children took place when the Congress was in power and did
nothing more than twiddle its thumbs as marauders went about their pillaging
secure in the belief that they would not be punished.
Yet, the Marxists have the gumption
of claiming that the riots in Gujarat were "the worst in modern Indian
history". Perhaps they are referring to history after it has been purged
of uncomfortable facts by the detox army led by Union Human Resource Development
Minister Arjun Singh.
Crass pandering to fundamentalism
comes easily to the Congress and its cheer leaders in the CPI(M). That
is the reason why propaganda disguised as campaign to promote secularism
is deployed with such ease, regardless of the truth. And appeasement of
the worst variety is projected as secular policy.
Two recent instances can be cited
to exemplify this point. Ulema who had gathered for a rally of the Jamiat-Ulema-e-Hind
over the weekend, passed a resolution demanding proportionate reservation
for Muslims in State legislatures and Parliament. Jamiat president Maulana
Syed Asad Madani articulated this demand without mincing words.
UPA chairperson and Congress president
Sonia Gandhi, who was present at the rally and spoke after Mr Madani was
through with his fire-and-brimstone speech, showered praise on the gathered
ulema and promised to fulfil every demand of theirs. She then went on to
shower abuse on the BJP and the NDA Government.
The other example is the cunning
manner in which the UPA Government tried to manipulate ownership of Jama
Masjid. This 17th century mosque is waqf property but has been appropriated,
for all practical purposes, by the Shahi Imam.
In the past, every time an effort
has been made by Muslims to free this place of worship from the clutches
of the imam and his henchmen, the Congress has come to his rescue, claiming
that it was doing so to "maintain communal harmony". This time, too, a
similar attempt was made, but the Delhi High Court has stymied that effort.
Meanwhile, with elections looming
large in Assam, the Congress is pinning its hope on that State's significant
Muslim vote bank comprising illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. The remarkable
growth in the Muslim population of Assam's districts adjacent to Bangladesh
may pose a serious threat to the region's demographic balance, but for
the Congress, it is manna from heaven.
The Assamese are feeling increasingly
overwhelmed by the continuous flow of immigrants and have launched a campaign
to throw out the Bangladeshis from Assam. Their efforts have begun to yield
results but the Congress is in a rage over the exodus of Bangladeshi Muslims
from Assam.
The Chief Minister of Assam has
turned on the Governor who is believed to have sent a report to the Union
Government, placing on record his assessment of the immigration problem,
pegging the inflow of Bangladeshis to a startling figure of 6,000 a day.
According to the Chief Minister,
who is also the local Congress satrap, there may be a few Bangladeshis
here and there, but "there is no problem of illegal immigration". He knows
that this is untrue. The Union Government knows that this is untrue. The
Congress and the CPI(M) know that this is untrue.
But none of them has the courage
to stand up and tell the truth lest the party is forced to forfeit its
deposit in the Muslim vote-bank. Instead, the BJP and the RSS are being
blamed for "terrorising Muslims" with an eye to the coming Assembly elections.
This is as logical as describing
the 2002 riots in Gujarat as "the worst in modern Indian history".
