Author: Ayesha Khan
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: August 29, 2008
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/story/354728.html
Introduction: Continual celebration of victimhood
isn't helping Gujarat. NGOs need to understand this
Perhaps it is the times we live in. Tragedies
now engender anniversary celebrations. There's a new social class of vocal,
visible victims. And publicly parading pain is the new thing. So in Gujarat
on August 26, a month after the Ahmedabad blasts, there were functions, official
and NGO-sponsored. One of the latter variety was organised by the Citizens
for Justice and Peace (CJP) in Quresh Hall, Ahmedabad. There, 2002 riot victims
met 2008 terror victims.
What was the idea? Fostering secular bonding?
Who can argue against that? But one can and must point out that life, and
life in Gujarat, is not Amar, Akbar, Anthony. Manmohan Desai had the three
brothers of different faiths united via an impossible conjunction of medicine
and maa - siblings simultaneously donating blood to their mother, tubes running
from their arms to their mother's. Such ideas of the heroic potential of inter-faith
bonding seemed quite apt when the organisers of the Quresh Hall meeting said
that the attempt was to "bridge the gap" and "get them talking
to each other in empathy, with sympathy". "Our grief is same, our
pain is same, our tragedies are similar, even if our faiths are different."
Read the subtext. Riot victims of 2002 are
Muslims who were victims of the state, the system and the majority Hindus.
Victims of the Ahmedabad bombs in 2008 are Hindus, the perpetrators are Muslims.
So, Muslims are victims, Hindus are victims, the bad guys may be different,
but we all stand united - in fear, in tragedy. In Gujarat, it seems only fear
and tragedy can secure the bonds.
Gujarat, let's say it again, is becoming a
strange place. The strange response to its brand of politics is now not only
from society, but also from even civil society groups. Gujarat is perhaps
the only Indian state to have the intriguing distinction of a memorial planned
for riot victims - as CJP plans one in Ahmedabad's Gulberg Society, the site
of one of the most gruesome riots in 2002, where ex-MP Ehsan Jafri died. So
we are to have a Gulberg Museum of Resistance. The sponsors didn't ask anyone,
didn't ask me, for example, whether I want this. Whether as a Muslim or a
Hindu, or Gujarai or Indian, whatever one's identity is, such a memorial only
brings deep discomfort.
This museum is not my culture, not my language.
This is supposedly to be a museum that will be a reminder of human frailties
and depravity. But will it soothe, will it heal? No, it will just help the
wounds to fester. Gujarat has more than its fair share of slogans, hoardings,
anniversaries and memorial functions. They are all over, in all shades and
nuances. And they all bring discomfiture - they don't help.
Bollywood secularism is not the answer to
Gujarat's political and social divides. This is missed even and especially
by those who write reams on post-riot Gujarat. Six years later, there's no
escaping this narrative. I, like all of us, have layered identities. I am
a journalist. I am Gujarati. I am a woman. I am a Muslim. But well-meaning
groups wait for a month to pass after the Ahmedabad bombs day and start reminding
me, lest I forget, that I am also to remember the riots, and the importance
of being a victim. Why the presumption that this is what I want? Why the presumption
that this is what anyone wants? If tragedies mean most in the personal dimension,
then individuals should be allowed to deal with it.
So what victim-meets-victim programmes do
is make me angry - because I am yet again labelled as the victim. I resent
the reminder of victimhood being foisted on me. Apparently, in Gujarat, you
can't escape being a victim if you have once been identified as one. Victimhood
takes different forms, searches for different contexts, waits for many anniversaries
- but it's always there. This is bizarre and made more so by the fact that
there seems to be no recognition that all this coming together is not happening
organically but because, in effect, different groups are being told they all
have reasons to be afraid.
The state once wanted to decide for me in
Gujarat where I stood in the scheme of things. Now, civil society groups also
want to do that. That the motives might be different makes little difference.
I don't want the state or civil society groups to decide for me. I want the
space and the time to decide for myself.
This is not an exceptionally demanding request.
This is not a request that should surprise either politicians or civil society
groups. This is not even a request that really needs to be made. Then why
am I making it? And many in Gujarat feel this way.
We have to say this aloud because willy-nilly
we have been playing a role decided for us. That role was something terrible
when the state's politics took that horrible turn. When civil society responded
to that, and respond it had to, the role changed, the script changed, the
people deciding the role changed, the motives were obviously infinitely better
- but it was still a role I, and we, were expected to play.
I say this years after the riots, years during
which I have felt constricted.
All that Gujarat wants is a space that the
rest of India gives - to Indians irrespective of their faith and/or ideology.
The state failed Gujarat on this. Will civil society groups let us down too?
Let me be. Just let me be.
- ayesha.khan@expressindia.com
