PRAGOTI

Narendra Modi, the person responsible for the 2002 Gujarat riots, is now sitting on a three day fast for communal harmony aimed at attracting the muslim vote, aiming the 2014 general elections. Such hypocrisy is the hallmark of fascists. We present here Badri Raina's thoughtful response to this episode. We also reproduce below, an open letter of the riot victims to Narendra Modi.

Modi and the Congressional Research Service (CRS):
 
Anyone who has   studied American political systems for any length of time  would know that  American Congressmen routinely employ young men and women from their electoral constituencies to prepare functional research briefs for them.
 
Invariably compiled from selective inclusions from relevant media interventions from region to region rather than strenuously researched on the ground, these briefs  speak neither for the American Houses of Congress nor for the  American State.
 
Put another way, these briefs are, more likely than not, attuned to specific special interests who may, at one time or another, wish either to disparage or laud any particular trend or entity in any part of the world through the aegis of Congressmen and women funded by them.
 
Thus it is that a CRS report (some 93 pages) has en passant praised the developmental efforts in the Indian state of Gujarat during the tenure of   Narendra Modi.  Although such approbation of Modi’s  “governance”  from  sources aligned to International Finance and Indian Capital is not new,  the CRS reference has provided grist to India’s Hindu Right-Wing mill,  as Modi’s party, the BJP, is currently going to town with the polemic that Modi has allegedly now found favour with an uncle Sam who, incidentally,  still refuses to issue an American entry visa to this  Nero  (characterization used for Modi by no less than the Supreme Court of India) of Guajrat.
 
This groveling need of Modi and the Bhartya Janata Party to obtain from the U.S.  a rescinding of his pariah status at the present moment of   India’s political effervescence  is indeed understandable in more ways than one:  widely favoured by the Hindutva hard core  as the first among warring BJP leaders  for claim to the party’s prime-ministerial candidate, Modi’s leap from his captive constituency in Gujarat to the national stage cannot be effected unless ways are found to neutralize his humungous culpabilities with respect to the carnage of 2002. 
 
As  everyday  whistleblowers of high rank and unimpeachable integrity come out with bold resolve to  set the Modi record straight (see Sanjiv Bhatt’s unprecedented open letter to Modi in The  Hindu, Sept.,15), and when , with the latest Supreme Court  decision to refer   hitherto unadmitted  materials pertaining to the Gulberg society massacre in which  the then Congress Member of Parliament, Ehsan Jaffri was hacked to pieces alongwith another 63 innocent Muslims, materials that include the original complaint filed by Jaffri’s  75 year old widow, and the Citizens for Justice and Peace, the final report of the Special Investigating Team, and the independent observations and conclusions of the Supreme Court- appointed amicus on the  report of the SIT,  to the trial court for formal legal  proceedings against the persons named in the Jaffri complaint, names that include Modi, the latter’s legal  difficulties seem now only to assume the proportions of a formal arraignment.  All that  contrary to the noisome  propaganda that the Supreme Court has actually given Modi a "clean chit." Goebbels would yet again have similed.
 
Given those contexts, it is hardly any surprise that Modi and the BJP should reach for any straw that offers itself,  and  manufacture others, however disingenuous or indeed laughable.  Thus, sections of India’s  corporate  media which wish to see the back of the current Manmohan Singh regime in favour of one led by the  “nationalist” and  “next-generation-of-reforms-friendly” BJP are busy tom-tomming the CRS reference to  Modi’s prowess at governance (read his ready willingness to jettison the interests of indigent Gujaratis in favour of the aspirations of private wealth) as the final  ringing endorsement by the American State and International Finance who are thought to think a Modi vs Rahul Gandhi contest for prime minsitership as the most likely political scenario  for India of 2014, a contest which is also ab initio being touted as a no-contest.  Ergo, close   your eyes, and Modi is the Indian prime minister as you open them again! 
 
Thus is the future manufactured.
 
Modi to undertake a three-day fast:

 Now to the hilarious bit.
 
Narendra Modi is to undergo a three-day fast in an obliging , air-conditioned venue at a university in Ahmedabad, beginning Saturday.  The fast is to be undertaken  for  “harmony and brotherhood.”  It may be noted that the same university had denied this facility to the Congress party on the grounds that the university does not encourage “political” activity on  its premises.  So much for the quality of academic independence and  integrity  under the aegis of the Modi regime.
 
On both counts, namely, fasting and  the desire for harmony, Modi seeks with astounding  but rather despicable cunning to take a leaf out of the book of  the Hindu Right-Wings’  established  bete noir,  Mahatma Gandhi.
 
Throughout his career, the RSS never failed to revile Gandhi for his fasting gimmickries, and most especially when those fasts were undertaken to salvage inter-community harmony.  Indeed, you may recall,  he was duly assassinated  for his heinous secular endeavours by stalwarts spawned by theHindutva brigade.
 
To this day it is difficult to recall any Hindu Right-Wing leader who ever went on a fast on any social or political  issue—not  Golwalker, not Vajpai, not Advani, not Deen Dayal Upadhay, not anyone.  A record that highlights  Modi’s genius at tactical innovation.  Having just seen how the Anna Hazare fast allegedly against a corrupt Indian political class drew more than impressive media and middle class support,  Modi’s  decision to do likewise, albeit for three days, must be considered canny at the least.
 
As  to the “harmony and brotherhood” bit:  how cute that a chief executive who presided, and, from all accounts, directed, the anti-Muslim carnage of 2002, under whose continuing watch  the Hindu and Muslim communities in Gujarat have now become almost totally segregated, who has to this minute disdained every plea and bit of advice, including from the erstwhile BJP prime minister, Vajpai, to speak one word of regret or remorse, who has to this minute refused to visit the Jaffri widow, for example, and to commiserate with her fate, and those of  the thousands who left behind them ruined families, who has without let attempted to subvert every effort of the investigating agencies and of the courts to bring out the truth and furnish redress,  who will in all likelihood return to his hate-spewing rhetoric come the next elections,  how cute that this unredeemed and unrepentant Nero should speak of harmony and brotherhood and seek to dramatise the same  in air-conditioned comfort to a national television audience. 
 
Ah, said the bard,  “you may smile and smile and be a villain.”
 
 The Congress party:

 Interestingly, the Congress party in Gujarat has hit upon a rather telling way of calling Modi’s bluff.  Its leader, Shanker Singh Waghela, is to sit on a parallel fast, an indeterminate one, not at a parallel venue of air-conditioned comfort, but from a well-chosen  Gandhi Ashram  site.
 
However disingenuous this fast may also seem, historically the Congress party can claim that fasting has been  a long-used  recourse in its political and activist repertoire since Gandhi first came to lead it.  And, a fast undertaken from a Gandhi-related venue ought surely to find greater salience with the hoi polloi than one that bespeaks a form of luxuriating  realpolik from the most unlikely of sources and subjects.
 
Clearly, one expects that in the days and months to come, the Congress and other secular forces will marshall the factual status of Modi’s  so-called incorruptibily (note that the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, or CAG, the very same who has been at the centre of the many recent exposures of corruption in high places, has in a report on Gujarat  underscored likely corruption running to some 26,000 crore rupees!) and the unlovely truths of his lauded developmental model, for, as long as it takes, it is truth alone that can best bring Gujarat round to “harmony and brotherhood.”
 
The Trial Court:
 
In that context, many millions now look to the trial court in Gujarat with hope; having been given a second wind of life to prove its impartial metal after the  unflattering episodes when the Supreme Court  was obliged to take one case of atrocity after another away from the legal  system  in Gujarat to other courts in other states, that court, given the reams of evidence newly incorporated, should find little rationale or justice in exonerating, ab initio, anyone from the list of accused furnished in the Jaffri complaint, or implicated in the substance of the report of  the SIT and of the amicus in his independent observations upon that report.
 
If the sordid story of the Modi years in Gujarat has to find closure, that trial court may have as much to do with it as all those who seek to foreground  aspects of the  Modi era, most of all the incredibly brave whistleblowers and  non-governmental organizations and  activists. 
 
To put it another way, the question still remains whether Modi’s Gujarat will shape the future of the republic, or whether the republic will rectify, redeem, and revalidate Modi’s Guajrat.
 
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New Delhi: The 2002 Gujarat riots victims gathered at Naroda Patiya and sent an open letter to Narendra Modi seeking justice.
Here's the full text of the letter:
Dear Narendrabhai
Why do you have to undertake this “Sadbhavna Mission” by observing three days “upvaas”?? No other Chief Minister of the 26 States in India has to do such a “prayaschit” to earn sadbhavna! Have you finally realized after about a decade that all the so called “developmental” publicity cannot earn you the faith, respect and love of the people?
You are quite good at story telling. Do you remember the story of king Midas? Whatever he touched turned into gold. Your supporters say you have the Midas touch of turning Gujarat into Swarnim Gujarat. But do you remember that despite all his power, Midas thirsted for just a glass of water, like you are thirsting for the love and respect of the victims of the 2002 riots? No amount of power or arrogance gave Midas his glass of water nor will you get your sadbhavana with all your developmental publicity!
You say all your critics are liars! Is it a lie that in the months of February and March 2002, over a thousand helpless men, women and children were butchered all over Gujarat with your police watching the mobs looting and killing?? Is it a lie that you were the Chief Minister of Gujarat at that time? If you were so great a Chief Minister as you claim today, why couldn’t you protect these innocent, helpless Muslims?? In fact, why did you fail to protect the innocent 58 passengers of Sabarmati Express who also died in the terrible fire on 27th February, 2002??
You say that you are not guilty of the mass murders of those days! If you are not guilty then tell us who are guilty? Tell us why your police failed to prosecute them because of which Supreme Court had to appoint SIT? Tell us why even after SIT was appointed, all those who were arrested including Mayaben Kodnani and Jaydeep Patel are roaming freely in this State? Tell us why POTA was applied to only Muslim accused? Tell us why the muslim accused were not granted bail and most of them have been convicted and even sentenced to death! Tell us why the accused of the Naroda Patiya or Gulberg massacre have not been convicted till today??
Tell us why the blame of the Haren Pandya murder was falsely put on the muslim boys who had to suffer 8 years in jail till they were acquitted by the high court?
Tell us why Sameer Khan Pathan, Sadiq Jamal, Ishrat Jahan, Sohrabuddin, Kausar, Tulsi Prajapati and several others were murdered in fake encounters and in every FIR it was alleged that they were intending to kill you? Did you ever investigate why every FIR made such an allegation regarding you? If such an allegation was false, did you take any action against the police officers who killed them? Or did you give them promotions??
Are you celebrating the pain of the victims or are you trying to confuse the people by organizing the five-star programme to give an impression that the cases against you have been closed?
Narendrabhai, you may turn Gujarat into a heaven for a handful of rich and powerful. But have you ever peeped into the hell through which we the victims and community as a whole is going through? No, you have not and we know, you have no desire or intention to give us Justice. We therefore dismiss your “Sadbhavana Mission” as just another publicity stunt.
On our part, we declare that we have no ill feeling towards our Hindu brothers and sisters despite our terrible loss and sufferings. We are both the victims of powerful political forces whose strength lies in our division. We alone can create “Sadbhavana” by uniting and defeating the forces of fraud and deception for vote politics. You may be doing all this for your great ambition to become PM of the country, but we have only one small demand- WE WANT JUSTICE.
Your riot victim citizens.
Jan Sangharsh Manch
September 18, 2011