The Hindu : An exercise in callousness

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jul 30, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

An exercise in callousness

By Muchkund Dubey

It is a cruel joke to ask those still homeless and jobless after the Gujarat carnage to exercise their voting rights.

SYEDA HAMEED and I visited Gujarat in the last week of June to prepare a report on the latest situation in the State on behalf of the Delhi-based Forum for Fraternity and Reconciliation. The conditions in the six camps we visited were inhuman and dehumanising. Some 20,000 people living in these conditions cannot be expected to be in a position to exercise their voting rights. Most of them will forego their voting rights not voluntarily, but out of the compulsion of distress, desperateness and insecurity. It is the duty of the state to bring them on a par with other citizens before presenting before them the formal option of casting their votes. These 20,000 people have no homes, jobs or relatives to go back to.

Another problem is how to account for the voters among some 130,000 people who have left the camps. Not all have gone back to their original dwelling places. This is partly due to a sense of insecurity and partly because the compensation paid is utterly inadequate to repair or build a house or restart a profession. Some of them are living with their relatives and some have migrated to join the ghettos of the minorities in other parts of the country. One hears gory tales of the plight of those who tried to go back to their villages. Several groups were driven back by force as soon as they entered their villages. A couple spending the night in a temporary shelter and hoping to enter their house the next morning were killed overnight. Several others were allowed to return to their villages only after signing letters of apology in which they gave an undertaking that they would not file suits against those who murdered, raped and burnt their near and dear ones; that they would not call Maulvis from outside the village and would render specific services to be assigned to them by the majority community.

The vast majority of the displaced cannot be rehabilitated and resume normal lives until they are paid adequate compensation for the loss or damage of their houses, household goods and profession. The compensation paid to them is utterly inadequate. Against the ceiling of Rs. 50,000 prescribed by the Prime Minister as compensation for repairing or constructing houses, the average compensation paid is in the range of Rs. 5,000 - Rs. 10,000. Some have been paid as little as Rs. 500. The compensation paid for the loss or damage of household goods has in most cases been between Rs. 250 and Rs. 500. Some have been paid a paltry Rs. 75 which is not adequate to buy even a decent tumbler. It is a cruel joke to ask those still homeless and jobless after the Gujarat carnage to exercise their voting rights in an election to the State Assembly.

In a day-long meeting held in Ahmedabad on June 28, a group of NGOs, representative of those living in the camps, volunteers working there, technical experts, corporate volunteers and intellectuals prepared tentative estimates of the cost to be incurred for rehabilitating the displaced persons. We arrived at a figure of Rs. 90 crores in grants and Rs.120 crores in soft loans. If the Government is serious about closing the chapter on the Gujarat carnage, the minimum that must be done is to mobilise resources of this magnitude and put in place a rehabilitation initiative in cooperation with the representatives of the Muslim charitable organisations, which have borne the brunt of the burden for maintaining the displaced in camps, and the NGOs. This is the critical element in applying the healing touch and a primary task before the nation. This must take precedence over elections. In fact, holding the elections before this task is accomplished will have the effect of relegating the latter to the background, leaving behind a trail of bitterness, frustration and discontent which will corrode social peace and cohesion.

When this proposition was put before the Prime Minister and his team of officials during a meeting in New Delhi on July 2, it was dismissed out of hand on the specious ground that the Government was bound to rely on its own machinery for determining the amount of, and paying, compensation. The Government is supposed to have dealt with and disposed of almost all cases, including two rounds of representations, of compensation. And yet the problem of compensation, and hence of the insecurity of the minority community, stares the nation in the face.

In recent decades, Gujarat has come to be known for its communal polarisation and the ghettoisation of the minority communities. This has acquired a new momentum, and a logic and justification of its own after the February/March carnage. We witnessed an all-pervading sense of insecurity and fear among the minorities. The well-to-do are wondering whether they took the right decision in making India their homeland and spurning the chances they had of migrating to other lands. The very poor among them feel helpless and desperate. They are mortally afraid of being spurned by the Hindus who were their employers, consumers of their goods and services or business partners.

Many of those who have left the camps do not want to go back to their homes in the Hindu-dominated areas. They are demanding allotment of land and construction of houses in the Muslim localities. To spurn this demand will be inhuman, even though it will result in further ghettoisation. Some of the children who have gone back to their schools located in the Hindu localities have been chased out by the local people. Their guardians are now demanding additional educational facilities in the Muslim-dominated areas where they have taken shelter. It is difficult to oppose this demand because ghettoised schooling is better than no schooling at all.

Apart from other adverse fallouts, if boys and girls remain out of school for a prolonged period, it can have very disruptive social consequences.

These consequences will not remain confined to Gujarat. The situation in Gujarat and the increasing evidence of the State and Central Governments pursuing anti-Muslim policies have engendered a sense of insecurity and resentment among the minorities in the country. This is bound to undermine the nation's unity and integrity.

Unfortunately, there is no evidence of any systematic and effective move to rid the minority communities of their current all-pervading sense of insecurity.

The Governments in power, in the State or at the Centre, have displayed no sense of remorse or repentance. They have not taken any step to dispel the notion that they are essentially hostile to the minorities and their rights as equal citizens of India.

They construe the elections to the State Assembly as an exercise in riding back to power on the crest of hatred and neglect of the minorities and visualise their outcome as a triumph of the most ugly face of Hinduism.

Will the Election Commission be a party to this sinister design and to this massive diversion of attention from the real issue facing Gujarat and the nation, by agreeing to hold the elections at the present most inopportune moment?

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