The Hindu : Can the polls wash away their pain?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Nov 03, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Can the polls wash away their pain?

In Gujarat, those living with the consequencies of the carnage expect little from the polls. For, the other institutions that make a democracy do not work for them. Anjali Mody reports.

THE AIR reverberated with the specious verbiage of campaign politics as the BJP and the Congress began their respective election campaigns in Gujarat. Each staked its claim to the ghost of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, one in Karamsad where he was born and the other in Bardoli where he led his first major political campaign. Sound and fury about strong leaders, the fight against terrorism, about inept Governments and visions for the future. And in all this just a passing reference to a carnage in which some 2,000 people were killed.

Gujarat has returned to "normalcy", and the violence that tore at its heart is no longer worthy of comment. The last of the relief camps were closed last week. Bright new paintwork covers what were burnt out shells of buildings. Women scarred for life by the violence find they are still able to laugh. Life has moved on. And so have many Gujaratis.

The electoral rolls record 1.7 lakh voters located at new addresses, some outside the State, but still entitled to vote. Another 2.2 lakh names will be retained on the rolls as they have not been located. The unstated fact is that a majority of them are Muslims, in a State where they are less than 10 per cent of the population. They left in search of safer and secure futures. A sign of normality is that they are called "economic migrants", not "riot victims".

And so Gujarat is ready for an election. This cycle of democratic politics is sacrosanct. The Supreme Court has held that all the resources necessary should be used to hold an election, and that civil disturbances are not a good enough reason to postpone them.

It is a judgment that reaffirms the fact that the democratic process is inviolable. The institutions which keep this wheel of democracy well-oiled and working do exist. The Election Commission has shown itself capable of holding proper elections in extremely trying circumstances. Gujarat, with 400 companies of central forces, should be easy enough.

Those living with the consequences of the carnage, however, expect little from the polls. For, the other institutions that make a democracy do not work for them. There are 1,000 families in Ahmedabad alone who are unable to return to their homes. They are threatened, intimidated and attacked if they try to do. A young Muslim was killed last week because he went to a neighbour, who had stolen his belongings during the violence, to ask for them to be returned.

In Hukum Singh ni Chali in Chamanpura of Ahmedabad, Muslim families have returned to their old houses to live side by side with Hindus who attacked them and looted their homes. Even the floor tiles from some Muslim homes now adorn the floors of Hindu homes. No cases have been filed, no claims made. The choice was between seeking justice and returning home.

Says Sheba George, who heads the NGO Sahr Waru, living each day with injustice staring you in the face, cannot make for lasting peace. It only deepens the divisions that already exist. "There is no hope from the legal system," she said. This is also why "no one is talking about rape any more".

Women who survived and broke taboos to speak about rape to newspapers, television audiences and even the President do not have any hope of getting justice. None of the women who filed FIRs in cases of rape has been contacted. No police investigations are under way.

On Wednesday, October 30, the court set a date for the start of the trial into the Gulmarg Society massacre. The former Congress MP, Ehasan Jafri, and 36 other persons were killed, raped, and burnt in this middle-class Ahmedabad neighbourhood on February 28. This will be the first major case to go to trial. Lawyers who are monitoring the legal process say that the police have "investigated" very few cases and chargesheets have been filed only in bigger cases like those of the Gulmarg Society and Naroda Patiya. In Ahmedabad alone, 800 FIRs were filed.

Even in cases where there have been "investigations", witnesses are frightened. The legal cell at St. Xavier's College's Behavioural Science Centre, which is monitoring the progress of cases in Ahmedabad, said that those named as attackers in many chargesheets are still free to roam the streets on which they unleashed their terror.

Some victims and witnesses, including in the Gulmarg Society case, have been threatened. In the rural areas, with few lawyers willing to advise the victims, the situation is even worse. People have simply withdrawn their FIRs in order to be able to return to their homes.

But withdrawing FIRs is not a guarantee for being able to re-build old lives. The Muslim residents of 300 villages have been re-housed at new sites by just one NGO. In Anand taluka, where the BJP launched its formal election campaign, 500 Muslim families have been unable to return.

And, 260 families from the prosperous Odh village are scattered around the State; many cannot go back because they have filed FIRs naming their attackers and have been told that they will be killed if they return.

The Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, trying to snatch the mantle of Sardar Patel told his party's faithful in Karamsad that the "arm of law was long" and would get anyone who unleashed violence in the State. He was referring to the attack on the Akshardham temple. But sitting among journalists at the rally were BJP leaders named in FIRs, among them Maya Kodnani whose name appears on several FIRs relating to the Naroda Patiya massacre and who is hopeful that her name will figure on the BJP's list of candidates. The long arm of the law has left her untouched.

And an election in which she may or may not be a candidate will make no difference to those who seek justice through the courts. Bhushan Oza, a lawyer, says, "a case is tried on the basis of the chargesheet, if the chargesheet is poorly framed that will decide the case". He said that most of the chargesheets framed so far had incorrect information, complainants did not feel that their statements had been accurately recorded, the main accused in some cases have been listed as witnesses, major political leaders who had been named in complainants' statements have not been included although small time criminals who are Dalits or Waghris (a Scheduled Tribe) have been included.

So, the effort now is to focus on allowing people a chance to rebuild their lives. Those most affected are the poorest, many who have lost months of income.

In the general economic downturn, many men who depended on daily wage jobs have been unable to return to work; many lost work contracts they could not honour during the three months of violence. And it is not only the Muslims in Gujarat who are having to deal with the economic consequences of the violence.

Local newspapers have reported a record number of suicides of Hindus in recent weeks. The reasons given are invariably financial ruin, loss of income caused by the disruption in economic activity.

Little wonder then that Sewa (the Self-Employed Women's Association) has seen its membership in Gujarat grow exponentially after the violence began.

Sewa's Mirai Chatterjee is in no doubt that the remarkable increase in the organisation's membership, by over two lakhs, is directly linked with the violence and it was primarily Sewa's livelihood security programme that attracted them.

If they had waited around for the compensation and rehabilitation packages promised by the Government, including those announced by the Prime Minister, they might have waited forever. The Rs. 1.5 lakhs the families of the dead were promised has gone to less than half the claimants. There are still those who are "missing" and whose relatives must first go through the administrative loops of having them declared dead to claim the compensation. Damage compensation has been arbitrarily fixed and unevenly distributed. It is a handful of NGOs, particularly the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind and the Gujarat Sarvajanik Samiti, which have raised the funds to repair and re-build homes.

Even as people try and pick up the pieces of their lives, the consequences of the violence for the State's Muslims remain. Mohammed Illyas, an IIT graduate who teaches mechanical engineering at Birla Mahavidyalaya in Vallabh Vidyanagar and coordinated the relief effort in Anand and Kheda districts, says that the pressure on him is to do something about getting children into schools. Muslim families, Prof. Illyas said, were finding it very hard to get school admissions for their children. Even in private schools. Even in some run by Christian missionaries.

Against this background, a BJP election victory is something that many people, from all communities, fear. They say it will consolidate the fruits of hatred and mean the continuation of an "experiment" in which the minority population of a State is pushed further and further towards the margin. But the alternative holds out little real hope.

The Congress, terrified of "losing the Hindu vote", was conspicuously invisible during the three months of violence. Despite its `secular' claims, it did nothing towards providing relief to victims even in constituencies where the MLA was from the Congress. Shankarsinh Waghela met the victims of some of the worst massacres only in Delhi, made them election-style promises and left the meeting early to attend a discussion on the Gujarat situation at a city club. Mr. Waghela now expects to get their vote. And the disquieting fact of Gujarat politics is that he will. For the choice before Gujarat's Muslims, effectively disempowered by the BJP regime, is to vote, or be disenfranchised.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Opinion

Stories in this Section

Can the polls wash away their pain?

Alternative voices

Readying for the contest

To Russia with love