The Hindu : Understanding Gujarat

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Tuesday, Mar 12, 2002

Opinion

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Understanding Gujarat

By Rajmohan Gandhi

The truth is that the subcontinent's religious extremists never forgave Gandhi his beliefs and his triumphs.

All THE comment about Gujarat's supposed avenging nature, including the Chief Minister, Narendra Modi's remark about five crore Gujaratis reacting to the Godhra outrage, left me wholly unimpressed. It was a slur. Just before the carnage began, I spent five days in the State, chiefly for events related to the JP centenary, and left Surat for Mumbai an hour before the Godhra killings occurred. In Ahmedabad, Bhavnagar, Bharuch, Ankleshwar and Surat I encountered several citizens groups committed to Gandhi's philosophy of fairness towards all and protection of the weak. The inferno that started with Godhra and then destroyed lives in different places in Gujarat was a comment not on the character of Gujaratis but on the poison knowingly injected into Gujarat's bloodstream by groups of Hindu and Muslim extremists.

The Gujarat of Gandhi, of the poet Narsi Mehta who spoke of the other persons pain, of the modern Jain saint Rajchandra, of brothers to the poor like Ravishanker Maharaj and Jugatram Dave, of the unknown poet who presented to Gandhi the Ishwar Allah Tere Naam line, of Vallabhbhai Patel, who mobilised his peasants against the Raj in a magnificently-controlled struggle of non-violent defiance and who knew how to enforce the rule of law, of recent incorruptible political leaders such as U.N. Dhebar, Balwantray Mehta and Morarji Desai, of hundreds of currently- active and efficacious NGOs, of ordinary men and women who care for their neighbours, stands deeply shaken.

Shockingly, the killings have continued. Deterring the next arsonist or killer group, or saving the next cluster of threatened lives, did not and does not appear to be the State Government's primary concern. It was hard to derive any assurance from a Chief Minister who liked to underline the number of localities and villages not yet burning, and who did so without conveying any contrition about the thousands ruined or killed on his watch. When September 11 happened, American leaders from George W. Bush down to local officials at once made it plain that hate crimes against Arabs, Afghans or other Muslims living in America would be severely punished. But after Godhra, Gujarat heard no warning against targeting Muslims.

For decades, Gujarat has experienced the injection of hate — from neighbouring Pakistan and also from the so-called Indian heartland. The truth is that the subcontinent's religious extremists never forgave Gandhi his beliefs and his triumphs. They hated him for standing up for minority rights, religious freedom, justice, and forgiveness, for persuading millions on the subcontinent to embrace these values, and for successfully inspiring his followers to enshrine religious equality and freedom in the Indian Constitution.

Muslim and Hindu extremists alike hoped that India would reject the inclusiveness and secularism that Gandhi had insisted upon. Maulana Maudoodi, founder of the Jamaat-I-Islami, expressly desired a Hindu state in India and a Muslim state in Pakistan. So did India's Hindu extremists. When the Hindu extremists who had backed the Mahatma's assassination found that it had consolidated India's pluralism instead of destroying it, they put their heads together and came up with two cunning strategies: inject hate into Gandhi's Gujarat, and turn Gandhi's healing Ram, the Almighty who was also the Compassionate, into an anti-Muslim chariot-riding warrior.

The extremists are chillingly symbolised by the photograph of the Gujarati youth in the maroon T-shirt with a raised crowbar, screaming mouth, clenched fist and blazing eyes, his whole being declaring the intent to destroy. Yet at least to me those unforgettable eyes seemed also to plead to be rescued from the fire of hate that had seized his heart.

The picture suggests the constituency that the extremists have focussed on — youths on the margins of crime and unemployment who feel threatened but also tempted by modernity, a conflict revealed by the word American displayed across the maroon T-shirt. To the (much larger) Hindu segment of this constituency in Gujarat, audio cassettes, videos and pamphlets have for years dinned the following message: Hindus have been made weak, effeminate and second-grade citizens, and Muslims and Christians have fattened, in the India fashioned by Gandhi and Nehru. Gandhi should never have spoken to Hindus about fair means or non-violence. Non-violence is cowardice, forgiveness sinful, and secularism evil. India is being Pakistanised or Christianised. Bharat Mata's honour requires the removal of the Babri Masjid and the erection in its place of a grand Ram mandir. Are you a man and a true son of Bharat Mata? If you are, be ready to destroy and to be destroyed. Be a hero or a martyr.

Tribal, Dalit and OBC youth were specially cultivated, even though it was not hidden that once Muslims had been satisfactorily tackled, dealing with independent-minded Dalits, tribals and OBCs could follow. Years of persistent propaganda, aided by a flow of funds, including from NRIs, and helped also by corruption and division in Gujarat's secular polity, did their work. There were many recruits. In numerous places in Gujarat, terror squads emerged that could also do duty as kar sevaks. And when, preceded by a parallel process aimed at counterparts among Gujarat's Muslims, Godhra happened, Gujarat's kar sevaks were prepared for quick and explosive action.

We know the gruesome deeds and the climate of terror that followed, yet these kar sevaks have neither taken Gujarat over nor altered Gujarat's character. They are a super-imposition on Gujarat's social and political life. Godhra gave the kar sevaks a provocation and also a pretext. The Modi administrations inaction or connivance gave them free passage. Using both emotion and intimidation, kar sevak squads attracted supporting mobs, just as the perpetrators of Godhra had done. But the kar sevaks do not symbolise or represent the Hindus of Gujarat, even as the perpetrators of Godhra did not represent Gujarat's Muslims. The hundreds of thousands of ordinary Hindus and Muslims saddened and shamed by the cruelties of their co-religionists, and the large numbers engaged in bringing succour to the inferno's victims, are better symbols.

Huge tasks beckon: lifting from Gujarat the shroud of terror; restoring to Gujarat's Muslims a sense that their lives count and will be protected; enabling Gujarat's silent and seemingly helpless majority to find its voice and feel its strength; reconstructing, once more and within a year of the earthquake, Gujarat's shattered economy; bringing some compensation and healing to the thousands damaged by the inferno; recalling Gujarat's Hindus to their tradition of a calm and honest Hinduism, a Hinduism that feels another's sorrow and does not need an enemy for its sustenance; and presenting alternatives to Gujarat's enraged youth, Hindu and Muslim.

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