The Hindu : `Modi Govt. used State machinery to target minorities'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Apr 26, 2002

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`Modi Govt. used State machinery to target minorities'

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI APRIL 25. In what is so far the most comprehensive report on the violence in Gujarat, the Mumbai-based anti-communalism journal, Communalism Combat, has collated the testimonies of survivors and witnesses and also the FIRs that some victims had managed to file. These name not only the VHP and the Bajrang Dal activists, as leaders of mobs and perpetrators of violence, but also Cabinet Ministers in Narendra Modi's Government.

Three Ministers have been named by victims of violence and eyewitnesses in Ahmedabad and two others by eyewitnesses in Mehsana.

According to the journal's editor, Teesta Setalvad, the systematic and planned violence that has gripped Gujarat since February 28 would have happened even if the massacre at Godhra had not taken place.

The journal's findings on the rise of militant Hindu fundamentalism in Gujarat over four years suggest a continuity between the attacks on Christians, soon after the Keshubhai Patel Government was formed, the targeting of churches and minority educational institutions, and the killing and acts of arson still continuing in the State.

The journal in its report "Genocide: Gujarat 2000'' alleges that every wing of the State machinery was used to target the minorities. It questions the independence of the State's judiciary, saying that "the judges chose to believe the much-indicted State Government rather than assure students of a postponement of examinations and safe examination centres''.

Speaking at a press conference in New Delhi, Ms. Setalvad alleged that the BJP Government had filled the ranks of the administration, the police and judiciary with people loyal to the Sangh Parivar. She said, "Gujarat, under the BJP Government, is cocking a snook at the Constitution every single day.'' It had systematically rejected any measure that could be regarded as confidence building: "The rehabilitation package offered informally by the Prime Minister during his visit has been rejected by the Chief Minister. The Supreme Court's suggestion of a possible re-exam for students who were unable to take the exam was rejected by the Education Minister, Anandiben Patel. The NHRC recommended a CBI investigation, the Gujarat Government rejected this,'' she said.

The Government has refused to address the issue of rehabilitation, or even of temporary shelters. It has, so far, said nothing about the nearly 2,500 missing people, presumed dead, in its official death figures which are fixed at over just 800. For those whose family members are not acknowledged as dead or missing, compensation, a necessary part of rehabilitation, will never come.

The report includes pictures of the carnage, burnt-out wrecks of homes and businesses, ruins of mosques, the charred bodies of infants, dismembered and beheaded corpses.

Ms. Setalvad said that these were published only to show the inhumanity of those who committed these acts and those who justify them.

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`Modi Govt. used State machinery to target minorities'