The Hindu : The women in Gujarat's camps

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, May 23, 2002

Opinion

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The women in Gujarat's camps — II

By Vasudha Dhagamwar

The malaise in Gujarat is deep, very deep. It needs sensitivity, understanding and courage to cleanse it. Posturing is not going to do it.

LIKE EVERYONE else I was struck by the fact that after seven weeks Gujarat was still burning, with no end in sight. Yet, even Parliament has not focussed on the need to restore normality; people were busy scoring points.

Most frightening was the polarisation, the hatred and aggression, even among the NGOs. During a public hearing at the Ahmedabad circuit house on May 11, there was a clear communal divide among the NGOs. They were even positioned on two sides of the conference table. The anger and hostility were also frightening. The pro-Hindu NGOs began with a challenge... What had we to say about the burning of the train on February 27? Had we visited any Hindu camps? A woman from a pro-Muslim NGO hotly contested that anything had happened to Hindus. A colleague of hers seemingly placated her saying, "no, no, they think that Hindus have also suffered". Needless to say that this remark was not designed to pour oil on troubled waters.

The Godhra train burning has truly rocked Gujarat. We were repeatedly asked why we had not spoken up on February 27, why we had ignored the plight of Kashmiri Pandits, even Bangladeshi Hindus or Hindus in Pakistan. This "we" was the Commission as well as the secularists. There was a strong resentment based on the perception that Hindus are denied protection of the law, that their grievances are ignored. The irony is that in New Delhi we have carried the implied but unspoken burden of being a group organised by a BJP-appointed NCW that would naturally be soft on the Government.

The question about why we had been silent when Hindus were attacked in Kashmir or elsewhere is not new. It has surfaced from time to time. On this point our track record is admittedly poor. It has not given credibility to secular thinkers. To be secular in India is seen by many as being equal to being anti-Hindu. We are losing touch with the ordinary Hindu who does not belong to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad or the Bajrang Dal.

There is one more point. We have been saying and rightly that the train massacre does not justify the carnage, which has now turned into riots. At the same time there are innumerable letters and articles which try to explain why the train carriage was set on fire. Well might a mother-in-law say that her daughter-in-law invited punishment by her behaviour. Another explanation that has surfaced for the quick conflagration is that the travellers were carrying kerosene stoves and canisters for cooking. Well might a mother-in-law say that her daughter-in-law was wearing a nylon sari.

Yet another question being posed now is whether the carnage was planned or unplanned. Is unplanned burning less heinous? What are the permanent anger levels that within minutes a mob can collect, stop a train, and set a carriage on fire? Is that a safe position for a community or a village? What is being done to deal with it?

Yet, people of the eminence of Swami Agnivesh and Nirmala Deshpande were the first to write to The Pioneer to say the train carriage had been burnt because the passengers had misbehaved with a tea vendor and his daughter. This story was further improved: she was kidnapped, and even raped in the few minutes that it took the train to reach the outer signal. Every such explanation leads to a counter-explanation. We must insist that nothing justifies and nothing explains mass murder, mayhem and looting. There is nothing such as a minority or a majority before the criminal law of the land, or before the Constitution.

The report has condemned the police for their role. It is a fact of politics that the police are the bonded servants of the politicians, especially of the Government. We had collected no direct evidence of the Government's complicity but we could perhaps have stated this inference. What we could have said with certainty was that no Government that could not control the riots in 72 days had any business to be in office. After all, the anti-Sikh riots were quelled in four days. To that extent the report is wanting. Our report contains one sentence on the Bhil involvement in the anti-Muslim riots. This is an exceedingly worrying situation. Only Kalpana Kannabiran referred to it in an article in The Hindu of April 24 "Adivasis and genocide". She said that as in these villages, "the Adivasis were to a large extent economically dependent on the Muslims as traders and moneylenders". As she points out, the Hindu baniya also fills these roles. She also concedes that the economic relationship has the "clear potential of being exploitative".

The exploitation is deep and biting. The fertile Tapi Valley lands are almost entirely in the possession of the non-Bhil moneylenders and bigger peasants. The moneylender and trader also take away on mortgage silver jewellery and even brass water jars. From the mountain-dwelling Bhils, the trader and moneylender want minor forest produce The Bhils work as saldars or annual labourers on what used to be their own lands. The anger and resentment of the Bhils are like a dormant volcano.

In one matter, the Muslims are different: they are willing to marry Adivasi girls after converting them to Islam. Santhal women in Dumka had actually given this as the reason for not wanting rights of inheritance. The Bhils may give in because of their economically weak position, but they resent it. I know it after working with Maharashtra Bhils on land issues for three years, when I lived with a Muslim family with a Bhil mother. This factor might have been exploited by the Hindus to make the Bhils join in the looting.

Normally the Adivasis keep well away from us. If they do not, they pay a very heavy price for it. If the story about the Hindus forcing the Bhils to loot is true, we must ask ourselves, what in God's name was the hold the Hindus had over the Bhils? If they could be so driven by other exploiters, it speaks of either a terrible grievance, or a terrible slavery. Possibly, when they got a chance to retaliate against at least one community they took it. Whatever the truth, it has to be brought out in the open and has to be addressed. There is no point in simply insisting that the Bhils were forced to loot and destroy; they are no one's fools.

But over the years we have not been willing to ask questions about the reasons behind any riot or crime by the Adivasis, if it is against a minority. Nellie is a case in point. So is the more recent awful triple murder of the Staines family. One almost prays that they will go on rampage against Hindus so that we will at least ask the much-needed questions, and will have the courage to apply the findings.

The British High Commission and a few others have "found" that the Gujarat carnage was planned four to six months earlier. If this can really be discovered so easily by outsiders, then what in heaven's name were the State and Central intelligence agencies doing? Where do these accusers locate the train disaster? Or the responsibility for it? The malaise in Gujarat is deep, very deep. It needs sensitivity, understanding and courage to cleanse it. Posturing is not going to do it.

(Concluded.)

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