I have returned from Gujarat with a pile of memoranda. It always
happens whenever I visit a riot-affected area. I got loads of them
when I was in Bhagalpur, Bhiwandi, Meerut, Mumbai and many other
places. I have lost count. The victims feel that once they have given
something in writing, they will get justice. They know it is a futile
hope, but they continue to cling to it.

The refugees in the camps I have visited in Ahmedabad are no
different. Despondency more than loss is writ large on their faces.
They want to be heard, want a door to knock on, a shoulder to cry on.

They have every reason to feel this way. Even after four weeks, no
FIR has been registered, no official taken to task, not even one
policeman suspended. On the other hand, the few who did a
conscientious job have been transferred. This has further jolted
their confidence. I have never seen so many people so much bereft of
hope.

I just listened to their harrowing tales, of murder, rape, people
burnt alive, looting. After some time, I felt could not take it any
more. Sorrow beyond a point dulls your sensitivity. Chief Minister
Narendra Modi was away to Rajkot. But I gave a bit of my mind to the
chief secretary and the home secretary. Why didn't any official in
Gujarat resign? Was there nothing called conscience, not even in the
land of Mahatma Gandhi? Why had none of them gone round to the
refugee camps? Must a BJP-run government be saved from dismissal
because of the Centre is led by the BJP?

And what happened to New Delhi? Should Home Minister L. K. Advani
have defended the state chief minister when his failure was palpable?
Would successive rulers follow these parameters of governance?

I found the answer at a gathering of NGOs, human rights activists,
Gandhians and all those who were working for relief and
rehabilitation in the state. They told me how the entire city of
Ahmedabad had been mapped out locality-wise within a few hours of the
Godhra incident on February 27. Areas, houses, shops and factories of
Muslims were marked and the specific task of killing, looting and
burning was assigned to different groups. They were in touch with
''their bosses'' who directed them on mobile phones. A pamphlet was
distributed to urge the Hindus to boycott the Muslims economically:
not to buy anything from their shops and not to have any transaction
with them.

The police behaved as if the force had been given instructions ''not
to interfere.'' During the 1992-3 Mumbai riots, the New York Times
had got hold of transcripts of conversations between the police
control room and officers on the streets. The advice was to allow
Muslim houses to burn and to prevent aid from reaching the victims.
In Gujarat, it was worse. The police instigated and protected the
rioters.

The day of Partition came back before my eyes. At that time too, the
police were hand in glove with rioters or, for that matter, the
killers. What was perceived as ''the call of religion'' had turned
thousands of ordinary people into a crowd of criminals indulging in
the types of atrocities that hardcore criminals would do. Even then
there was little remorse in the society as in Gujarat today.

But I felt spontaneous kinship with the refugees. They too had left
behind their hearts and homes, friends and hopes as I did when I left
my hometown Sialkot. Like the refugees, I too had seen murder and
worse. But their plight was more harrowing they were refugees in
their own country. Like the Kashmiri Pandits. It also reminded me of
the 1984 riots in Delhi where 3,000 Sikhs were butchered in broad
daylight.

I went to the spot where the Godhra incident happened. Reconstructing
the tragedy, I found that the train left Godhra station at 7.50 a.m.
on February 27. Some kar sevaks were still on the platform washing
their faces or teasing some vendors. One kar sevak pulled the chain
to stop the train. It left five minutes alter. The chain was pulled
again at 7.58 a.m., this time from three compartments. The
authorities are yet to identify who did it. When the train halted at
a distance of 800 metres from the station, the train was stoned and
the S-6 bogie was set on fire.

I have no doubt that the attack was well-planned. Otherwise, it is
not possible for a mob of 500 carrying petrol and kerosene to
assemble in three minutes in an area that can only be reached by
running through prickly bushes.

But Godhra pales into insignificance when compared with the
retaliation in Ahmedabad, Vadodara and other cities and even in the
countryside. Ten districts out of 23 in Gujarat have been affected.
The toll is now 736. Nearly one lakh, men, women and children are
living in inhuman conditions in what are called the refugee camps.
NGOs are managing them but even the wheat or atta provided by the
government is bad.

Why the Centre merely hemmed and hawed and did nothing is
understandable if the infighting within the BJP is understood. It is
a confrontation between the hawks and the doves. That also explains
why the PM did not go to Gujarat immediately.

Many in the party believe that such happenings will consolidate
Hindus on its side. A few like the PM and External Affairs Minister
Jaswant Singh believe otherwise. But they are quiet. They are afraid
of the RSS hardliners who initiated the thesis of Hindu consolidation
and and have found no fault with Modi, an RSS pracharak.

In my letter to the prime minister, I said that the riots in the
state were not Hindu-Muslim clashes in the sense that one community
fought against the other. ''It was really a pogrom, a well planned
and executed scheme. I find that the bureaucracy and the police have
been communalised. There are umpteen instances to show that the
government machinery was biased as if there were unwritten
instructions not to act against the rioters. Chief Minister Narendra
Modi should have been asked to quit long ago.'' I have made a
suggestion to expand the one-man commission to a three-member panel
to be presided over by a Supreme Court judge. The CBI, and not the
state inquiry set-up, should be in charge of the investigation.

The government has not yet done even a survey, let alone compensating
and rehabilitating them. Voluntary assistance is coming and some
people are adopting families to help them restart their lives. It's
still too inadequate and too tentative.

There is a larger question. Do we go from one riot to another? How do
we stop people who are trying to build a Hindu rashtra and demolish
the secular ethos of the country? The example of Pakistan is before
us: a theocratic state that's trying to be pluralistic after fanning
the wind of fundamentalism and jehad.

Can the genie thus released go back into the bottle? Democracy is not
the only institution which the nation loses. The climate also becomes
ripe for dictatorship and fascism and all that goes with them.There
is no option except to fight against the forces of reaction and
bigots. India's pluralistic society cannot be saved by staying quiet.
Martin Luther King was right when he said: ''The day we see the truth
and cease to speak is the day we begin to die.''