The Hindustan Times
4 March 2002

What we worry?
Praful Bidwai


When Atal Bihari Vajpayee makes his long-overdue visit to Gujarat
today, the very minimum one expects from him is three things:
acknowledge the exceptional character of Gujarat's five weeks long
carnage as independent India's worst pogrom (i.e. organised massacre)
of Muslims; solemnly vow to identify and punish those guilty of
barbaric crimes committed there; and send Narendra Milosevic Modi
packing - at once, unceremoniously.

The National Human Rights Commission's 'preliminary' report removes
the last vestiges of any doubt that Modi has lost his sanction to
rule. A government which repeatedly fails to defend its citizens'
most fundamental right - that to life - has no business to remain in
power. Worse, a government which connives at snatching away that
right, or becomes complicit in its systematic violation, deserves to
be put on trial.

Vajpayee should have promised to do that long ago - after credible
evidence emerged of planned official inaction in the face of the
butchery that began on February 28, with a discreet nod from Modi &
Co. Since then, the media have exposed ministerial and police
sponsorship of the carnage, which has gutted India's claim to secular
pluralism and tolerance.

When he addressed the nation more than a month ago, the public
expected Vajpayee to go beyond platitudes about tolerant 'traditions'
and declare, as any worthy national leader would, that his government
won't allow innocent citizens to be butchered, irrespective of their
religion; it is duty-bound to protect the vulnerable minorities
against a majoritarian onslaught.

Vajpayee let us down. Like any other petty politician in the Hindutva
mould, he showed he implicitly buys the theory that the ghastly
Godhra carnage was the result of a large-scale organised conspiracy
involving the ISI; that the post-February 27 violence was "natural
and spontaneous"; further, that there is nothing outrageous about a
democratic government turning a blind eye to organised atrocities.

No wonder Vajpayee is silent on the RSS's deeply offensive Bangalore
resolution, which rationalises the pogrom, and menacingly threatens
Muslims by telling them their 'safety' depends not on
constitutional-democratic legality, but on Hindu 'goodwill'. In
spirit, this isn't very different from Vajpayee's February 19 speech
contemptuously telling Muslims the BJP doesn't need their votes to
come to power.

To return to Gujarat, the idea of an eye-for-eye revenge or barbaric
retribution has always been morally odious. It now turns out that the
Godhra-ISI 'conspiracy' may be a bit of a cock-and-bull story too.
Independent investigations, in a report soon to be released, suggest
the train attack was a condemnable, but largely spontaneous, if
cumulative, reaction to the harassment of Muslims, especially Muslim
women, by kar sewaks travelling to/from Ayodhya for several days.

However, Vajpayee's government seems rather partial to cock-and-bull
stories. Take the arrest of JKLF leader Yasin Malik under POTO, which
some states are zealously implementing without making the requisite
legal notification. It defies comprehension how Malik could be
charged with 'terrorism' - the JKLF voluntarily abandoned violent
means in 1994 - for ostensibly receiving $ 100,000, which should
logically attract the Foreign Exchange Management Act.

Even the money transfer story is full of holes. It's hard to
understand how the co-accused could carry one thousand $ 100 notes in
her underclothes without being stopped anywhere on a long highway.
Her testimony is at odds with that of the JKLF functionary accused of
having used her as a courier.

But then, Kashmir is full of cock-and-bull stories. Exactly two days
ago, forensic specialists literally exhumed one - namely, five bodies
of the 'terrorists' held officially responsible for the
Chittisinghpora massacre of March 2000, and killed in cold-blood.
This is a particularly obnoxious, proven, case of fudging and fraud:
mixing tissue samples sent for DNA tests.

It is on such shaky foundations that Vajpayee is building his Kashmir
policy and his forthcoming visit to the state. The policy lacks
coherence and consistency. His government callously refused even to
discuss the J&K assembly's unanimous demand for autonomy within the
Constitution. It won't find it easy to persuade elements in the
Constitution non-abiding Hurriyat Conference to do a deal to
participate in the coming elections, nor claim much legitimacy for
these - in the absence of independent observers.

The government may bring little to the deal table. What its right
hand offers, the left hand may take away.

The political gains possible in Kashmir - after the Taliban's
collapse and the puncturing of jehad's legitimacy - are in danger of
being lost under the pursuit of myopic, devious and parochial
agendas. Not least of these is the three-month long, ruinously
expensive, but counter-productive and extremely dangerous border
build-up with a million men staring eyeball-to-eyeball.

This has failed to make Pakistan blink. But it has probably cost more
than the entire central elementary education budget (Rs 4,900 crore),
or combined central spending on secondary and tertiary education.

It is high time India corrected course - in countless areas. But can
the exhausted, discredited BJP leadership do so as the NDA itself
begins to unravel under the unpopular stewardship of a party which
has lost every major election since 1999 and antagonised its own
supporters through massive misgovernance and rank communalism?