In an indication of their intense and continuing interest in
the aftermath of the Gujarat violence, eight MPs of Britain's
governing Labour Party have said they will visit the state to get "a
clearer picture of the situation on the ground", even as a ding-dong
battle has begun between Muslim organisations and the VHP for
Labour's heart and soul.
MPs, who include some from Muslim constituencies, such as Terry
Rooney of Bradford and Fabian Hamilton of Leeds, have dismissed the
Indian government's oft-stated concern that British politicians are
making domestic capital out of foreign issues, with one eye on the
Muslim votebank.
In March, India criticised the British High Commission's leaked
report into the Gujarat violence and asked other countries to mind
their own business.
But Rooney, who announced the MPs' forthcoming visit at a 400-strong
public meeting in Bradford late on Saturday, told TNN the new
fact-finding mission to India was an expression of "concern about
human rights".
He said, "the Indian government always churns out such nonsense when
anyone wants to visit from anywhere. They should know that people do
care about human rights abuses. One has to ask, why are the Indian
government is so afraid. Perhaps they do have something to hide".
Rooney confirmed that the MPs would visit Gujarat and Kashmir in October.
Rooney's passionate words come after a series of well-attended public
meetings about Gujarat, organised across Britain by disparate Muslim
organisations and attended in most cases by local Labour Party MPs
and leading Labour activists.
The organisations, which include several Indian Gujarati Muslim
groups, told this paper they were seeking to keep up the pressure on
Tony Blair's government to demand answers from the Indian government
and redressal for the victims of the Gujarat violence.
Ismail Lahir of the 1,000-member Federation of Gujarati Muslim
Organisations, which organised Saturday's Bradford meeting, told TNN
they wanted to focus on "the 100,000 Gujarat refugees still in camps,
who are homeless in their own country".
More controversially, said Lahir, the Bradford meeting renewed its
call for the British government "to include the Vishwa Hindu Parishad
in the list of banned terrorist organisations".
The call for the VHP to be banned has been put to several Labour MPs
with sizeable numbers of Muslim constituents.
The VHP, however, said it had been assured by British home secretary
David Blunkett and junior home minister Angela Eagle that nothing of
the sort would happen.
VHP spokesman Hasmukh Shah told this paper that he met Blunkett and
foreign secretary Jack Straw just before Straw's departure for India
last week.
"The VHP is a registered charity. This is serious mischief by
Muslims, a case of sour grapes because attention is focussed on most
British mosques, whose madrasas breed extremists".
The VHP, he said, would now lobby Blair's Labour Party seeking
answers to the question why its MPs were lending support to meetings
where the VHP was referred to as a terrorist organisation.

_____