At the departure lounge at Bangkok’s international airport late last year, Wolfgang Rollick, a German settled in Bangkok put forth a general query that baffled me. The question was simple and short. How does India run with such a vast differences of opinion and cultures? To each of my answers he had another intriguing question and ultimately I put the onus on the almighty that runs the show. In spite of being an atheist, he agreed the existence of almighty seeing a country like India making progress, albeit at a snail’s pace.
I reached Delhi’s international airport with three bottles of Johny Walker bottles each containing 500 ml. Coming from a duty free zone, I would have been the most foolish guy around to gift my Delhi based editor a packet of Marlboro or Swiss chocos. Moreover, this was affordable and palatable for any journalist. After an enduring hour and a half where I had to face a lot of questions from the emigration and customs officials, I was almost out. I was virtually interrogated for having a moustache that contradicted from my nine-year-old passport photograph. In between, I didn’t realize that somebody put a cross mark with a chalk over my black hand baggage. In the next hour, I realized what Rollick was discussing about. In order to confirm what Rollick debated, I parted with one bottle to the preying hands of an inspector of Customs.
My flight sponsorship ended at Delhi. I was part of a seminar on Media and Violence by virtue of a journalist who covered the Godhra train burning and the carnage thereafter.
Back from the capital in a sleeper class lower berth that I had to swap with an upper one, I made a deep introspection as to how the country runs and still couldn’t find answers. Perhaps, very few have the answers and that is because we are a nation devoid of responsibility, tolerance and above all identity.
I feared even I could become an atheist.
Incidents, one after the other, puts India in international news bulletins and prestigious western newspapers, which had hitherto, denied news of Indian success in various fields. But the news not only created more disgrace and humiliation for the people settled there, it has also put the greatest democracy in the world to shame.
Let’s forget what has happened after the Godhra carnage. Let’s forget that some right wing Hindu fundamentalists have allegedly massacred some 1000 innocent children, men and women just because they were not born to the same caste as the fundamentalists belonged. To bring those culprits to book, you have to name a Mr X or Mr Y. Here the culprits are what the government calls a mob that reacted naturally. But what about the compensation? The poor victims have nowhere to go to ask for compensation. There are thousands of villages in Gujarat districts (except Dangs) where the attack took place and witnesses say there are still many who are unaccounted for. May be migrated or may be killed. But there still no sign of any effort even to try and locate these ‘missing’ people leave alone paying any compensation. Legally a person is presumed to be dead if he/she is missing for seven years if direct evidence is not available. Noted lawyers point out that this law is a matter of interpretation and the courts can award compensation on the basis of circumstantial evidence through logical consequences.
Still worse is the government asking for undertaking from the beneficiaries of the compensation. Don’t presume that the compensation is millions. It is a mere 2000 or 10,000 rupees that these people have to bent on their heels to bargain for human lives. The people of this country still have no idea how many have died though constitutionally it is the duty of the state government in place, to inform the public the figure and the dimensions of the problem. For each person died in thousand of villages, there are two missing. With the then CEC asking for special revision of electoral rolls, more stories of gross negligence of administration appeared, merely to remain a statistical data. Time we have a well oiled Right To Information system in place.
Almost four years down the ladder, we have already forgotten the trauma because we really haven’t faced it. Even the government machinery is busy trying to erase marks of any human tragedies that may have gone unnoticed. This is the value that we Indians give to the human lives. Remember this is the state where cows are protected. There was a department functioning under the CM to protect the revered cows, which have become nuisance to the traffic movements in the whole state. Not a single soul raised their voice to protest this apathy. Everyone enjoyed the show and patted the buffoonery remarks the CM has been making about constitutional authorities and the ‘5 crore’ people of Gujarat.
Gujarat case is one of the finest any atheist to believe in God. Take the case of a victim who wants to file a case and then argue it in the court. It is impossible. What he can do at the most is to give a petition to the jurisdictional police station and then see the prosecution section, appointed by the state government, plead his case. This precisely means that the pleader appointed by state government, largely believed to have presided over the massacre, will argue the case for the victims. How on earth these people can get justice? The state government has clearly forgotten or no one has even raised a voice to form a separate human rights court, duly constitutional, to try the criminals of the riots. Supreme Court has held state government responsible for any human rights violations and has directed it to take even the remedial measures.
Can you ever imagine going to a locality, pull children and women out, hack them and then burn them and enjoy the flesh burning? Are we in India or Papua Guinea? I could not defend a charged victim who confronted me in one of the relief camps saying Gujarat is no more vegetarian. A more sophisticated trader nearby added that Gujarat has become a land of cannibals.
Gujarat has recovered from this cannibalism but it has failed to give a meaning to this recovery. Gujarat’s resilience and business acumen was appreciated during the earthquake. And now we neither have any resilience nor any morality. Our society still continues to defend the Gujarat carnage. Various dimensions have already been given to it. More to come.
It is truly said that politicians last from elections to election and NGOs last from disaster to disaster. It was a provoking news item that appeared in the largest read vernacular dailies of Gujarat that prompted the miscreants to attack children and women. The report said that Muslims kidnapped ten Hindu women from the train and raped and mutilated them. This created an electrifying effect on the sentiments of many. The news item later turned out to be a fig of imagination amongst the corrupt practices these newspapers adopt to make some ‘additional’ money. I was surprised to find that none of the reporters that these newspapers pay have seen Muslim localities nor have talked any victims to balance the stories? “They will hack us to death,” screamed one of the Chief Reporters. But why will they do it? If the reporters themselves felt guilty, then there was no need to ask the locality people why would they hack someone from a particular newspaper? Wherever I went to cover stories, mainly in relief camps, I was first screened to ensure that I am not from these vernacular dailies before opening their mouth. Some of the columns that these papers carry may provoke some respected journalists but to me it evokes laughter. One column suggested that the convent educated English journalists, who have no idea of the geography of Gujarat, must be given uniform – as Hitler did – so that people on the streets identify them and thrash them. Another suggested that the use of words like pogrom, massacre, carnage etc. is too harsh for the intensity of the incidents that took place. Though I was a naïve in this field with only ten years of experience then, I felt pity for these columnists.
But today when we go back to the carnage time, we are forced to ask where were the women’s organizations when women were humiliated? Where was Sonia Gandhi, Brinda Karat and scores of women activists? These are the same people who appears in talk shows to defend the women. They have neither gone to any victim or have visited any place. The humiliated gender in Gujarat still remains in their stigma without knowing what to do next. While their body pain presses them to file a criminal case, social stigma withdraws the pressure. Main question is who to name? Who is the culprit? They can’t file an affidavit that a mob has robbed their modesty. So they suffered in silence. Their modesty still melts in tears when asked to recount the experience.
Just one experience makes me feel where the country is heading to
Back to the first question again, how does India run? It is because there is Almighty.
And I am no more an atheist.
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