#DDGujDiary #4, Ahmedabad camp

A fourth installment of notes from my trip diary from Gujarat, 2002. These are from a visit to a camp for victims in Ahmedabad. (I tweeted them using the tag #DDGujDiary).

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* In Ahmedabad, we stop outside a shopping complex that is burned down (maybe looted too?). Nobody else on the road stops. It's been burned, but life around it goes on.

* A sixty year-old in the camp used to be a watchman in a building. A mob of 5000, he thinks, surrounded the building and began throwing stones at it. He and his wife ran away.

* He shows me a "Rahat Chhavninoon Hangami" card that he says the Government gave him because of the violence. "What's it for?" he asks. I can't answer because I don't know what this means, or of this card distribution programme.

* Outside the camp, I notice this large banner: "Health and Family Welfare Department, Government of Gujarat, At Your Service."

* Two women I speak to were driven by a mob from their homes in Guptanagar. They went back there to look, a couple of days later. All the houses in the area, including theirs, were burned down. "It doesn't look like a place to live", says one. "There were people standing there with lathis and swords," they tell me, "and they told us to get out."

* Later, the Army took the women and their families back again. This time, they were able to approach their once-homes. Where they could, they put locks on the doors. Then they came back to the camp.

* Kudratbano, 35, saw her brother, his wife and their six children burned alive in Naroda-Patia. The mob that did this "came from four sides", she says.

* Ishu, the son of her other brother, was hit with sticks and thrown on a garbage dump. He lived. He shows me the scars on his head.

* His two year-old brother [looks like I didn't record his name] was burned.

* Just outside this camp as we leave, a young man yells at us. "We don't want your peace committee!" -- and he and a few others start throwing stones at us. Small stones, but it's frightening anyway. "Take your peace nonsense [shanti bakwas is the phrase I remember clearly] to the RSS!" they shout, still throwing stones. In the distance, at the end of a long road we had walked down to get to the camp, I can see the stones have broken a few windows on our bus.

* I'm walking to the buses alongside a monk from our party, young man dressed in saffron robes. Young men point at him, pick up stones. I have no clue what to do, but there's only seconds to think about it, because ...

* ... a young woman on a scooter drives up beside us. "Get on behind me!" she orders the monk, quiet but urgent. "Get on right now! I'll take you out!"

* The monk sits sideways on her pillion seat. She revs her engine and zips him through the milling shouting crowds to the bus. I see him clambering in. I'm alone, but nobody is interested in me. I run to the bus. Getting on, I see her. There's time to shout: "What's your name?"

* I've said it silently and often in these ten years, and I'll say it here: Thank you, Mumtaz, for being brave. For being human. For being human in a time, in a place, where so many others weren't.

#DDGujDiary, #3: Dehlol

Some more tweets from my #DDGujDiary sequence on Twitter (as @DeathEndsFun) over the last few days.

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* On the road from Godhra to Baroda, we stop at a mosque that has been burned down. Inside we can see pieces of cloth strewn about, and a small flock of rather calm goats. There's a man standing outside; he says he knows nothing about what happened here. "Nothing?" we ask. "Nothing."

* Dehlol village has a burned and completely destroyed mosque. Inside we dan see monkeys running about. (Not goats). Outside, the residents of Dehlol watch us sullenly and silently.

* 37 Dehlol residents were pursued to this and killed there. A man tells us that then it was torched and its minaret toppled. Still sullen people still watch us.

* In Dehlol a photographer buddy and an old man from our group were surrounded by a mob who demanded their film. They refused. Started to get heated and ugly. A cop saved them.

* The cops tell us that the residents of Dehlol had complained, saying our group was harassing them and making them uncomfortable. I had to wonder, could we have said something similar, at least, about those 37 who were chased into a mosque and killed?

* A man in a sleeveless vest in Dehlol, glasses and running to flab, says this: "Pakistan attacks us on the border. Obviously we can't go to the border, so we hit back at them here."

* "See what Israel is doing to the Palestinians," the same man says admiringly. "That's the treatment we had to give them here."

* "For 50 years they have been doings things like Godhra, with many more train burnings. But the press never reports all this." Who's "them" and "they", I want to ask.

* (Still with the same man in a vest, running to flab. He's talking to a German blonde and me, standing in middle of Dehlol, large crowd around us.)

* "The days of that ch***ya Gandhi, with his turning the other cheek, are gone!" He turns his cheek to me in a way that -- I would never have guessed -- is shockingly crude.

* "When people enter our houses and torture us," he says, "we have to react!" The crowd nods. Who entered your home, I ask. Angry silence.

* The crowd disperses. We start walking. The same man suddenly says "Come have a soda at my shop." When we get there, he makes us a lime-based drink. Good stuff. But he takes no money, just shakes my hand.

* The blonde and I are walking out of Dehlol. It's a frightening, unnerving several minute. Large crowds watch us pass in complete silence, the women in it snickering behind us after we pass.

* For 10 years, I've wondered: someone killed 37 people in Dehlol. This flabby guy who wouldn't charge for soda, was he one of the killers?

#DDGujDiary, #2

Continuing from the previous post, here are some more notes from my Gujarat 2002 diary. I tweeted these yesterday (as @DeathEndsFun, same Twitter tag #DDGujDiary).

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* Fatma, 45, ran to the hills without footwear and hid there for three days without food and water. This is because mobs burned her house in Randikpur.

* After telling me this, Fatma is quiet, then says out of the blue: "It's a Rs 14 ticket from here [Godhra] to Randikpur."

* Yakub whom I met in a camp says: "We can't go back because they have destroyed our homes and turned the area into a maidan."

* Young girl says, the sarpanch hid us in a field, telling us we'd be protected. Then he went away. When he came back, he brought many people with him to kill us.

* The same girl saw a friend standing in front of her home, saying "My father will definitely come to save us!" Then she was cut down by a mob.

* She starts crying quietly as she tells me of that brief incident, and then she tells me three of her uncles were also killed.

* 22 yr-old Fatma (another Fatma) hid in the fields too. A mob came -- "there were ten people for each one of us" -- to kill them. She was hit by a lathi and a sword, she fell unconscious, they left.

* In Godhra camp alone, at least three different women told me about sarpanches who directed them to fields and then called a mob to attack them.

* Zohra, 23, hid with her husband in a cornfield. A mob set fire to the crop. They got up and ran. The mob caught her husband and killed him. She saw it happen.

* Bilkis of Randikpur had a three year-old child who was "cut and thrown away". Then twelve men raped her. She is pregnant.

* I should point out that I learned about Bilkis from her bua who was with her in camp. Bilkis herself was unable to speak.

#DDGujDiary

In 2002, not long after violence erupted across Gujarat, I joined a group of people on a trip through that state, what some of them thought was a journey of compassion. While I believe in compassion, I was admittedly cynical about it applying among people who had done a series of unspeakable things. I went thinking of myself as an observer -- both of what had happened, as well as what kind of reception this idea of compassion would get.

We started in Godhra, and went on to Baroda and Ahmedabad, with plenty of stops at smaller villages and towns on the way, and several visits to camps for the victims of the violence. It was a raw, disturbing, nerve-wracking and soul-deadening trip, among the most depressing several days of my life.

To remember, ten years on, here are some notes from my diary of those days when I travelled through a massacre-wracked Gujarat. (As @DeathEndsFun, I tweeted these using the tag #DDGujDiary. They are here as they appeared on Twitter, except for expanding any abbreviation necessitated by the 140 character limit).

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* In Dehlol, we pass a trishul which has an unexpected object fluttering from it: a bra.

* Huge hoarding in Godhra, with a portrait of Narendra Modi and these words -- "Gujarat measures 9.9 on the recovery scale."

* Met a man called Siraj Patel who had watched three people being killed on the road that runs from Limkheda to Baria to Antala (sp? Can't tell). One of them was his 10th standard son.

* Inside the carriage -- that carriage -- at the railway station in Godhra, of all things I notice grains of rice strewn all over the floor.

* Also seen on the floor of the carriage in Godhra: shoes, jeans, socks, bottles, twisted metal, pictures of the filmstar Govinda, a metal cup.

* The inside of the carriage looks like the barracks in Auschwitz or Dachau. There and here, how could anyone hope to survive?

* (Picked up a small handful of ashes in that carriage. They're on my lap now, wrapped in plastic. Ten years on, ashes fly in the breeze).

* A half-burnt kid's exercise book at my feet inside the carriage. Its first legible page has these pencilled Hindi words in a careful schoolkid hand: "baal kaan haath gaal naak maathi". Who wrote all that?

* Also found in the carriage: several booklets called "Ayodhya", with a picture on the back of the Babri Masjid with people on top of its domes.

* Also found in the carriage: Several books printed in Hindi, carrying this title in English: "Ayodhya Guide."

* Man in Gurgaon whom I speak to a few days later on the phone, his eldest brother and wife (kids too? I can't tell) died in the fire. "I'm afraid to come to Gujarat", he tells me.

* Among the people in our band is a theatre group from Delhi called "Nishant". At the carriage in Godhra, they gather outside and sing.

* In a camp in Godhra, Yusufbhai from Kuwajar village says the mob that drove him and several others from his home was shouting "Maro, kaapo, maal loot lo" (kill, cut, steal).

* Yusufbhai says the police did nothing to stop the mob. Instead, they told Yusufbhai and the others with him, "save yourself and run".

* In a village near Dahod, 70 houses were burned down. In the camp, I met a man from there, his wife and their four kids. They had to run from the village, they stayed in the "jungle" for 3 days without food and water.

* He also says 14 members of his family were raped and/or killed.

* In the same camp is a 20 year-old girl from Kesharpur. She had a 2 year-old child who was killed. She doesn't know where her husband is.

* Salambhai's house in Kuwajar village was burned by a mob. "What is the fault of us villagers," he asks me, "in what happened in Godhra?"

* Met two teachers in the camp. One says "We believe in this sarva dharma sambhav; but the people who watched their kids being burned, how will they believe?"

* A woman in Godhra camp says the police told her: "You had better run away, or the swords will be used on you!"

* Siraj (another Siraj? can't tell) watched three men he knew being burned alive. He tells me how it was done: "They tied branches on them and set them on fire."

* Amina's son was "made into 3 pieces" (what I was told was, "unka teen tukde banaye"). A man with him was shot dead. Another man with him was tied up and burned alive.

* A ten year-old girl shows me a gash on her back from a sword. She saw her father being attacked and ran to save him; that's when someone slashed at her. She is alive. He is alive.

* She tells me about another ten year-old who told the mob "Kill me, but spare my sisters!" Her father was killed with a blow to his head.

Truth, ten years on

Yes, like in South Africa emerging from apartheid, let's have a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Gujarat, 2002. Why not?

For that matter, let's have a T&RC for Bombay, 1992-93; for Kashmir 1989+; for Delhi, 1984; for Laxmanpur-Bathe, 1997; etc -- but this is a tenth anniversary of Gujarat we're marking, so let's discuss just that for now.

The important part of that is that first word, "Truth". Meaning we need to see the perpetrators of ghastly murders come out and tell the truth about what they did. It's called making a clean breast, and there's no substitute for that.

Meaning: No rhetoric that we've "moved on", or "much water has flowed down the Sabarmati", or "what's the point of re-opening old wounds that have healed?" No resort to invoking 300-year histories of communal violence. No pointing fingers at previous despicable Congress governments. None of that stuff. Just fronting up to the truth.

There's a reason it hasn't happened yet. Making a clean breast of things needs great courage. Far more courage than you need when you're in a mob setting fire to a train, or chopping up defenceless women, even pregnant women. Because you have to look in the mirror, and be true to yourself. Hard to at the best of times, infinitely harder when you've got blood on your hands, or when you're trying to cover up or explain away the blood on your friends' hands.

Nevertheless, it's possible, that truth and reconciliation. Let's start with the truth. Right now.

Ten years

Coming up to ten years since what I think is one of the worst crimes in Indian history; as also one of the worst breakdowns in law and order in our history. The massacres across Gujarat, of course.

There's so much that's already been said about those godawful weeks and months, so much that I don't even want to try finding something new to say. But these few points:

* To those who say there should be an end to "raking" up the past, there's just this to say: If there had been some kind of justice for everything that happened then, nobody would be raking up anything. Since there hasn't been that kind of justice, please don't expect silence. The country you live in is itself a testament to the spirit of folks who would not keep silent and who kept raking up injustice.

* To those who say we should "move on", there's just this to say: I'm set to meet someone who lost, say, a young son to the violence, who will say "It's true, we should move on." On the contrary: some of these people are the most dogged I've ever knowm, in their pursuit of justice.

* To those who speak easily and angrily about the "demonization" of the CM of Gujarat, there's just this to say: This man presided over a collapse of law and order across his state on a nearly unprecedented scale. If it had been any other state, this man's own party would have been leading the calls, and rightly so, for that state's CM to own moral responsibility for this collapse and resign. (Consider, after all, that the CM of Maharashtra lost his job after the terror attacks of November 26, 2008). But in this case, any criticism at all is immediately painted as an insult to a state, the demonization of a man. Both of which charges are nonsense. Understandable nonsense from those who want to sweep a massacre under a carpet, but nonsense nevertheless.

* To those who talk of "development" and the "efficiency" of Gujarat's government, there's just this to say: How do those things change the reality that 1000+ people were slaughtered in 2002? But more than that, what is the "efficiency" in failing to prevent those 1000+ being killed?

* To those who say "but are you aware of the ground realities in that state, then and now?", there's just this to say: I travelled Gujarat while some of the violence was still happening. I got a pretty good sense of some ground reality, thank you. It was this: 1000+ people had been slaughtered, and those wounds were still raw. That reality has not changed, and does not change because of other claims.

* To those who say "but why does nobody speak about these other horrific massacres in state X, under leader Y of party Z?", there's just this to say: Plenty of people speak about those other massacres too; if you choose not to listen for your own reasons, that's nobody's fault but yours. More important, the fact that you make these equations/comparisons is an admission that you know just how horrific Gujarat was, that you know there's been no accounting for it. Face up to yourself, for once.

* Finally, to those who say of Gujarat that it was "unfortunate", or "shit happens", or the like, there's just this to say: when a thousand and more Indians are killed, that's not unfortunate shit happening, that's a massacre. Equivocation doesn't change that.

Ten years on, I want justice for Indians slaughtered in Godhra, Ahmedabad, Dehlol, Halol, Baroda, and plenty of other places across Gujarat. I think you do too.

One crime, and another

The truth of what Modi did or did not say at a meeting on February 27 2002 is, as far as I'm concerned, always going to be what it is now: a hotly contested matter of "I was there and I heard him say XYZ" and "He was not there and Modi never said XYZ."

Those whose politics lean towards Modi's will believe the second statement. Those who think he is responsible for, at a minimum, failing to protect lives in 2002 will believe the first. And so it will go.

So until this gets resolved, if ever, I prefer to focus on something else.

On February 27 2002, a mob burned and killed 56 Indians in Godhra. Several people were accused of this crime, chargesheeted and tried. In March this year -- just about nine years after the atrocity -- 20 were given life imprisonment and 11 were sentenced to death.

The day after that atrocity in Godhra, a mob burned and killed 69 Indians in Gulberg Society in Ahmedabad. To date -- over nine years since it happened -- nobody accused of this crime has been sentenced to anything.

Why is this discrepancy A-OK with so many of us? Or ask this: how many even consider it a discrepancy, or one worth paying attention to?

The rest

Eleven people were sentenced to death yesterday, and another 20 given life sentences. This was for their roles in the great crime of February 27, 2002: the torching by a mob of a coach on a train in Godhra that killed 59 people.

The judge called this crime the "rarest of the rare", that formulation that is used to decide on the appropriateness of the death sentence.

The next day -- February 28, 2002 -- yes, the very next day, a mob attacked Gulberg society in Ahmedabad. They set the building on fire, pulled some of its residents out and hacked them to death. They killed 69 people.

Was this also a crime that could be described as the "rarest of the rare"? I don't know and I don't much care, really. But ask yourself this: has anyone been punished for that great crime, as 31 people have been sentenced for the great crime from the day before?

There's more. But hey, You Fill in the Rest -- that's my guest post on Kafila.

Perceptions, hurt and anger

Another round of India-Pakistan talks, another road that apparently has led nowhere. Me, I'm a believer in the mantra that the road itself is the point. If the alternative is hostility and killing, better to talk, even if the talks only lead to more talks that, it seems to us on the outside, lead to yet more talks that, I'm getting somewhere I think, apparently lead nowhere.

I'm not being facetious. Any talking must take into account the concerns of both sides, or it leads nowhere. I can't tell if that happened or didn't, at this most recent meeting of foreign ministers on both sides. (Probably it didn't, or it might have led somewhere).

Part of the reason for not being able to tell is how the event gets reported.

Today's Times of India has a front page report whose headline reads: "Qureshi Kills Peace Talks".

The Economic Times says: "Failure of talks exposes Pak’s evil designs".

The Hindustan Times accuses Pakistan of "ambush diplomacy": "Pakistan's 'all or nothing' timeline trap broke talks".

Then I looked at some other papers.

The Daily Times says "India remained stuck in modalities".

Dawn says "Deadlock blamed on selective Indian approach".

Kashmir Watch says "India has been using delaying tactics".

As always, what happened is a function of who tells you what happened. Also as always, what you choose to believe about what happened is likely a function of which country you live in. Few of us seem able to consider: by their nature, these failures cannot be the fault only of one or the other side. Possibly lost in all that is a non-partisan account of what happened, that will give us a better understanding of it all.

Overall, an object lesson in how perceptions differ.

Also in the use of words like "kill", "evil", "delaying" and "selective".

***
A less one-sided account is in the Wall Street Journal: "Tempers Flare in India-Pakistan Talks".

***
As an aside, the same Times of India report I mention above refers to "India's hurt and anger at the fact that 26/11 masterminds are ... roaming free in Pakistan ... There can't be any closure on 26/11 until there is justice."

I fully agree.

But all over again, I cannot help wondering: is there "hurt and anger" in India that the masterminds of Delhi 1984, Gujarat 2002, Bombay 1992-93 and more are roaming free in India? (I know plenty of people who are hurt and angry over that). Can there be closure on any of those episodes without justice?

Why won't we deliver justice in those massacres of Indians, if we want it for the 26/11 massacre of Indians? And if we won't or can't deliver justice for those, why do we expect it of Pakistan for 26/11?

Better in ... Azamgarh?

Narendra Modi is about to visit Bihar. To prepare the ground, his government puts out full-page ads in local dailies saying that "Muslims in Gujarat enjoy better education, and employment opportunities, financial stability, health facilities and infrastructure."

Questions: Better than what? What about Hindus in Gujarat, do they enjoy the same better facilities? If so, is there such an ad too that refers to them? Why would a government issue an ad referring to one particular religion?

Questions apart. You can see the ad in the link above, but you can see it more clearly at the top of the report on this page. Note the three photographs (besides Modi's face) in the ad; note especially the top right one. You'd assume that since they appear in an ad saying Muslims enjoy better things in Gujarat, those photos were shot in Gujarat, right?

Wrong. As the same report indicates, that particular shot was shot in Azamgarh, UP. It was part of a report published last November (see last photo there).

Question: Why would the Gujarat government support a claim about how things are better for Muslims in Gujarat with a photo shot in UP?