How to Combat the Cancer of Communalism
(Dr. R.M. Pal)

If ever the Hindutva forces want to return to political power their first task would be to ask the majority community (the Hindus) to end majority communalism. In the last election the BJP was defeated not by Sonia Gandhi and the Congress, it was defeated because of massive human rights violations in Gujarat. Our so called illiterate voters understood the game and removed them from power. I have maintained and written on a number of occasions that Pakistan was not defeated by the Indian Army in 1971, it was defeated by its own army, which under the leadership of General Yahya Khan, perpetrated massive human rights violations in East Pakistan, which culminated in the partition of Pakistan, East Pakistan cutting away from Pakistan and becoming an independent country, Bangladesh. I maintain that our people, specially Hindutvavadis, must learn a lesson from Pakistan. Communalism creates dissension and discord. Once again it has happened in Gujarat in a village near Baroda where 40 Muslim families live. The Hindus have waged war on them. They have been asked by their leaders not to have any social contact with them, not to buy anything from their shops, not to even speak to them. If you do you pay a fine of Rs.200/-. In short the Muslims have been given notice that they must leave the village. This was published in newspapers of 12 July. I spoke to a Muslim friend in the morning. He fears that the Sangh Parivar might carry this economic boycott across the country. Is this the way to make India a civilised country? Or this is the way which will lead us to destruction? It is said that the present government is planning to introduce a new law to combat communalism.   The proposed legislation to enact a law against communal violence provides for investigations by a central agency and payment of uniform compensation. The legislation does not speak of how to prevent communal violence. This is understandable. The state cannot stop violence. In our country only thoughtful people from the majority community must sit together and scratch their heads on how to prevent communal violence. They must accept that majority communalism is the real danger. Why does communal violence break out in Gujarat frequently? A couple of years ago in a village in Gujarat, a Hindu girl fell in love with a Muslim boy and eloped with him. The Hindus blamed the Muslims and accused them of kidnapping the girl. They asked the Muslims living in the village to leave the village. Where could they go?

It’s time thoughtful people in our country begin to give thought to remedy the situation. By now we know almost everything about the Gujarat riots. When the Nanavati Commission report comes out we will know everything. There are two agencies which have to tackle the problem; one, the state, two, the people. It is believed that the Union government is planning to introduce a new bill to make a law against communal riots. The fact remains however that we have enough laws in our country which can take care of the offenders. The Supreme Court in a recent directive transferring the cases from Gujarat to Maharashtra has identified the culprits. What the court has not done is to announce the punishment that should be meted out to the culprits in Gujarat, where the Chief Minister, the Home Minister, the police are guilty of colluding with the rioters, who like the Germans during Hitler’s regime, became the willing executors of the will of Modi, Togadia and the law enforcing agencies of the state. All of them are culprits – only the other day an SHO appearing before the Nanavati Commission confessed that he did not inform the higher authorities about the gruesome incidents taking place in his area. Such police officers from SHO upwards to Director General of Police must be punished. The minimum that the government should prescribe is that these politicians and policement must be made to pay compensation to the victims from their pockets. The Srikrishna Commission had identified the rioters in 1992-93 Mumbai riots. The State has taken no action to proceed against any one of them. They can be proceeded against under the existing laws, no new laws are required. What we need to do is to implement laws, not to create more new ones. Thoughtful people must come out with suggestions on what should be done if the state does not take action against rioters. Some kind of debate and brainstorming sessions, like the one initiated by Pamela Philipose in the Indian Express, need to be started and continued if we have to find a remedy for these ills.

The average man and woman in the country including BJP and VHP stalwarts like the Chief Minister Narendra Modi and Praveen Togadia, VHP leader, maintained that the Gujarat riots started because of the provocation of the Godhra train burning which was organized by Muslim mobs. The Nanavati Commission has contradicted this assumption and impression. After the burning of the two coaches, what followed was not riots of the conventional kind, but a systematic attack on Muslims in which the state agencies participated with equal zeal. Chief Minister Modi provoked the communal Hindus by saying after the Godhra incident, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This statement and later the Supreme Court judgement on the transfer of cases for trial from Gujarat to Maharashtra and the complicity of the state and its agencies are clear indication that all of them are guilty. The Nanavati Commission report is totally against the police report about the involvement of outsiders in the burning of the compartment at the Godhra station.

Nanavati Commission has concluded that people from outside did not assemble at the Godhra station to burn the train compartments. What remains to be investigated is then how did the fire happen? It is possibly to find this that a new commission headed by a retired Supreme Court Justice has been appointed by the Union Government. This was a persistent demand made by the Railway Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav. What is important is that both the Supreme Court observations and the Nanavati Commission findings make it quite clear that the State, the Chief Minister, Home Minister and the police are guilty. The only thing that the Supreme Court has not done is to inflict punishment on the guilty. The fact that communal violence cases have been shifted from the jurisdiction of the Gujarat government makes it clear that the state is not governed by rule of law. Once the guilty are punished there will be a stop to communal riots. So long as the rioters go scot- free, it will be difficult to put a stop to communal killings. This is a kind of fascist practice, a vicious cancer. What is also important is that intellectuals, humanists and activists must sit together and start a debate on how to stop this fascist practice, something like what has been initiated by Pamela Philipose’s article in The Indian Express reproduced elsewhere in this issue. (Did we publish this?)