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| India-Pakistan |
| Gujarat: Looking Back |
| 2007-02-25 |
| By B. RAMAN It is five years since the brutal massacre of a group of Hindu pilgrims by some members of the Muslim community in the Godhra railway station in Gujarat and the violent Hindu-Muslim riots that followed. There has so far been no objective account of the incidents of 2002 in Gujarat. An unfortunate attempt has been made by the so-called secular elite of the country to create doubts in the minds of the people about the facts relating to the carnage at Godhra. The use of force by the Administration to bring the resulting law and order situation under control has also come in for criticism from this elite. Among the criticisms made by them are that the force used was excessive and disproportionate; that it was mainly directed against the Muslim community; that there were many atrocities committed against the Muslims; that it was politically orchestrated etc. Such a campaign to play down the culpability of minority communities and to direct the attack against the administration, particularly the police, and the majority community is nothing new in our history since 1947. This has always happened after every communal riot. Whenever some Muslims take the law into their own hands, it is always the police which is criticised for acting against them. The secular elite rarely criticises the Muslims, who violated the law in the first place, and rarely calls for action against them. The voice of the secular elite will carry greater credibility if it modifies its present position that "the Muslims can do no wrong" and that it is always the Hindus and the Administration who are responsible for anything going wrong, which affects the interests of the Muslims. If there are signs of an emerging divide between some sections of the Hindus and Muslims, the so-called secular elite cannot escape a major share of responsibility for this. Its compulsive habit of justifying every cause and complaint of the Muslims—whatever be the merits—and its repeated failure to articulate the feelings and sense of anger of the Hindus are creating an impression in the minds of growing sections of the Hindus, who constitute 80 per cent of the population of the country, that for the secular elite only the rights of the Muslims count and not the rights of the Hindus. One finds this particularly in the case of the youth. |
| Posted by:John Frum |