People's Democracy

FOR those who thought they had heard the entire story of what happened in Gujarat, the public hearing in which 40 survivors of the Holocaust gave their first hand versions of the organized pogroms came as a rude shock. The reality is not merely very much more shocking, as one has generally come to assume, than what newspapers and official figures reveal, but the political climate is much closer to the fascist future that we want to avoid, in Gujarat if not all over India. Even as the BJP has been getting defeated in elections held recently all over the country, and even in the municipal elections in Gujarat, what can be described as fascist ‘common sense’ has taken over Gujarat in proportions that spells danger for the entire country. For the minorities it means a new stage of second-class existence much beyond the discrimination and outbreaks of violence that we have come to accept as part of ‘normal’ political life.

The details of the carnage point towards forms of cruelty that make one’s hair stand on end, and one wonders how human beings can be capable of such acts, how so many more can allow it and live with it, and how so many, many more can justify and excuse it on grounds of ‘natural reaction’ and life can go on as ‘usual’ with the daily chores being performed and purchases in the markets even as more than two thousands have been brutally murdered in ingenuous ways, more than a lakh and a half have lost their homes, and an entire community their sense of security, hope and dignity.

But life does remain ‘normal’ even in these dark times in Gujarat, and that is what fascism is all about—that people accept as routine and normal what is unspeakably horrific. This is what essentially came through the testimonies of the forty survivors at the public hearing organized by Communalism Combat and Sahmat in Delhi for two days, and then a film and another hearing in the Press Club by some NGOs working in Gujarat. At the risk of their lives these forty people, among them women and even children, who hardly understood but nevertheless gave their halting versions, told of events as they actually happened.

Eleven-year-old Noor Jehan Yakoob Khan, stoically described, "They killed my father. They cut him into pieces and poured petrol on him…he was trying to go back into the house where my mother was left behind." She and her brother, who is thirteen, were witness to the killings of their entire family, in Mehsana district, one of the places where mass murder was perpetrated. Thousands of such little children have witnessed murders with swords, burning, rape of their mothers and sisters, and are likely to remain scarred for life with memories of such unspeakable horrors.

Another survivor who had seen his father, mother, sister and brothers brutally murdered said of his neighbours "I thought till the very end that they will not harm us, we have lived together in friendliness for so long…. I have not shed a single tear. I want only justice".

A woman, unnamed here not to make her a statistic, but because she could be any one of the thousands, said she saw 9 young girls raped in sheer barbarity before her eyes, and has had all her children killed even as she saved other children and fled with them. Another young girl could hardly walk because of what had been done to her repeatedly as she tried to look for her little child separated from her. A young boy said my mother suffocated when they lay on her, and then they burnt her. He is too young to know that it was rape.

Ibrahimbhai Ismailbhai Ghachi has served in the army from 1973 to 2000.

He spoke of assurances being given by the neighbours. His, as with thousands like him, is a story of betrayal by neighbours who turned killers at the given opportunity. " They got us back by saying-we have been living together for 300 years so nothing will go wrong this time. When the people returned they attacked them. I lost 11 members of my family-three brothers, two sisters nieces, nephews and children-in one night and my mother is lying in coma at the civil hospital…there is a fire burning inside me today. We have no faith in the police."

There is a fire burning in the hearts of thousands of people like him, and thousands have lost faith in the police, the government and even in neighbourly relations. Who can blame them? We only know what all this can lead to. There are numerous documented incidents where the police actually herded the fleeing into the arms of the mobs at the point of their guns, or actually shot them point blank in the head when asked for help. They gave names of VHP-Bajrang Dal-BJP leaders who were at the heads of mobs directing the proceedings, who not only remain scot free but are in a position to yet harm them for opening their mouths.

Aftab Qadri, an advocate, said he had come to tell us that they are not safe even now. "We are scared that the camps will be soon be attacked "- a fear that is not unfounded as one learns from news reports where one woman died from shelling by the police on the camp, on the pretext that some ‘miscreants’ were harboured in these camps.

There are reports that two camps have been closed down, of people not being allowed to return to their homes. Shunted out from camps, and threatened elsewhere, where do they go? That is a question that the State should address itself to, but it is a question that the State does not ask because the victims belong to a particular community. It is a question uppermost in the minds of the survivors which, if not solved for them, could result in that many more deaths as there already are, from neglect, starvation, disease, and more ‘revenge’ from the state and its institutions.

The issue requires urgent attention. Thousands are still in the clothes they fled in, thousands have lost their means of livelihood, thousands are outraged, insulted and with a sense of being rejected. What is my fault? Are we not Indians? Why does this keep happening to us? They know it is not fate. We should also recognize that what is happening is not inevitable and unavoidable. They expect sympathy and help. But they expect a lot more, and we should recognize that being a proud Indian is not a genetic or biological natural state of being that people of this country should feel come what may. The ball is now in our court. We need to recognize that and to put our best foot forward in defeating the fascist forces of Hindutva. It is their ‘final solution’ or victory for democracy. There is no short cut to the problem of violence against minorities.