Gujarat: When Will The UPA Govt Wake Up?

A 300 YEAR old dargah was demolished in Vadodara on May 1, 2006, ostensibly for purposes of broadening the road, leading to protests from Muslims, followed by police firing in which four people were killed and curfew imposed in 13 police station areas in the city. The dargah on the Fatehpur- Champaner road was of a sufi saint, Syed Rashiuddin Chishti, and has been targeted in all the ‘riots’ since 1969. It was demolished by the municipal corporation under the direct supervision and in the presence of all the local BJP leaders of the city, including the city BJP president and BJP councillors. The reactions to the incidents, which have since resulted in more rioting and deaths, tell their own story of the situation in Gujarat.

It may be remembered that around 300 places of worship were destroyed all over Gujarat in 2002, including the tomb of Wali Mohammad in covering up which with a metalled road, the municipal corporator (of the Congress incidentally) had shown remarkable efficiency and speed of action.

In reporting this latest demolition, the Indian Express says that “it stood in the middle of the road” (May 2, 2006), which makes one wonder that if it was 300 years old, did the dargah encroach on the road, or the road on the dargah! Its report of May 3, 2006, p. 9, does a balancing act on the matter by asserting that “the Muslim leaders, honed on the 2002 riots experience, however, failed to evolve a response that could have avoided violence or the contentious build up to the situation. The leadership also seems to be unable to contain its restive youth….” And again, “The BJP stand is short of gleeful joy as they have been handed on a platter their acclaimed avowal to development at all costs, hindered apparently by an immature Muslim rhetoric.”

And yet again, that “Even before the demolition of the dargah, the Muslims who resisted and petitioned against its removal knew, as did everyone else in the city, that there would be trouble in the city. The implication is that the Hindutva forces should be allowed to do what they want if the administration and police remain on the side of the Hindutva goons, so as to avoid violence on themselves and in the city in general. The question is never asked as to why Muslims are forced into taking matters into their own hands, or as to why the administration and the police are discriminatory and actively act on the side of Hindutva goons. The collusion of the state on the side of Hindutva forces is the overriding factor in contributing to violence on all sides is something that needs to be emphasised again and again..

Further, some papers have also reported that this is part of a larger drive against encroachments in which some Hindu temples too have been broken, with the consent and co-operation of Hindu leaders. But what is not mentioned is that those were in fact recent encroachments while the dargah is 300 years old and therefore a historical monument, and that the Muslim leaders had also co-operated in the removal of a smaller dargah in the Danteshwar area (this one fact is mentioned in IE alone), or that even in this case the Muslim leaders had agreed to part breaking of the structure to allow for the road but that the municipal corporator and the BJP leadership of the area showed undue zeal in demolishing the entire structure and with undue haste. The fact that it has been targeted in all the communal flare ups since 1969 shows that there is more than a question of a road involved here, particularly in the context of the Places of Worship (Special provisions) Act, 1991, which ensures status quo to religious places built before 1947.

The administration seems to have responded to this plea by stating that it is not a “protected monument” and that the Muslim community has “no papers of possession”. Again the question is not asked as to why the old monument was not granted the status of a protected monument in the first place, and whether the BJP or the Congress governments in the state can ever be expected to declare ‘Muslim’ monuments’ as protected. The Gujarat High Court has directed the state government to issue immediate instructions to the police department to provide full protection to demolition squads, that encroachment on public space by religious places should not be permitted or tolerated “even for a minute”, which the BJP government is happy to interpret as endorsement of its demolition of the 300 year old dargah, and to designate it as encroachment and hindrance to its plans for ‘developing the area. A very convenient tool to accomplish taking over of land and attacking the places of worship belonging to the minorities!

Let it also be noted that the recently appointed state police chief by Modi is none other than P C Pandey, who presided over the ‘riots’ of 2002 as chief of police in Ahmedabad city, and suffered important bouts of amnesia during the inquiries of the Nanavati-Shah commission. He is making the same wishy-washy statements not with regard to why the police should have had to fire such that there are head injuries, why only Muslims have been killed in police firing, or why the police failed to protect the funeral procession of those killed in firing from attacks of Hindutva goons and so on. He has of course precise details on how the Muslim crowd got restive and violent when the dargah was being demolished.

While all this is going on, all that the UPA government has to say is: "Enough caution was not taken by the district administration which decided to remove the dargah on the pretext of clearing illegal encroachment. More caution should have been taken," minister of state for home Sriprakash Jaiswal said.

This incident also needs to be seen in the context of the recent attempts by the Supreme Court to ensure justice for the victim survivors of the 2002 massacres of Muslims in Gujarat. The situation is more than a matter of simple neglect in rehabilitation, it is clear. The Gujarat police and the state administration have been actively colluding with each other since 2002 and continue to victimise the victims and those who tried to help them. They have been browbeating survivors into maintaining silence: at Kuha village in Ahmedabad district, where several Muslim houses were set on fire and property looted in 2002, Muslim vegetable vendors and traders in other commodities are getting no buyers because they signed testimonies against Hindu attackers during the riots. This was one of the cases reopened on Supreme Court orders. In Panchmahals district, on the outskirts of Lunawada town, the police, guilty of illegal mass burying of bodies of those massacred, has now filed a case against five persons for digging out the remains of their relatives from an open ground and also against CJP State unit convenor Rais Khan, who was present during the incident on December 27 last. The Lunawada police filed the case after the victim-survivors obtained an order from the High Court for transferring the investigation to the CBI and taking samples for the DNA test of the skulls and bones recovered. (The Hindu, April 24, 2006). The non-bailable arrest warrants have been issued against the victim survivors.

There has not been a single statement from the prime minister or any senior leader of the Congress expressing concern at the blatant infringement of the constitutional and fundamental rights of citizens belonging to minority religious groups. A party that has been least sensitive to federalism has suddenly woken up to usefulness of autonomy of states on issues of secularism and minority rights. In Gujarat, thousands of Muslims have neither been compensated nor allowed to return to their homes and livelihood since the genocide of 2002. The UPA government seems to have reconciled itself to this and has not even expressed cognizance of the situation. It is complicit in the second class status of the Muslims and Christians in BJP ruled states like Gujarat and Rajasthan: Prime minister Manmohan Singh took great care to apologise for 1984, and rightly so, but has not bothered with the continuing siege of Muslims in Gujarat, or Muslims and Christians in Rajasthan. What more is required to happen before the UPA government, to wake up to take some action? Or at least take notice?

People's Democracy