National

Body Of Evidence

Hate pays. In this state, polarisation is near-complete as the right fringe holds out the hope of future financial rewards.

Advertisement

Body Of Evidence
info_icon

It is past midnight in Ahmedabad but down a dark empty road near Mahalaxmi Char Rasta, the lights are on in the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (vhp) office. There is something about a few men here which seems to suggest their time has come. On the phone a worker is saying, "Four of theirs and one of ours." He is counting the dead to an anxious caller on a Sunday evening and so far it has been a "favourable" ratio. "We get more calls than the police control room," he says. Mostly, "from anxious Hindus who want to know what's happening". On the walls of this office, in its store-room and in its locked drawers are preserved tools that every day send out the message without fail, "Don't forget Godhra, don't forget to hate the Muslims, we cannot live with them."

On a wall are displayed the photographs that capture the Godhra incident with captions that say, 'Ram sevaks burning alive in the compartment', 'Even the smoke is saying Jai Shri Ram', 'Everybody kept burning like that'. The pictures are being sold at Rs 150 for 4-by-6-inch prints and Rs 500 for 8-by-12 inch prints. These have been reproduced in the vhp magazine which has been selling at a special discount for Rs 5 a copy.

Kaushik Mehta, a senior vhp worker, tears himself from the television to meet us "badmash log", one of the more sophisticated ways by which he refers to the English press. He says he has been very busy these days with his daughter sitting for her school exams in which, it later transpires, one of the tasks for the students was to remove the 'if' in the sentence 'If you don't like people, kill them'. For now, though, he has something important to show: a CD of "what actually happened in the Dariapur locality".

The 15-minute footage is of a riot scene in a Muslim locality. Some vhp boys are huddled around the computer looking at what's unfolding with exclamations of horror. "You hear the sounds? That's the sound of AK-47s. There, do you see that man? Do you see a gun in his hand?" The visual is not very clear but there is a man running up the stairs with a firearm. The sounds of "AK-47s" are soft staccato bangs. What Mehta doesn't say is that the video was shot by one Hukum Singh, a vhp activist who was accused in a 1999 riot case. Copies of the CD were sent to the police and government officials. According to an additional commissioner of police, "the CM's office was very interested in this CD. There were raids in that area but nothing was recovered".

CDs are for those who have computers. The message, "Don't forget what they can do to us," is chiefly spread through pamphlets and clips on cable TV, many of which can well invite Section 153 of the ipc.

vhp leader Pravin Togadia doesn't deny that the tools to distort exist but he challenges, "Trace them back to us." Moving to and fro with some sort of elation on the swing outside his house, he tries to appear intimidating against a pitch-dark backdrop. Pointing a firm index finger as though posing for a sculptor who will make him immortal, he describes the situation as "natural Hindu retaliation". And adds, "It's not my business to ask Hindus not to retaliate." He says it is his duty to "inform and educate" Hindus about the "danger that they are living with in their own country". And the resulting "awareness that has translated into hate and distrust is natural". People, he says, are so grateful to the vhp that "our following has increased 10 times". He, however, denies media reports that the vhp has been distributing trishuls "but look at how charged Hindus are today. After the reports, we got calls placing orders for trishuls worth Rs 30,000, asking us to quickly dispatch them at the earliest".

He doesn't deny that there are trishuls floating around "but that's purely the enterprise of some Hindus who have got together and decided to fend for themselves".Not trishuls, but there were weapons recovered on April 23 from what a police officer described as a house "very close to the home of sitting bjp minister Bharat Barod, who is also a known vhp activist".

The hate campaign has been so pronounced that "secularists" have a bad name in Gujarat. When a loose cannon like Togadia says "secularists should be deported to Pakistan", not many in Gujarat would disagree. The ground reality is that the word secularist means "someone who doesn't know what he is talking about" or "someone who is against Gujarat". Very clearly, the way Gujarat has viewed the riots is very different from how the rest of the nation has. The car driver who on the way to Juhapur, where there was an outbreak of violence, whispers, "This is chhota Pakistan". He fails to understand why TV channels "keep showing only what happens to Muslims".

Two top vernacular papers have capitalised on this sentiment and portray the victimisation of Hindus even to the point that when they "accurately" cover a rioting mob, they just change the religious tag of the crowd. "This is what the people want to hear," says socio-political analyst Achyut Yagnik, who believes that the society in Gujarat has been completely polarised. One of the Gujarati papers, Sandesh, has upped its circulation by over 1.5 lakh copies since February 27.

Just 50 metres from the police commissioner's office, the Rapid Action Force (raf) is guarding the Dhariyakhan Ghummat Minority Relief Camp, a school building where over 5,000 Muslims are holed up. Here, a huge mob had attempted to burn a dargah right next to the commissioner's office demanding the closure of the camp because they believed that miscreants from the camp occasionally slipped out, created trouble and went back into the camp.

As two senior officers of the raf sit wearily near the camp, an old footsoldier rushes in with chilling news from a combing operation. He says he has just found 70 petrol bombs and a few rods and sharp implements. A police officer says, "They were planning a major attack on the relief camp. It's a matter of luck that we found those weapons." In the Madhavpura police station where the seized weapons are kept, the bored constables show the arms. The bombs are liquor bottles filled not just with petrol but also metal scraps to cause maximum damage. Some of the rods have been sharpened on both ends. Beside this room is the lock-up where about 10 boys are sitting. They were nabbed from a riot scene. One of them, Narenbhai, says through the bars, "We were just running away from the violence when they caught us. We're just daily-wage workers, we are not vhp or Bajrang Dal activists or anything." But when talk veers around how the Muslims from the camp slip out and create trouble, they all crowd around the cell's door and talk with a lot of venom, "They start all the trouble."

And that's the message the vhp is so passionately trying to send out. It has come out with a list of 135 incidents since March 15 which were allegedly "started" by the Muslims. Another personal letter from the vhp, which was systematically dropped off at middle-class Hindu homes, talks about an impending threat. "Your life is in danger," it says, "you can be killed anywhere. Krishna had asked Arjun to kill all those who are against the Hindus (see 'Dangerous Texts')".

The letter ends with the message that Hindus can avail of 50 per cent tax saving by contributing to the vhp. Another pamphlet urges Hindus to break business links with Muslims. It begins with a "Wake Up Hindus" call and enumerates points like, "Don't go to Muslim shops, they earn from us and then use the money to attack us, We don't need weapons to kill Muslims, we can cut off business ties and make them bleed."

Over the years, Muslim merchants have done well and created wealth for themselves along Ahmedabad's arterial streets like C.G. Road. Muslims from the Chilia community have made a success out of running vegetarian eateries frequented by the majority population that give value-for-money meals. These are the enterprises that have borne the brunt of the riots. A Bajrang Dal worker perversely remarks, "After eating Muslim food for so long, even Hindus have assumed Muslim aggression." But some do point out that the burning of these shops may have been planned. "By offering to bring future financial rewards by targeting Muslims shops, the vhp is trying to befriend the Hindu business community, chiefly the Patels," says human rights activist Father Cedric Prakash, who is among the many "foes" of the vhp, and who has received virus-bearing e-mails and death threats.

Police confirm that in several burnt or looted shops, vhp and Bajrang Dal men stand guard to make sure the owner doesn't return to literally pick up the pieces. Below Gandhi Bridge, on the dry stretch of the Sabarmati river, Muslim slumdwellers are still under attack. An additional commissioner of police points out, "The idea is to evict the Muslims who have no legal claim to their homes and eventually let the land mafia take possession."

The vhp is trying to bear upon the people, systematically, that hatred for Muslims can also bring about financial benefits. But despite the tangible effects of all the labour that goes into the hate factory, there is hardly any police intelligence on the vhp's activities. In the nameless office of a top intelligence cop in Gandhinagar sits a man who has time and again refused to give "favourable intelligence" to the CM's office. "They did not do their homework before appointing me," he says. But he admits that it's very difficult to get information on the vhp's dirtier side. "My own men refuse to give me information. They like the vhp. They have come up to me and told me that Hindus have to retaliate." He says that the vhp has a better intelligence set-up in place than the government. "The cops themselves are monitored carefully. The constables give an accurate picture to the vhp on the 'ideological inclination' of top officers," says the officer. From what he gathers, he says the people "are beginning to see the vhp point of view and that's dangerous. The hatred for Muslims is almost complete."

It is this hatred that Togadia calls "reaction". As a medical doctor of uncertain success, he says "a body has to react". Accordingly, when bjp president Jana Krishnamurthy said in a press conference in Ahmedabad that the situation is "by and large normal", a journalist started giggling aloud. That was a body reacting.

Advertisement

Tags

    Advertisement

    Advertisement

    Advertisement

    Advertisement

    Advertisement

    Advertisement