Fascism in Bastar

A mob of about 100 slogan shouting supporters of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party barged into the public meeting of eminent citizens, including space scientist Yash Pal, veteran Gandhian Narayan Desai and former UGC chairman Ramji Singh, a day before they embarked upon a peace march from Raipur to Dantewada in Chhattisgarh.

A group of over 50 leading citizens had converged in Raipur on May 5 to take out what they call 'March for dialogue on peace and justice', calling for end to a civil-war like situation in the predominantly tribal state of Chhattisgarh. These citizens comprising academics, scientists, social activists and Gandhian workers, want a 'ceasefire' between the state forces and Maoists to begin a nation-wide discussion on model of development that the country should follow to ensure a sustainable, just and people-oriented economy and polity.

At a press conference, held before the public meeting, Prof Yash Pal said he was greatly pained at the plight of the tribals, farmers and the indigenous people in the last 60 years of Independence for which the powers that be and the middle-class in general were responsible. "Do we want to annihilate the entire race of aboriginal people, like America had done in the name of development?" he asked.

Interestingly, the Press Club of Raipur allowed to hold the press conference of the leading citizens as an exception to their earlier resolution not to allow any press conference of human rights activists. The press conference lasted for more than an hour during which journalists asked leading questions like 'How can you advocate ceasefire when Naxalites are out to wage a war against the constitutionally-formed government?"

Swami Agnivesh, Prof Yash Pal and Narayan Desai explained the limited scope of the peace march saying the foremost thing was to stop violence from both the sides - from the state and the Left extremists - to facilitate a nation-wide dialogue on ways and means to have a sustainable and just development of the country in which people were at the centre.

Later, while the marchers held a public meeting at the town hall, near the district collector's office, a mob of over 100 people, stormed into the hall shouting slogans, "Naxal sympathisers go back", "Naxal sympathisers, shame, shame." The trouble-makers disrupted the meeting several times during which the speakers stopped addressing the gathering.

State director general of police Vishwa Ranjan said the trouble-makers belonged to both the BJP and the Congress party. "Tempers are running high in Chhattisgarh over the wanton killings of tribals by the Maoists. Anyone advocating dialogue with them is perceived as the sympathiser of the Maoists," he added. The top cop directed concerned police offers of Jagdalpur and Dantewada to provide adequate security to the peace marchers.

Hate Campaign

Though there appears to be a surface calm in Gujarat, the Modi government and the Sangh Parivar continue to target the Muslims. The state government is out to subverting the process of justice to ensure that no one involved in the 2002 carnage is punished. The Best Bakery case in a glaring example of this. In the Best Bakery case, the session's court has acquitted all the 21 accused of killing 14 hapless people, including women and children, after the key witnesses were coerced by the local BJP MLA and his municipal councilor brother into retracting their statement. Similar has been the fate of most of the cases of heinous crimes in which BJP, VHP and RSS activists are the accused.

While those who had committed murder, rape, loot and arson are roaming fearlessly, the police is hunting down Muslim youths, foisting trumped up charges against them and arresting them under the draconian Prevention of Terrorist Activities Act (POTA). In most of the POTA cases, the charge leveled against the detained person is the same that he had been recruited by Pakistan's intelligence agency, ISI, after the Godhra carnage, taken to Pakistan, trained there in terror tactics and brought back to Gujarat to attack Hindu places of worship and kill leaders of the BJP and VHP.

In times of communial violence in Gujarat, the language press sheds its yellow and dons deep saffron. The Gujarati press has proved time and again that pen is mightier than a trishul (trident). With scant regard for journalistic ethics, the Gujarati press has been adding fuel to the fire by whipping up communal passions.

The Muslims in Gujarat are a hounded lot, condemned by the ruling party politicians (BJP and its VHP-RSS allies), a partisan police force and civil administration and a belligerent press. If this is not Fascism, what is it?

A Leaf from Mein Kampf - Part I

One had only read about Fascism and Nazism in books of history and fiction. But had never experienced living under a Fascist state. One had lived under the constant fear of arrest and police torture during the 19 months of the Emergency. But what the Muslims in Gujarat experienced in 2002 must have been much more dreadful than that.

There were massacres of Muslims, gang rapes of Muslim women and looting and arson of shops and establishments belonging to them.

Armed mobs, led by known Bharatiya Janata Party and Vishwa Hindu Parishad workers, were on a killing spree, targeting Muslims to avenge the burning alive of over 50 VHP volunteers returning from Ayodhya by train on February 27 near the Godhra railway station.

Instead of providing protection to the Muslims, the police aided and abetted the killer mobs. Worse, the police refused to file First Information Reports in several cases and where it became unavoidable to register a case, the FIRs were so doctored as to help the killers, rapists, arsonists and looters escape unpunished.

Gujarat had become unsafe for Muslims. Hundreds of Muslims fled their homeland, Gujarat, after the mayhem. Many enterprising, forward-looking, well-to-do Muslims, like the members of the Chelia clan from north Gujarat, who owned over 400 restaurants, most of them serving only vegetarian food and bearing pronouncedly Hindu names, sold their establishments to move to Hyderabad and Bangalore.

These popular restaurants, other shops and business establishments doing flourishing business in Ahmedabad and elsewhere in central and north Gujarat were singled out, plundered and then set on fire by the Hindu mobs in the aftermath of the Godhra carnage.

(Introduction)

When It Rained Blood - Introduction

When I returned to Gujarat after eight years, in June 2002, the muddy water of the Sabarmati River had already turned bloody. The sword of the Saffron Brigade had drawn enough blood from Muslim men, women and children to redden the azure blue water of the Narmada that had been fed into the Sabarmati.

The Sangh Parivar, comprising the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Bajrang Dal and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), had exploded the saffron bomb successfully in Gujarat to prove before the world that Mahatma Gandhi, the apostle of peace and non-violence, can be defeated in his own home land.

The Sangh Parivar had been preparing to wage a war against the humanity since 1920 when its ideologue Savarkar propounded the theory of 'Hindurashtra' (Hindu nation). When in 1947, their dream to convert India into a Hindurashtra failed, the Sangh Parivar contracted Nathuram Godse to kill Gandhi, who symbolized universal brotherhood.

The next assault on secular India was made on December 6,1992 when a fifteenth century mosque was razed to the ground by a fanatic mob, a section of which had been trained in demolition techniques in a camp in Gujarat.

Having covered Gujarat as a journalist for over two decades, I was a witness to the Sangh Parivar's Fascist methods and its devastating effects on the life and psyche of the people. I will try here to trace the roots of fascism that culminated in the genocide of 2002.