The countdown to a macabre anniversary has begun and the media has already started reliving those gory moments and days. Even if you want to, there is simply no way you can avoid reliving the horror. Yes, I am talking about the burning of the S-6 coach of the Sabarmati Express – in which 'Kar Sevaks' were travelling from Ayodhya – at the Godhra station on February 27, 2002, and the subsequent riots in Gujarat that led to the brutal deaths of about 2,000 human beings, most of them Muslims. There is little doubt now that a lot of those killings were conducted in an organised manner and the state government failed to protect innocent citizens. Of course, I must say that the manner in which our secular fundamentalists use the word 'Genocide' to describe the 2002 Gujarat riots have a deeply perverted sense of history as well as the English language. I find it stranger still when the same folk insist that the burning alive of 59 children, women and men inside a train compartment was merely an accident, or a conspiracy hatched by Hindu fanatics to provide ammunition for the pogrom (there goes another word) against Muslims in Gujarat.
Since 2002, no other man or woman in contemporary Indian history has been demonised the way Narendra Modi has been. And as the 10th anniversary of Gujarat riots approaches, you can bet many pundits will dish out more armchair psychiatric nonsense while claiming to analyse the psyche of a ‘mass murderer’ (there goes another word) like Narendra Modi. The more polite and possibly more objective ones will say how the taint of the Gujarat riots will prevent Modi from being able to play a more effective and meaningful role in national politics and even in BJP (God knows how desperately the BJP needs a national leader at this juncture). The more ideologically perverted types will continue to declare him persona non grata. By the way, our Indian comrades managed to convince Capitalist and Imperialist America to deny a visa to Modi. But I guess the comrades either forgot to ask or failed in their attempts to persuade Communist China to deny a visa to Modi! I think such small ironies of life entirely escape our Indian Left ies who still think Stalin and Mao were 20th century versions of God.
So Modi as Ravana will become the leitmotif for India in the coming weeks. But don’t you honestly think we are going too far in our obsession to demonise the man? And that we are belittling ourselves and India in the bargain? I wont repeat stuff about how our media conveniently ignores the massacre of Sikhs in 1984 and the myriad massacres of Muslims in the (then) Bombay, in Bhagalpur, in Nellie, in Meerut and many other places in which surely Narendra Modi was not the ‘mastermind’ (there goes another word).
But I will ask you this if you honestly believe in the Indian Constitution and the Supreme Court. The latter has relentlessly pursued the Gujarat riots cases, including transferring them to other states so that the killers could be punished and the victims get justice. So can we allow the Supreme Court to finish its job before we pass verdicts? Of course, if you are convinced that Maoists are Gandhians with Guns, you probably are convinced that the Supreme Court of India is a conspiracy hatched by Goebbels.
Since 2002, no other man or woman in contemporary Indian history has been demonised the way Narendra Modi has been. And as the 10th anniversary of Gujarat riots approaches, you can bet many pundits will dish out more armchair psychiatric nonsense while claiming to analyse the psyche of a ‘mass murderer’ (there goes another word) like Narendra Modi. The more polite and possibly more objective ones will say how the taint of the Gujarat riots will prevent Modi from being able to play a more effective and meaningful role in national politics and even in BJP (God knows how desperately the BJP needs a national leader at this juncture). The more ideologically perverted types will continue to declare him persona non grata. By the way, our Indian comrades managed to convince Capitalist and Imperialist America to deny a visa to Modi. But I guess the comrades either forgot to ask or failed in their attempts to persuade Communist China to deny a visa to Modi! I think such small ironies of life entirely escape our Indian Left ies who still think Stalin and Mao were 20th century versions of God.
So Modi as Ravana will become the leitmotif for India in the coming weeks. But don’t you honestly think we are going too far in our obsession to demonise the man? And that we are belittling ourselves and India in the bargain? I wont repeat stuff about how our media conveniently ignores the massacre of Sikhs in 1984 and the myriad massacres of Muslims in the (then) Bombay, in Bhagalpur, in Nellie, in Meerut and many other places in which surely Narendra Modi was not the ‘mastermind’ (there goes another word).
But I will ask you this if you honestly believe in the Indian Constitution and the Supreme Court. The latter has relentlessly pursued the Gujarat riots cases, including transferring them to other states so that the killers could be punished and the victims get justice. So can we allow the Supreme Court to finish its job before we pass verdicts? Of course, if you are convinced that Maoists are Gandhians with Guns, you probably are convinced that the Supreme Court of India is a conspiracy hatched by Goebbels.
