Wednesday 29 February 2012

Gujarat: 'Since there is no evidence that Modi himself engineered it, he is not guilty'


There is a view that the post-Godhra carnage, in which over 2000 Muslims were killed by frenzied Hindu mobs, was a pre-meditated conspiracy to use the Godhra train incident as an opportunity to cleanse Gujarat of its Muslim population. Gujarat's Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, is believed to be a part of this conspiracy. However, let us assume that he is acquitted of the charge of a pre-meditated agenda of ethnic-cleansing. Does that mean he is not culpable?

*

To answer this question, one must examine, a) the Chief Minister’s actions during the pogrom, and b) after it. 

As for Modi’s actions during the post-Godhra carnage, the affidavit of Modi’s own chief of police, DGP R.B. Sreekumar, states that Modi had prevented him from taking necessary action to prevent further escalation of violence against Muslims. According to Sreekumar, Modi “asked me to concentrate on Muslim militants... [He] instructed that I should not concentrate on the Sangh Parivar [the Hindu Right], as they are not doing anything illegal”. Further, two affidavits and a petition filed in the Supreme Court by Sanjeev Bhatt state that Modi had asked officials to let Hindus ‘vent their anger’ at the Muslims.

But let us assume that Shreekumar and Bhatt are unreliable, and that no such instructions were given by Modi. Does this let Modi off the hook? As the Chief Minister, Narendra Modi failed in his primary responsibility i.e. to preserve law and order in his state. When it collapsed, he failed to restore it. The violence continued for 182 days. Modi failed his responsibility to utilise the state machinery under his command to protect the fundamental right to life of more than 2000 Gujaratis. Hereby, Modi has achieved something historic: as CM, he has presided over violence on an unprecedented scale since Partition. The Special Investigation Team (SIT), appointed by the Supreme Court, has reported that the Modi government delayed imposing curfew in Muslim areas, which would have reduced the killings (Hindustan Times, 27.02.2012). In his failure to protect hundreds of Gujarati women - who were raped, maimed and sexually tortured -Modi became the Chief Minister under whom the scale and extent of atrocities upon innocent women far exceeds any reported sexual crime during any previous riots in the country since partition. ­Due to his inability to prevent the carnage, 523 places of worship - 205 mosques, 298 dargahs, 17 temples, and 3 churches – were desecrated. 

But let us forget this and, instead, assume that Modi was helpless: he had tried his best to curb the riots but to no avail. Assuming that nothing could have been done during the initial riots to prevent their further escalation, let us examine Modi’s actions after the riots. Before this, we must ask what should be done after  mass violence. First, the state machinery should be utilised to identify and try the perpetrators, and punish them according to the law. Two, along with delivering justice, the victims must be shown sympathy and compassion. There must be an acknowledgement of their loss and hurt, an apology for it, concomitant with an attempt towards their rehabilitation and integration. In the 10 years since the pogrom, there should have been an active attempt to reconcile the Hindu and Muslim communities in Gujarat. If this has been achieved, Narendra Modi is worthy of exoneration. 

But Modi has not punished the policemen who let the massacres take place. On the contrary they have  been promoted. Further, he has not identified or punished those in his government (assuming that this was not done on his orders) who destroyed crucial police wireless communication records during the pogrom. Second, the SIT has confirmed allegations that the Modi government had appointed pro-BJP/RSS* advocates as public prosecutors in riot cases. It also states that police officers who took a neutral stand were transferred to insignificant postings (HT, 27.02.2012). Apart from Sreekumar and Bhatt, Rahul Sharma, a superintendent, has been charge-sheeted for giving details of the role of Sangh Parivar (the family of Hindu nationalist organisations) to the SIT without seeking permission of the state authorities. Vivek Srivastav and Himanshu Bhatt are two police officers who were transferred for trying to apprehend rioters (the former for arresting a Bajrang Dal leader and a VHP worker who were trying to foment trouble). 

In the immediate aftermath, when the atmosphere was still volatile, the Vishva Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Organisation) spoke of the Gujarat pogrom with pride, as ‘having shown the way’. Its general secretary Praveen Togadia spoke of Gujarat as an ‘experiment’. He said, “we will make a laboratory of the whole country. This is our promise and our resolve. If madrasas, the jihadi laboratory, are allowed to educate to kill non-Muslims, why can’t we have our own laboratory?... Gujarat has become the graveyard of secular ideology”. Let us, for a moment, even forget the links between BJP and the VHP – the militant Hindu nationalist organisation that facilitated the BJP's rise as a national-level party. What, then, was stopping Modi from banning the VHP for its incendiary remarks and its rabble-rousing? 

In a compassionate human being who was trying his best to stop a massacre, one would expect to find feelings of remorse, helplessness, and desperation. Portraying the people of Godhra as having ‘criminal tendencies’, Modi said that “... now they have done a terrible crime for which a reaction is going on”. Thus, instead of viewing the pogrom as morally reprehensible, he calmly portrayed it as a ‘natural’ reaction. If Modi is not guilty of engineering the massacres, he remains guilty of unabashedly condoning grotesque murder, rape and torture. As L.K Advani – then, the union Home Minister - admitted very openly, “... riots are a sad issue... [but].. the question of an apology does not arise”. In these ten years, Modi has not visited the victims’ homes, and has not apologised to the Muslim citizens of his state. Empathy and compassion seem to be singularly lacking in Gujarat’s strong leader.

Muslim victims have not been given the compensation they were entitled to. In many cases, the victims had neither home nor jobs to return to. Modi’s government has been very efficient in building roads, temples and Hindu business establishments over the ruins of Muslim homes. Muslim businesses in many areas have been taken over by Hindus. Even 10 years later, four families that survived the massacre at Ode - a municipality in the Anand district of Gujarat, where 47 Hindus, all Patels, killed 23 Muslims – say they feel safe only in the fields outside Kanbhaipura village. Fear and mistrust is still pervasive among the victims of Gujarat (Indian Express. 28.2.12). 

Many others still live in “transit” relief camps which have become ghetto colonies – evidence of permanent displacement. One such colony is “Citizen Nagar” - near Ahmedabad’s garbage dump at Pirana – where 183 riot-affected families have been re-located. Hindus and Muslims in Gujarat live separately and unequally. Last year, a senior academic from IIT Kanpur was forced to drop his plan of moving to the new IIT at Gandhinagar as he, being a Muslim, was unable to get a house on rent in the predominantly Hindu area where the IIT is located. A top official at IIT Gandhinagar told the Hindustan Times, “we even proposed to some societies that IIT will take the flat on rent but they bluntly said no Muslim family will be allowed to live in the flat”. 

Clearly, even if Modi himself did not have a ‘grand design’ to allow the massacre of Gujarati Muslims, he is culpable on several accounts. As the Chief Minister, he stands guilty in failing his primary responsibility to restore law and order and put an end to the violence – the riots continued for over six weeks. Moreover, Modi deserves strong censure for not condemning murder, arson, rape and torture during the pogrom. It is the very least one expects from a head of state. As the chief minister of Gujarat, he failed to show urgency in identifying the perpetrators and bringing them to justice, and has been unable to provide a sense of security to the victims of the 2002 violence, who continue to live in fear. Nor has he made any serious attempt to rehabilitate or compensate them. Narendra Modi stands guilty in his utter inability to show even an iota of sympathy and compassion.

Just as one can assume that the pogrom was beyond the Chief Minister’s control, one can talk of Modi’s inactions in terms of an ‘inability’ or him having ‘failed’. However, if one assumes that Modi is the shrewd, astute political leader he is made out to be – the one responsible for turning Gujarat into ‘Vibrant Gujarat’ with a GDP of 11%, one will find it extremely difficult to deny the role of choice and agency in Modi's actions and inactions related to the 2002 pogrom.




*RSS = Association of National Volunteers.




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Updated information

Naroda Patiya Verdict, Aug 2012 -



Naroda Patiya survivors and witnesses  face threats - http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article3392165.ece

Amicus Curae says proceed against Modi - http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article3393808.ece

The cast of characters changes from one SIT version to another. And so do the stories they have to tell - http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article3409329.ece?homepage=true (May 12, 2012)

Saturday 4 February 2012

An Elegy for our Education System


From Class V all the way to Class XII, my report card invariably had the same adjectives for me: ‘hardworking’, ‘conscientious’, ‘diligent’, ‘bright’, ‘intelligent’.  And the reason for that was that from class 5 onwards there was not a single year in school that I got below an average of 83%. I was often among the ‘top 5’ in my class. The CBSE wanted me to know everything in my text-book as anything could be asked in the exam. I figured that if I knew everything in the book, I could never go wrong. But even as a teenager, a part of me was aware that I was being rewarded, not for using my brain and thinking for myself, but for mastering a technique- the technique of cramming. 

Just for the record, home was where one mastered this art. School was definitely a place to socialise, fool around with friends, and perhaps poke fun at the teachers. Very little learning actually took place inside school premises.  The best teacher I ever had was a maths teacher who was a private tutor at home. Most of the teachers at school seemed to lack passion for the subjects they taught. In the 12 long years that I spent at school (not counting ‘nursery’) I was taught by approximately 30 teachers, only two of whom I found inspiring. 

Nevertheless, the system of education at the school level was convenient for me as it always yielded good results – a pat on the back from my teachers and friends, and a sense of personal satisfaction: I was a keen learner, always worked meticulously and was thrilled when it paid off.  

But as I grew older I became increasingly aware that our education system reduced knowledge to mere information that was to be memorised and absorbed. While a part of me enjoyed the compliments from teachers and friends, another (smaller) part resented that I was being praised simply for being an expert at memorising, recapitulating and reproducing information. I was being praised not for my insight or for the questions I raised but for how perfectly I regurgitated answers.

While this did worry me (and exasperated me- it was hard work, stuffing all that information into a small part of my brain), I also reflected on the fact that cramming had served me well all my life. It had got me 88-point-something in the 10th Boards and I was willing to fall back on it again for the 12th Boards, which, at the age of 17, seemed like a matter of life and death to me. An 85 could get one into St. Stephen’s College and falling short of the cut-off mark by .25 could condemn you forever to what everybody at least saw as a just little less impressive. Even if someone told you that it was “okay even if you didn’t make it to Stephens or LSR”, you would find it hard to believe that these same people wouldn’t be a little more impressed if you introduced yourself in the future as being from St. Stephens. The name mattered, and one cannot deny that at some small level it mattered for everyone – teachers, parents, friends, parents’ friends, friends’ parents. Apparently even universities abroad knew St. Stephens College but not the other colleges in Delhi University. If cramming got me the marks, I would rely on it. I was too scared to risk using my own brain.

And my well-honed skill of being able to stop myself from using my mind was rewarded again. After an interview that seemed to test my ability to withstand intimidation rather than independent thinking, I was offered admission to read History at St. Stephen’s college!

Delhi University claims to model itself on the Oxbridge System – combining lectures with tutorials. For each topic, one was given a reading list consisting of about 20 books and articles by different scholars, each giving their interpretation of history. Being unfamiliar with how one was to make this transition from school- where one studied one text-book for all topics in a subject - to College where we were assigned twenty books for one topic, some of the students asked a lecturer how one was to go about this. The answer was categorical: “you have to read each and every book and article, and there is no way around it”. 

How was I to read and know everything in these books and articles? I tried to read an article on archaeology and got thoroughly bored. How could I possibly read all twenty books when I couldn’t even go through one article! 

How was one supposed to read so much in such short a time? I had always read and made notes on everything in the CBSE textbook but how could one read every article as thoroughly? If one couldn’t read it thoroughly and understand each word, what was the point? How was one to make notes on ten hundred-page articles? How was it supposed to all fit together? The task seemed utterly daunting. But I found an easy way out: I just simply avoided reading and made myself busy with social life in College- there were new people to meet, and new things to be discovered!

But my awareness that, in school, I had always been lauded for my excellent ability to memorise and reproduce what Bipin Chandra said had happened in history grew stronger. And it was now turning into rather intense self-doubt. Since no teacher came forth to provide guidance, I dealt with it my own way: by losing myself in taking pleasure in the novelties of college life – the independence, the lack of emphasis on discipline, new people from different schools and even different colleges now ‘chilled’ together!  

My first year at Stephen’s brought me down from being a proud 80 percent-er to a 50 percent-er. And though I knew “marks didn’t mean everything”, I concluded that they did mean something. I knew the 80% in school did not prove my intelligence, but the 50% in college definitely was not helping my self-esteem. I decided to lose the treacherous ‘backbencher’ in me and bring back the ‘conscientious’ kid.

I attended every class, paid attention, took copious notes on whatever the lecturers said or dictated, read (definitely still not all of) the readings that were assigned, attended every tutorial and even ‘prepared’ for them. I realised that there was a technique to be learnt even in College. For most tutorials, one had to know the information that had been dictated in class as ‘notes’ and had to answer a sort of quiz based on it (if one hadn’t revised class notes, one could save oneself the awkwardness by raising some interesting questions of one’s own). For the three essays one had to write in a term, one merely had to summarise what a few of the major scholars had to say on the topic. Moreover, one was absolutely free to plagiarise from books and collude with ‘senior’ or fellow students! No one seemed to care very much about my opinion and judgement, and so I figured it didn’t matter what I thought (Who was I anyway?).

I passed out of Stephen’s with a first division, and came second in my class in my final year.

15 years of education in my country- first at a top-notch school and then at one of the best known colleges in India – tried very hard to make me believe that facts are more important than thought and imagination, that it’s more important to know the answers than think critically, that exams are more important than knowledge itself. Some may say that in College the majority of us chose the convenient way out and they are right: one could have gone through the trouble of coming up with an original and coherent argument, no one was stopping us. But the system did not seem to require it. One could be rewarded even if one chose the easy way out, so why not choose it?

And that is the saddest and most dangerous thing of all. Our system of education, even at the undergraduate level, does not encourage us - in fact, gives us every opportunity not to - think independently, critically, creatively or analytically. And so daily India produces citizens who lack the capacity to think for themselves and instead defer to some authority, who lack the ability to critically examine their own beliefs, habits, customs and traditions, who find it difficult to imagine what it is like to be in the shoes of a person who is different from them, citizens who live together but cannot deliberate or reason logically with each other, who do not know how to develop an argument but instead tend to express disagreement through assertions, diatribe or, worse, violence.


If one has somehow developed a capacity for critical thinking, this can be attributed to a conducive  environment at home, an intellectually adventurous peer group or a gifted teacher, an isolated figure in her department. One can be sure that one developed these skills in spite of our education system, and not because of it.







This article was published in The Hindu on April 25, 2012. Click on the link below to view it:   


http://www.thehindu.com/education/article3352093.ece