Godhra Revisited
“I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.” – Clarence Darrow
Had Godhra had not happened, Naroda Patiya would not have burned, Ehsan Jafri would not have been killed, the Best Bakery not destroyed and Bilkis Bano would not have been raped. Moreover, Modi would not have become the Prime Minister of India or Amit Shah the President of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
What happened at the Godhra Railway Station on the morning of February 27, 2002, when the Sabarmati Express, filled with Kar Sevakswas returning from Ayodhya, has never been explained. The station has gone into the annals of Gujarat’s and Indian history, changing the dynamics of the nation’s politics and society.
After the train stopped at the platform, slogans of ‘Jai Shree Ram’ rent the air, and there was a violent scuffle between a hawker and a Kar sevak on the platform. A little while later, the station witnessed one of the darkest events in contemporary Indian history. The fire in Coach S/6 killed 58 people.Who were the victims who died in the fire? Only four among them were reserved passengers. Nineteen remain unidentified.Thirty-five charred non-reserved passengers therefore were ‘identified’ by the government.
The aftermath of burning of Coach S/6, according to official sources, was 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus killed, and as many as 100,000 Muslims and 40,000 Hindus rendered homeless. About 130 are still reported missing. These are official estimates, the actual number is probably much more.
Several people were accused, and some even convicted. Like many such cases in India, it is also widely believed that the innocent have been convicted and the real perpetrators are still free. The various commissions of inquiry and investigative teams that probed the Godhra train fire failed to address the core issue that could have led to the whole truth.
The official account was that a large Muslim mob assembled on the railway tracks outside Godhra station, stopped the Sabarmati Express and launched a premeditated attack on Coach S-6, killing 58 passengers. The official chargesheet says one or more members of the mob boarded the coach and poured some 60 litres of petrol inside before setting it on fire. This dastardly attack in turn provoked a ‘reaction’ throughout Gujarat which claimed the lives of nearly 800 Muslims.Collective punishment and civic violence became the norm. While addressing party workers in Goa in 2002, Vajpayee regretted the Godhra killings, but added “Lekin aag lagayi kisne? (Who lit the fire?)”.When asked about the Muslims who had been massacred in the aftermath of the Godhra incident, Modi had justified, ”Kriya pratikriya ki chain chal rahi hai. Hum chahte hain ki na kriya ho aur na pratikriya (This is a chain of action and reaction. We want both the action and reaction to stop). Hollywood lyricist Gulzar wrote on the riots: “Sar nahin katey they, topiyan kati thi ke jinme insan they” (They didn’t cut off heads, they merely cut off caps in which heads were present).
The state could have prevented the rioters, but it seemed that the state stepped aside. Why Gujaratis killed fellow Gujaratis, the deliberate withholding of the state’s ability to stop violence, all point towards one theory. Once the administration signaled its passiveness, the killings began. The Gujarat violence happened because the government wanted it to. Godhra was just the excuse.The British had left us a system of neighborhood policing through which law and order could be imposed within 48 hours.This did not happen in many of the cities of Gujarat, especially in Ahmedabad and Baroda. The army was called and made to standby for 24 hours.
It seemed that the police force, the administrators, the district magistrates and the judiciary, were part of the same violent civil society. They took sides in the violence without instruction from above. There is reason to believe that this happened, as the Supreme Court moved most of the serious riot cases out of Gujarat and to the Bombay High Court.
When Rajiv Gandhi justified the 1984 genocide of Sikhs with his callous throwaway remark about the earth shaking when a big tree falls, it had evoked widespread revulsion. In Godhra too, we had a police force that was willing to let innocent citizens be attacked, and the chief minister and prime minister who offered post-facto justifications for genocide. In the Gujarat killings, it was first time that revenge was elevated to the status of moral code and official policy in such a blatant and sustained manner.
Coach S/6 was not there at the Signal Falia where I had seen it in the tenth anniversary of the incident. It had been removed from the original site and is now kept in a siding two kms away from the station, under 24-hour police surveillance, out of bounds for curious visitors. My early morning visit to the station and the small talk I made with the tea vendors and stall owners was noticed by the Railway police on duty. Two of them followed me as I walked the length of the platform. The Sabarmati Express was late this morning too, it had not arrived.
I made my way to the siding. Only after ringing up the top police official was I allowed near the coach. Seeing my camera, the constable pointed out the chalked scrawl on the coach, written in Hindi, “Tasveer khinchna mana hai” (Photography prohibited). I wanted to climb inside, but the entrances had been barb wired. The attached S/7 coach had been engulfed by creepers.
In spite of clean chit to Modi by all the courts, Sonia Gandhi still calls him “Maut ka saudagar”. Truth alone triumphs, and for India, truth triumphed gloriously when the people of Gujarat and India created history in the 2014 elections. Or did it? SatyamevaJayate!