Role of the Central Government
1.1. The
complicity of the state government is obvious. And, the support of the
central government to the state government in all that it did is also by
now a matter of common knowledge.
1.2. The
entire country had been held to ransom by the vitriolic rhetoric around
the building of the temple at Ayodhya; the threatening statements by
leaders of the RSS, VHP, Bajrang Dal and the BJP kept communal
temperatures on the boil. It was in the midst of this surcharged
national climate that Godhra happened and the Gujarat carnage was
masterminded.
1.3. Within
hours of the Godhra arson, an organised carnage was planned and
ruthlessly executed over the next 72 hours in 15 of Gujarat’s 25
districts. It was apparent that thanks to the instructions from the
state government, the administration and the police stood paralysed as
the brutal massacres — Naroda Patiya and Gulberg society in Ahmedabad,
Pandharwada in Panchmahal and Sardarpura, Unhava and Kadi in Mehsana
apart from Nadiad – were clinically executed; yet the government of
India turned a blind eye. In a situation such as post-Godhra Gujarat,
when huge, organised mobs of the majority community were attacking the
minorities, when the state government and the administration sided with
the majority, it was a clear case of a breakdown of the constitutional
machinery in the state. The culpability of the central government in the
Gujarat carnage lay in its failure to invoke its executive powers
available under Article 355, read with Entry 2.2A of List 1 and Entry 1
of List II and Entry I of List III of the Constitution of India, to take
over the administration of law and order in Gujarat, and to send in the
Army under direct orders of the Centre.
1.4. At no
time during the Gujarat carnage did the central government and its
functionaries show any initiative or commitment to constitutional
values, impelling them to intervene and intervene swiftly and
effectively to end the violence.
1.5. Far
from invoking the provisions of the Constitution and performing their
constitutional obligations and duties, neither did the Prime Minister
nor the home minister even issue a stern order to the chief minister to
crackdown on the lawless elements.
1.6. Late on
February 28, after he had cancelled a scheduled foreign visit, the PM
met RSS and VHP leaders in the nation’s capital, not to discuss the
quartering and massacre of innocents in Gujarat, but to dialogue on the
Ayodhya issue! Later, the Cabinet Committee on Security met and merely
ordered the Army to be on alert.
1.7. The
attitude of both Shri Vajpayee and Shri Advani appeared to aim at
diverting the nation’s attention away from Gujarat, and directing it
instead towards Ayodhya and the happenings there.
1.8. The
conduct of the railway minister, who rushes to the spot whenever a train
accident takes place, failed in his duty to visit Godhra, to survey the
situation for himself and to order an immediate inquiry into the cause
of the fire. Questions about the fire in the railway compartment at
Godhra still beg for an answer. Who pulled the chain? How did the fire
occur? Surely this merited the urgent attention and immediate
intervention of the railway minister? Yet, to this date, the minister
has not visited Godhra. What explanation has he to offer for his utter
inaction?
1.9. The
conduct of the railway ministry related to the entire Godhra arson is
shocking. On February 27, as reported in The Times of India
(February 28), Shri Nitish condemned the attack on the Sabarmati Express
and asked the Gujarat government to take proper measures to ensure the
safety of railway property and passengers. Shri Kumar, who spoke to the
Gujarat chief minister on telephone in this regard, asked the state
government to take appropriate measures to ensure the smooth and safe
running of trains, from the capital without visiting the scene of the
incident.
1.10.
However, in the six months that have followed, Shri Nitish Kumar has
been distancing his ministry from the Godhra carnage on the ground that
what happened was not a ‘rail accident’ but a law and order issue. But
the very fact that the Railways made speedy ex-gratia payments to the
relatives of those killed and to those injured is proof that the
ministry indeed treated Godhra as any other ‘accident’ with a
difference: in many earlier rail accidents the ex-gratia payment has not
necessarily been so prompt.
1.11. In
fact it was not until the media made specific inquiries that the
internal Western railway reservation list of that day was made
available. From this, it is not at all clear if all those killed were
kar sevaks. Reservations for coach S-6 were made in Lucknow and not
Faizabad. The Gujarat government released the names of 39 of those who
died. Nineteen of the 58 dead have yet to be identified. One of the
passengers who suffered grievous injuries was a Muslim.
1.12. The
Prime Minister’s prevaricating statements, saying different things at
different times at different places, left everybody in utter confusion.
Had he already prejudged the situation and apportioned blame for the
Godhra arson to the Muslim minority or did he attribute guilt to the
goons from the Hindu majority who indulged in this carnage and brought a
bad name to the country in the international community?
1.13. On
February 27, hours after the Godhra tragedy, the PM said in Parliament
that from the preliminary reports it appeared that the incident was the
result of slogan shouting. On April 4, when he visited the Shah-e-Alam
Camp, he bemoaned the burning alive of women and children, the rapes and
killings and urged the Gujarat government to observe its duty. But only
a fortnight later, at his party’s national executive meeting in Goa on
April 22, he said the Gujarat carnage would not have occurred but for
the Godhra arson. Thereafter, he bemoaned India’s loss of face in the
international community. He termed the Gujarat carnage as "a blot on the
nation." His statement at his party’s national executive in Goa bears
mention. "Wherever there are Muslims, there is a problem… What happened
in Gujarat? If the passengers of the Sabarmati express, innocent,
unblameworthy, had not been deliberately burnt alive, Gujarat’s tragedy
(Gujarat ki trasadhi) could have been avoided. But this did not
happen. People were burnt alive. Who were they? Intelligence is
investigating but we still need to ask, how did this all happen? The
latter happenings should not be criticised till we understand who set
Gujarat on fire. Who lit the fire? How did it spread? Our country
is multi-religious, multi-linguistic. We believe in cooperation, we
believe in sarva dharma sambhav (respect for all religions). We
are proud of our secularism… From Goa to Guwahati, wherever I go, the
Indian is not a kattarwadi. Yeh maati ek hai (the Indian
is not a fanatic. This soil is one). But whenever I travel around the
world, our officials in all the embassies tell me, ‘militant Islam
raaste mein kaante bo raha hai’ (‘militant Islam is sowing thorns in
our path’). One Islam there is which is tolerant to all, that believes
in truth: samvedna aur daya sikhata hai (it preaches compassion
and mercy). But the kind of Islam being perpetrated in the world today
is a violent, intolerant Islam that has no room for tolerance." This
statement, made after the worst state-sponsored carnage against Muslims
post-Partition had been so cynically carried out, is unfortunate, to say
the least.
1.14. The
role of the then union home minister and now deputy Prime Minister, Shri
LK Advani appears to be patently partisan. His pat on the back for Shri
Modi, not once but on several occasions and his rejection of the state
government’s Forensic Science Laboratory Report (FSLR) as soon as it
appeared in the press, amounted to no less than his assuming the role of
a judge. His dogged refusal to acknowledge within the country that the
Gujarat carnage was an inhuman, shameful act on the part of the communal
elements among Hindus, yet accepting it as a blot on the country during
his foreign jaunt in England, makes people wonder whether he is a
spokesman of the party which he represents or the home minister/deputy
Prime Minister in the government of India? Is he simply a time server
when it comes to a foreign audience? What is inexcusable on his part is
the assumption of the role of both a lawyer holding the brief for Hindu
communalists as also of a presiding judge giving his verdict on the
carnage. When he rejected the state government’s Forensic Science
Laboratory Report, was he doing so on behalf of the Hindu communalists
or the central government? It appears that like Shri Modi, he too keeps
forgetting that he holds constitutional office and is not a Sangh
pracharak.
1.15. His
statements with regard to the entire carnage make people wonder whether
any impartial investigation is at all possible into the charges against
the accused, with him in charge of the home affairs of the country.
1.16. As
noteworthy was his reluctance to visit extensively, affected areas of
the post-Godhra carnage, immediately after it took place, despite the
fact that he is elected from the Gandhinagar parliamentary constituency
each year.
1.17. Shri
Advani is one of the leading figures in the central government who has
irresponsibly peddled the theory of a "foreign hand" behind the Godhra
arson without any proof; described Godhra as an "act of terrorism" and
the subsequent carnage as a "communal riot"; debunked the findings of
official investigations as contained in the FSLR; repeatedly praised
Shri Modi as "being the best chief minister India has seen in 50 years"
and lauded him as being the best example of "good governance"; and, most
dangerously, given a clean chit to indicted organisations like the VHP
and BD, who were openly gloating over the violence.(See
section on Annexures, Volume I).
1.18. It
needs to be recorded here that barely a few days after Rev. Graham
Staines, the Australian priest who had been working with lepers for
years, was torched to death along with his two young sons inside a jeep
in Orissa on the night of Jan 22/23, 1999 and Shri Dara Singh, a man
with clear links with the RSS/VHP and BD was named as the main accused
in the case, Shri Advani had shown similar partisan conduct when he had
said on the floor of the Lok Sabha, "I know these people (Bajrang Dal),
they will never do such a thing."
1.19. Shri
George Fernandes, the union defence minister, emerges from the entire
episode as a pathetic character. While he no doubt visited Gujarat
immediately after the outbreak of the violence to oversee the role of
the Army, and for which he undoubtedly deserves appreciation, it appears
he learnt nothing from whatever he may have surveyed. Had he done so, he
would not have made the statement that he did in the Lok Sabha on April
30. That statement not only added insult to the injury of those
brutalised by the pogrom but also undermined all human values. If a
minister of his rank and a politician of his experience chooses to liken
the mass instances of gender violence (perpetrated against 150-200 women
and girls) and the subsequent slaughter of most of them, as "nothing
new", it is sufficient indication of the seriousness with which the
whole carnage was looked upon by the central government. His attempt at
whitewashing his statement at a later stage made things even worse.
1.20. As the
union law minister, it was expected that Shri Arun Jaitley would have
more respect for the rule of law than Shri Modi. Instead, he showed
complete disregard for the basic human rights of innocent men, women and
children who fell victim to the carnage. He patted Shri Modi’s back, the
man who was the root cause of the massacre of humanity in the state of
Gujarat. His attitude was and is sufficiently representative of the view
and attitude of the central government to the entire incident.
1.21. In short, the inaction
on the part of the central government and the utterances of its
spokesmen occupying responsible positions show that not only had the
central government failed in its duty but it also had no intention to
discharge it at all. Contrast this conduct of the central government
with its prompt action after the Akshardham Mandir massacre. This only
shows that if the central government intended to take action, it could
have done so. The fact that the central government failed in its
constitutional obligations during the post-Godhra carnage is
indisputable. In the event of any international authority also indicting
the state government, which we believe to be inevitable, the central
government will have to bear a major share of the blame and will be
liable for censure.