'Secular' in Delhi, 'communal' in Gujarat?                                     

On May 26 Special Investigation Team (SIT) chief R. K. Raghavan appointed by the Supreme Court to look into the alleged role of the Gujarat chief minister Narindra Modi in the 2002 Gujarat riots did not rule out questioning the chief minister as part of its inquiry.

When a section of industrialists flung the name of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as the prime ministerial material, an important English daily published from Delhi was quick to paint him as "a deeply divisive figure, the real motivator of the orgy of anti-Muslim violence that rocked Gujarat in 2002 while he was the chief minister..." 

There were anti-Sikh riots in 1984. So were the 2002 riots in Gujarat. Both have many similarities. Yet our secular, liberal media and intelligentsia never tried to see the two in the right perspective to treat the two in the same light as unfortunate human tragedies and to provide justice to the aggrieved and the bereaved in an equal manner.

Similarities

The turbulence in both the instances was triggered by a provocation and instigation -- the 1984 anti-Sikh riots by the unfortunate, inhuman killing of the then Prime Minister, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, by two of her own security guards who happened to be Sikhs. In Delhi and elsewhere hundreds of Sikhs were butchered in cold blood. Women widowed, children orphaned and bread-earners snatched before the eyes of their families. Their only crime was that they too belonged to the Sikh community from which the two Indira killers came from.

The Gujarat riots were triggered by the burning alive of 59 karsevaks in a train at Godhra. The Sikhs are as much a minority as are the Muslims, though the latter command a greater percentage of the country's population.

Last update : 31-05-2009 19:41

Keywords : A Tale of Two Riots, Amba Charan Vashishtha

Average user rating

   (0 vote)