The news-magazine Tehelka has done another spycam exposé, this time with conspirators involved in the Gujarat riots of 2002. The Tehelka website is full of very bold claims regarding the importance of the statements made in the video footage they’ve captured, and thus far they’ve put up three YouTube videos to back up the hype. One spycam interview, with Babu Bajrangi of the Bajrang Dal, is here:
It’s in Hindi (sorry, no subtitles; UPDATE: a close English transcript of the video is here). Much of what he says about his own role is fairly chilling. At the very least this particular guy should probably go to prison for a very long time (as of the present moment I do not know whether any charges have been filed against him … UPDATE: Babu Bajrangi has in fact done eight months in prison, and is now out on bail, according to Himal Southasian).
There are also interviews with Arvind Pandya here and Ramesh Dave here; I haven’t watched them yet, but I thought I would give the links for readers who may be interested. If anyone wants to translate telling lines or sections of the videos for the benefit of our non-Hindi speaking readers, I would be grateful.
Tehelka claims that its spycam videos prove definitively that Narendra Modi gave direct approval for the killings in 2002, but I’m not sure, yet, that they do that (my views may change as I dive further into this). The video I saw does seem to add to the argument, which has been made consistently by Modi critics since 2002, that the killings weren’t a random upwelling of popular rage, but rather akin to an organized pogrom.
It’s also worth noting that the timing of this exposé can fairly be said to be a bit questionable — state elections are coming up in Gujarat in the next few weeks. There Modi may be in trouble not with Congress or Left parties, but because of dissatisfaction within the Sangh Parivar; both the RSS and the VHP have expressed dissatisfaction with him, stating that they aren’t supporting him in these elections. In the end Modi may finally be defeated, not by Tehelka, but by the Hindu right itself.
Amitabh wrote:
His whole way of thinking, of looking at other humans belonging to a different religion, of wanting to do violence against those people…is something that he learned from fanatical Muslims themselves
That’s rich. The real culprits of the Gujurat pogrom — Muslims! They’re the ones that taught Hindus how to hate!
But to add some light, not just heat, to the discussion – is there something unusually violent about South Asia. Not just mega-violence like Gujurat, or Ram Janmabhoomi, but also the regular mob violence, like this summer’s mass rape in Dhanni Deeh (UP), where at least 17 Muslim women were gang raped in retaliation for a Muslim boy eloping with a upper-caste Hindu girl (again, communal violence mixed with misogyny). In the interests of communal balance, I’d note that the Mukhtara Mai case was a similar, if smaller, affair.
Compared to other, similar regions, the subcontinent is one giant Rwanda, always simmering, occasionally blowing up. Nigeria doesn’t have the same levels of violence, nor does Indonesia, Egypt, the Balkans, or other multi-ethnic states. And its certainly not just Muslim-Hindu — Mob violence is used against lower castes, tribals, shia versus sunni, and even occassionally between linguistic groups (see 1971).
So, a good topic for Sepiamutiny: Why are Desis such bloody awful people?
To get an idea on how other desis think you can also check comments in rediff.com on this subject where more than 1000 comments have been been filed.
http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/oct/25godhra.htm
Whatever happened in Gujrat was just unbelivable..but anybody who use incidences like these to trash hindus in India should ask themselves this questions and answer it honestly..
What would happen to all the hindus in India if the population ratio of Hindu and Muslims was reverse?
I totally agree with Pravin (#54).
I think the mob mentality isn’t restricted mostly to Indians. Look at the Nazis of Germany (Krisstal Nacht), the lynching mobs/KKK in the southern USA, and so forth. A mob uprising can take place anytime in any part of the world.
What is also sickening about the killing of innocent Hindus and innocent Muslims is that it took place in Gandhi’s ancesteral home.
I admitted to a generalization. Prove me wrong. I actually want to be proven wrong. All I am seeing so far is not a denial of my generalizations, but indignation that I am generalizing. I am sure there are quite a few Gujaratis out there that are opposed to what happened. But if I do not see any instances of denial, I am going to have to assume that such people are in a small minority. Give us some anecdotes, links. Anything to make me change my opinion.
Comparisons to Iraq war not valid. Iraq war is mostly collateral damage(which I do not condone either). Also, there is significant visible opposition to the war among Americans now. And even back then , there was a significant minority that hated Bush, Cheney and the neocons for their reckless policies. If you can show me there is significant dissension among Gujarati Hindus(at least the ones in America) on this issue, I will stop generalizing.
When I mentioned Gandhi’s home in my last post, I meant to say Gandhi’s home state. Sorry about that!
why do we have to always compare despicable events and measure which is worse? Iraq war was a calamity of major scale; but the violence that was unleashed in Gujrat was sickening at a very basic level that individuals who took part in it chose their victims with such precision, voter lists, last names, were all used to eliminate a community – that was a pogrom orchestrated at the highest level of the goverment. Sure, there were other riots where muslims took part in atrocities, but can’t we condemn something of this nature without strings attached? Doing that wouldn’t mean we tolerate muslim atrocities when they are committed.
Plenty of people are likely to criticize me (and Tehelka) for posting this, so it’s important to assert only exactly what we know to be true.
Well you did jump on this story once it was anonymously posted on the news section of your website and selectively interpreted it. You ignored the following testimony:
A few minutes later, the train left the platform. According to the train driver, Rajendrarao Raghunath Rao, he got a green signal at about 7:45am. “The train had started moving towards Vadodara,� says Rao in his statement, “when the chain was pulled at about 7:47am and the train stopped. My assistant driver and guard found that the chain had been pulled from coach numbers 83101, 5343, 51263 and 88238 and we informed the stationmaster about this through a walky-talky.� Throughout this time, the stone pelting continued from the direction of the platform. This is corroborated by both Pande, the army man, and another ordinary passenger, Amarkumar Jamnaprasad Tiwari, 19, who was travelling with his father, mother, sister-in-law and nephew from Uttar Pradesh, their native place, to Ahmedabad. According to Pande, “After running for about 30 to 40 metres, a chain was pulled and the train stopped. Thereupon more members of Bajrang Dal came running and boarded our coach [S-6]. At that time, there was normal stone pelting from the platform side.�
Tiwari too says the train had stopped moments after it left the platform. “I heard the sound of stone pelting on the coach,� he says, “and some stones had started coming into the coach through the windows.� Amidst this chaos, the railway staff managed to fix the chain pulling in the aforementioned four coaches and the train began to move again.
8:00am. After moving a short distance, once again a chain was pulled and the train came to a halt near Cabin A. The time is recorded by Assistant Station Master (ASM) Harimohan Meena who was manning the cabin. The driver, Rao, says he saw a 900-1,000 strong mob near Cabin A, pelting stones at the train. The stone pelting had obviously intensified and begun to break the window panes of coaches. Both ASM Meena and survivors of S-6 testify to this. Amarkumar Tiwari says that all through the time the train started and stopped for the second time, there was constant stone throwing from the left side. “On account of this, window panes had broken in our coach and my brother’s wife, my mother and I were hit by these stones.� Pande, the army man, says much the same. “When the train stopped for the second time about a kilometre from the station, there was heavy stone throwing from the left side. As the doors and windows of the coach were shut, a few panes got broken. Some passengers sustained injuries from the stones and had started bleeding.� . On going near the train, I found a mob of about 200 to 500 people running towards the train from the back and surrounding area. They were pelting stones.
Meena is silent on the issue in his statement to the police. TEHELKA’s undercover reporter decided to meet him posing as a research scholar. Meena � not aware that he was talking to a journalist or being recorded � said that when he came down and asked the mob why they were chasing the train, a few people from the mob replied that one of their people had been abducted by the karsevaks on the train. Meena also said that he heard a few in the mob suggesting that the coach be set on fire to drive people out of the coach. Rajendrasingh Rajput, also travelling in S-6 with his father, said, “A mob of about 100 to 150 people in the northern direction were throwing stones at the train. The people in this mob were armed with pipes, dhariyas and swords. As I came out through the window, they hit me on my leg, shoulder and hands with pipes and stones. My father had felt suffocated by the smoke in the coach. I had also sustained burn injuries on both my hands and ears. Thereafter, people from Godhra had taken me and my father to the Godhra civil hospital.� After getting down from the train, Pande says he saw “boys of 15 to 16 years of age taking rounds around the train. They were armed with iron rods and knives. On seeing them, I ran for about 70 to 80 feet. Then some of them surrounded me. By that time, I had sustained some injuries on my right hand due to the stone throwing. The boys were shouting, “Maaro… maaro.� I told the boys I was an army man. They asked for proof. I pulled out my warrant from my pocket. One boy, after seeing my warrant, told the others I was an army man and nobody should beat me. The other boys then asked for my name. The said boy read out my name, upon which the other boys said I was a Hindu and one of them hit me with an iron rod on my head. My head started bleeding and I felt dizzy. Then, the said boy, after driving away the other boys, dropped me on the main road.�
So even though it’s very possible that the fire itself was an accident there isn’t much doubt about the fate of the karsewaks were there no fire – they would have been killed or badly injured by the mob. And now those of you who would like to punish the few attackers and spare the innocents I’d like to ask how do you punish a mob of hundreds of people? How do you punish thousands who brazenly come out in the streets in favor of Bin Laden who has called for the destruction of Hindu India? Anyways this train fire incident until the anti-Muslim riot started is very typical of Hindu vs Muslim incidents of violence in post independence India. Always started by well armed Muslims where Hindus would end up being saved as the major victims only by the interference of the police which then is branded partial. We are not even talking about the hundreds of years of Indian hostory interrupted by mass killings, lootings of peaceful Hindus by invading Muslims. One of the worst happened right there in Somnath, Gujarat. Not to talk about the mostly one sided nature of the partition killings where Hindus again bore the most. Add to this the daily indignity, humiliation Hindus have had to experience at the hands of minority Muslims in Gujarat. Muslim dons terrorizing Hindu traders, brazen cases of sickening eve teasing of Hindu women in otherwise women friendly Gujarat, the no go areas where it’d be hard for a Hindu to come out alive of. So for hundreds of years when Hindus would just take it no one appreciated their calm instead they were mocked as grasseating cowards. So these riots were only partially premeditated. You know what is premeditated? Deliberate planning and massacre of chat eating and film watching women and children in Hyderabad or Mumbai local train commuters.
It’s easy to do that when you’re at a distance.
Exactly. If you lived in India you’d know that for the longest time it’s the non muslims who have felt threatened.
I am not accusing you of being anti hindu. I am accusing you of being against religious fundamentalism only selectively. I am shocked that Amardeep you for example didn’t find the almost murder of a fellow academic and intellectual Taslima Nasreen worth protesting by blogging. Maybe your logic is well everyone knows about Islamic fundamentalism. Not many know that even Hndus can be extremists. Which is true to an extent. But I think it’s you who has correctly pointed this out as ‘ competitive fundamentalism ‘ which is what exactly the relatively recent Hindu fundamentalism is. It’s a reaction. But they are still amateurs if the single digit casualties they allegedly caused in the Ajmer Sharif and Mecca Masjid blasts are any indication.
Everyone should be sickened by these killings of Muslims. But what will deter the endless violence against innocent people that is sanctioned by a religious ideology and wildly false grievances? And finally I’d like to keep the Shias, Ismailis, Sufis, Bohras, Ahmadiyas out of this. This is primarily a Sunni Wahabi problem.
For some people, the clock is still stuck in 2002.
M. Nam
Amardeep,
The aspersions you have cast on Tehelka for its timing are unfair. Any secularist knows that raking up these issues before the elections can only help the BJP (at least in a state like Gujurat). Tehelka has consistently been campaigning the secular cause, possibly it is your interest that has peaked before the elections.
The tensions and grievances that fuel these riots exist all across India, not just in Gujarat. Almost the entire Indian subcontinent has experienced centuries of muslim invasions and intolerance, which by the looks of it they don’t seem to feel bad about even one bit, if anything they gloat about it.
Amitabh,
It is a myth that Modi is good for Gujarat economically. If you look at personal income tax returns, Gujurat has seen a slowing down relative to it position amongst states in the past. “GDP” has been inflated by just one or two projects (e.g Reliance’s refinery). Gujarat has in fact lost out on many sunrise sectors such as IT, BPO, auto, textile etc, and is home only to polluting chemical units, owned by people residing outside the state and drawn to Gujarat due to lax environment laws.
This myth has been perpetrated by those eager for a fashionable reason to support the communalists. Such people are also likely to use a similar line for Hitler. Ask them if they know the names of the PMs of Japan of the ’60s and ’70s, when Japan experienced high growth. They would’nt, because they admire not GDP growth, but mass murder.
His whole way of thinking, of looking at other humans belonging to a different religion, of wanting to do violence against those people…is something that he learned from fanatical Muslims themselves…because this was never part of the Gujarati culture.
Wow!
His whole way of thinking, of looking at other humans belonging to a different religion, of wanting to do violence against those people…is something that he learned from fanatical Muslims themselves
This reminds me of the ‘you made me do it’ defense used by husbands who beat up their wives.
That’s right. there Muslims only kill Christians when someone draws a cartoon of Mohammad or someone remarked about how MOhammad would view the beauty contest.
Because people use history to point out the atrocities of Muslims over the centuries to justify the present attacks. I said using the same logic Dalits have a valid case on their side too. Dalits can muster a few people and go out and attack their upper caste neighbors because apparently their ancestors have mistreated or oppressed Dalits’ ancestors. It makes as much sense as the logic of taking revenge on Muslims now for the atrocities done by their ancestors a few hundred years back.
Simple, just look at the situation of Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh (because they are the regions that were part of India until recently). The same fate awaits the Hindus..
Narendra Modi fan group in Orkut(Namo :: Narendra Modi)
http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=16185057
Mr Narendra Modi Fan Club
http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=16884013
But you should sympathize Moornam. From your history of comments you seem to be stuck in 2001 after all.
I am not accusing you of being anti hindu. I am accusing you of being against religious fundamentalism only selectively. I am shocked that Amardeep you for example didn’t find the almost murder of a fellow academic and intellectual Taslima Nasreen worth protesting by blogging.
But I did blog about it here.
I really wish people would do simple searches on our search bar before they started throwing around these accusations of “double standards.” It’s all too predictable.
Hmm..there was post..but was there a protest in it :).. It seemed the gist was that secular’s are not partial. But I am sure there must be stronger example of protest against muslim atrocities on the blog…doing a simple search to find out.
There was a post on it a while ago.
The nasreen blog had a comment in it which speaks of the double standards in India today. And there were a mere 27 comments in all. Where did all our secularists go then?
Reaction to Gujarat incident was almost instantaneous – while Nasreen incident just made a good reality TV with no reaction from professional secular protesters.
I cant speak for anyone else here, but my take on this particular post is that we are not talking about a religion committing the crimes. This is distinct from some people committing horrible crimes in the name of religion or of the nation. This is a pivoting point of debates. when you speak of muslim atrocities, i take it you would Bucket 9-11 in this – and my take has been that it wasnt muslims who flew the planes into the buildings but terrorists who happened to claim themselves muslim.
Sit back and listen to the guy talking about ripping a baby out of a womb or read that guy richard talking about savaging the girl on the web site – were you to meet these people in a temple or share a room with them, would you care to break bread with them or let them hold your child. It may be melodramatic, but one must separate the individual from the community he claims to belong to, which is really a shell for his weaknesses.
The killing happened in 2002. This was a time when the nation was still recovering from Kargil. There were several reports of terrorism of ammunition dumps being blown up. Even throgh all this, muslim neighborhood in india never fly the Indian flag, but always fly a green islamic flag, which looks awfully like the Pakistani flag. This raises suspicions. Then you have reports of muslims burning women and children on a train returning from pilmgrimage. There was enough fuel and the train burning lit the match to create a mob. I wonder what the reaction would be if some muslims returning from mecca were burned by hindus in Pakistan. I suppose it would be similar to all the vandalism that happened to hindu temples after the ayodhya incident. Many hindu temples in pakistan were burned but it was not news as it was expected. I am not trying to justify the killings, just explaining the reasons. There is considerably less hate history between the Sunnis and Shia’s in Iraq, and a lot more bloodshed. Humans are clannish and mob mentality is innate.
If you are interested in volumes, thousands have been killed in J&K alone because they were Hindus, hundreds in Punjab, even in post Godhra Gujarat, a third of the people killed were hindus. I could name several other instances , but all this has nothing to do with the point I was trying to make. Godhra and the other incidents I mentioned had no trigger. In Godhra, it became quickly apparent that there would be no justice for the victims. Worse, the first reactions implied, and in some places stated, that it was the fault of the people who got burnt, and that the survivors should be arrested. The people who said this were actually lauded, and the careers were greatly enhanced.
The point I was trying to make was that, in effect, it has become socially acceptable to kill someone on the flimsiest of excuses (including Dutch cartoons and visits by the US president) simply because they are hindus – with no consequences or repercussions. Switch Hindus with any predominant community Can any of you imagine any other democracy accepting this situation?
The Tehelka interviews it is state in various places, that as a CM, Modi was powerless to do anything about the Godhra. The most he could do was inaction.
I feel powerlessness is the key.
The broken down state of the Indian law and order system, means that usually justice needs to be delivered in other ways. This is not necessarily violent — this could be done by highlighting the injustice done, by a real show of contrition by the perpetrators and everyone associated with them in one way or the other, a full compensation of the victims and strong measures to ensure that something like the event never happens again.
The state should have been allowed to use the measures it usually takes in going after, say, the naxalites or the mafia. The Godhra killers should have been rounded up and shot. The careers of the killers’ apologists (Teesta, Azmi, et al) should have suffered at least as much as Churchill Ward’s
Suzy: Even in the Tehelka interviews, no-one has accused Modi of organizing the riots or ordering the police to kill Muslims. Gujarat did confront its actions. The government was dismissed as it did not uphold its responsibility to maintain law and order and every detail was printed in the press (Tehelka has not revealed anything new). In the 5 years since there have been other attacks against Hindus in Gujarat (such as Akshardham), and Muslims have been protected against retaliation by Modi and the Gujaratis. Muslims have not been excluded from the social programs and the infrastructure initiatives that the Modi government has launched since then. This election is not about the riots and whether Modi’s (in)actions should be punished. That is what the 2002 elections were all about.
This election is about development and clean government Vs Identity Politics. Where do you stand on that? (If you are truly secular the answer should be clear, even if you don’t like it)
this is quite incorrect. mob violence was a regular feature of many “now-developed” polities. actually u.s. history until recent times is littered with it (as is western european history). in contemporary times, nigeria and indonesia are actually a lot like india in this respect. mob violence and religious riots have been a regular feature of southeast asian societies at least until the 1980s (actually religious anti minority riots led to the so called bumiputera policies in malaysia). there are many studies linking the level of violence to the level of continuing economic development; the relationship is not monotonous. violence seems to increase at intermediate levels of growth and decrease after a point. so the subcontinent is not unique (but given the larger population, these things happen more often and we hear about them more). the really interesting comparisons are actually within india. there are some interesting regional variations that deserve study (there are plenty of works on this; check out some authors such as ashutosh varsheney, paul brass, and steve wilkinson).
The Hindu right in India disgusts me. Speaking about the Godhra incident, the guilty should have been arrested and the law should have taken its due course. Instead the event was used by the Gujarat’s state Government led by the BJP and their goons to ethnically cleanse the muslim neighhorhoods. That was inexcusable.
Ordinary Gujuratis who were not directly involved in the looting and killing but were responsible for electing Modi again are culpable too. I also do not agree with the sentiments expressed here by many of the BJP apologists here that Hindus are oppressed in India. The sad thing for India is that BJP and their venomous platform has such a following among educated and well to-do Hindus.
So that is what it is all about. Hindu right, Ordinary Gujaratis who voted modi and BJP and its following amongst educated Hindus. Thanks for pointing out the problem.
You are welcome. I appreciate your snark, but can you illustrate the point you are trying to make.
Especially the people that didn’t survive 2002.
this i believe is a very real and almost primal fear that drives a lot of moderate people to support extremism – (ps: not saying this is an excuse for killing, NOT AT ALL) i am just trying to see the mechanisms at work here. it works (it = the idea that your culture, your religion, your way of life is going to be driven to extinction) even when used by islamic fundamentalists to garner support.
For some people, the clock is still stuck in 2002.
Yes, but did you know that the Muslims invaded and killed a lot of Hindus in 1437?
Dude, there is no justice for anyone who doesn’t have connections in India. This has nothing to do with religion. If some Congressi or BJP gunda beats me up, do you think I can do anything? If I file a case against someone, can I hope to see it completed in my lifetime? This is not a hindu-muslim problem, it is a law and order problem. The same logic applies in large scale killings.
Because only they have the time to worry about past grievances. The average Indian has more than enough present grievances to worry about.
I am a Gujarati, and like the rest of 55 million Gujaratis my response to this tehelka bullshit will be to line up outside the polling booths on election day and vote for Narendrabhai Modi.
Judicial reform is way overdue in India. Cases languish in courts for years. Sakshi makes a good point here. You do feel powerless in India whether you are a hindu or a muslim, if you don’t know the “right” people. If you have the right connections you can quite literally get away with murder. It is pretty sad to see people serving jail terms being elected to the Loksabha.
I guess this is completely off the topic we are discussing. Sorry for the digression.
The same ordinary Gujaratis will vote once again for Modi. What do you intend to do then ? Send them to jail ? All 55 million of them ?
Would it make you doubly sad to note that not just the educated and well-to-do, but 40% of the Indian electorate suppported BJP and its allies in the 2004 election (in an election that BJP lost) ? 40% of India’s population or 475 million people support BJP. What do you say to that ?
Ok, I read the whole report. Tehelka rocks!
Thanks, Yoga. If you live in India, you get used to that feeling of powerlessness. Anyone remember the case when one of Prime Minister Vajpayee’s relatives was thrown out of a moving train, and died? No one gave a damn until it was discovered that he was related to Vajpayee . Suddenly a massive manhunt was launched, and the murderers caught. The media covered it for weeks, like it was the first time something like this happened. There was no justice for the poor karsevaks who died at Godhra, because they were poor. If one of them had been an MP’s bhateeja, rest assured something would have been done. It is not a hindu-muslim problem: it is a problem many Indians face everyday.
The video reminded me of Javed Mir AKA “Bitta Karate”, who between them killed more than two dozen Kashmiri Hindus, raped many Kashmiri Hindu girls, and confessed to all in an interview. the latter on BBC’s Hard Talk[Link below. please scroll down]. They were also the instigators for the ethnic cleansing of the Kashmiri Hindus from the land of their ancestors. I am compelled to wonder, why the left leaning Indian-American intellectuals never seem to discuss the largest displacement of Indians post 1947.
the link for # 140
http://www.radiokashmir.org/video/politics.html
Al Chutiya #133,134
Really wow, I am not even sure where to begin, this just proves that people don’t think before typing. If hindus are mass murderers it is because Muslims did something centuries ago or there are some hard line muslims. I am too shocked to react.
brown: I was being facetious
Most people who defend Modi will never understand, what it means to be a terrified minority living in India. The fear is constant. If it’s the “green flag” outisde Kashmir, which gets you a riot, it’s expressing support for the Indian Cricket team in Kashmir [INDIA], which could get you beaten to death. If anybody understands the Gujarati Muslim’s pain, it’s us Kashmiri Hindus. And, yet, we are treated differently by the egg heads.
Many many Indians are proud, and apologise for what is done by their politicians, killing, rape, of children, women and men, in the name of their religion. Just read the obfuscatory posts by dizzy desi, ‘Raj’, moor nam, Indian. Blood on your hands. Pathetic, small and wicked.
Many of these people live in the West. If someone launched a campaign of racist hate of Hindus, including advocating burning down temples, raping Hindu women, setting Hindu men on fire, they would scurry to the police and demand action. Back in the motherland, they apologise for, and often actively encourage, this kind of thing towards Muslims (and others). Lovely people eh?
See link for Transcript of Javed Mir Interview, in which he confesses to the killing of Hindus. Btw, he, too, is not in jail.
oops, here is the link
http://thekashmir.wordpress.com/2006/10/25/bitta-karate-ravana-of-kashmir/
That should be Yogi, not Yoga.
ALC,
I was agreeing with you and I meant 113 and 114, oh the irony of not proof reading:)
Don’t worry about it Sakshi.