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Please go to the above source for viewing this article in its entirety as it is copyrighted by Nicole Elfi OCTOBER 30, 2014 (scribd by Nicole Elfi): This is a postscript to The Godhra Riots: Sifting Fact from Fiction, July 2013, by the same author. In May this year, the people of India chose their Prime Minister. Over twelve years, several inquiry commissions -- the Tewatia Committee (2010), the Nanavati Commission (2008), the Special Investigation Team (2011) under the Supreme Court -- cleared Narendra Modi of all charges of having masterminded or, at least, encouraged the Godhra riots. This report by Elfi goes into the evidence and court cases and convictions of those responsible for the attack on the train in Godhra station which started the turmoil. Go to source above for full report. |
The Godhra Riots - Postscript: The Masterminds - Nicole Elfi
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The Godhra Riots
Postscript:
The Masterminds
Nicole Elfi
October 2014
Note
: This is a postscript to The Godhra Riots:Sifting Fact from Fiction, July 2013, by the same author.In May this year, the people of India chose their Prime Minister. Over twelveyears, several inquiry commissions — the Tewatia Committee (2010), theNanavati Commission (2008), the Special Investigation Team (2011) under theSupreme Court — cleared Narendra Modi of all charges of havingmasterminded or, at least, encouraged the Godhra riots.
1
Still, his detractors —politicians and ideology-driven activists in India, the US and Europe — havecontinued to label him “merchant of death”, “butcher”, “Nazi”, “fascist”,“murderer”, etc.Let us examine the facts and see whether they can point to the riot’s realmastermind.
On 27 February 2002, when a coach of Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhyawent up in flames at Godhra railway station, a Congress member of the Godhramunicipality, Haji Balal, led a mob and stopped the fire-fighting vehicle on itsway to the station. The fire crew reported that “he had been visiting the firestation at night for the past few days on the pretext of watching films ontelevision.” Haji Balal, a few days earlier, had the clutch plates of one of themain fire-fighting vehicles removed; in the second vehicle,
the nut connectingthe pipe to the water tank was spirited away.
2
Haji Balal who, according to locals, proudly proclaimed himself the “BinLaden of Godhra”, is among eleven people convicted for criminal conspiracyand murder and sentenced to death by a special fast track court in the high-security Sabarmati Central Jail in Ahmedabad on 22 February 2011.
3
The Godhra Riots — Postscript: The Masterminds / p. 2
Other Congress members were also “booked for the carnage”.
4
Theattack on the pilgrims was carried out “according to what was planned earlierunder the directions of [the late] Maulvi Umarji”,
5
a religious leader of theGhanchi Muslims of Godhra.
6
“All the acts like procuring petrol, circulatingfalse rumour, stopping the train and entering in coach S/6 were in pursuance ofthe object of the conspiracy,” concluded the Nanavati Report. “The conspiracyhatched by these persons further appears to be a part of a larger conspiracy tocreate terror and destabilise the Administration.”
7
“Destabilise the Administration”: Narendra Modi had assumed office asGujarat Chief Minister on 7 October 2001, four months earlier. Incidentally,Maulvi Umarji got a ticket to campaign for the Congress in December 2002 stateelection in Gujarat.In order to quickly gather a crowd of angry Muslims to the Godhrastation and attack the train, so that no one would guess who was pouring petrolin the S6 and S7 coaches, rumours that a Ghanchi Muslim girl had beenabducted by the Kar Sevaks were spread by the Jamiat-Ulema-E-Hind (JUH), along-standing ally of the Congress.
8
From the start of the crisis, Narendra Modi appealed to the people toremain calm and exert self-control. On five occasions between 27 and 28February, “CM addressed Media, Assembly and General public andeverywhere the genesis and intention was one and the same, to punish theculprits responsible for the Godhra incident in an exemplary manner, so that itdid not recur ever again.”
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He announced anex-gratia payment of 200,000rupees tothenextof kin ofthosekilled in the Godhra incident and ordered ahigh-levelinquiryinto theincident.
10
On 1
st
March, less than two days after the tragedy and while riots wereraging, Modi requested the chief secretaries of neighbouring states of MadhyaPradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan to send ten companies of armed policefrom each state to assist the government in “handling law and order situation”.As the sociologist and author Madhu Kishwar points out,
11
all three states thenhad Congress governments, and all three turned down the request.
Let us recall that the BJP-led NDA alliance had been in power at the Centresince 1998, confirmed by fresh elections in 1999. A 15-million-rupee campaign
The Godhra Riots — Postscript: The Masterminds / p. 3
by journalist-activist Teesta Setalvad and her husband Javed Anand, funded bythe Congress Party and Communists to “politically isolate the BJP”,
12
failed toconvince the Indian people, who voted the BJP to power. And the crusadershad to swallow the obvious — that the streets of India remained peacefulduring the NDA regime.
13
They however found a fertile ground in the US, especially with theevangelical lobbies.
14
On 1
st
April 2002 Teesta Setalvad created “Citizens for Justice and Peace” (CJP), an NGO “outsourced by the Congress to the job ofattacking Modi”, as Madhu Kishwar put it.
15
The activists approached theUnited States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), a U.S.government-funded body, with known roots in the evangelical movement,whose “original intention was to protect Christians around the world ... toreview facts and circumstances of violations of religious freedominternationally — and to make policy recommendations to the President,Secretary of State, and the Congress”.
16
Testifying before the USCIRF, TeestaSetalvad alleged that the BJP had conducted:
successful pogroms and attacks against the countries religiousminorities, ... recent state-sponsored Genocide of the MuslimCommunity in Gujarat ... Brutal destruction of life, through rape,quartering of bodies, urinating on them and incarcerating [
sic
] them sothat there is no trace or evidence of their remains ... desecrating over 270religious and cultural shrines belonging to the community ... throughsystematic planning and targeted action by armed militias ideologicallydriven by the vision of a supreme and exclusive Hindu rashtra (state). ...Over 2,000 lost their lives, 500 are missing and 250-300 girls and womenwere gang-raped before being quartered, burned and killed.
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This “testimony” from India is what fed countless self-styled humanrights organizations and intellectuals in India and in the West. They drank inSetalvad’s words and regurgitated them as articles and “reports” with aplethora of gory details.As regards the number of riot victims, invariably quoted in thousands,the then Police Commissioner P.C. Pande, in a statement to the SpecialInvestigating Team, declared,
... it was incorrect to say that 1000 people lost their lives in AhmedabadCity during the riots of 2002, whereas the actual number of deathsbetween February 28
th
2002 and April 30
th
2002 was 442, of whom 113
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