MUSLIMS IN MODILAND
The Truth Behind The Stage Show Personal sketches. Disturbing statistics.
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On 14 SEPTEMBER, a few days
after the Supreme Court order on Zakia Jafri’s plea, Gujarat Chief
Minister Narendra Modi announced a sadbhavana fast “to strengthen
Gujarat’s environment of peace, unity and harmony”. At the brightly-lit
Gujarat University convocation hall in Ahmedabad, Modi praised his
government’s efforts at upholding satya, shanti and sadbhavana since
2001, how it has managed to get investment even as vested interests
attacked it constantly, and tried to evoke Gujarat’s progress and
prosperity with the metaphor of a train — that mothers of youngsters
coming to Gujarat sleep peacefully once they hear that the train their
child is travelling on has entered the state.
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At the fast, dozens of Bohra Muslims — the men in white-and-golden caps and their women in ridas — filled the central row. They spoke of how they had come from Jamnagar, Surendranagar and Rajkot, taking turns to attend the three-day fast. Muslims from Juhapura and Porbandar, led by former BJP MP Baburam Bokhiria, who has been in and out of jail on charges of illegal mining of limestone, were also present. On the stage, Bohra priests, sadhus, heads of the four Swaminarayan sects, priests of churches and gurdwaras presented a picture of communal harmony.
The fast is only the latest
in Modi’s public posturing and coating what goes in Gujarat with the
patina of good governance. A few days earlier, speaking at a function
organised by the Ajmeri Education Trust in Ahmedabad on 4 September,
Modi had exhorted Muslims to join the ‘mainstream’ and peppered his
speech with ‘education’ and ‘inclusive development’.
His recent speeches have been in sharp
contrast to 2007 when he spewed venom at Muslims in poll rallies,
taunting them with phrases like “hum paanch hamare pachees”.
Some commentators have analysed the shift in his stand as the compulsion
of appearing palatable as a pan- India leader. Others see this as more
insidious, a change of tactics in his communal politics — that beyond
merely labelling any discourse on equal treatment of Muslims as
‘pseudo-secular’, he has now shifted to ‘secular-speak’. He offers
‘development’ to Muslims but with caveats — forget the past, minimise
your demands for justice, and drop your religious identity.
Is Modi’s claim hyperbole, or does it
translate into fair governance? Is his government even delivering on
what he boasts of? Do Muslims really have equal opportunities and
infrastructure? Modi has won successive elections in Gujarat since 2002
even while his role in the riots was under probe by the Supreme
Court-appointed Special Investigation Team. How do Muslims negotiate
their rights as citizens with a government that has refused to even
acknowledge the extent of the pogrom?
Rakhial is a lower middle-class
neighbourhood located 5 km north of Maninagar, Chief Minister Modi’s
constituency in east Ahmedabad. Of the three large housing colonies
located here — Sukhram Nagar, Shivanand Nagar and Sundaram Nagar —
Muslims live in the third. Built as a mixed colony in the 1970s, it
became a ghetto after the 2002 riots.
National Highway 8 cuts through the
settlement and Hindus and Muslims on either side of this refer to it as
the “border”, a term common in several other Gujarat neighbourhoods
where the two communities live cheek by jowl. Besides this road that
cuts through the colonies, a sharp contrast of infrastructure separates
the Hindu and Muslim neighbourhoods; a contrast most telling and
disturbing in the condition of government primary schools for which the
state provides land, buildings and funds for maintenance and facilities
like libraries.
A dilapidated structure with a tin roof
broken at several places serves as the municipal primary school for 600
children in Muslim-dominated Sundaram Nagar. One part of this rundown
building serves as a Gujarati medium school up to Class VII. At the
other end, a tin-covered structure open on all sides is used as a
classroom to teach Urdu to over 200 students in Classes I to IV. Less
than 2 km away, in the same municipal ward of Rajpur, a three-storey
building serves as a Gujarati medium school up to Class VII in
Hindu-dominated Shivanand Nagar. Sukhram Nagar has a Hindi medium school
up to Class VII that is a three-storey building with stone mosaic work
depicting Hindu goddesses.
“Those living here cannot afford to send
their children to private schools and the government takes no
responsibility to improve the school,” says Sheikh Ahesan, in his
mid-20s, who started the Student Welfare and Education Trust in 2007.
Ahesan and his friends have provided floor mats to kids in the Sundaram
Nagar municipal school. “Anyone could stand a fair chance by studying
and looking for work in the private sector. But how will these children
reach there when they do not get to go to a half-decent primary school?”
asks Sheikh Usmaan, a member of the trust.
Muslim families living in Rakhiyal narrate
countless struggles to get benefits such as educational loans. “For my
MBA admission, I went with my uncle to ask Dena Bank for a Rs 1.25 lakh
loan. They asked for collateral and discouraged me from applying. Then I
got aid from a Muslim trust,” recounts Sheikh Shehzaad. The Central
scheme he is referring to is one of the key proposals adopted after the
publication of the 2005 Sachar Committee report that mandates banks to
give educational loans up to Rs 4 lakh without any collateral to
students from poor minority families.
“The bank is asking for income tax returns
and PAN card. Where will we get this from?” asks Ghori Firdaus, a
homeopathy student, about her experience at the State Bank of India that
moved its branch from Sundaram Nagar to the Hindu-dominated Odhav area
across the road after 2002. It is to help students like Firdaus, whose
father is an autorickshaw driver, that the scheme has flexible rules —
the family’s income certificate and an affidavit certifying religion
from the Collector’s office are suffice to qualify. “We are able to pool
small amounts among ourselves to help these students but some months,
especially during admission time, we don’t know what to do because we
cannot risk rejection by these banks,” says Shehzaad.
Principal Secretary, Education, Hasmukh
Adhiya says he cannot comment on the details of the policy
implementation but the department has taken steps where gaps had been
brought to its notice. He points out that the government is building a
secondary school in Juhapura on the western outskirts of Ahmedabad. “Dr
Tripathi made a representation that Juhapura does not have a government
school. So we have given permission to start one,” says Adhiya,
referring to a request by Prof Vipin Tripathi of IIT-Delhi, who has been
working to improve government education facilities in Juhapura since
2008.
A key finding of the Sachar Committee report
was that drop-out rates are highest among Muslims. Their mean years of
schooling are lower than SCs and STs at a little over three years. In
2008, the Centre started a scholarship scheme for minorities, to be
shared in a 75:25 ratio between the Centre and state to encourage
students from poor families to complete schooling. Since the scheme
started, Gujarat has let the funds lapse by not sending any proposal to
the Centre for giving these scholarships.
At first, the state government found faults
with the scheme saying this targets religious minorities and is
discriminatory on “principles of equity and financial implications”. The
Gujarat High Court settled this question when it recognised the Central
scheme as constitutionally valid in March 2009. This April,
contradicting its own stand in an affidavit filed in response to the PIL
in the high court, the government cited a scholarship for minorities
that has existed in the state since 1979. It said, since this scheme
exists, there is no need for implementing the Central scheme.
The state government added another argument
in the affidavit. It said executing the Central scheme for a limited
number of students — the Ministry of Minority Affairs (MMA) calculated
52,260 scholarships on the basis of population and income levels among
Gujarat’s minorities — will cause “heartburn” among those minority
students who do not enjoy the benefits.
But who is stopping the state government
from covering the remaining students using additional funds? MMA data
shows that in 2010-11, a less developed state like Rajasthan disbursed
more than double the year’s target of 60,109 scholarships. Bihar also
disbursed more than double its target of 1,45,809 scholarships. Uttar
Pradesh disbursed over 130 percent of a target of 3,37,109, and West
Bengal — that has one of the highest proportion of Muslims — disbursed
400 percent of its target of 2,22,309. In all these instances, state
governments have increased their allocation because of the high quantum
of applications; the Centre has matched their funds bearing 75 percent
of the total cost.
“The matter is sub judice, I cannot
comment,” says Sunaina Tomar, Principal Secretary, Social Justice and
Empowerment, when asked why Gujarat, a state that this January boasted
of money worth a third of India’s GDP coming in as investment, could not
do likewise.
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THIS FEBRUARY, Abusaleh
Shariff of the National Council of Applied Economic Research, Delhi,
used National Sample Survey Organisation data to calculate that in
Gujarat, only a fourth of Muslim children who started school finish
matriculation. He calculated that urban Muslims in Gujarat are eight
times poorer than uppercaste Hindus. This is almost twice the gap
between Hindus and Muslims on an average nationally.
Muslims’ work participation rate in
manufacturing and organised sectors in Gujarat is 13 percent compared to
the all- India average of 21 percent. “Gujarat has had better
infrastructure such as roads and electricity since the 1960s. As a
Muslim, I may prefer to live there than in a poorer state. Does that
mean there is no economic discrimination? There is deep-rooted poverty
among Muslims compared to other groups,” says Shariff, who is one of the
key authors of the Sachar Committee report.
Besides scholarships and school
infrastructure, other means of economic mobility such as loans and
financial access are outside the grasp of most of Gujarat’s Muslims.
Shariff’s analysis showed that in Gujarat, Muslims hold 12 percent of
all bank accounts, which is proportionate to their population in the
state, but their bank loan amount outstanding is 2.6 percent. This means
even when Muslims have accounts, they don’t get loans.
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The same lack of access reflects in the data
from the State Level Bankers’ Committee (SLBC) that looks at
implementation of financial inclusion norms. SLBCs monitor priority
sector lending, i.e., lending to groups such as farmers and minorities.
In 2008, the Centre mandated that minorities should get a 15 percent
share of 40 percent that constitutes priority sector lending. In
Gujarat, this has hovered around 2-3 percent. In other words, of every
Rs 100 of financing, Rs 1 - Rs 1.5 goes to minorities,and of this, a
part to Muslims.
“Last month, I met with Muslim entrepreneurs
from Dholka. All they wanted to know was about loan subsidy schemes
sponsored by the Centre. For an entrepreneur, this should not be the
main concern. What can banks do if these people lack vision?” asks JM
Patel, assistant general manager, Dena Bank SLBC.
Colonies built to resettle riot victims at
Panderwada, Lunavada and Boru village near Kalol resound with stories of
struggles to get small loans of Rs 75,000 - Rs 1 lakh to set up corner
shops or buy autorickshaws.
The Gujarat Minorities Finance and
Development Corporation Limited (GMFDL) was set up to finance small
entrepreneurs and provide educational loans. It has not given any loans
since last April because repayment rates were so low that the Centre
stopped sending funds.
Officials admit this is in sharp contrast to
states such as Kerala and Karnataka where repayment rates are over 90
percent but take no responsibility for the dismal plight. “The Centre is
biased against Gujarat’s Muslims and that is why it has stopped sending
funds,” says GMFDL Chair-man Imtiyaz Pathan, a man appointed by the BJP
this year after the post lay vacant for the past six years.
THE MODI government
shuffles its feet when it comes to doing what it is legally obliged to
do — providing education and loans, the two most fluid avenues for
change and improvement, to Gujarat’s Muslims. What is the way to the
mainstream paradise it promises?
On the other side of the city is Juhapura in
west Ahmedabad. The area was developed as a colony to rehabilitate
flood victims in 1972. It was a mixed neighbourhood till the 1990s but
Hindu Dalits and Bhois moved out after communal violence broke out in
1992. Juhapura is now Gujarat’s largest Muslim ghetto, home to affluent
Muslims — businessmen, builders, retired IAS and IPS officers and
journalists. Juhapura is proof of how even money is not a conduit to
access for Muslims. Any conversation seems to suggest normalcy but probe
a bit and there is a deep sense of alienation and disappointment; a
resignation that they have to make do without expecting any cooperation
from the government.
“There is no municipal water supply, so we
had to dig borewells for children to be able to drink water,” says
Asifkhan Pathan, who manages Crescent School. The ghetto, which has a
population of more than 3 lakh, has only four government- aided schools.
woefully short to accomodate over 3,000 incoming students in Class I
every year.
“I tried to advertise discounted medical
packages on Snapdeal, an advertising website, but a manager turned it
down saying he didn’t think any of his users would visit Juhapura,” says
Dr Saquib Sheikh, who runs a hospital in the neighbourhood.
Juhapura residents complain that areas
dominated by Muslims have been blacklisted by banks for issuing credit
cards. In a telling example, a bank officer was denied a credit card by
his employer. “I was surprised when my credit card request was turned
down because I work in this bank. My colleagues hinted that I should not
expect it to have worked when I have a Juhapura pincode in my address,”
says the mid-level private bank officer, on the condition of anonymity.
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Scientist Dr HN Saiyed has a similar story
to tell. In 2004, an SBI employee approached him with an offer of a
credit card when he was living in government accommodation in
Hindu-dominated Maninagar. But his application was turned down after he
moved to Juhapura postretirement a few months later. “On the phone, a
bank officer expressed embarrassment about the incident and tried to
explain it as a mistake by the junior staff. I withdrew my application. I
did not want to try a second time,” says Saiyed who was director,
National Institute of Occupation Health, a medical research body, till
2004.
Gujarat boasts of more than 90 percent paved
roads to remote villages, 98 percent electrification, 86 percent piped
water supply and the best of infrastructure in India. But Juhapura has
no streetlights, water supply or internal roads. Residents have
regularly paid property and water taxes since Juhapura was merged with
Ahmedabad municipal limits in July 2006. Those who can afford it have
built borewells and paved roads for short stretches.
Residents filed a PIL in the high court, the
route that seems to be the most common recourse for groups working for
Muslims’ rights. They demanded water and sewage facilities and made
several representations to the Urban Development Department. After an
interim high court order, the government began providing water to
Hindu-dominated Sankalitnagar in 2008. However, Muslim-dominated areas
such as Gyaspur, Makarba, Juhapura and Vasna are yet to get these
facilities.
“Nothing has changed over the past three
years. Now that the Assembly election is approaching, and Modi is
focussing on Muslim votes, maybe some things may change,” says lawyer
Girish Patel, who is representing Juhapura residents in the high court.
“Harassment, discrimination — everything remains the same. The only
difference is that Modi has terrified Muslims and they have lost their
ability to speak against public wrong.”
The senior lawyer’s analysis is shared by
Farooq Mohammed Sheikh, an autorickshaw driver living in Shah Alam,
where more than 15,000 riot-affected families stayed in 2002 for over
six months. “Modi is responsible for two things — in the Hindus, he has
sown the fear that without him to watch their backs, the Muslims would
slaughter them, and the Muslims, he has managed to terrorise anyway
since 2002,” says Sheikh. “We have become very afraid of the police; who
knows under what case they will have us arrested. Such is the fear that
our boys do the namaaz on their own.”
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Juhapura is the constituency where BJP
nominated the most high-profile of its 12 Muslim candidates in last
October’s civic polls. AI Saiyed, a retired IPS officer, was in the
middle of his speech when a pot was hurled at him from a window in the
Royal Akbar housing society. Saiyed was unhurt but he gets a little
fazed when talking about the incident. “They are in the grip of the
Congress leadership. Their problem is illiteracy; all they want is alif beh the,”
he says at the Waqf Board office in Gandhinagar. He was made board
chairman after he lost the poll. “They come now and complain that they
have no facilities in Juhapura. I tell them this is your nemesis.”
Muslim businessmen owning dealerships and
retail stores say they do negotiate concessions out of local BJP
functionaries and leaders. They describe instances where they have got
help for permissions, licences, in some instances even permission for
religious processions. But they add that BJP functionaries do this on
the sly, not comfortable being openly associated with Muslims as their
political constituency.
Trader Usman Qureshi, who was part of a
group of Muslim leaders, businessmen and core members of the chand
committee led by Shabir Alam, the Pesh-i-Imam at Ahmedabad’s Juma
Masjid, met Modi this April. “Initially the discussion was going OK but
when we mentioned school scholarships for minorities, Modi started
calling them discriminatory,” Qureshi says at his small automobile parts
shop in Mirzapur. “When we requested that Urdu poet Walli’s tombstone,
that was destroyed in the riots, be restored, he refused to acknowledge
it had ever existed. I came back feeling embarrassed, like I had lost
face.”
Others within the community react to
experiences like these with little patience. They compare them to power
brokers like Bohra Muslim clergy or businessman Talha Sareshwala, who
owns a BMW dealership in Ahmedabad and regularly praises Modi
government’s largesse to Muslims. They say this inability to negotiate
their demands without obliterating their identity as Muslims is what is
at the core of their discomfort with the BJP.
“Things were no better under the Congress
but with the BJP, we feel uncomfortable in saying that we are Muslims
and we are equal citizens,” says social worker Hanif Lakdawala. His NGO
Sanchetna has been struggling to get basic amenities for 90,000 Muslims
who moved to the Bombay Hotel area after the riots.
A few hours after Modi began his sadbhavana
fast invoking his government’s glory of having rebuilt quake-hit Bhuj in
half the time estimated by the World Bank and the success of its
biennial investment summits, a crowd gathered around a pool of stagnant
water in the Bombay Hotel area. They curiously watched as a JCB made
slow, unsure attempts at removing waste that has waterlogged lanes and
house plots for the past four months.
“There are no gutters, we get only brackish
water. They burn the waste and our house fills up with smoke,” says
Afsana Bano, who moved from Naroda Patiya to this colony adjacent to an
open landfill after she lost her brother in the 2002 riots.
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A FASCIST has many faces.
Like Hitler had a dream, a vision, now Modi has a dream. Why is he doing
all this 10 years late? None of this will translate into any benefit
for Muslims except a few who show sadbhavana with him on his stage,”
says Shah Navaz, who has volunteered with the Bombay Hotel community
since 2002. Shah Navaz has a reason to be angry. He believes that the
Modi regime’s mistreatment of Muslims is not just limited to playing
truant on providing basic amenities but is part of an insidious
discrimination evident in how this government flouts its constitutional
responsibilities.
Shah Navaz, who belongs to the Rangrez
community — traditionally nomadic dyers — is one of the several OBC
Muslims who had to drop out of college in the middle of the academic
session when the Department of Underdeveloped Tribes (DUT) cancelled
their certificates entitling them to 27 percent quota for socially and
educationally backward classes (SEBC).
“I had completed seven months of my B.Ed
training course on an SEBC seat when the DUT sent a letter saying they
recognised the Gujarati word ‘Galiyara’ for dyers, but not Rangrez. When
I met DUT Director KG Vanzara (brother of encounter specialist DCP DG
Vanzara) in Gandhinagar, he taunted me by saying ‘Quran’s first aayat,
sur-e-fateha, asks you to come into the light, why don’t you?” recounts
Shah Navaz, who is in his early 20s. His admission was cancelled when he
was just two months away from getting his degree.
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Traditional weavers Julaha Ansaris are
fighting the same battle against the Modi regime’s sleight of hand with
SEBC caste synonyms. Ansaris say the Modi government deprives them of
their entitlements by not recognising synonyms used by various strands
of the same OBC community, something that the Mandal Commission report
specifically asked state governments to be cognizant of. It recognises
Musalman Julaya as an OBC community but refuses to acknowledge the
synonym Ansaris that some families have adopted to protect against the
derogatory connotation they feel the term ‘Julaha’ has in some settings.
“We submitted proof that we are Ansaris but
they didn’t accept our documents,” says Aliya Bano, a tailor, who is
wary of making the rounds of the DUT to secure a reserved seat in an
engineering college for her 17-year-old son Zaid.
Ironically, in 2005, the same DUT
acknowledged that Julaha Ansari is a synonym of Musalman Julaha.
Following a representation by the Samastha Julaha Musalman Samaj to the
government, a caste scrutiny committee made up of DUT director and head
of the Social Justice department got the matter examined by experts in
Tribal Research and Training Institute, Gujarat Vidyapeeth. This group’s
findings, data from the Anthropological Survey of India and Central
List for Gujarat of Mandal Commission Report, all support the Ansaris’
claim that they are the same community as Musalman Julaha, who have OBC
status. Despite this evidence gathered by its own departments, Modi’s
office has twice — on 30 October 2006 and 2 January 2007 — sent the
matter to the OBC Commission. However, the commission has requested that
it be excused because deciding if a community name is to be considered a
synonym is not in the panel’s ambit but the chief minister’s office.
When asked why the DUTwas wavering on
deciding this matter despite all the evidence available with it, Vanzara
declined to comment. “The matter is with the chief minister’s office,
please don’t ask me any questions,” he said.
Gandhian scholar Tridip Suhrud says it is
this question of social justice that will prove to be the true test of
Modi’s newfound sadbhavana. “No one has bought Modi’s sadbhavana idea,
not even his usual supporters. If he is talking of sadbhavana, he must
talk of social justice. But that is where it may start hurting his hard
Hindutva constituency,” argues Suhrud.
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It is in this shifting but unreliable
discourse where community leaders like Maulana Ghulam Mohammed
Vastanvi’s position becomes significant. When he was quoted this January
as saying that minorities don’t face discrimination in getting
development opportunities in Gujarat, it was an endorsement that the
Hindu Right eagerly lapped up. Vastanvi was ousted as head of the
majlis-e-shoora in a move closely intertwined with an internal power
struggle at the Dar-ul-Uloom. The Muslim Right thought it fit to remove
Vastanvi even though he clarified that he did not intend to give the
chief minister a clean chit for his role in the 2002 riots.
“The old ways of communalism are not working
and Modi has shifted to a new secular-speak,” says sociologist Shiv
Vishwanathan. “He is saying, ‘I am offering you an option — join the
mainstream. Take development. Minimise your demands for justice.’
Secular-speak is always in the language of economic rationality.
Investment can be calculated, so it is rational. Anything outside this
is subjective, ethnic and irrationaI. In secular-speak ‘and’ is no
longer available: ethnic and citizen, Muslim and Indian, seeking justice
and mobility. Vastanvi’s problem was he tried to say ‘and’.”
AS MODI was fasting for
sadbhavana, riot victims demanding justice were prevented from entering
the venue and detained. Their protest is a surface symptom of their
long-standing anger and eternal wait for justice. Forget the past, seems
to be the Modi government’s suggestion. But will the future be secure
in any way?
In 2002, more than 4,500 FIRswere filed in
police stations across 16 out of Gujarat’s 26 districts. In 12
districts, the FIRs recorded serious offences such as rioting, arson and
rape. Within two years, Gujarat Police closed over 2,000 cases filing
‘A’ summary reports — which says the offence has been committed but the
accused is either unidentified or is absconding.
In August 2004, the Supreme Court ruled that
there should be an in-depth investigation into these cases. Range IGs
were asked to look into FIRs and supporting material and decide if
reinvestigation was necessary. Additional DGs were to ensure veracity of
the reports and the DGPwas to be in-charge reporting on the status of
the cases to the apex court every quarter.
According to the police riots cell data, of
the 2,017 cases reconsidered, 1,958 were reopened. Of these, the police
made 1,299 arrests in 117 cases till June this year, which makes up a
little over 5 percent of the cases. However, data from September 2009
shows the number of cases in which arrests have been made is the same:
117. The police has not made a single arrest in the remaining cases in
the past two years.
Razakbhai Ismailbhai Ghauchi, 65, is a
farmer from Halodar village in Sabarkantha district. He lives 20 km away
from Limbadiya Chowkri, the site of a massacre in which 75 people were
killed in 2002. He recalls how he watched from his fields as a mob set
his house on fire. Coming out of hiding three weeks later, he tried to
file an FIR against 14 persons — including the son of a former Congress
MLA living in his neighbourhood — he had identified in the light of the
flames that burned his house.
Ghauchi tried to file an FIR accusing these
14 persons with the Malpur Police Station, Modasa Circle Police Station,
offices of the DSP and Collector, Himmatnagar, and the National Human
Rights Commission, but in vain. He tried again when an inspector from
Modasa visited his village in 2003. The police eventually registered an
FIR but in his brother Rasul’s name and blamed a mob instead. A few
months later, the case was closed. In 2004, when NGO Nyayagruha began
work in the region, he got the case reopened.
In 2007, a team from a riot cell in
Gandhinagar came and went and closed the case a second time without
interviewing him. “When I tried making my way to Rasul’s house, the
local police inspector asked me to get the two panchas, the main
witnesses. By the time I returned with them, the team had left,” says
Ghauchi.
However, the riot cell report has a
different story to tell: “A team of senior officers came from
Gandhinagar and made a video recording of the reinvestigation in
Halodar. Applicant Razakbhai and other witnesses were interviewed. They
did not give any information about the accused. The probe was closed on
10 April 2007.”
Nyayagruha coordinator Sheikh Usman, who is
following up on 32 reinvestigations in Sabarkantha district, is not
amused. “It is the police’s responsibility to ensure that the panchas
are there, not the complainant’s. How can they close the case without
interviewing the complainant who they knew was present?” he asks.
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This June, Usmanbhai managed to get a copy
of the CD through an appeal to the State Information Commission after
Malpur Police Station and the DSP office had both turned down his RTI
request. This CD shows police officers perfunctorily interviewing 11
witnesses in less than five minutes before closing the case a second
time. An August 2008 video recording of another reinvestigation shows
Noor Mohammed, a trader from Tintoi village in Modasa taluka, being
interviewed by the police in front of the seven people he had accused of
looting his shop in 2002.
For the riot victims, there is palpable
anger and disappointment at not being able to find either justice or
closure. Ask about Modi’s fast and many Muslims react with a sceptical
smile. “He is doing this for ‘raj kaaran’,” is a common
refrain. “He thinks he has got 10 more years of relief, so he is
celebrating. After the riots, all the relief money came from the Centre,
the state didn’t spend a single paisa.” And anger that continues to
simmer. “Modi should be punished first. It’s our prerogative to decide
whether to forgive him or not.”
From
TehelkaAnumeha Yadav is a Senior Correspondent with Tehelka.
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