Gujarat riots were part of a political strategy

The Gujarat riots of 2002, in which nearly 1500 innocent Muslims were killed by riotous Hindu mobs across the state, has been the subject of many reports and analyses over the last 10 years. Apart from the reports written as Sangh Parivar's political propaganda, studies of this apocalyptic event have been undertaken either as an academic exercise or as a genuine attempt to understand what caused the whole tragedy.

The academic view sees the riots as mere failure of governance caused by in-built structural infirmities which allowed officials and politicians to manipulate the administrative machinery to their
subjective goals.

The realistic view, on the other hand, perceives the communal riots as an entirely a man-made disaster. Lack of integrity and absence of respect for the law among officials (from the chief minister to the constables at the bottom) conspired to carry out the pogrom against the state's Muslim community.

Any objective analysis of events - from the train fire at Godhra on February 27, 2002 in which 59 Hindu passengers were killed, to the commemorative events planned on Monday and Tuesday - will make it clear that riots were the result of deliberate acts of omission and commission by politicians, bureaucrats and policemen. The anti-Muslim upsurge was not so much the result of failure of governance as of the wish of state's politicians to reap rich political harvest from the riots.

There were many laudable instances of police officers enforcing the law very much against the wishes of their political masters. These officers — IPS officers Rahul Sharma, Vivek Srivastava, MD Antani, Himanshu Bhatt and a few others — ignored the illegal orders of state's politicians and ensure security to minority community in areas under their administrative control.

Significantly, nearly all police officers who enforced the rule of law and provided security to minorities incurred the wrath of the Modi government. They were punished by disciplinary proceedings initiated on fabricated charges, humiliating transfers, and by being bypassed in promotions. Some upright officers thought it better to leave the state on deputation.

The statistics on the number of people killed in police firing and the number killed in mob violence in areas which saw the worst violence during the riots speak for themselves. Naroda Patia and Gulbarg society in city, Sardarpura in Mehsana district, Ode village in Anand district and Best Bakery in Vadodara city were the sites of some of the most horrendous massacres during the riots.
Around 60% of the people killed in police firing in these areas were Muslims. This would seem to indicate that it was Muslims who were on the rampage during the riots. But the truth is revealed by another significant statistic. Around 77% of the people killed in mob violence in these cities were
also Muslims.
Does this not raise serious questions about the professional integrity and impartiality of police officers posted in these areas during the communal mayhem? It seems they gave Hindu mobs a free hand and allowed them to kill Muslims at will, even as they fired at Muslims wherever the minority community tried to resist the pogrom launched against them.

Any chief minister of integrity would have immediately tried to de-politicise the Godhra train fire and, thereafter, strictly enforced the law. But the tone, tenor and thrust of Modi's response to the

Godhra tragedy betrayed a political strategy to project the incident as an 'international conspiracy' targeted against the Hindu community. The obvious aim of this strategy was to get electoral dividends through mobilization of Hindus on communal lines.

The handing over of the bodies of Godhra victims to VHP leaders in violation of the regulations, delay in imposition of curfew in Ahmedabad to facilitate public display of bodies, and many other such acts were all intended to foment communal passions.

The unprecedented anti-Muslim violence of 2002, denial of justice to minorities and negligible ameliorative measures for survivors had prompted the Supreme Court to portray Gujarat politicians and officials as modern Neros.

(The author is a former DGP.)