ZEE JLF 2019: Army veteran tells the story of ‘Sarkari Mussalman’

Lieutenant General Zameer Uddin Shah, an Army veteran who has taken part in the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War has come up with a book, sarcastically named the Sarkari Mussalman. 

According to the retired General, the name for the book had stuck with him from his early days in the Army when he asked a group of young men if they wanted to join the Army after telling them of the great life it offers, however, the men replied by saying that he was a Sarkari Mussalman – a government stooge.

However, it is not a memoir of an Army Man, rather it has a detailed account of the riots in Gujarat following the Godhra train burning incident–one of the most heated times of recent memory. Shah had been chosen to lead the Army Division to quell the 2002 Gujarat riots and he maintains that the state administrative machinery failed to act timely in tense scenario. Shah mentions that there was a delay in providing the necessary things like vehicles, maps, magistrates, police men and all this while they could not move out of the Ahmedabad airport as the Army follows a protocol. It was only after a delay of nearly a day that what all he had asked for was provided and Army was then successful in putting an end to the riot.

Interestingly, Shah’s claims in the book are exactly opposite to what the SIT found. However, Shah claims that it is a soldier’s word and moreover, what he has written in the book can be corroborated by 3,000 men that were under his command and sent to quell the riots. On being asked if the court asks him to testify, will he do so (since the claims he made are opposite to the SIT finding) – the General said that if the court summons him, he will.