The BJP's Mr. Modi and the Gujarat Massacre
by Salil Tripathi
Posted December 7, 2007
On Dec. 11 and 16, voters in the western Indian state of Gujarat will go to the polls and most likely re-elect the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government of Narendra Modi.
On one level, that’s a sensible choice. The economy is booming, businesses swear by Mr. Modi’s leadership, and development indicators are looking up. But on another level the victory would reward a BJP leader who turned a blind eye to one of the worst massacres in independent India.
In February 2002, a train carrying Hindu activists was set afire at the Godhra railway station in a dispute over a site considered sacred for Muslims and Hindus. Fifty-eight Hindu passengers died.
The state had an obligation to investigate these deaths and prosecute the perpetrators. Instead, the state looked the other way as Hindu militants gave vent to their fury on any Muslim they could find. People were killed, women were raped, homes were burnt, property taken over or razed, and thousands were displaced. Nearly 1,000 died by official count, at least two-thirds of them Muslims; human rights groups say the real figure is probably twice as high.
As a result, the State Department has denied Mr. Modi visa to enter the United States. The BJP should not overlook his blood-splattered record and project him as a potential future leader. That some in the BJP continue to do so reveals the depth to which India’s political discourse has fallen.
Indian industrialists, too, praise Mr. Modi’s administration for being “result-oriented” and “efficient.” But when it came to protecting innocent people and stopping the 2002 riots, his government was anything but that.
According to Human Rights Watch, police officials told Muslims who sought help that they had no orders to protect them. The state’s prosecutors were sluggish in bringing cases to the court. The Supreme Court chided the government for its inaction, transferring a large number of cases from Gujarat to other states, because it was not convinced that victims would get a fair trial in Gujarat.
A recent exposé in the Indian media using controversial stealth techniques shows BJP officials and Hindu activists boasting about their role in the killings, saying they were encouraged to take revenge against Muslims. One politician, apparently unaware he was being filmed clandestinely, bragged that they were given three days to finish off the problem.
Mr. Modi seems unrepentant. He has taken no responsibility, and shunned discussions on the issue. He projects himself as a protector of national interests, busy with the job of developing his state. Francois Gautier, a French journalist based in India, compares Mr. Modi with Vladimir Putin, a strong leader who will stand up for Indian interests, in a documentary Mr. Modi’s fans have posted on YouTube.
Which is why any evaluation of Mr. Modi’s record should go beyond bean-counting of the miles of roads built and kilowatts of power generated. If those statistics are important, so are the number of dead, and the paucity of prosecutions against the perpetrators.
There is a longer term question here that the BJP must face: What kind of a political party does it wish to be? It can capitalize on the positive aspects of Mr. Modi’s administration while making sure he is subject to the rule of law. Or it can succumb to its atavism, fail to protect minorities, and continue to fight antediluvian battles over India’s past.
The choice cannot be starker, and it goes well beyond Mr. Modi.
Mr. Salil Tripathi, a former Singapore-based regional economics correspondent of the REVIEW, is a writer based in London.
