Seeking stability

Clashes between India's Muslim minority and its Hindu majority population threaten the stability of Indian democracy, Sudhanshu Ranjan writes from New Delhi
With communal strife gripping India's western Gujarat province at the beginning of March, Narendra Modi, the province's irrepressible chief minister, was catapulted into the spotlight. One of the most controversial personalities in Indian politics, his opponents consider him odious even as he has been elevated to being the counter- establishment's latest poster-boy and a veritable hero to many in Gujarat.
The orgy of macabre violence and killing that engulfed Mahatma Gandhi's state has not abated since 27 February when carnage erupted at Godhra, where a train carrying Hindu pilgrims was ambushed by Islamist militants who prompty massacred the passangers. The whole state was thrown into an unprecedented communal conflict. Gujarat increasingly resembles the stage of a Jacobean tragedy and Narendra Modi is emerging as the play's chief dramatic figure -- a hero or villain who has effected the greatest polarisation in the Indian polity since the heated Ayodhya Temple dispute.
Modi's detractors have dubbed him a "mass murderer" and a "fascist" and even compared him with such figures as Adolf Hitler, Nathuram Godse (Mahatma Gandhi's killer), Ariel Sharon and Slobodan Milosevic.
To his supporters, however, Modi is the inheritor of the mantle of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the Iron Man who served as India's first home minister following India's independence and is revered as the Bismarck of India for successfully integrating the 546 princely states into one national entity. Prominent Hindu religious leaders have even conducted public prayers for Modi and made it clear that he has their full backing.
Modi remains defiantly ebullient, especially given that he enjoys the full support of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and his ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). Modi's offer to resign was summarily rejected by the party's National Executive when it met in Goa on 12-13 April and took stock of the situation.
At the meeting, the demoralised party cadre -- smarting after a series of electoral debacles -- met in a sombre and funereal mood. But, by the time the delegates departed two days later, the mood was buoyant. The catalyst for this remarkable transformation was the ubiquitous Narendra Modi whose offer to resign, and its rejection, had an electrifying effect on the party.
According to ruling party sources, even the prime minister could not overlook the passion with which pro-Modi sentiment was expressed. This, despite the fact that he would have preferred that Modi had tendered his resignation, a move that would have boosted Vajpayee's personal image and the coalition's unity.
But the support for Modi has been so overwhelming that Vajpayee relented and, in a public speech he delivered at Goa, came across as tough and pro-Hindu by blaming the Godhra incident for the communal flare-up in Gujarat: "We don't need lessons in secularism from anyone ... India was secular even before the Muslims and Christian came."
Vajpayee's speech gave his critics the rope by which to hang him with. They thundered that the prime minister had finally shed his secular mask and exposed his true sectarian character. In fact, Vajpayee remains caught in a Scylla and Charybdis situation. He can neither afford to antagonise his Hindu constituency nor can he alienate the NDA's allies, some of whom are baying for Modi's blood.
These constraints have forced Vajpayee to change his tune. Whereas in Gujarat he claimed that the communal pogrom had caused him to hang his head in shame, at Goa he performed a volte-face and attributed the event in its entirety to the Ghodra events.
But the Gujarat government's firm indictment by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and the warning that the European Union issued to the Indian government on the continuing violence in Gujarat have not dispersed the clouds of anxiety that currently hover over the prime minister.
On 1 April the NHRC released its proceedings on the Gujarat situation, along with its preliminary comments and recommendations. Despite intervening in a limited way in Orissa and Gujarat, after the provinces were struck by natural disasters, it is the first time that the NHRC has intervened in a major way in a situation of a political nature since its inception in 1993. The commission noted that, whereas in previous instances the human tragedy was caused by natural disasters and its intervention was aimed at ensuring that the rights of all, particularly the most vulnerable sections, were respected, "In the present instance... the death and destruction sadly resulted from the inhumanity of human beings towards other human beings and the large-scale violation of human rights. This, therefore, requires a response from the commission of a qualitatively different kind," the body observed. The report is being kept confidential for the time being.
The commission's preliminary comments suggest that there was a prima-facie reason to hold the Modi government guilty of complicity in the violence against Muslims. The commission made it amply clear that it was the state's duty to protect its people's right to life, liberty, equality and dignity.
The NHRC assessed the state government's role in this event and asked whether the state government failed in collecting intelligence relating to the Godhra incident and the carnage that followed. In its report to the commission, the government admitted that the attack on the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) activists in Godhra occurred in the absence of specific information about their return from Ayodhya. The NHRC observed that there had been a serious failure of intelligence and the state government's inaction marked the events leading to the Godhra tragedy and the subsequent deaths and destruction. The commission also noted that in most cases in Ahmedabad, Gujarat's capital, looting was "reported in well-to-do localities by relatively rich people" and expressed its disappointment over the state government's failure to identify these persons in its 28 March response.
The NHRC rebutted the state government's claim that the situation was brought under control within 72 hours of the Godhra incident. It said that its team noted a lack of security throughout the state and pointed out that one sitting and another retired judge of the Gujarat High Court had to stay away from their homes because of the tense atmosphere, a damning indictment of the government's failure to control the situation.
Having already been criticised by the NHRC's indictment, the EU warning struck another blow to the Indian government. Vajpayee reacted by sharply commenting that India does not need western countries to "preach" to it to about secularism. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) rejoined that it considered the NHRC report to be an uncalled for interference in its internal affairs.
Jaya Jaitly, a senior leader of the Samata Party, one of the NDA's constituents, frowns upon those who seek legitimacy from foreign countries in their tirade against the BJP-led government: "More than 60,000 people have been killed and 300,000 displaced since terrorism raised its head in Jammu and Kashmir. Yet India has unequivocally said that we want no interference in what is an internal matter. The desperation of the false secularists to obtain international condemnation for incidents in Gujarat that they have cynically fanned through wild rumours and accusations of pogroms, genocide, fascism and encouraging a further Muslim-Hindu divide, is nothing less than a display of their willingness to sell out their own country's interests for (the benefit of) their pathetic and petty politics."
In spite of the fierceness of the rhetoric, the opposing view that India is a signatory to the 1949 Geneva Convention and that this compels it to act according to certain rules, norms and principles relating to universally-acknowledged human rights has also been heard. India has presently relied on the Geneva Convention to complain of treaty violations by Pakistan in the Kashmir conflict. But the events in Gujarat have rendered India's claims hollow. Being an active member of the world community India cannot avoid international scrutiny of its internal affairs.
One thing is clear. In the aftermath of the Gujarat events, India has lost its moral high ground. The international goodwill that the country gained from the 13 December terrorist attack on its parliament has been erased by Gujarat's communal savagery. The sectarian violence has also blunted India's diplomatic offensive against Pakistan. Recently Delhi has launched a PR campaign through its diplomatic missions and circulated an express advisory that puts its version of events across -- detailing the circumstances leading to the violence and the steps being taken to rehabilitate riot victims and bringing the culprits to justice.
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