C'da,
This article and others for the last few days do reflect on the
violence that crop up time to time in India.
I am glad that the likes of Jadish Tytler was forced to resign. Its
also sad that the attrocities on innocent Sikhs took 20 years to even
be recognized. Its heartening, that the PM at least 'hung his head in
shame' and apologized for the attrocities, even though he was far
removed from the scene. At least it gives some closure to people who
lost their loved ones.
Unscrupulous polititcians are at the core of the violence. Immediately
after the Indira Gandhi assination, it were people like Tytler who
instigated the masses to attack Sikhs. Similarly, is the case when
Muslims are attacked.
The article below does seem to lay the blame
entirely on the majority (Hindus).
Not that one can condone any of the attrocities, is there any
culpability of minority groups in these incidents?
Why would Sikh bodyguards assasinate the PM? I am not sure about
Godhra, but whats bandied about is that muslim groups cast the first
stone by killing the 'Hindu' political workers, and things started
spreading to other areas.
First hand in the 60s, I have seen Calcutta go up in flames when
Hindu/Muslim mobs killed each other. Do we blame the masses or the
polititcians who started these?
IMHO, the country is much like a tinder box at times. With huge
uneducated masses are drenched with passions of one kind or another.
All it takes is a cruel polititcian to light it up.
We have seen these types of incidents in Assam too, during the
Assamese/Bengali conflicts or Nelli. I was very young at that time,
and know now how and why the conflict started, but do vividly remember
a GU Prof (Gupta, a quiet Bengali gentleman) was stabbed just a couple
of homes away from us - we could hear the wife and son crying for
help, but no one had the courage to go out and help (even the next
door neighbor).
Were those culprits ever brought to justice? Absolutely not, and given
the political climate it would have been imprudent for anyone to get
arrested - the incident was just brushed under the carpet.
I have also heard of similar incidents in Silchar, where Assamese were
singled out to be murdered.
So, in the end, whether we like it or not, it seems that crimes
committed during riots are 'not crimes'. A few days ago, I think you
asked a question: If India was a violent country?
The answer is a resounding yes. The only thing, one can say is that
given the diversity of language, religion, caste, creed, states all
living in one place as a country, its a miracle these conflicts are
not as frequent as they used to be.
Maybe, people are at last learning to live in harmony and tolerance.
--Ram
On 8/11/05, Chan Mahanta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
CARNAGE 84
We, the bloody people
By Sankarshan Thakur
IN AN UNREQUITED LAND:
A child from one of
Trilokpuri's ravaged families
Photographed by Gauri Gill
We are the apparatchik of serial and periodic
political madness, we are the midwives of the
abortion of the senses
For a talkative society, we tell very little of
the essence of ourselves. We babble in the
subconscious hope it will drown our truths. We've
erected opaque mental monuments to Buddha and
Gandhi to blind our eager resort to bloodletting.
When the glare catches us red-handed, we wipe our
sins on others and melt into our vast convenience
> of numbers. Narendra Modi. Pravin Togadia. Lal
> Krishna Advani. Jagdish Tytler. Sajjan Kumar. HKL
> Bhagat. Bal Thackeray. Hiteswar Saikia. Bhagwat
Jha Azad. Remember him? Bhagwat Jha Azad of
Bihar? Remember Bhagalpur of 1989? Remember a
village called Chanderi and another called Logain?
....It was eventually left to the vultures to
rip the cover. The bodies, 116 of them, had lain
there decomposing for six weeks. In that period
the village had grown wiser to the fineries of
tilling - dead men made good compost. A lush
winter crop of mustard had sprung on the bed of
corpses they had laid. But the village was also
to grow wiser to a thing or two about old idioms:
Dead men do tell tales, it is seldom they don't.
The stench had risen high off the field and the
vultures had begun to swoop low. The killing had
been consummated weeks ago, an entire settlement
of Muslims on the edge of Logain. Their common
guilt the villagers had consigned to a common
grave. The carnage was an open secret in the
village but to the world beyond it was just a
secret. Until the vultures arrived, followed by
that rare thing called a policeman with a
conscience. He had the crop shaved and the field
dug up. The skulls flew into the sky as the
spades got to workS.
Some among us were there and told the story.
Logain became, like many of our stories, the
child of memory's whore - an unwanted, forgotten
consequence of collective shame. We are a nation
eddying with bastard deeds. Nellie. Moradabad.
Bhiwandi. Hashimpura. Maliana. Meerut. Kanpur.
Bhagalpur. Sopore. Baroda. Aligarh. Mumbai.
Chittisingpora. Ahmedabad. Delhi. We lay
blood-litter on the streets and retreat into our
homes. Nobody owns up. We decamp from facts and
populate our horrors with clichéd characters of
fiction - a violent mob, a murderous horde, a
crowd screaming, slashing, burning, a mass that
suddenly descended and vanished.
Who? Wherefrom? Us. Herefrom. Every single time.
It is we who pillage, rape and murder. Under
wrongful excitement and exhortation. Under
criminal instruction and protection. Under the
Modis and Togadias and Tytlers, yes. They are the
leaders but we are there to be led. We are the
apparatchik of serial and periodic political
madness, we are the midwives of the abortion of
the senses. Then we wash our hands and line up
for secular prabhat pheris, our opaque monuments
to Buddha and Gandhi urgently recalled to veil
memory and guilt.
The Babel Tower of inquiries and commissions,
reports and recommendations that we have piled
for ourselves is a route of escape. The tabling
of Nanavati conclusions has become the hour of
more deflective clamour, a booster dose of
obfuscation. A talkative society talking
endlessly. Or an argumentative society, as we are
told on formidable authority, arguing on. About
who and how. About cause and consequence. About
crime and the absence of punishment. Never once
do we dare look ourselves in the mirror. Never do
we stop pointing fingers at others. Outraged,
shrieking justice, baying retribution, if legal.
Hush. Where were you at the time? And what were
> you doing? You were electing Narendra Modi
astride a bloodied rath. You were voting Sajjan
Kumar and Jagdish Tytler back to respectable
titles and hallowed portals. You were turning up
in thousands to pirouette to the twisted bigotry
of Pravin Togadia. You were letting Thackeray
hone your hatreds.
We need to ask few questions of each other. We
need to ask questions of the households that were
spared the mayhem of Trilokpuri. Ask the
shopkeepers of Mandvi Ni Pole. Ask around in the
bylanes of Hashimpura. Ask those who live across
the charred remains of Gulberg. Ask the villagers
of Logain, it's been 16 winters since that
resplendent mustard crop that contained a gene of
murdered blood. We cannot pretend being a civil
society when we claim, every now and again,
rights over uncivil liberties. We cannot invoke
laws that we ourselves violate. We cannot look up
> to a Constitution that we trample underfoot.
There are a myriad contemporary Indian stories
we have forgotten. They are all true stories.
They have dates and datelines. They have pegs and
dead people hanging by them. And there are, among
us, the many hands that hung them there that have
since been washed in collective and convenient
forgetting. The truth about mass murder in this
country we haven't learnt to tell. Even less to
confront. Which is why someday, when that
diabolical sloganeer appears again with a manic
prescription and a surcharged bloodcry, we will
again turn upon each other and consume.
Aug 20 , 2005
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