From: bcsabha.kal...@gmail.com
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7 Aug 2015Hindustan Times (Mumbai)Rajdeep Sardesai is a senior journalist and
author The views expressed are personal RAJDEEP SARDESAI
The claim that evidence is far more difficult to gather in a riot case than in
a terror conspiracy can no longer be an alibi for a shoddy probe“The Mumbai
blasts seem to be a reaction to the ‘totality of events’ in Ayodhya and Mumbai
in December 1992 and January 1993.” Justice BN Srikrishna report.REUTERSCan
Yakub Memon’s transformation be linked to the fact that Mahim was one of the
worst-affected areas during the communal clashes?Justice Srikrishna is spot on:
If there were no riots in Mumbai in 1992-1993, there would have been no serial
blasts. Like if there was no Godhra train burning there would have been no 2002
Gujarat riots, or if Indira Gandhi was not assassinated, there would have been
no anti-Sikh pogrom in 1984. Or we could argue that if the Babri masjid was not
demolished, the post-Babri riots would not have occurred; if Indira Gandhi
hadn’t ordered the army to storm the Golden Temple, Sikh militancy would have
been contained; if the VHP hadn’t undertaken a Kar-Seva in Ayodhya, no train
would have been targeted. Searching for the ‘root causes’ of any act of
violence is fraught with danger. Just how far back will action-reaction
theories take us, and do they eventually lead to rationalising violence?
And yet, it is impossible, as Justice Srikrishna points out, to separate the
Mumbai blasts from the riots that preceded them. Which is why the narrative
over 1993 Mumbai blast convict Yakub Memon’s execution cannot but reflect on
the riots as well. Why did Memon, who by all accounts had set up a relatively
successful chartered accountancy firm in Mumbai’s Mahim area (Memon and Mehta,
a Gujarati Hindu being his partner), become part of a diabolical ‘Muslims only’
terror plot? Can his transformation be linked to the fact that Mahim was one of
the worst-affected areas during the communal clashes? Or that his brother’s
office was attacked in the riots, the family received threat calls, and local
Shiv Sainiks had warned Muslims in the area to ‘go to Pakistan’?
Whether Memon was fully aware of the serial blasts conspiracy, widely believed
to have been executed by his brother Tiger, is uncertain. But after the apex
court verdict, the debate over his exact role in the 1993 blasts must now end;
what must begin is an attempt to reset the discriminatory manner in which the
Indian state and the criminal justice system deals with mass crimes.
In the cacophonous television studios, there has been an emphasis on how
stringent punishment to Memon will be a deterrent to terrorists and provide
closure to the families of 257 victims of the blasts. But few public figures
have called for similar tough action against the rioters of Mumbai. More than
900 people died in the violence, but only three people were convicted and given
one-year jail terms, one of whom is dead, the others out on bail. And yet those
who do raise their voice and seek justice for the riot victims are labelled
‘anti-national’, ‘presstitutes’ and worse. It is almost as if there is a
selective amnesia where Mumbai’s violent journey begins on March 12, 1993 and
what happened before is to be conveniently forgotten. And if you do care to
remember, then you are accused of being an apologist for ‘terrorists’, as if a
rioter with a sword who kills in the name of religion cannot be compared to a
terrorist armed with RDX.
With informed liberal opinion being pushed on the defensive, is it any surprise
then that the voice of dissent is now being hijacked by the likes of an
Asaduddin Owaisi? The MIM MP from Hyderabad is no bleeding heart liberal, but a
hard-headed politician who has sensed an opportunity in a surcharged and
polarised atmosphere to build himself as a defender of ‘Muslim interests’. It
is no different, in a sense, from how Bal Thackeray saw himself during the
1992-1993 violence as a ‘protector’ of Hindus, an image that eventually
catapulted him to power during the subsequent 1995 Maharashtra assembly
elections. Or how a Praveen Togadia, and even a Narendra Modi, projected
themselves as Hindu Hriday Samrats and defenders of Gujarati asmita in 2002. Or
how the Congress under Rajiv Gandhi, during the 1984 general elections, ran an
insidious campaign aimed at showing the Sikh as a terrorist.
The difference, perhaps, is that then we didn’t have the spectre of a global
‘jihad’ being waged by terror groups like the Isis. Now, the rising influence
of such groups and the growing radicalisation of Muslim youth whose rapid
alienation is pushing them to seek ‘revenge’ demands that the State be seen to
be just and even-handed. The claim that evidence is far more difficult to
gather in a riot case than in a terror conspiracy can no longer be an alibi for
shoddy investigation and, in some glaring instances, for an utterly compromised
a
