Seriously Sandeep

I’ve decided to be large-hearted and forgive Tehelka for its expose–it is election season and Tehelka needs the money to fund its continual quest for truth.

Let’s rework the Gujarat Conclusion.

Key Points:

The following are some of the premises for the Gujarat Conclusion:

• Large numbers of Muslims were killed by Hindu mobs. This act of barbarity, if it was not directed by the State, was aided by it or at the very least, had the State’s assent. As the head of the State, Narendra Modi is culpable in this crime. This is a fact we knew all along but it is now buttressed by the devastating Tehelka expose.
• Now, the numbers, which initially varied from 2000-plus have now settled to 790 dead Muslims.
• The popular angst is justice has been denied to these deaths because of the State’s culpability in the form of police inaction, purposeful delay of the army’s arrival, etc.
• Therefore, the State has conducted a pogrom, genocide, mass murder, and now, holocaust.

Omission and Whitewashing

The Gujarat Conclusion suppresses, omits and/or glosses over these crucial points:

• The provocation for the so-called genocide: The fact that no riot or incident of mass violence can occur in a vacuum. The fact that Lalu realized the importance of covering up the small thorn of the burnt kar sevaks by instituting an enquiry committee designed to extract the conclusion he wanted. The fact that the "findings" of this committee were subsequently used as fact by the media and biased Western scholars.
• The account of dead Hindus, and attacks by Muslims on Hindus.
• An accurate and complete picture of the State’s action during the violence.

Role of the Media

We can conclusively attribute much of the hoopla about the Gujarat violence to the role of the Indian mainstream (mostly English) media. It is guilty of the crimes of both omission and commission. A short list of its misdeeds:

• Suppressed and/or glossed over the trigger for the riots.
• Exaggerated Muslim death tolls
• Suppressed and/or glossed over Hindu death tolls
• Falsely accused the State of not taking any action
• Uttered outright lies–remember, Ehsan Jaffri, and the highly-suspicious Tehelka videos of the " confessions" of some of the murderers.
• Continues to perpetuate all of the above

New revelations shed more light on the other side of the story.

"The Hindu", the leading-most South India daily reported on 1st March 2002 : "The Chief Minister Modi frantically asked for the Army units to be called in." On 2nd March 2002 ’The Hindu’ reported : "Unlike February 28 when one community was entirely at the receiving end, the minority backlash on 1st March has further worsened the situation ………. and the Army staged a flag march in Ahemedabad on 1 st March 2002 at 9.00 A.M." [...]

What follows (from the same link) is truly shocking.

It was therefore truly shocking that on 25.8.2007, "Aaj Tak" harped on the same old refrain that "Modi did not call the army until three days had passed". Even more outrageous was their insistance on this point. When "Aaj Tak" contacted me on phone to get my response, I told the anchor that the GODHRA carnage took place on February 27th 2002, that the Hindu backlash commenced on February 28th and the Army was doing flag march on the forenoon of March 1st ………… He cut me short by saying that "this is exactly what we had said, no action was taken by Modi on 29 th, 30th and 31st thus giving three clear days to the murderers …….." I had to cut him short by reminding him that the date 28 th was 28th of February 2002 and there was no 29th, 30th or 31st in that month. The phono was of course disconnected.

It is amazing that the media is ignorant of something as basic as the number of days in February. And further:

Fact 1: That SHOOT AT SIGHT ORDERS had been given by the Government on 28th itself. [.] Fact 2: On the 28th February itself 10 Hindus had been shot dead and 16 Hindus had been wounded by POLICE BULLETS.
Fact 3: On the next day i.e., 1st March an additional 24 Hindus were shot dead and 40 Hindus wounded by POLICE BULLETS.
Fact 4: In the entire period of riots total Hindu casualties were 80 shot dead, and 207 wounded by POLICE BULLETS alone. (But no Delhi-based media showed any interest in giving coverage to these casualties.)
Fact 5: The Muslim counter attack which commenced from 1st March 2002 was no less ferocious. In the first three days alone, out of a total of 611 deaths, 101 were caused by POLICE FIRING. Of these, 61 were Hindus and 40 were Muslims.
Fact 6: As on 5th of March, as many as 40,000 Hindus had had to be given shelter in Relief Camps. (There was plenty of media coverage given to the plight of Muslims in relief camps but no Delhi-based media covered any Hindu relief camps.) Fact 7: In answer to the Parliament questions, the UPA Home Minister gave the figures of casualties during Gujarat riots. There were Muslims killed 790, Hindus killed 254, wounded 2500 in all missing 223. Thus this proves the lies that what happened in Gujarat was a one-sided affair for every three Muslims who died in Gujarat, one Hindu was also killed. [...] With the Muslim counter attack commencing from 1st March onwards till the riots were quelled altogether, what took place in Gujarat was a full-fledged Hindu-Muslim Riot. It was no GENOCIDE, or POGROM, or STATE TERRORISM against the Muslims of Gujarat. " (Ed: Some formatting stripped from the original)

The Wikipedia entry on the Gujarat violence recounts the horror that Hindus went through in the senseless violence. The entry records that over 10,000 Hindus were rendered homeless due to the violence. How about a slice of justice for these people? Or is it that, according to the media and/or secularists, justice in Gujarat means justice only for the dead/aggrieved Muslims?

It is also logical to ask why Tehelka didn’t conduct sting operations on Muslim leaders who would’ve exhorted their community members to kill the Hindus, or more fundamentally, on the people behind the train fire that started it all?

Aside on Tehelka:

• The paper’s mask is quickly slipping away. Read Offstumped’s neat dissection of an article by one of its editors.
• Also read Barbar Indian’s similar dissection, and a blow-by-blow follow up of Tehelka’s false claims. He notes that Tehelka is "selling briskly" in the Kashmir valley, no doubt to be used as terrorism-arsenal. The terrorist attack, which must surely follow, will then be justified by Tehelka in an op-ed holding Narendra Modi guilty again.
  

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Concluding Observations

Ultimately, we believe what we want to believe. Intelligent, educated, and well-read people who elaborate on esoteric concepts such as Cognitive Dissonance and nuance and complexity, uncritically refuse to even consider that there is an other side to the story. That, underneath the sting operation lies a lot of muck, some of which I’ve recounted here. It is ultimately the fear of being identified with Hindu groups that makes them take this position. There is no reason otherwise to claim that Tehelka’s "expose" will be "valuable for historians at a later point in time."

A small point endnote before I sign off: majority of–if not all of them–Tehelka’s sting operations have been carried out on either the BJP or Hindu groups…