"We Have No Orders to Save You" (rev)
NOTE: THE HINDUS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS BLOG IS A SPACE FOR A HEALTHY EXPLORATION OF IDEAS PERTINENT TO OUR MISSION. THE VIEWS AND OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN THIS BLOG ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE OFFICIAL POLICY OR POSITION OF HINDUS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS.
—by Raju Rajagopal, HfHR CoFounder
From Savarkar’s call in 1923 for India to be the land for only Hindus (“Every person is a Hindu who regards and owns this Bharat Bhumi, this land from the Indus to the seas, as his Fatherland as well as Holyland…”), to the ‘Gujarat laboratory’ in 2002, to the ‘full scale production’ in the making in Delhi in 2020, Hindutva Fascism is upon us.
Left: Entrance to Ahsan Jafri’s fire-bombed home in Gulberg Society; Right: Nishrin and human rights activist Teesta Setalvad in the compound of the gutted home. Photos: Raju Rajagopal, Sep 2002
“Yeh andar ki bat hai
Police hamarey saath hai
Jaan se mar dengey
Bajrang Dal zindabad
Narendra Modi zindabad “—This is inside information, the police are with us.
We will kill. Long live the Bajrang Dal. Long live Narendra Modi.-- From “We Have No Orders to Save You,” Report from Human Rights Watch
This week marks the 18th anniversary of the horrific Godhra train burning and the ensuing anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat that left over 2,000 dead [see end-note] and thousands homeless.
For those of us who toured Gujarat widely at the time, speaking for peace and communal harmony, our visit to the burnt out home of late M.P. Ahsan Jafri is still etched in our memories. (See my Report from 2002)
Nishrin Jafri was with us looking on with horror at the ruins of her childhood home for the first time after the cold-blooded murder of her father. I remember her containing her deep hurt, to explain to us how her father had passionately believed in co-existence of all faiths, and how in the housing society that he had promoted, Hindus, Muslims, and Parsis had lived for years not only as neighbors, but also as a family. Perhaps, it was precisely that kind of lived harmony that had made her father a prime target in the minds of Hindu extremists -- who had swarmed his home on Feb 27/28th 2002 and hacked him to death and set him afire. It took considerable energies of a few brave human rights activists for years on end to obtain an ounce of justice for some of the victims of the pogroms, but success was often short-lived as many of the perpetrators are out of jail and back on the streets of Gujarat, courtesy of the BJP.
Nearly eighteen years later, what we are seeing today in Delhi seems like the beginning of RSS/VHP/BJP’s dream of turning their ‘Gujarat laboratory’ into a ‘full-scale production’ in all of India.
From In Pictures: New Delhi's worst violence in decades, Feb 26, 2020
There are indeed many parallels between Gujarat and Delhi as many writers have pointed out (see Chilling coincidence: Two callers — MP now and ex-MP then. Both times calls to cops for help go unheeded). But there are also hugely alarming differences: In the case of Gujarat, the Supreme Court and the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) had provided moral leadership in looking for the truth. Human Rights organizations were able to take an active role in seeking the punishment of perpetrators. Even the Delhi government, headed by P.M. Vajpayee, had shown some signs of remorse for what had happened under C.M. Modi’s watch, before the P.M. was tamped down by the BJP extremists.
Sadly today, there seem to be no such checks and balances: the entire government machinery and ‘law enforcement’ is in the hands of Hindu Nationalists; the Human Rights defenders and the progressive media have been eroded over the years through deliberate state policy; and even the justice system now seems to have been radicalized by the virus of Hindutva.
In my humble view, the future of India is now entirely in the hands of ordinary people of conscience, and especially in the hands of Hindus of Conscience, if only they are able to free themselves of the fetters of state propaganda to speak truth to power.
End Note:
The official casualty figures of Gujarat 2002 pogroms, as announced in the Parliament in 2005:
Dead: Hindus 254; Muslims 790; Missing 223 = 1,267 [+ 58 Hindus in Godhra]
Human Rights groups place the number of missing (and some possibly in mass graves) at a higher figure, hence they estimate 2,000+ dead (see Wiki for references)
But the real story of the pogrom’s impact are in the following statistics taken from the book “Lest We Forget History” from my good friends PGJ Nampoothiri, Former Commissioner of Police at Ahmedabad and Special Rapporteur for NHRC at the time; and Gagan Sethi, who was on the Special Monitoring Group of the NHRC:
Property Loss: Hindus 31 crores; Muslims 245 crores
Damage to religious places: Temples 18; Muslim Places 535
Injuries: Hindus 937; Muslims 1,180; Police 550
Number of people displaced (many permanently): Over 125,000 - mostly Muslims