Gandhinagar : ‘Grief”, ‘sadness’, ‘misery’, ‘anguish’, ‘agony’ is how Gujarat chief minister and BJP’s prime ministerial aspirant Narendra Modi described the 2002 communal riots on Friday, twelve years after the violence ripped the state, leaving the two communities cleaved.
Whether he was making a political statement in his hour of redemption or “seeking to share his inner thoughts with the nation after the judiciary has spoken,” the chief minister wrote in his blog about the riots, “Mere words cannot capture the absolute emptiness one felt on witnessing such inhumanity”.
“Yesterday’s judgement culminated a process of unprecedented scrutiny closely monitored by the highest court of the land, the Honourable Supreme Court of India. Gujarat’s 12 years of trial by the fire have finally drawn to an end. I feel liberated and at peace,” Modi wrote in what was an open letter of sorts published in his blog on Friday.
In a way, Modi was enlarging on his tweet of Thursday in reaction to the Ahmedabad Metropolitan court’s judgment giving him a clean chit, when he had posted, ‘Truth alone triumphs’ (Satyamev Jayate). Fleshing out this theme further, the chief minister stated in his blog on Friday, “The end brings back memories of the beginning. The devastating earthquake of 2001 had plunged Gujarat into the gloom of death, destruction and sheer helplessness. Within a mere five months however, the mindless violence of 2002 had dealt us another unexpected blow. Innocents were killed. Families rendered helpless. Property built through years of toil destroyed. Still struggling to get back on its feet from the natural devastation, this was a crippling blow to an already shattered and hurting Gujarat.”
In an apparent move to reach out to the minority community, Modi maintained that the Gujarat Government had responded to the violence more swiftly and decisively than ever done before in any previous riots in the country. As he made this claim, he also expressed the hope that “with this cloud of misinformation firmly dispelled, many others out there, who are trying to understand and connect with the real Narendra Modi, would feel more empowered to do so.”
Indirectly alluding to then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s advice to ‘perform his rajdharma,’ he wrote that during “those challenging times, I often recollected the wisdom in our scriptures; explaining how those sitting in positions of power did not have the right to share their own pain and anguish. They had to suffer it in solitude. I lived through the same, experiencing this anguish in searingly sharp intensity. In fact, whenever I remember those agonizing days, I have only one earnest prayer to God. That never again should such cruelly unfortunate days come in the lives of any other person, society, state or nation”, he added.
In sync with the SIT report, which had observed how Modi had appealed for calm post Godhra carnage, Modi writes, “However, it was from these very built up emotions that I had appealed to the people of Gujarat on the day of the train burning, fervently urging for peace and restraint to ensure lives of innocents were not put at risk.”
“I had repeatedly reiterated the same principles in my daily interactions with the media in those fateful days of February-March 2002 as well; publicly underlining the political will as well as moral responsibility of the government to ensure peace, deliver justice and punish all guilty of violence,” he said. “You will also find these deep emotions in my recent words at my Sadbhavana fasts, where I had emphasized how such deplorable incidents did not behove a civilized society and had pained me deeply,” he added. In a deft political move, Modi sought to portray himself as a victim of vicious political propaganda. He writes, “However, as if all the suffering was not enough, I was also accused of the death and misery of my own loved ones, my Gujarati brothers and sisters.” “Can you imagine the inner turmoil and shock of being blamed for the very events that have shattered you!”
Continuing in the same vein, he states “For so many years, they incessantly kept up their attack, leaving no stone unturned. What pained even more was that in their over-zealousness to hit at me for their narrow personal and political ends, they ended up maligning my entire state and country. This heartlessly kept reopening the wounds that we were sincerely trying to heal”, he wrote. “It ironically also delayed the very justice that these people claimed to be fighting for. Maybe they did not realize how much suffering they were adding to an already pained people,” he added. Moving to take a higher moral plane, he further states, “Emerging from this journey of pain and agony, I pray to God that no bitterness seeps into my heart. I sincerely do not see this judgement as a personal victory or defeat, and urge all – my friends and especially my opponents – to not do so as well. I was driven by this same principle at the time of the Honourable Supreme Court’s 2011 judgement on this matter. I fasted 37 days for Sadbhavana, choosing to translate the positive judgement into constructive action, reinforcing Unity and Sadbhavana in society at large.”
RK MISRA
