Rahul Pandita: Apology no absolution // Harsh Mander: India must win justice for victims of Muzaffarnagar riots // Blog: what a young army officer saw in '84 riots
...Ms Sonia Gandhi and Dr. Manmohan Singh may have already apologised for 1984. Rahul Gandhi may perform a penitent kar seva at the Golden Temple or get his party loyalists from the Sikh community offer him yards of the ceremonial saropa; the entire Congress party including those accused of leading murderous mobs in 1984 may apologise, but that should not stop the wheels of justice from moving.
An apology ought, at best, to be treated as a symbolic gesture. But the danger is that in our political discourse it is rather seen as delivery of justice to the victims. Apology cannot be absolution. There is no concept of absolution in the modern criminal justice system. The principles of restorative justice do not apply to people who call themselves leaders, wear khadi and offer floral tributes at Rajghat, and then go on to lead murderous mobs burning people to death with petrol-filled tyres. They do not apply to men in khaki who take an oath of allegiance to perform their duty with integrity and impartiality and then end up serving the interests of their political masters. They do not apply to those who head a nation or a part of it and simply choose to remain passive during a riot or a pogrom.
That is why even if Mr. Narendra Modi folds his hands a hundred times in apology, Qutubbudin Ansari’s folded hands will always remain the emblematic image of the 2002 Gujarat riots. No matter how much pain he expresses at the idea of an imaginary puppy coming under the wheels of his car, and even though the judiciary gave a clean chit to him, he must be judged by how the guilty ministers like Maya Kodnani were rewarded with plum jobs... Similarly, the Congress party will have to be held accountable for how leaders like H.K.L. Bhagat were rewarded with ministerial berths. If Mr. Gandhi is serious about empowering people then it is not enough to just acknowledge that the 1984 killings took place and that they were completely wrong. He cannot just mumble: “Gujarat happened. People died. But the real issue as far as I am concerned is […]” The real issue as far as anybody must be concerned is that people died. They died in 1984 in Delhi. They died in 1990 in Kashmir. They died in Bombay in 1993. They died in Muzaffarnagar in 2013. And that many responsible for these killings or abetting these killings are still roaming free.
Mr. Gandhi can wear his Asics sneakers, roll up his sleeves and tour the countryside as much as he wishes to. But the real test of his intent would be whether or not he supports Mr. Arvind Kejriwal’s decision to set up a Special Investigation Team to probe 1984. Some day, Mr. Modi will also have to face the truth of 2002 even though for now he is busy flying kites with Mr. Salman Khan. Meanwhile, let us stop asking for apologies. Let us begin by demanding that those accused of involvement in the 1984 killings be brought to justice. Let us begin from the other end of 2013 as well. Let us put the nails of Muzaffarnagar in Mr. Akhilesh Yadav’s path; let us force him to get down from his Mercedes cycle... Read more:
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/apology-no-absolution/article5646032.ece
Blog: what a young army officer saw in '84 riots
WHO ARE THE GUILTY? Report of an inquiry into the causes & impact of the riots in Delhi
Blog: what a young army officer saw in '84 riots
WHO ARE THE GUILTY? Report of an inquiry into the causes & impact of the riots in Delhi
India must win justice for victims of Muzaffarnagar riots: This is a winter of sorrow. A few hundred kilometres from the country’s Capital, children are dying in the cold, neglected and humiliated by an uncaring government, and in mortal fear of neighbours with whom they lived peacefully for generations. Several thousand hate refugees in Muzaffarnagar survive under makeshift tents without clean water, elementary sanitation, healthcare and schooling. They are victims of communal misinformation which hinges on a myth so implausible and fanciful that it would be funny if it was not so dangerous.
This is the claim of ‘love jihad’, that good-looking Muslim boys are being trained in madrasas to trap Hindu girls into fake love affairs. They are then equipped with the necessary instruments for female entrapment — attractive clothes, trendy gadgets and motorcycles, all to lure unsuspecting Hindu girls into marriage.The girls are then converted into Islam and used to produce large numbers of Muslim progeny. There are other versions as well, even more bizarre, that the love jihadi later uses the Hindu girl as a sex slave, or traffics her into sex work. When I first heard the idea I found it incredible that people could actually believe it: it reminded me of TV advertisements which show girls surrendering themselves as willing sex objects the moment a young man applies a particular brand of deodorant.
The assumption is not just that Muslim boys are trained to ‘lure’ Hindu girls, but also that young Hindu women are empty-headed, lacking any agency or discernment, unable to protect themselves without the vigilant intervention of their male co-religionists. I witnessed first the poisonous impact of this far-fetched propaganda in coastal Karnataka, in which Hindu nationalist vigilante groups track Hindu girls who are spotted in public spaces like a café, cinema or bus in the company of a Muslim boy. Volunteers of these groups attack the couple, drag them to a police station, inform the girl’s parents to shame them, and the media and police are often sympathetic to their vigilantism. This has generated widespread and now settled mistrust between the two communities in the areas around Mangalore.
Even more surprisingly, a segment of the clergy in Kerala has also accepted that love jihad constitutes a threat not just to Hindu but also Christian girls, and warned their believers to guard against Muslim boys tailing Christian girls. Incredibly this juvenile propaganda has successfully driven a wedge between the communities threatening centuries-old traditions in Kerala of pluralist co-living.
In a recent article, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) professor Mohan Rao reports that the ABVP (the student wing of the BJP) is distributing pamphlets warning Hindu students against the designs of their Muslim classmates in as enlightened, pluralist and cosmopolitan a university as JNU, Delhi. The social media in also crowded with dark tales of love jihad.
A typical pamphlet reproduced by Rao attributed to the ‘Anti Love Jihaad Front’ appeals to Hindu brothers to awaken and become vigilant. The pamphlet shows a bearded Muslim boy on a motorcycle, with a love-struck girl riding pillion.
It claims that Muslim boys assume Hindu names, even wear a saffron string and red tika on their foreheads, trap Hindu girls in the web of love, convert them to Islam, produce children with them, torture and ultimately abandon them. It cites the examples of ‘Bollywood’ actors Aamir Khan and Saif Ali Khan, who married Hindu girls, had children with them and then abandoned them. It even has a helpline number. The latest and most dramatic and lethal application of false claims of ‘love jihad’ occurred in Muzaffarnagar. read more:
CONSTITUTION OF the Sampradayikta Virodhi Andolan 1989
Political Resolution of the Annual Convention of the SVA, Delhi, March 1992
Rethinking Secularism by Bhagwan Josh, Dilip Simeon & Purushottam Agrawal
Political Resolution of the Annual Convention of the SVA, Delhi, March 1992
Rethinking Secularism by Bhagwan Josh, Dilip Simeon & Purushottam Agrawal
