Book launch & discussion: The Dirty Business of Clean Chits
The Dirty Business of Clean Chits
Discussion to mark the release of The Fiction of Fact-Finding: Modi and Godhra
by Manoj Mitta
published by HarperCollins India
The discussion will be chaired by Siddharth Varadarajan
Panelists: Vrinda Grover, Prakash Singh, Shiv Visvanathan, Dilip Simeon and the author
Event starts at 7 pm
Tea at 6.30 pm
Date: March 19 (Wednesday)
Venue: Gulmohar Hall, India Habitat Centre
New Delhi
Manoj Mitta’s hard-hitting, superbly documented book The Fiction of Fact Finding: Modi and Godhra is a timely arrival in the market. And it does exactly what we are being told not to do: question the processes of investigation resulting in Modi’s acquittal.
I will limit my discussion to chapter VI of the book titled: Shifting Bodies, Shifting Facts. The chapter goes into details of the chain of events that played out after the train burning incident in Godhra, setting off the orgy of violence. The killings and the lootings continued for over a month on Narendra Modi’s watch. The contents of this chapter clearly show that this was one moment when Modi’s supposedly efficient administration could and should have reined in passions, enforced law and order, and directed the police to deal with the rioters – the way Jyoti Basu did following Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984. But we all know how the events in Gujarat were channeled into a different and violent trajectory.
At the heart of this chapter is the question: Did Modi have a hand in organising reprisals against Muslims? Establishing that the prolonged cycle of violence received one of its major triggers from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad-led procession of the charred bodies taken out of the train at Godhra and paraded through Ahmedabad, is not difficult.
Some central questions raised in this chapter are: who allowed Jaydeep Patel, then VHP joint secretary, to take custody of the bodies? Did the Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi have any part in it? Or was it entirely the decision of local agencies as is being made out?
The official version goes like this: Mahendra Nalvaya, Godhra’s revenue officer, requested the VHP to take possession of the bodies. But why was such an unprecedented decision taken in the first place? Equally important – was this decision legally tenable? Mitta replies with a categorical No. It was “legally untenable, irrespective of the context in which it had come into existence.” The law doesn’t allow any person other than the legal heir or guardian of the deceased to take custody of bodies. “If there was any exceptional reason to depart from the norm, the letter should have disclosed it.”
“Worse, the administration showed such undue deference to the VHP at a time when it had already been mobilising kar sevaks around the country to defy the Supreme Court’s status quo order on Ayodhya and had just then posed a threat to the law and order with its bandh call,” writes Mitta. Why did the Modi government allow such gross violation of well laid down norms – unless the BJP was already hand in glove with the VHP?.. read more:
