Editorial

The interim report by Justice Mr. U. C. Banerjee panel on the Godhra train tragedy in which 59 karsevaks were burnt alive, has served to highlight the fact that it was at best-if one were allowed to interpret that way-an accident and was in no way a conspiracy by Muslims. Reports by the Delhi based Hazards Centre and the witnesses so far recorded by the Justice Nanavati Commission further corroborate the findings of the Banerjee panel that the coach burning did not seem to be a job by outsiders. However, the Gujarat police still pursues the ‘conspiracy’ theory even though it has jettisoned the initial ‘miscreants throwing petrol from outside’ in favour of ‘their boarding the coach to put it aflame’.


These reports collectively exculpate Muslims from coach burning and strikes at the naievete of building up a quick nexus between the coach burning and its macabre fall-out. Much before these reports came in, an investigation by the Gujarat Government’s Forensic Science Laboratory had made out a case for fire emanating from within than without. The FSL report was hushed up thereafter. Even though the probes have not pinned the blame on any miscreants, it seems much ground needs to be covered before it is proved that the perpetrators of its cataclysmic aftermath themselves created an excuse for inflicting the most infamous mayhem of our times on the hapless Muslims of Gujarat. However, one hopes that the investigators have not excluded this probable scenario from their purview. The very fact that Gujarat witnessed a very systematic ethnic cleansing and pinpointed assault on the economic sinews of the minority community, leads one to conclude that ‘an accident’ could not be the basis for lighting the filibuster for kicking up an orgy of genocidal scale as was witnessed in Gujarat. Evidently, the Hindutva forces have outdone the fascists in their high-stake game of brainwashing the masses and making a villain of the Muslim minority.


The report has also etched to relief the drama of negligence by the Railway Ministry in failing to conduct a thorough probe into the episode and thereby letting the Hindutva outfits tap full mileage from the event by mobilising public opinion and even conducting polls in the heat of frenzy to consolidate itself in a state said to be the Hindutva’s laboratory. Perhaps only a fuller probe will be able to unravel as to how the Railway Ministry (then headed by Nitish Kumar of Samata Party, a coalition partner) abdicated its role and responsibility and lent the conspiracy handle to the Hindutva brigade.


The proximity of the release of the interim report with elections in three states does give the report a ring of expediency. But it should not detract us from the fact that debate and discourse on issues concerning the polity constitute the essence of democracy. If not elections, what could be the more appropriate time for discussing issues like communalism, fascism and the threats to communal harmony. It is one thing to communalise an election campaign and quite a different one to expose the games the politicians and political parties play to whip up sentiments, divide people on the basis of religion and hatch conspiracies to trigger violence and mayhem. Where is the justification to decry Laloo Prasad Yadav for exposing Narendra Modi and Company when the latter was able to call for fresh elections in Gujarat to tap the anti-Muslim hysteria stemming from the bogey of Muslim complicity in the Godhra train burning.