'I salute you, Geetaben, from the bottom of my heart'

'I salute you, Geetaben, from the bottom of my heart' 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_ID=7296104


SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN

TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 2002 
10:55:12 PM ] 
 
NEW DELHI: Two weeks ago, the resident editor of The
Times of India in Ahmedabad sent our office in Delhi a
photograph so shocking it made my stomach churn.
Shocking not just for what it depicted but because, to
paraphrase Barthes, "one was looking at it from inside
our freedom." This was my India. This is my India.

On a hot and dusty patch of asphalt lies the naked
body of a woman, Geetaben, her clothes stripped off
and thrown carelessly near her. One piece of her
underclothing lies a foot away from her body, the
other is clutched desperately in her left hand. Her
left arm is bloodied, as is her torso, which appears
to have deep gashes. Her left thigh is covered in
blood and she is wearing a small anklet. Her plastic
chappals sit sadly alongside her lifeless body and in
the middle of the photo frame is a gnarled, red,
hate-filled remnant of a brick, perhaps the one her
assailants used to deliver their final blow.

Geetaben was killed in Ahmedabad on March 25, in broad
daylight, near a bus stop close to her home. She was a
Hindu who in the eyes of the Hindu separatists
currently ruling Gujarat had committed the cardinal
sin of falling in love with a Muslim man. When the
Sangh Parivar mobs came for him, she stood her ground
long enough for him to flee. But the killers seemed
more interested in her. She was dragged out, stripped
naked and killed. No lethal dose of Zyklon-B delivered
surreptitiously in a darkened, secluded chamber.
Geetaben's murder was never meant to be a furtive,
secret affair. The holocaust that Chief Minister
Narendra Modi's administration presided over was
engineered in the knowledge that the Indian state
never punishes murderers with political connections.
Delhi 1984, Bombay 1993, Gujarat 2002. Neither
Congress, Third Front or BJP believes in Nurembergs.

In these troubled times, when heroes are scarce and
villains abound, Geetaben deserves to be worshipped.
She is Gujarat's Jhansi ki Rani, its La Passionaria. I
salute you, Geetaben, from the bottom of my heart for
your one brief moment of defiance. For, even in death,
with your helpless, innocent body bloodied and your
clothes ripped apart, you showed more courage,
humanity and dignity and more fidelity to the Hindu
religion than Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has
done in the past month. When the day of reckoning
comes, no one will dare ask you where you were when
Gujarat was burning. But when Yama waves a dossier at
Mr Vajpayee and asks him how many lives he saved, what
will he answer, I wonder. Will he hang his head in
shame as he did at Shah-e-Alam camp in Ahmedabad? Or
will he lecture the Hindu God of Death about Godhra
and jehadi Muslims, and claim, as he did Wednesday,
that if only Parliament had condemned the Sabarmati
Express carnage, the genocide which followed would
never have happened.

When I heard what Mr Vajpayee said at the BJP rally in
Goa last week, I experienced the same contaminating,
stomach-churning sensation of being present at a crime
scene that I felt when I saw the photograph of
Geetaben. Though the PM now insists he was misquoted,
whichever way his words are parsed, what he told his
party faithful at Goa was bone-chilling. "Wherever
Muslims are," he said, painting a broad brush to
describe not just the followers of Islam around the
world but the one-fifth of India's citizens who happen
to be Muslim, "they do not want to live with others
peacefully."

At the best of times, such a statement would be
unforgivable. But when you consider that he was
talking about the killing of as many as 2,000 Muslims
in Gujarat — and to an audience which believed this
genocide was justified — one can only react in horror.
Already, the Sangh is enforcing an economic boycott of
Muslims. There is not a single Muslim business left in
Gujarat. Photocopying stalls near Gujarati courts turn
Muslim lawyers away. Men with beards are not served in
restaurants and shops in the state. Muslim mothers
pray their children won't call them ammi on the
street. Instead of speaking out against this, Mr
Vajpayee actually had the gall to say Muslims do not
wish to live in peace.

For tens of millions of Indians, including those who
might have flirted with the BJP, Mr Vajpayee's remarks
have served as a wake-up call. At the Shah-e-Alam
camp, he said the riots had shamed India. But what he
said at Goa has shamed India even more.

For all his fulminations against jehad, Mr Vajpayee's
ideology is equally jehadi. His party does not believe
in people living in peace, in ensuring that the
citizens of India — whether Hindu, Muslim or other —
have the wherewithal to live as human beings. The BJP
does not respect the rights of citizens or of the
nation as a whole. Instead, a bogus, hollow ideology
of 'Hindutva' has been erected to cover up their utter
contempt for the rights of the people of India.

If historians use the phrase 'Muslim separatism' to
define the struggle to carve out a Muslim nation from
India in the last century, the project of the RSS-BJP
could well be called 'Hindu' separatism. Separatism or
secessionism is not just about the desire to create
physical distance; it is as much about striving to
distance oneself from the political, cultural and
philosophical mores of the country. The BJP's
separatist project poses as 'Hindu,' but it aims to
secede from the philosophical and cultural foundations
of India, including Hinduism, and from the political
principles that Indians have evolved over the past 200
years of struggle for their rights.

The aim of this project is to establish a state where
all Indians, including Hindus, will be devoid of
rights except those which will be bestowed upon them
as a privilege. Today, Mr Vajpayee tells Muslim,
Christian and Sikh Indians at Goa that "we (i.e., the
BJP) have allowed you freedom of worship." Tomorrow,
Hindu Indians will be told what they are "allowed" to
do. Those that transgress — like Geetaben, or Medha
Patkar, journalists and others — will be dealt with.
Gujarat has thrown a challenge to the country. The
writing is on the wall. Either we stand up to defend
the rights of all citizens; or we will all go down
eventually. 

(svaradarajan@indiatimes.com)