See. And Be Afraid

The Tehekla guys have done it again. One of their reporters went undercover as a researcher on hindu resurgance, and got to talk to the a lot of people involved in the Godhra riots. In true Tehelka style, he was wearing button cameras, and got stunning confessions on tape.

Editor-in-chief Taun Tejpan writes in his editorial:

Of the many things that are uniquely appalling about Gujarat 2002, three are particularly disturbing. The first that the genocidal killings took place in the heart of urban India in an era of saturation media coverage — television, print, web — and not under the cloak of secrecy in an unreachable place. The second that the men who presided over the carnage were soon after elected to power not despite their crimes but seemingly precisely because of them (making a mockery of the idea of the inevitable morality of the collective). And finally — as TEHELKA’s investigation shows — the fact that there continues to be no trace of remorse, no sign of penitence for the blood-on-the-hands that — if Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky are to be believed — is supposed to haunt men to their very graves.

Like Germany and Italy once, Gujarat begs many questions. How do a non-militant people suddenly acquire a bloodthirsty instinct? Does affluence not diminish the impulse to savagery? Does education not diminish the impulse to bigotry? Do the much-vaunted tenets of classical Hinduism not diminish the impulse to cruelty? If tolerance and wisdom will not flourish in a garden of well-being and learning, in the very land of Mahatma Gandhi, then is there any hope for these things at all?

WARNING: The following videos made me sick to the stomach, but hey, the truth _is_ bitter.

Babu Bajrangi: A local Bajrang Dal leader and one of the main conspirators.


Ramesh Dave: VHP's point man who planned attacks on Muslims in Kalupur and Dariyapur


Arvind Pandya: State Counsel appointed by the Narendra Modi government to defend it before the Nanavati-Shah Commission


The sceptics will ask - "Why now? Isn't this a Congress ploy just before the elections?". I say it very well can be, but does that change the gruesome nature of these crimes? [Also, Tarun slams the central govt for its spinelessness too, and I don't like the congress for what they did in the Delhi riots either.] And please do not give me the "muslims killed so many hindus in the medieval times, so what if we killed some now" line -- last time I checked this was not the middle ages, and we had something called due process.

Or perhaps, I am wrong, and as Tarun says in his editorial:

Is it possible that contrary to all the hoopla we may have already lived out the high tide of our democracy? Many Indians may get richer and richer but as a people — a deep civilisation — we will now only get poorer and poorer? Is it possible that a country sprung from the vision of giants can now only sustain small men with small concerns? Once a few good men shaped a modern egalitarian nation out of a devastated colony; are there none now to staunch the rot?

Too shocked to write more...
-A