The Hindu Business Line : Avoiding double standards

It is the ardent hope of everyone who yearns for the country's politics to conform to healthy and honourable norms that the Gujarat poll will provide ample room for introspection. Ever since the gory Godhra inferno and the resulting horrendous reprisals, sections of India's elite, its media and intelligentsia have been projecting Gujarat, in general, and Mr Narendra Modi, in particular, as a blot on the country's secular escutcheon. The kind of vituperative attacks and the insufferable insults to which the poor man was subjected over a period of five years would have broken the spirit of any other person.

Reviled as an emblem of Hindutva, an enemy of secularism and a destroyer of human rights, Mr Modi was demonised to such an extent that for the first time in Independent India's history, the Chief Minister of a State was exposed to the humiliation of denial of visa.

The ground for all these fulminations against one person was that he stymied any action by the State police and administration to control the riots, leading to a `pogrom' against Muslims. The final word on this would necessarily have to await the report of the Justice G. T. Nanavati Commission of Inquiry, but there are certain facts that are usually ignored by critics.

The Godhra carnage took place on February 27, 2002. The Hindu reported on March 1 that "The Chief Minister Modi frantically asked for the Army units to be called in." and on March 2 that "Unlike February 28 when one community was entirely at the receiving end, the minority backlash on March 1 has further worsened the situation and the Army staged a flag march in Ahmedabad on March 1 at 9.00 A.M." As on March 5, reportedly, as many as 40,000 Hindus had to be given shelter in relief camps. In answer to Parliament questions, the Union Home Minister gave the figures of casualties during Gujarat riots as 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus killed, 2,500 wounded and 223 missing.

`WELL-ORGANISED PLAN'

Compare this with what happened during the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi 1984.

In the holocaust that lasted from October 31 to November 7, as per official sources, 2,427 were killed, 2,403 injured and there were 3,537 cases of damage to, and destruction of, houses. Unlike in Gujarat, where it was not a one-sided affair, the number massacred right under the nose of the Central Government, pertained almost wholly to the Sikh community. The scale of the horror would be seen to be manifold if the unofficial estimate of the dead in Delhi (exceeding 5,000) and the many Sikhs killed outside Delhi, in other parts of India, are taken into account.

The Nanavati Commission set up to inquire into the 1984 riots had no hesitation holding that the Delhi carnage was the "outcome of a well-organised plan marked by acts of both deliberate commission and omission by important politicians of the Congress (I) at the top and by authorities in the Administration."

OBSERVE FAIR PLAY

Those casting stones at Mr Modi are, therefore, doing so from glass houses. It may well be that the State administration in Gujarat took more time to come down heavily on the rioters than it need have. Whether this was due to any cue from the higher reaches of the government or to the time taken to get the act together will be known only when the Inquiry Commission comes out with its findings.

Till then, we should observe fundamentals of fair play and eschew double standards in judging events and individuals. Not just political correctness but political fairness also is equally vital.