The battle against forgetting

"If we accept Gujarat 2002 as something ‘in the past,' as some would like us to, we threaten the meaning of our present, and endanger our future."

The Hindu : Opinion / Lead : The battle against forgetting: These contestations are not just about many battles in courtrooms that must be waged. The contestation is about the meaning of citizenship. It is about the relationship between citizen and State. It is about challenging State impunity. Gujarat is the battle for collective memory against forgetting because it is ultimately the battle for the idea of India.

In 1950, India made a constitutional promise to protect the rights of its minorities to live with dignity and with full rights of citizenship. Time and again, that sacred promise has been violated. Institutional biases of the State machinery cannot be acceptable in any civilised democracy — that is the lesson of Gujarat.

We cannot legislate against communal prejudice and hatred in the hearts and minds of people. That is a battle that we as a society and a people must wage in a million different ways at a million different moments in our collective and individual lives. But we can and we must legislate to ensure justice to the weak.

We give up on the battle for justice in Gujarat at our own peril. For in giving up on Gujarat, we give up on hope for a better India — an India that is by right home to each one of us.

A past that will not pass

The Gujarat High Court lit into the Narendra Modi government, accusing it of “inaction and negligence” resulting in the destruction of over 500 Muslim places of worship during the 2002 post-Godhra pogrom. A day later, came the news that Mr. Modi had been cleared of the charge of abetting the 2002 violence in a final report filed to the magisterial court by the Special Investigation Team.

It is clear that the last word on the question of criminality will not be said for some time. So the CM's camp followers will do well to show some restraint, not least because his administration has come in for repeated censure by courts in the past year.

The Hindu : Opinion / Editorial : A past that will not pass: "Whatever the final view taken by the courts on Modi's individual legal culpability for the tragedy of Gujarat, the fact that he remained — at best — a mute spectator to the killing of hundreds of innocent citizens and did nothing to ensure justice for the victims afterwards is a moral and political badge of dishonour that will ensure the higher office his supporters seek for him remains out of reach."