UNTIL the other day, I unhesitatingly voted for the BJP in every general election since I came of age. I won’t do that any longer.
Why? I guess you already know why. But just in case the BJP doesn’t know yet, and still cares to know, here’s the reason.
I wasn’t born into a family of Sangh sympathisers, and yet rooted for the BJP because it taught me to be proud to be a Hindu. Then one recent day, a friend posted me an e-mail. And I discovered how the BJP had changed its shade from saffron to b-l-o-o-d-y red. This is what I read:
‘It started at 9 am on February 28th. That’s when the mobs arrived, shouting ‘mian bhai nikalo (bring out the Muslims). Many of them were wearing kesari chaddis (a euphemism that identified Hindu right wing with purportedly wearing saffron coloured shorts or underwear). The mob included boys from the neighbouring buildings — Gopinath Society and Gangotri Society. I ran out of my house with the entire family — mother, father, sister, sister’s daughter, my wife Zarina, my brother, my sister-in-law, and my niece ... there were 11 of us. We all ran towards the police chowki. The police said, ‘Go towards Gopinath and Gangotri’. In the melee, I was separated from my wife. What happened to her, she told me later. She tried to escape the mobs by leaping over a wall. But found herself in a cul-de-sac. They gang-raped her, and cut one arm. She was found naked. She was kept in the civil hospital for many days. Now she is recovering with her mother near the Khanpur darwaza.’
This is an excerpt from the account of 30-year-old Naimuddin Ibrahim Sheikh whose 25-year-old wife Zarina was gang-raped in Ahmedabad.
Sheikh told his story to a women’s fact-finding team sponsored by Ahmedabad-based Citizen’s Initiative. The report goes on to add that Mumtaz, who was among the women who found Zarina in the maidan, corroborated Sheikh’s testimony.
Sheikh’s not an isolated account. Citizen’s Initiative has been circulating horrendous rape stories from countless victims on the Internet. They narrate how mobs lynched, raped, set on fire and murdered innocent victims. I haven’t read most of these stories in newspapers. Why not, I wonder. What is clear, however, is that suddenly my pride in being born a Hindu seems to ring hollow.
Now the sanghis have a convoluted way of justifying things. So they say there’s nothing wrong with what’s been happening ... the rest of Gujarat only followed the track laid at Godhra.
Even chief minister Narendra Modi espouses this line. But, such logic can only be the product of a fanatic mind. So, I am not surprised when the Muslims feel alienated.
It shouldn’t even surprise that many more like me who are not Muslims and have been nowhere near Gujarat in the past two months feel violated as well. Now, how do we get over this national trauma? How do we recover from this mass rape of our national psyche?
I am no sanghi. Yet, I find refuge in my religion. And the answers come from the scriptures themselves.
Hinduism, as I know it, recounts several stories of how devout worshippers of Hindu gods tormented ordinary citizens. So, they came to be known as asuras.
And the stories also show us how to rid these demons, god came down from heaven so that ordinary folks could live in peace on earth. You find these tales recounted over and over again in every confrontation between good and evil.
In his great revelation during the big battle of Mahabharat, Krishna tells Arjun:
yada-yada hi dharmasya, glanirbhavati bharata,
abhyuthanamadharmasya tadatmanan srijanyaham,
dharma-sansthapanarthay sambhavami yuge-yuge!
Translated, Krishna’s words go thus: Whenever harm is brought to dharma, to lift dharma out of the depths, I take birth on earth ... in every epoch.
It’s time now for god to come down from heaven. My scriptures tell me so. They are the same scriptures that the sanghis swear by as well. But, should god fail to bring peace back to my religion that’s being forced to change its colour, I really don’t know what to do.
Muslims in London who trace their roots to Gujarat are planning to approach the International Court of Justice so that Modi, like Milosevic, stands trial for genocide and crime against humanity. I can’t help hope that they succeed.
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