|
Widow against Widow: We are all
fighting for justice
WSN Network
 NEW
DELHI/AMRITSAR: “Allah ke haath lambe hain,” Jakia Nasim Ahesan said
after India’s Supreme Court ordered a probe into the role of killer
Hindutva mascot Chief Minister Narendra Modi in Gujarat anti-Muslim
riots. Ahesan is the widow of slain Congress MLA Ehsan Jafri of the
Congress, and is fighting to keep faith in the Indian legal system.
Darshan Kaur, a
widow of 1984 genocide who lost 12 family members and is a prime
witness who testified against HKL Bhagat, said last week: “Bhagat is
now dead but I want Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar to hang while
I’m still alive. Only then will I feel I’ve got justice.”
India is
currently going through elections. By definition, ballotting is a
secret exercise. But let us hazard a guess. Jakia Nasim Ahesan lives
in
Gujarat
and is most likely to press the Congress button on the electronic
voting machine. Darshan Kaur is a nurse at Tilak Vihar government
hospital these days, and is still full of rage. “I want God to do
the same thing to them as they did to us,” she says. She has
suffered attacks even later from Bhagat acolytes who wanted her to
withdraw the case. She was offered a bribe of Rs 25 lakh too. Which
way do you think will she vote? Congress? By a long shot? No? Okay,
we too agree.
| |
Both have waited long for justice. Both still have hopes after
years of darkness. Both are widows. Both watched blood thirsty
Hindu rampaging mobs kill their husbands. Both will most likely
vote against each other. Such are the machinations of Indian
nation state. It is time you really engaged. |
Jakia Nasim
Ahesan and Darshan Kaur are both victims, both have waited long for
justice. Both still have hopes after years of darkness. Both are
widows. Both watched blood thirsty Hindu rampaging mobs kill their
husbands. Both will most likely vote against each other.
Welcome to the
Indian nation state’s idea of justice. One party fails to punish
senior leaders who led mobs on a Sikh killing spree. The other
celebrates the man and ideology that killed hundreds of Muslims and
created a hate atmosphere. Both put each other in the dock over the
issue of killing minorities. My minority against your minority.
It is in such a
paradigm that we must place the untiring efforts of the ruling Akali
Dal led by Parkash Singh Badal-Sukhbir Singh Badal duo which is
trying to install BJP hardliner L K Advani as Prime Minister of
India. For many weeks now, the Badals spend considerable time,
energy and money trying to convince us and everyone that L K Advani
will be better for the Sikhs than a Sikh but Congressman Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh.
There was a time
when Badal Sahib used to take a lot of credit for installing Atal
Bihari Vajpayee as Prime Minister. L K Advani used to be seen as
some kind of an unacceptable hawk and difficult to swallow as Prime
Ministerial material. Now that he was to be presented as a mellowed,
mature leader, the RSS-BJP pulled a very old trick on the
electorate. It hyped Narendra Modi as a star leader after Advani.
The gamble seems to be working. Compared to Modi, Advani seems
mellow. He only opposes Sachar committee benefits to Muslims. Modi
wants them to be sent to Pakistan.
When the turn
comes, BJP will have to field Babu Bajrangi next to Modi. This will
make Gujarat CM look a shade mellow.
Doesn’t Kamal
Nath look mellow when compared to Jagdish Tytler? How many times did
you read demands that Congress should not give a ticket to Kamal
Nath?
It is time the
Sikh community took a more macro view of the realities of Indian
politics. It is time we took a more macro view of how interest
groups work. It is time we understand that at one level, the
entrenched forces in the BJP and the Congress largely represent the
interests of the same class, if not the same people. And very often,
it is the same people too.
The neo-liberal
economic interests intertwined with brahamanical forces entrenched
on the basis of exploitation of vast masses, institutionalized
discrimination and an expertise to send core issues to the periphery
form a deadly combination. These forces have little to do with the
notions of human rights. They will make a noise when Sensex will
fall or rise, they will celebrate when the number of Indian
billionaires will rise. They will make efforts to make you
understand the difference between billionaire and a dollar
billionaire.
| |
The Jafri
case
The Supreme Court order on probe of Modi’s role came less than
72 hours before voting began for the 26 Lok Sabha seats of
Gujarat. It was issued on a petition filed by Jakia Nasim Ahesan,
wife of former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, who was killed by a mob
on February 28, 2002 in Gulbarg Society in the heart of
Ahmedabad.
Accusing Modi of “masterminding” the riots, Jakia slammed police
investigation in various riots cases as “a charade calculated to
shield and exculpate” the chief minister, his certain cabinet
colleagues, high ranking police officials and bureaucrats.
“The SIT will inquire into the complaint made by the petitioner
(Jakia) and file its report within three months,” said a bench
comprising justices Arijit Pasayat and A.K. Ganguly .
The SIT, set up on the orders of the Supreme Court in March 2008
and headed by former CBI director R.K. Raghavan, is already
probing about a dozen major post-Godhra riots cases. In March,
the Gujarat government had put the riots toll at 1,180.
According to the petition, 18,000 houses were burnt down and
1.68 lakh people became refugees. More than 270 places of
worship were damaged, and property and businesses worth Rs 4,000
crore were destroyed.
Jakia had named Modi and 62 others in her June 2006 complaint to
the state police chief, who refused to register any case.
Following the refusal, she approached the Gujarat High Court in
November 2007. The high court had asked her to approach a
magistrate’s court for registering an FIR.
In her complaint, Jakia alleged her husband and 37 others were
killed by rioters as a result of the police’s criminal inaction.
She wanted the court to direct the police to book Modi and
others for criminal conspiracy, murder and other charges.
The complaint levelled specific and damning allegations against
Modi, 11 of his cabinet ministers, three sitting MLAs and 38
high-ranking police officers and bureaucrats (including IPS and
IAS officers) including the director general of police and
Gujarat chief secretary .
Jakia, who wanted to be included as a witness in the Gulbarg
Society massacre case, alleged that none of the 63 people named
as accused in her complaint had been booked for their acts of
omission and commission in the past seven years.
Jakia said there was a “deliberate” failure on the part of the
state government to protect the life and property of citizens
through a “well executed and sinister criminal conspiracy”. |
But they will
not shed tears at the state of your social indicators. India may be
below sub-Saharan African nations on the Human Development Index,
but the media will not go to town. It may have unacceptable levels
of poverty and malnutrition but the sense of shock will not riddle
its soul. Its middle class wants justice for 26/11. They want to
hang Afzal Guru first. Their idea of national security is to push
for an aggressive attack on Pakistan. They dismiss a movement as
strong as Naxalism as a “menace.”
It is with such
forces that representative leadership of the Sikhs has tied its
future. Punjabis, particularly Sikhs, may cry themselves hoarse
about opening the border with Pakistan. Some proactive ones go to
the border to light candles. Culture exchange programs were
difficult to stem once the flood gates of emotions were thrown open.
Parkash Singh Badal himself was a great votary of Punjab-Punjab
ties. Now, he and his party are in league with Advani-Modi-RSS. Not
just in league, they are working hard to put the country into their
pocket.
Irrespective of
who Mr Badal believes could have carried out
Gujarat
killings, does it behove him to never ask for justice for the
victims of
Gujarat?
After all, he represents a community whose members were killed in
1984 by blood thirsty mobs. If
India’s Sikh
Prime Minister could apologize for the sins of 1984, may be a Sikh
CM asking for justice for Gujarat victims would also make sense.
Twenty five
years have passed for us. Seven years have passed for the Muslim
victims after BJP’s future prime ministerial mascot Narendra Modi
presided over the pogrom. Evolved democracies one after the other
have refused a visa to Modi. The civil society has witnessed how the
entire human rights domain has been frustrated with the agenda of
the saffron lobby, but there has been no debate within the Akali
Dal, the SGPC, the larger Sikh forums about the Akali Dal-BJP tie
up.
May be it is
time we thought things through.
29
April 2009
|
Read Also