It is two months since the Godhra massacre took place (on Feb 27). And Gujarat is still smouldering.
The BJP, its leaders and its supporters still haven't realised why the post-Godhra events are different from the burning of train passengers. They still have time, it is better to be late than never.
The Godhra incident was an act of terrorism, designed by some one specially to incite communal passions. No one needed any great powers of foresight to know that it would spark a violent backlash by forces inherent in any society who look for excuses to create trouble. Herein comes the role of the government and of Chief Minister Narendra Modi in particular.
The government should have pre-empted the revenge killings. When it says a backlash was natural, it is perfectly right. In spite of this knowledge that a backlash would be coming, it failed to act doubly fast to prevent the cycle of killings.
What happened instead was the government let the revenge attacks to take place. Meaning, it descended to the level of street thugs and terrorists. It clearly abandoned the duty and responsibility of a government; which is to be the guardian of law for each and every citizen.
By letting the revenge killings take place, probably BJP hardliners thought, the perpetrators of the Godhra massacre would learn a lesson. But, how foolish of them to think that those perpetrators are civilised humans to learn from mistakes! Two, the plan to take the "natural justice" take its course horribly backfired.
Think of this: had the revenge killings not taken place, Modi and the BJP would earned the accolades for maintaining sanity in a society that is so short of hope and positive ideas. Besides, all the anger would have rightly focussed on the terrorist attack in Godhra. We would have had a proper inquiry and who knows identified the killers too.
There was still time to salvage the situation. If Modi had resigned things would have calmed down. Now, it appears that the BJP and the Sangh Parivar units do not wish to see any sort of civility in Gujarat. What they all hope to achieve by this, defies comprehension.
Gujarat is one of the most productive states of Indian economy. Gujaratis are one of the most enterprising and nice people around, as I have seen during my six years of stay there. Maybe Modi will go finally, but the damage has been done. How long it will take to get the society to tick again? How long will it take for people to trust each other once again?
If our rulers, democratically elected by us, care only this much, what hope do we have?
