People's Democracy

A NEW gruesome dimension is unfolding in the communal genocide in Gujarat. The woefully inadequate relief camps housing more than a lakh of those who managed to survive the carnage are being pressurised to be closed down by the state administration. All these relief camps are being run by the NGOs through voluntary collection of money and material. On paper, the state government, under pressure, a month after the carnage began had sanctioned some provisions which in many cases is yet to reach the inmates.

Forcing the camps to close is being done in order to show that "normalcy" has returned to the state. Nothing can be more absurd. Everyday fresh spurts of violence are being reported. Today (May 9 4.00 p.m) 12 killings have been reported so far. Through these two and a half months of wanton killings and pillage, the chief minister visited the camps only once when he accompanied the prime minister. No other state cabinet minister has according to reports ever visited any camp. The Governor, made a formal appearance once over a month after the carnage began. It must be recollected that the same RSS pracharak, S S Bhandari, as governor of Bihar in the past had with alacrity recommended the dismissal of the Bihar government when 11 deaths in a caste conflict were reported. The Gujarat genocide does not merit, according to him, such attention.

As the inmates of the relief camps, living in inhuman conditions with epidemics and diseases spreading, leave in search of their destroyed homes, they are being waylaid and killed. Those who have braved to reach what were once their homes are being threatened in various ways. Some are being told that they cannot live in their homes unless they convert their religion. Some others are being threatened that they cannot live in their homes unless they withdraw the FIRs and complaints that they have filed. Yet some others are being told that they can live in their homes only if they permit complete access of their properties to those very people who in the first place killed, raped and looted them.

These are the conditions of "normalcy" that Mr. Modi wants the country to accept. While shamelessly capitulating in the Rajya Sabha and accepting the opposition censure motion, the Vajpayee government committed itself to intervene in Gujarat under Article 355 of the Constitution. Apart from allocating a measly Rs 150 crores there is precious little intervention. Various estimates have put the loss of property and economic life as a result of this carnage at a whopping Rs 11,000 crores. Since very little is being done about relief itself, there is absolutely no talk of any rehabilitation measures.

It is imperative that even at this late stage the central government intervenes to ensure proper human conditions in relief camps, provide adequate relief and work out a proper rehabilitation package for the victims. In the meanwhile, all measures must be taken to bring the perpetrators of this ghastly crime to book.

It is obviously ridiculous to expect either the Narendra Modi administration or the Vajpayee dispensation to undertake such a task. They have shown the world the Indian variant of ethnic cleansing. What they are doing in Gujarat is reminiscent of the fascist ghettoisation undertaken by Hitler and the Nazis in the 1930s. It is a different matter that civilisation has advanced during the seven decades since. The fascists however continuously keep going back to barbarism as the method to achieve their political objectives.

The Indian people, who celebrate our rich and pluralistic diversity, will have to rise as one man, to unitedly defeat these forces of fascistic communalism.