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By I K Shukla

Jan. 17, 2005 is a day the HinduTaliban would like to scourge not commemorate. It was a day their perfidy was exposed, their mendacity highlighted. All their efforts at hoodwinking justice, stalling and strangling truth, concealing their crimes, covering up their bloody tracks, validating their outlawry and sacralizing their barbaric brutality were set at naught by the Interim Report on Godhra issued by Justice Umesh Chandra Bannerjee, the Chairman of the Inquiry Commission set up to probe the Godhra Fire.

This was the statutory duty of the former Railway Minister Nitish Kumar of BJP-NDA who chose to go not only derelict in the matter but also awol. He did not set up any inquiry. Nor did he deem it worthwhile, for departmental or humanitarian reasons, to visit the site of the terrible railway disaster. He also forgot to resign for his failure to ensure passengers’ safety in the trains. He forgot, again, his promise to reveal the secret of the tragedy. BJP had expected that the nation would forget too. It was not to be. Nitish served BJP not the passengers, nor his charge, the ndian Railways. It was a big betrayal, a crying shame.

It is the finding of this interim report that Godhra train fire was an accident, issuing from within the S6 bogey itself, sequent to someone lighting a stove and trying to cook. From this it is indubitably apparent, that augmenting the accident into a statewide communal fire of monstrous proportions immediately after, was the real conspiracy. The conspirators were Modi and his saffronazi gang in the ministry, in the bureaucracy, in the police, and the fascist Hindu offshoots of RSS, viz., VHP-BJP-BajrangDal, etc., etc. which put the minorities (Muslims) to torch.

It is the finding of this interim report that Godhra train fire was an accident, issuing from within the S-6 bogey itself, sequent to someone lighting a stove and trying to cook. From this it is indubitably apparent, that augmenting the accident into a statewide communal fire of monstrous proportions immediately after, was the real conspiracy. The conspirators were Modi and his saffronazi gang in the ministry, in the bureaucracy, in the police, and the fascist Hindu offshoots of RSS, viz., VHP-BJP-BajrangDal, etc., etc. which put the minorities (Muslims) to torch.

In independent India, for the first time, state-sponsored terror was unleashed to teach the Muslims a lesson for their refusal to vote for the HinduTaliban. They learnt it; and the Modi gang won after it had ignominiously lost several elections in succession. Since then, Gujarat has been a veritable hell for the minorities and anyone sympathetic to them. The criminals at the helm in Gujarat were approved and applauded by their cohort in Delhi (Atal-Advani), and encouraged by the Congress’ spinelessness then, and its sub rosa Hindu communalism now. The Modi government was not sacked for law and order failure by the BJP warlords in Delhi then. Nor has it been kicked out now by the Cong-UPA for its abject violations of the Constitution. This should set us thinking: Is only Hindutva contemptuous and destructive of it? Let the Left check it out.

As to the question of it being made public a few reflections are in order. The EC is abruptly and unconscionably awake in the matter. Why did it issue no such stricture when in the wake of the Gujarat Genocide of 2002 Modi and his cavemen lustily utilized Godhra (and the massacre of Muslims) as their poll plank in order to return to power with a massive majority? Why should this threat to society and polity be kept within wraps only during the election time, and to whose advantage? Why should not the electorate be allowed to participate in the debate on the serious and burning issues facing the country and the state? Again, when the fire-eaters and saffro furies like UmAbharti are going to stump for BJP in Bihar, does the EC expect they would sing paeans to democracy and secularism, pluralism and diversity, justice and dissent, equity and egalitarianism? Why does the EC set itself as the national arbiter to privilege communal fascists rampaging all over and propagating Gujarat as the pristine paradigm in Bihar, Jharkhand, and Haryana? Promoting Hindu fascism in the nation by its partisan pugilism is not among the EC’s assignments. It was not mandated to handicap those countering the communal criminals.

EC’s enthusiasm and alacrity must not come in spurts, randomly, supporting division, nation’s disintegration, desecration of the Constitution, and widespread desolation through violence and anarchy, through communalism and its paterfamilias, fascism. In the interests of its own probity to be found unsullied the EC must be ever careful of its dicta and its directives. It must not be seen in any way politicizing the issues or its own firmans. For that would be deleterious to its reputation and impinge on its usefulness.

Another murder yesterday in Kanchi Mutt of another dissenter and the Jharkhand murder of Mahendra Singh, an MLA, both none too mysteriously within a certain time frame, must not be treated as isolated incidents. They are linked.

The Jharkhand assassination, allegedly involving BJP’s CM there, Marandi, and his Industries Minister, has some very salient points to ponder. One, this is a warning shot of the HinduTaliban, in respect of the imminent polls in Bihar. It is a demonstrative dress rehearsal of the “voter persuasion” of the kind historically and habitually favored by the Hindutva brigade. Two, it prefigures Gujarat. Modi redux. Marandi rising to the template sanctified by the saffronazis of Gujarat geared to winning power at the polls. This is their idea of democracy. Three, the protagonists of the Chariot of Fire trail of death and destruction, having been pre-empted from burning Bihar then, have been gearing up for revenge ever since. To defeat Lalu Prasad Yadav and get even with him for having been checkmated years ago, they would drench Bihar in blood in revenge and for electoral success. See, who is with them, - George Fernandes, so very famous for secularism, and even more for financial uprightness.

The murder of Shankararaman in Kanchi Mutt, according to VedicTaliban, enhanced the stature of Hindutva, just as the setting afire of Staines and his two sons in Orissa was touted as having saved Hindutva. In both the cases those demanding that criminals be brought to justice are supposedly insulting Hindutva. This line prods the Hindu fascists to launch a campaign for the release of Jayendra-Vijayendra, the Chief and his Deputy. It is a repeat of the campaign to absolve Dara Singh, the murderer of Staines family. He was also enabled by the Hindutva cabal to contest elections to the State Assembly. The lawbreaker as lawmaker is the trick that a prostituted and pulverised democracy allows fascists to employ with great effect.

If the killers of Shankararaman can be absolved and freed through the street mobsterism of Hindu fascists, Advanis and their ilk (guilty in Hawala, Ayodhya, and other scams) too can, is the hope and cretinous logic firing the champions of the saffronite campaign.

If Gujarat murderers and rapists can be saved from the clutches of law, Marandis too can be. If mega murders established the dharma of Hindu Rashtra in Gujarat, the mini murders elsewhere too would do the same. They are not crimes, but political performances, assert who? The criminals themselves.

Thus, it is evident that much rides on these elections particularly in Bihar. To mollycoddle the proven savages and reprobates, to provide a cover for the ruthless enemies of India, under the cover of the Electoral Commission would be a travesty of the functions and faith invested in it, and a betrayal and blight of the democratic institutions that the founding fathers of the Constitution envisaged, and the Hindu fascists sniped at and scorched over several decades, arching their foul and traitorous mayhem with the assassination of Gandhi, the Father of Free India. «