–Ananth Seth
Today, February 27, it will be 19 years since the Godhra incident: an incident that resulted in the death of 59 Hindu pilgrims who were burnt alive inside the coaches of Sabarmati Express. The Commission set up by the Government of the State where the incident occurred, to investigate the train burning, spent 6 years going over the details of the case and concluded that the fire was an act of arson committed by a Muslim mob of 1,000 to 2,000 people. The attempts of the then Central Government, led by Congress Party, to play dirty by appointing another panel (Banerjee Committee) fell flat when the appointment of that Committee was held to be unconstitutional. The Court, while quashing Banerjee Committee, ruled that the investigation of Banerjee Committee was “unconstitutional, illegal and null & void” and declared its formation to be a “colourable exercise of power with mala fide intentions”. Later, the report submitted by the Special Investigation Team constituted by the apex court of the country described the train burning as a conspiracy.
The so called Leftlib lobby (an oxymoron because the words Left and Liberal are not synonyms; the leftists are not liberal in any sense of the word) has continued to work overtime, not missing even half an opportunity to keep the embers burning. The Leftlib complex did not hesitate to spread rumors about these unfortunate victims. Some said they didn’t pay for tea, some said they had pulled a Muslim man’s beard, some even spread rumors that they were assaulting women. Some of the lies spread about the victims were even more fantastic in nature, appearing to defy even physical notions of time and space – Arundhati Roy crowed that the Kar-Sevaks in 2002 were on their way back from demolishing the babri masjid in 1992!
Lot of water has flown since 2002 and the Godhra carnage has had its share of analyses and commentaries. But hitherto, the carnage has only been analyzed from the communal, civilizational and political angles. The Security & Strategic angle and the possible external machinations have been ignored. We don’t seem to have sensitized ourselves to the possibility of the carnage being a part of the proxy-war being waged upon India by Pakistan and its strategic master, China. The train carnage at Godhra followed the attack on Parliament which led to Operation Parakaram, wherein the Indian Army attempted to demonstrate its punitive resolve by deploying half a million troops along the Indo-Pak border. The military-intelligence establishment and jihadi groups of Pakistan might have had precise agendas in orchestrating the Godhra train carnage. We need to delve into the aspect of the carnage being a pre-meditated external ploy to ease pressure from the borders during Operation Parakram, divide Indian reaction and neutralize its capabilities to punish Pakistan for its orchestrated attack on Indian parliament on 13 December 2001. The gravitas of the issue is not lost even in 2021 because if we get sufficient reasons to draw and demonstrate some conclusions which can corroborate that angle even today, the strategic positives will be plenty.
Be that as it may, those who hate anything that is pro-India and pro-Sanatan might have scored some small inconsequential victories here and there, they have failed in their main mission of creating chaos so that conditions can be created for furthering their sinister agendas. What has frustrated them is that despite their best efforts, they were not taken on face-value. Their false narrative has spurred the patriots to dig deep in an attempt to find out the truth. The attempts by that lobby to portray Cultural Nationalism & Assertive Hindutva as the villains, and Jihadis & ‘Distorted Secularism’ as the victims, has actually pulled many Nationalists out of their religio-cultural somnolence. The consequent unification of intent amongst the patriots has catapulted nationalists to power and they seem well set…for a long time to come. Tathaastu!
(Author is Hyderabad-based Legal Practitioner)
