Some Cong men also killed Ehsan Jafri

Rajesh Singh writes:

It was early October in 2001 when Mr Narendra Modi, still not an MLA, took oath for the first time as the Chief Minister of Gujarat. It would be just over four months later that violence would rock the State and lead to a torrent of allegations of communal conduct that would begin to rain on him — and it continues to do so to this day without any legal evidence. But back in October, preparations had begun for his election to the Assembly from Rajkot, zeroed in on by the Bharatiya Janata Party after some deliberation as the constituency for Mr Modi’s debut in electoral politics. Congress leader Ashwinbhai Kotwal had then remarked morosely: “This Narendra Modi is going to deal a deadly blow to the Congress. He is a man of great talent and competence. He is going to prove to be a cyclone for the Congress.” It was prescience at its most accurate. From that moment to now, almost 13 years since his arrival, Mr Modi has ensured that the Congress remained confined to the opposition benches in the State.

What had made Mr Kotwal to give this, from his party’s point of view a gloomy, prediction? He had, like many other leaders from across the political spectrum in the State, been witness to Mr Modi’s organisational skills as a senior worker of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The Congress leader had confided in a friend that his party would have had easy going had the BJP allowed, according to his party’s assessment, a bumbling Keshubhai Patel to finish the rest of his term as Chief Minister. Mr Modi’s arrival spoiled the Congress’s gameplan.

While the Congress never recovered from the Modi onslaught — he went on to comfortably win the Rajkot seat by defeating, of all people, the crystal-gazing Mr Kotwal — it has utilised the time since then to improve upon the atrocious calumny it has been heaping upon the Chief Minister, and promote a band of dubious NGOs and individuals who have made it their profession to malign Mr Modi and his supporters.

But why is all this important today? It makes sense to revisit the conspiracy to slander the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate because the hate-Modi lobby continues to insult people who are today speaking out in the Chief Minister’s support. But for the revisit to have credibility, it must be laced with facts that cannot be denied. And because they cannot be denied, the anti-Modi camp has either ignored them or twisted them out of shape. It’s here that author Madhu Purnima Kishwar’s book, Modi, Muslims and Media: Voices from Narendra Modi’s Gujarat, has its utility. Modi’s critics can slam the book as biased, but what can they say on the facts therein? But the anti-Modi camp stopped talking of facts long ago.

There are many reasons for the victory of the Narendra Modi-led BJP in the Assembly election that happened soon after the violence in 2002. Mr Modi’s rivals continue to harp on the polarisation of votes as a result of the incident to explain away the party’s triumph. But they refuse to acknowledge the other important reason: The stellar leadership Mr Modi provided in the relief and rehabilitation work in the wake of the terrible earthquake in 2001 that had devastated the Kutch region —the town of Bhuj and dozens of villages. Ms Kishwar explains at length, not just through her personal impressions gathered from visits to the area but also by her interactions with key Government officials who were engaged in the relief and rehabilitation work, how Mr Modi turned around a tragedy into an opportunity for the shattered residents to re-build their lives in a better way. In fact, this was the first real test of Mr Modi’s leadership skills.

But the popular narrative on Mr Modi dished out by his opponents glosses over this achievement and concentrates exclusively on the 2002 violence. Even here the story is packed with half-truths and blatant falsehoods, allowing for an impression to gain ground over the years that the Chief Minister was in some way responsible for the February violence. One of the silliest accusations is that he called in the Army late, that while the violence took a serious turn by the evening of 28, the force arrived only on the first day of the following month. The spate of incidents began on February 28 and the Army marched in by late afternoon of March 1: In 24 hours. Contrast this with the four days that it took for the Army to come when ethnic riots broke out in Congress-ruled Assam some months ago, and the more than two days that the Union Government of Rajiv Gandhi took to call in the Army when the Sikh massacre erupted in Delhi in 1984.

Ms Kishwar deals at length with the impressions and experiences of prominent Gujarati businessman Zafar Sareshwala who, along with other members of the community, suffered losses in the incident. Mr Sareshwala is today a hate figure for the anti-Modi brigade because he speaks in favour of the Chief Minister. It must be remembered that he was one of the prominent people who had decided to take the Modi Government to the International Court of Justice following the violence. He had also filed a case in the London High Court pleading that veteran BJP leader LK Advani, who was to visit the city, should be barred from doing so. Mr Sareshwala was then based in the UK. Modi, Muslims and Media gives a detailed account in his words how his thinking changed and how he reached out to Mr Modi in the belief that nothing could be gained for the Muslim community in the State by gunning for the Chief Minister, and that time had come to confront him with issues and demand resolutions. Ms Kishwar’s book provides an insight into how things panned out thereafter.

But what is even more interesting is the response of the Congress leadership then to the crisis which they have been flogging for a decade now. Except on the rare occasion, they never spoke of the violence in the State. Mr Sareshwala is quoted in the book as saying: “The Congress knows it was complicit in the riots. This is the reason why the Congress does not want to mention 2002 in Gujarat but they scream about it only on national television.” At another place, he states, “Some Congressmen were in fact part of the mob that killed (Ehsan) Jafri”, the heavyweight Congress leader during the violence. Yet, today, we do not hear a word about this from either the hate-Modi activists — or even Jafri’s widow who continues to target Mr Modi for the killing of her husband.

 The answer to the question, ‘Who needed post-Godhra riots? The Congress or Narendra Modi?’ lies in the political reality of those days in 2002. Mr Modi had begun to rejuvenate the BJP which had fallen on bad days, and the Congress was staring at political exile. The relief and rehabilitation work in Kutch had won him many admirers, including large numbers from the Muslim community who had been severely affected by the earthquake. Why then would the Chief Minister have, deliberately, as his critics have been alleging, engineer a communal riot and destroy the hard-won support of the minority community? But from the Congress’s point of view, the violence came in handy for the party to damage Mr Modi’s image and hopefully topple his regime.

They partially succeeded in the first and completely failed in the second. Now even that partial success stands discredited.

Tweet: #CupOfLies: Even some #CongressMen were part of killing #Ehsan #Jafri. Know more http://bdnarayankar20.blogspot.in/2014/03/cup-of-lies-against-narendra-modi.html …
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