SUNDAY HINDUSTAN TIMES, MUMBAI SEPTEMBER 16, 2012 | 09 think! THEBIGSTORY

Banaskantha ■ Rioters on the run, March 1, 2002 Sardarpura FILE PHOTO Patan Sabarkantha

Ahmedabad GANDHINAGAR AFTER Naroda Patiya Rajkot Anand Jamnagar Vadodara GUJARAT Ode

Bhavnagar Junagadh Amreli THE Surat

THREE KEY MAP: SEBASTIAN HOPEVERDICT AND FEAR Two weeks after a historic judgement convicting 32 JUDGEMENTS “For the first time in Independent India, we have a high people of murder in ’s Naroda Patiya, its consequences are rate of conviction in communal rioting, going all the being felt in and around the site of the worst rioting in Gujarat in 2002 way up to the political masterminds. There is a long way to go, but the convictions have punctured a MAHENDRA PARIKH/HT PHOTOS culture of impunity and ensured some accountability Sumana Ramanan ■ [email protected] for lives and dignity lost,” says , secretary of Citizens for Justice and Peace, an NGO at mina Abbas, 50, has often seen ’s cav- the forefront of the fight for justice. alcade pass the road in front of her home in Ahmedabad’s NARODA PATIYA, ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF AHMEDABAD Naroda Patiya. Each time, she feels a mixture of anger, 1 Deaths during the riots: 97 fearA and hopelessness — anger that the Date of the judgement: August 29, 2012 Gujarat chief minister never once visit- Court: Special court judge Jyotsna Yagnik, at a ed her largely working-class Muslim special designated court in Ahmedabad, colony, the site of the worst violence in supervised by the Supreme Court riots that convulsed the state in 2002; Convicted: 32 people, including BJP MLA and fear that the mobs that set houses on fire ex-minister Maya Kodnani, former Bajrang Dal and killed more than 90 people will convenor , BJP leaders Bipin return; and hopelessness about her future Panchal and Ashok Sindhi and former corporator in the city. “Wherever there is a calami- Kishan Korani — all of murder; 29 acquitted ty, leaders are supposed to go,” she said in Hindi, standing outside the commu- Sentences: Life terms to 31 people nity mosque, on September 11, the day What next? NGO Citizens for Justice and Peace that Modi set off on his Vivekananda plans to file appeals with respect to the ■ BJP legislator Yuva Vikas Yatra from Bahucharaji, a acquittals and accountability from policemen on Mayaben Kodnani Hindu pilgrimage town in Mehsana dis- the beat. FILE PHOTO trict in north Gujarat, launching his cam- paign for the state assembly election due FROM THE COURT ORDER: Acts of communal violence are brutal, in December. “But he did not even make inhuman and shameful...It [Naroda] was a clear incident of human a pretence of commiserating with us.” rights violation as 97 people were killed brutally within a day which Clearly among the locality’s more artic- included helpless women, children, aged persons...This was a ulate and fearless residents, she was the pre-planned conspiracy and it cannot be mitigated just by saying it first to come forward from among a clus- was a reaction [to the] Godhra train burning incident. State ter of people, mostly men, sitting and Government protected and shielded the guilty accused, especially its standing around the mosque. At the end ■ Amina Abbas, 50, outside a mosque in Naroda Patiya, a suburb of Ahmedabad that witnessed the worst rioting in 2002 minister, by providing protection to her when she was absconding. of August, when she heard on TV that a special court had convicted 32 people for murder and rioting in her locality, she felt a measure of satisfaction (see panel ODE, ABOUT 90 KM FROM AHMEDABAD ‘Three key judgements’). Most of the con- Deaths during the riots: victs are from neighbouring settlements 27 2 Dates of the judgements: April 12, 2012 — either Chharas, classified as a crimi- nal tribe by the British, or Sindhis, from and May 4, families that were refugees of Partition, 2012 including the area’s MLA, Mayaben Court: Judge PB Singh and Judge RM Sareen, at a Kodnani, a former state minister and a special court in Anand doctor who ran a clinic in the area. Convicted: 23 people and 10 people Historic in India for its conviction of respectively, of murder and rioting not just the foot soldiers of a riot but also Sentences: 18 of the 23 convicted in April were the generals orchestrating it, the judge- sentenced to life imprisonment, the remaining five ment's effects are gradually rippling to seven years in prison; nine out of 10 convicted through communities connected with in May were sentenced to life imprisonment. the worst brutality of 2002. ■ A policeman carries “It partly restored our faith in the law,” What next? NGO Citizens for Justice and Peace has filed appeals in the high court in the first case away an elderly convict. said Amina, whose immediate family, her FILE PHOTO husband and two sons, escaped the vio- and will file one soon in the second. lence, but whose home was looted. ■ The Chhara community centre and ■ About a dozen residents of Chhara Nagar (above) were convicted of murder. “Innocents — poor, vulnerable people — library were murdered and raped. Our homes SARDARPURA, ABOUT 80 KM FROM AHMEDABAD and livelihoods were destroyed. What has the Gujarat government done to help Deaths during the riots: 33 us rebuild our lives?” 3 Date of the judgement: November 9, 2011 Amina stopped working on February The court: Special court judge SC Srivastava of the 28, 2002, the day the mobs came. She district and sessions court of Mehsana had a job in the neighbouring Hindu area of Chiloda, in a press that prints exami- Convicted: 31 people, of murder and rioting nation papers; she had the responsibili- Sentences: The court sentenced 31 people to ty of ensuring employees did not leave life imprisonment and fined them `50,000 each. the premises with copies. “I am too afraid It acquitted 42 others, 11 for a lack of evidence, to work in a Hindu area,” she said, adding while the remaining 31 got the benefit of the that she planned to move soon to doubt. These 31 have been asked to submit a Bhiwandi, a Muslim-majority textile town solvency bond of `25,000 each and told not to leave 20 kilometres northeast of Mumbai, the country without the court's permission. where she has relatives. Said her hus- What next? Supported by the Citizens for Justice band Abbas, 65, a retired mill worker: and Peace, victims and witnesses have filed appeals ■ A convict’s relative “Muslim votes make no difference to against acquittals and the judgements that did not breaks down. Narendra Modi.” But Amina has no faith ■ Neeraj Jain, a neighbour of Mayaben uphold the charge of conspiracy. FILE PHOTO in the Congress either. “It did nothing Kodnani, believes she was framed. ■ A woman at the eerily quiet Apna Ghar Colony in Sindhi-dominated Kuber Nagar during the riots or afterwards,” she said. In the nearby Chhara settlement, about nel young people’s energies into reading On the other side of Patiya lies the ventured out, but would reveal only his could not have done all those things. She a dozen of whose residents have been and theatre and bring about communal lower-middle-class Sindhi locality of first name — Anil. He said he did not has been framed.” An older man, cradling convicted, Chetna Rathod, 29, and Ankur harmony, she said. After the 2002 riots, The judgement may have Kuber Nagar. On a stretch facing the know much, including whether any of an infant, nodded vigorously. “The riots Garange, 24, are two prominent, edu- the group ran workshops for Muslim chil- jolted some god-fearing people main road are a row of dispensaries. One the convicts lived there. An elderly were a spontaneous reaction to what cated youngsters. They weren’t keen on dren in Patiya who had seen their par- of them, as the Gujarati sign indicated, woman also tentatively stepped out. “Yes, happened at Godhra,” he said, referring being photographed but talked freely ents being killed, said Garange. among the Gujarati middle belongs to Mayaben Kodnani. When I saw Mayaben and others being arrest- to the torching of a compartment of the about the judgement, sitting in the As a youngster, however, Garange reg- classes, but mainly among the asked when she last came there, a man ed, on TV, but I know nothing else,” she Sabarmati Express on February 27, 2002, Chhara community centre, whose street- ularly attended programmes run by the at a counter outside shrugged and turned said in Hindi before ducking back inside. largely carrying Hindutva activists facing façade, with its bright handprints local Rashtriya Swayamsevek Sangh older generation. away, discouraging further conversation. Several activists, such as Gautam Thaker, returning from Ayodhya. He did not want made with paint catches the eye amidst branch, at a cricket ground nearby. “I ACHYUT YAGNIK A woman inside claimed she had sold it the Gujarat general secretary of the to reveal his name. the area’s unrelenting hodgepodge of low- even wore khaki pants,” he recalled. author and activist six months ago. Two doors away a sign People's Union for Civil Liberties, said Jain and Parmar are members of flung tenements lining narrow, slush- “They told us that we were Hindus, that ( ) read ‘Surendra Kodnani’, Mayaben’s hus- the Sindhis may have clammed up Gujarat’s growing urban and urbanised filled lanes. On the door hangs a board: Muslims were our enemies. They taught band. At 9 am, his clinic was closed. A because they were angry with Modi for middle class, the vast majority of whom Budhan Theatre. Inside, against three us inflammatory songs. But they didn’t centre, by way of emphasising Hindu fun- man in a saffron robe sitting on the stoop having forsaken them. “Besides those Yagnik had said still staunchly support- walls are eight steel cupboards, stacked succeed because our experience with damentalism’s hold on parts of the local- outside said the compounder would open convicted, many others are also still fight- ed Modi, especially youngsters. “My busi- with mostly English books, a surprisingly Muslims has been good.” ity. Bajrangi, a former leader of the it after an hour. Deeper inside Kuber ing cases against them,” he said. ness has prospered during his rule,” said high-brow and eclectic collection, includ- Just the previous day, Achyut Yagnik, extremist Bajrang Dal, was convicted Nagar, a man on a bicycle stopped, eager Several kilometres away, in Jain. “Gujarat hasn’t had a riot in the ing Rabbit at Rest by John Updike and the author of several books on Gujarat last month, along with Kodnani. Yet to talk. A retired public prosecutor at Ahmedabad’s upper middle-class past decade. Modi is India’s best chief Walter Laqueur’s Europe in Our Time. and the founder of the Ahmedabad-based Rathod found it hard to believe that so the chief metropolitan magistrate’s court, Shahibagh area, in Om Towers, where minister.” Just then, his father walked In an open yard behind the room, a man non-profit group, Centre for Social many Chharas had been found guilty of he identified himself as NS Saini. “The Kodnani lived on the 10th floor, people by, asked him whom he was talking to is selling plastic pouches of what is appar- Knowledge and Action, had said that for murder. “Chharas are often involved in Naroda verdict is unprecedented in were more forthcoming. The building’s and frisked him away. ently country liquor; several youngsters two decades the property-related crimes,” she said can- Gujarat,” he said in English. “Convictions supervisor, Atmaram Parmar, 62, said Four days later, Modi’s yatra had are sitting on wooden benches, drinking. (BJP) had been wooing an emerging class didly. “But according to our customs, you act as a great deterrent. But they will she had been an upright resident. “I liked reached Navsari district in south Gujarat. “Traditionally, the community made of urban, educated Dalits and backward cannot kill.” probably have no effect on Modi’s her,” he said. “She was from the BJP, By then, Amina Abbas had also moved a living through thievery and brewing castes, some of whom were attracted to “I was young when the riots took place, prospects in the election. He has charis- which I support. Modi’s work is good. He south, to Bhiwandi, unsure about when liquor,” said Rathod in Hindi. “But we are Hindutva as a resolution of their identi- but I’ve heard about the atrocities, and ma.” He directed us to the Apna Ghar is a good person.” she would return to Naroda Patiya. “I trying to change things.” Founded in 1998 ty crisis. Some Chharas continue to I’m glad some people have been pun- colony nearby, where he said the fami- “What happened with Mayaben, it’s am waiting to see,” she said over the with the help of writer and activist attend the Sangh’s programmes, said ished,” said Garange. “But you can’t say lies of some of the Sindhi convicts lived. wrong,” said Neeraj Jain, 28, a textile phone, “whether or not those above Mahasweta Devi and academic-activist Rathod, adding that Babu Bajrangi’s anything about Modi in Gujarat. The rich In this colony, people peeped out, but merchant, attracted by the gathering Mayaben and the convicts come to Ganesh Devy, the centre aims to chan- home was a five-minute walk from the support him. He will come back to power.” few wished to speak. One man finally crowd. “She’s a respectable doctor. She their rescue.”