Who are the Terrorists in the coup d’etat during President Trump’s Visit?

by Mustafa Khan

It was a coup. And the unravelling of events now in 2020 Delhi and in the Gujarat genocide of 2002 has striking resemblances. The inductive and deductive process of reasoning shows who the real terrorists are. Three neighbours who lived together cheek by jowl went to lodge a complaint with the police in Delhi in the aftermath of Trump’s departure. Rahis Ahmed, Harish Garg and Shakir. On reaching there Rahis and Shakir were detained as rioters and the third was allowed to go back home. He was a Hindu. The two Muslims were taken in a police van and abused. One of them used his phone to call help from his home. The security abused him, snatched his mobile and crushed it under his boots. But the call was made.

India is vibrant in coups like the midnight demonetisation, in the transfers at the head-quarters of Central Bureau of Investigation, the transfer of the Delhi HC judge Muralidhar. PM Modi is too parsimonious with words and leaves the nation groping in the dark. But strangely his followers in 2002, 2013 and February 24-25, 2020 have imbibed the Pavlovian signals of the dog whistle. Sangeet Som, while talking to the media outside a special court in Muzaffarnagar, “Such people (like Hussain) are terrorists and have no right to live.” He said they should not be put on trial. Another one was Anurag Thakur who shouted that traitors should be shot dead.

Many traders from Mumbai were holidaying in Ahmedabad when Trump was enroute to Sabarmati Ashram. It was for them that loud music from the 1978 ‘hit Macho Man’ from Villlage People was played. Not for them was this as Pavlovian stimulus

“Body...wanna feel my body?

Body...such a thrill my body

Body...wanna touch my body?

Body...it’s too much my body

Check it out my body, body.

Don’t you doubt my body, body.

Talkin’ bout my body, body,

Check it out my body....

Hey! Hey! Hey, hey, hey!

Macho, macho man (macho man)

I’ve got to be, a macho man

Macho, macho man

I’ve got to be a macho! (dig the hair on my chest) [57 inches]”

They danced with abandon. The entire families in all their age-groups shared picnic food among themselves and others caring to join in their euphoria to make it a gala performance. But it was another city where the dog-whistle was sounded even before Trump left. The localities were early earmarked even the dog-whistle was sounded with impunity by 3 in the afternoon itself while Trump was to leave later in the evening. Kapil Mishra trumpeted while a senior police officer affectionately padded his flank with his hands, as a mild reproach or timid remonstrance. He voiced how they would take upon themselves to remove the protestors of the anti-CAA from the roads. The result was foretold.

“The violence in Delhi was genocide. I am calling this a planned genocide because it is state-sponsored. The police stood and watched while the violence happened. I am also sorry for the police constable and the intelligence officer who died. But this violence was the implantation of the Gujarat model and must be stopped before it spreads to other parts of the country. I am deeply pained by the killing of innocent people.” Thus observed Mamata Banerjee, the CM of West Bengal.

By his silence and words the PM has promoted himself from Nero to Pharoah. His eerie silence reveals much more as he resembles a manic killer par excellence. He has the audacity to be taciturn when the people want him to account for what happened in Dlhi.

The Indian Express narrates what befell 28-year-old Kadijah Khan and her five children, whose house in Shiv Vihar was among the many that were burnt down during the violence. Holding her one-year-old baby, who suffered burn injuries on his leg, she said: “We were sitting inside our house when I saw a mob throwing petrol bombs and lighting cylinders. I was horrified, my husband wasn’t home. I took my five children and rushed to the terrace. We waited for them to leave but they kept throwing petrol bombs, one of them hit Shazdah on his left leg. Our neighbours helped us and we managed to escape to Chaman Park. A doctor treated Shazdah there. He has fever and he hardly sleeps. My husband is still staying at his friend’s place. We have nothing left.” Ths is the work of manic killers of children. Salman Rushdie had observed in the 2002 genocide that burning children was a speciality of Indians. That has gone too far 18 years later.

The baptism in fire began on February 27, 2002 what had begun as a fire accident on the Sabarmati Express at Godhra, according to the Collector of Godhra, Jayanti Ravi, was later christened as sabotage and the Ghanshi Muslims were blamed. A carefully planned pogrom began on Friday when Muslims had to face the ire of the ravenging mobs. CM Modi had called the Ganchi Muslims as a criminal class. Though a tea-seller, he was also from the oil extracting class of Ghanchi (Hindus). The coup d’etat then was wrought by his blue-eyed senior cop of the midnight coup at the CBI office, Rakesh Asthana. Asthana was the Superindepent of Police then. It is all history how two different commissions inquired the fire on the Sabarmati Express’ locked and barricaded compartment. How the train junk was sold away in a hurry to wipe out the trace like what happened when D.G. Vanzara burnt to ashes the body of Sohrabuddin’s wife, Kauser, at his own palace of pleasure at Iliol. So what Bertrand Russell gives as the first example of Galileo’s scientific method “fire burns” in his book The Scientific Outlook is part of critical thinking which is not in favour of the education system in Gujarat, according to the author, Martha Nussbaum, of The Clash Within.

In the earliest reaction 65 persons from the Muslim community travelling in a tempo from Kidiad to Modasa in Sabarkantha were burnt alive at Babaliya, Khanpur chowki, Panchmahal on the same day. Modasa has a sizable Muslim population, an eyesore to the Hindutva groups which also targeted it in a bomb attack on September 29, 2008 along with Malegaon in Maharashtra. The earlier event of February 27th, 2002 was the onset of the genocide.

It was not in a Newtonian way at all. The action led to not just unequal and opposite reaction but far more outweighed than what had happened at Godhra. On the same day five more Muslims were killed in Godhra alone. It Early next day on February 28 at 10 am the whole families of Shabbir Ahmed Khurshid Ahmed and Mehmud Ahmed Khurshid Ahmed were wiped out in the initial attacks in Naroda Patiya and Naroda Gam. A well-armed mob in khakhi half-pants and in saffron vests and black bandana tied on the forehead had begun the killing.

Modi has acquired the notoriety of applying the third law of Newton in human affairs. In the natural sciences one-to-one connection can be verified. But in the human relation this is rather difficult. For example, the Godhra attack led to the pogroms. But the attempted abduction of a girl by the kar sevaks from near Godhra or the brawl on the railway platform between caterers and kar sevaks is deliberately not brought forth as the antecedent but the consequences they must have produced. However, human beings can stagger the response according to the choice of time and place. That is what set the natural science in a different category. Even the most gruesome incident of the volunteers of the temple or kar sevaks throwing a Muslim from the running train, in this case the Sabarmati Express, did not figure in any explanation of any Newtonian law.

The extreme Hindutva forces have a long history of “retaliation”—a euphemism for prepared and long-planned riot. In the famous anti-reservation agitation of upper-caste Hindus in Gujarat in the eighties of the last century the Hindutva groups veered it into a Hindu-Muslim riot which claimed hundreds of lives. Such antecedents are galore. But Modi did choose the fire accident because of this established tradition of going for the Muslims when the atmosphere is created, when the tinder box needs just a burning match stick.

Children too were burnt alive with their parents. But another kind of atrocity was: they were spared and were made to witness what happened to their parents. This kind of extreme punishment was the sowing of torments and depression for years to persist and hence a new ingenuity of the evil mind of the tormenters and murderers.

In Ladoo village of Mehsana the Hindus caught Karisma Rehman (5) and her brother Mohsin (12). They had caught their parents and poured petroleum on them. The parents pleaded them to leave their children. Karisma repeated the requests of her parents: “Leave the children alone.” She could not make out anything further than this of the adult world’s treatment of her parents. “I don’t know what happened.” She repeatedly said. Her mind could not grasp the dark reality any further. However, her brother told the reporters “I recognise who did it.” He repeated the names of those who killed his parents.

However some children instinctively rushed to shelter themselves wherever they could. So in the night of March 1 there was a twelve-year-old Dilawar Sheikh of Sardarpura where he hid in a carton inside the kitchen and saved himself. He recalls what he saw nearly ten years ago: “My mother died near the entrance, with half her clothes pulled out. She was begging them for her life with her hands folded. The attackers told them to touch their feet. The Muslims even touched their feet only to be burnt with acid, which the attackers poured over them. There was hatred in their eyes.”

In the most horrifying scenes from 2002 even children of 11 or 12 were forced to drink petrol and burning matches thrown at their mouths and they exploded into pieces. Such testimony a retired judge belonging to the Citizens for Peace and Justice recorded within months of the mass atrocities. In contrast the government of Narendra Modi did nothing to even record the deaths of such children. This totally cussed and callous attitude of the administration and hence of the Chief Minister shows how the genocide was executed mercilessly to wipe out any trace of pity and remorse which humans share across all religious groups. What has then Modi bequeathed to the future generations of Gujarat and the rest of the country?

Lies and rumours are most infectious in public life. The man who had the reign of power over the whole country was infected by the lies and rumour of 2002. The Prime Minister of India A.B. Vajpayee deliberately fell into the trap of lies. At 4.30 pm he told in Parliament that the burning of the train at Godhra was an accident and slogan-shouting was there as the reason. That was also the view of the Collector of Godhra and she maintained it till full four hours until Modi turned it into a lie that it was a terrorist attack by the LeT and ISI. In just over a month Vajpayee uttered lies that shocked many people. He blamed the Muslims in general for setting the train on fire. “Who started the fire first?” (“pehli aag kisne lagayi”) “How did the fire spread further?” (Aag faily kaise?) He even voiced the deliberate falsehood of the Hindutva Right that Muslims have spread their religion on the strength of the sword. “Don’t spread faith on the strength of the sword.” (Talwar ke bal par mat ka prachar nahin karna chahiye.). He spoke to the Hindutva party BJP convention in Goa on Friday April 12, 2002 and said that Muslims do not know how to live with others. In this generalised sense he gave the example of Indonesia and Malaysia. In addition to the obvious lie there was another. Vajpayee added “such” in a sentence which did not exist in the original speech in Goa. This led Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi move a privilege motion against Vajpayee in Parliament on May 16, 2002. Thus the Prime Minister adopted the lie that Modi mouthed at 8.30 pm of February 27, 2002. Vajpayee brazenly and rhetorically said later before the year was out that if there is another conflagration ala Godhra, his party would give the same fitting reply!!! All this confirms that the party and its leaders would now take cue from Modi. A confused Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani told reporters in Port Blair on Friday May 3, 2002 he would ask Modi whether the fire on the train was planned by the Muslims. The reporters had drawn his attention to the finding of the investigation agencies which denied that it was planned at all.

The web of lies that Modi began to weave is an example of impunity he enjoyed by the tacit support of the Central Government. On March 1, 2002 he had asserted that he would control the “riots resulting from the natural and justified anger of the people” within 72 hours. However, 500 hours later Gujarat was still burning as the Chief Minister kept on weaving the web of lies on Saturday, March 23, 2002: violence would abate when the Members of Parliament sent from Delhi would return to their respective constituencies. “The petrol was being sprinkled from Delhi to stoke the Gujarat fire. Every morning one former Prime Minister is making a statement, which is igniting the violence here. These statements show that one lie automatically leads to more lies and that has continued till the beginning of 2012 and shows no remorse on his part and no stopping of weaving the lies now or hereafter. On par with the Prime Minister the manner of weaving the web of lies continues. Even after Modi had insulted Parliament the prime minister dared to say: “I have full faith in Modi” in just over a week. The Deputy Prime Minister’s penchant to issue Modi as the best Chief Minister of Gujarat in 50 years also was belied by the ground reality when exam centres were under attack by violent mobs on March 16, 2002. These blatant lies disgusted the IAS officer, Harsh Mander, to resign from the government job around this time.

His resignation naturally reflects the sham investigation and sketchy First Information Report which the police were preparing. In the case of the dreadful Babu Bajrangi he was arrested on May 28 even when his name was not in the FIR. Why should the SC be riled by Harsh Mander after all these and the midnight transfer of Justice Muralidhar for not allowing 2020 to turn into 1984 and ordering ambulance to take the injured in Delhi to hospitals!

Modi’s understanding of the Newtonian third law in applying to action and reaction is till incomplete. Why did he not bother for Galileo’s law of the “unsupported bodies in air fall” when a Muslim old woman was thrown from the fourth floor of the civil hospital to meet her death on the concrete below? In the second attempt also she survived. Then his unruly mob burnt her alive there in the hospital. He gave his own understanding that petrol (or?) kerosene was sprayed into the compartment that burnt part of the train. But more action and reaction was when a Muslim girl Sophia was snatched from the platform by the mob of karsevaks who tried to abduct her into their compartment. These will take much longer time for explaining. Some more coups will follow.

(Courtesy: scroll.in)

Mustafa Khan, who resides in Malegaon (Maharashtra), has the following blog: http://commonalty.blogspot.com