The rioting in Gujarat in the first three days after Godhra was a

result of not just the massacre at Godhra. It was the result of

something else. And this something else was the reaction of
the Left-liberal-secular media.
The media in general and TV channels like Star News-NDTV (who then had
a collaboration) in particular and all English newspaper editors of the print
media, and all non-BJP politicians belong to this Left-liberal-secular brigade.
And every non-BJP leader who came on TV rubbed salt into the wounds of the
anguished people. This was done by rationalizing and justifying the Godhra
carnage.

Vir Sanghvi is the Chief Editor of The Hindustan Times. He wrote an article
titled “One way ticket” in The Hindustan Times dated 28 February 2002, i.e. he
must have written it on February 27 itself, the day of the massacre in Godhra.
This is the full text of his article:

“ There is something profoundly worrying in the response of what might be

called the secular establishment to the massacre in Godhra. Though there is
some dispute over the details, we now know what happened on the railway
track. A mob of 2,000 people stopped the Sabarmati Express shortly after it
pulled out of Godhra station. The train contained several bogeys full of kar
sewaks who were on their way back to Ahmedabad after participating in the
Poorna Ahuti Yagya at Ayodhya. The mob attacked the train with petrol and
acid bombs. According to some witnesses, explosives were also used. Four
bogies were gutted and at least 57 people, including over a dozen children,
were burnt alive.

Some versions have it that the kar sewaks shouted anti-

Muslim slogans; others that they taunted and harassed
Muslim passengers. According to these versions, the Muslim
passengers got off at Godhra and appealed to members of
their community for help. Others say that the slogans were
enough to enrage the local Muslims and that the attack was
revenge.

It will be some time before we can establish the veracity

of these versions, but some things seem clear. There is no
suggestion that the kar sewaks started the violence. The
worst that has been said is that they misbehaved with a few
passengers. Equally, it does seem extraordinary that
slogans shouted from a moving train or at a railway
platform should have been enough to enrage local
Muslims, enough for 2,000 of them to have quickly
assembled at eight in the morning, having already
managed to procure petrol bombs and acid bombs.

Even if you dispute the version of some of the kar sewaks

- that the attack was premeditated and that the mob was
ready and waiting - there can be no denying that what
happened was indefensible, unforgivable and
impossible to explain away as a consequence of great
provocation.

And yet, this is precisely how the secular establishment

has reacted.

Nearly every non-BJP leader who appeared on TV on

Wednesday and almost all of the media have treated the
massacre as a response to the Ayodhya movement. This is
fair enough in so far as the victims were kar sewaks.

But almost nobody has bothered to make the obvious

follow-up point: this was not something the kar sewaks
brought on themselves. If a trainload of VHP volunteers had
been attacked while returning after the demolition of the
Babri Masjid in December 1992, this would still have been
wrong, but at least one could have understood the
provocation.

This time, however, there has been no real

provocation at all. It is possible that the VHP may defy the
government and the courts and go ahead with the temple
construction eventually. But, as of now, this has not
happened. Nor has there been any real confrontation at
Ayodhya - as yet.

And yet, the sub-text to all secular commentary is the

same: the kar sewaks had it coming to them.
 Basically, they condemn the crime; but blame the
victims.

Try and take the incident out of the secular construct that
we, in India, have perfected and see how bizarre such an
attitude sounds in other contexts. Did we say that New York
had it coming when the Twin Towers were attacked last
year? Then too, there was enormous resentment among
fundamentalist Muslims about America’s policies, but we
didn’t even consider whether this resentment was justified
or not.

Instead we took the line that all sensible people must take:
any massacre is bad and deserves to be condemned.

When Graham Staines and his children were burnt alive,

did we say that Christian missionaries had made themselves
unpopular by engaging in conversion and so, they had it
coming? No, of course, we didn’t.

Why then are these poor kar sewaks an exception? Why

have we de-humanised them to the extent that we
don’t even see the incident as the human tragedy
that it undoubtedly was and treat it as just another
consequence of the VHP’s fundamentalist policies?

The answer, I suspect, is that we are programmed to

see Hindu-Muslim relations in simplistic terms:
Hindus provoke, Muslims suffer.

When this formula does not work — it is clear now that a

well-armed Muslim mob murdered unarmed Hindus - we
simply do not know how to cope. We shy away from the
truth - that some Muslims committed an act that is
indefensible - and resort to blaming the victims.

Of course, there are always ‘rational reasons’ offered for

this stand. Muslims are in a minority and therefore, they
deserve special consideration. Muslims already face
discrimination so why make it harder for them? If you report
the truth then you will inflame Hindu sentiments and this
would be irresponsible. And so on. I know the arguments
well because - like most journalists - I have used them
myself. And I still argue that they are often valid and
necessary.

But there comes a time when this kind of rigidly

‘secularist’ construct not only goes too far; it also becomes
counter-productive. When everybody can see that a
trainload of Hindus was massacred by a Muslim mob, you
gain nothing by blaming the murders on the VHP or arguing
that the dead men and women had it coming to them.

Not only does this insult the dead (What about the
children? Did they also have it coming?), but it also
insults the intelligence of the reader. Even moderate Hindus,
of the sort that loathe the VHP, are appalled by the stories
that are now coming out of Gujarat: stories with
uncomfortable reminders of 1947 with details about how the
bogies were first locked from outside and then set on fire
and how the women’s compartment suffered the most
damage.

Any media - indeed, any secular establishment - that fails

to take into account the genuine concerns of people risks
losing its own credibility. Something like that happened in
the mid-Eighties when an aggressive hard secularism on the
part of the press and government led even moderate Hindus
to believe that they had become second class citizens in
their own country. It was this Hindu backlash that brought
the Ayodhya movement - till then a fringe activity - to the
forefront and fuelled the rise of L.K. Advani’s BJP.

My fear is that something similar will happen once again.

The VHP will ask the obvious question of Hindus: why is it a
tragedy when Staines is burnt alive and merely an
‘inevitable political development’ when the same fate befalls
57 kar sewaks?
 Because, as secularists, we can provide no good answer, it
is the VHP’s responses that will be believed. Once again,
Hindus will believe that their suffering is of no consequence
and will be tempted to see the building of a temple at
Ayodhya as an expression of Hindu pride in the face of
secular indifference.

But even if this were not to happen, even if there was no

danger of a Hindu backlash, I still think that the secular
establishment should pause for thought.

There is one question we need to ask ourselves:

have we become such prisoners of our own rhetoric
that even a horrific massacre becomes nothing more
than occasion for Sangh Parivar-bashing?”

As we see, when he had written it, no riots had taken place

in Gujarat at all. But close observation of his article indicates
that he knew that a backlash would take place in Gujarat-
after the inhuman response of the ‘secularist’ brigade to the
inhuman massacre in Godhra. See his two sentences “Even
moderate Hindus, of the sort that loathe the VHP, are
appalled by the stories that are now coming out of Gujarat:
stories with uncomfortable reminders of 1947 with details
about how the bogies were first locked from outside and
then set on fire and how the women’s compartment suffered
the most damage” and “My fear is that something similar
will happen once again”.

What Vir Sanghvi wrote in that article really explains

everything, not just about Godhra but everything that
followed after Godhra too. And not just that, but the behavior
of the newspaper editors, who call themselves ‘secularists’
on all major issues too is explained and exposed by this self-
confessed article, such as their response to all major
communal riots in India and all clashes between the Hindus
and other minorities.
 Let us see his statement: “We are programmed to see
Hindu-Muslim relations in the simplistic terms: Hindus
provoke, Muslims suffer.”

This is the first and biggest admission of pseudo-

secularism from Vir Sanghvi, not just for himself, but
also for his entire fellow ‘secularists’.

When any person views any happenings in a biased way,

i.e. one person suffers and the other provokes, it also shows
his moral and mental bankruptcy. Irrespective of whether a
VHP member thrashes a Muslim or whether Muslims thrash
or burn alive a trainload of VHP members, the ‘secularist’
newspaper editors will continue to bash the VHP and hold it
responsible for all the troubles. He will not even bother to
see who has suffered, and try to investigate who is at
fault, but simply close his eyes and blame one group-
i.e. the Hindu group during the Hindu-Muslim
conflicts.

Something similar was written by the great Congress

leader Kanhaiya Lal Munshi to the Congress Party’s Prime
Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in a strong letter dated 23rd May

1962: “Whenever there is any inter-religious conflict, the

majority is blamed regardless of what happens”.

Inability to judge any situation on merits, whether XYZ

person attacked ABC person and killed him, or it was the
other way round but simply judge it on the names of the
persons- ABC or XYZ or the identities of the persons- Hindu
or Muslim- i.e. ABC provokes and XYZ suffers- shows that the
‘neutral’ observer (in this case, the ‘secularists’) is partial
with prejudice and jaundiced vision.

In reality, the Hindu- Muslim relations in India have been

exactly the opposite. It is in fact most often a case of
Muslims provoke, Hindus suffer. The Madan Commission
appointed by the Congress government in Maharashtra to
probe the riots gave the report that riots are invariably
started by the Muslims. Ganesh Kanate, a staunch anti-BJP
and anti-Sangh Parivar journalist with Communist leanings,
wrote in his weekly column in the Nagpur-based English daily
‘The Hitavada’ dated 19 August 2003- “The Muslims are the
most foolish of the lot. They always start the riots and then
suffer heavily because of the riots which they themselves
start.” Even a Communist like Ganesh Kanate had to admit
that Muslims start most of the riots. Deep down, all the
newspaper editors like Vir Sanghvi and all self-proclaimed
secularists also know this.

How that mentality affected their reporting on Godhra

His one-sided vision in seeing Hindu-Muslim relations is amply clear by

his as well as all other pseudo-secularists’ reaction to Godhra.

Nearly all the media rationalized Godhra. Mind the word rationalized
and not justified. Because after rationalizing Godhra, all of them added that
they are by no means ‘justifying’ it. To say that they all justified Godhra will
be a bit too harsh. But there is absolutely no doubt that they all rationalized
Godhra and in parts, partially justified it