''Gujarat: The Making of a Tragedy'' is a book about the
2002 Gujarat riots
The 2002 Gujarat riots, also known as the 2002 Gujarat violence, was a three-day period of inter-communal violence in the western Indian state of Gujarat. The burning of a train in Godhra on 27 February 2002, which caused the deaths of 58 Hin ...
edited by
Siddharth Varadarajan
Siddharth Varadarajan (born 1965) is a journalist and editor in India. He was a former editor of the English language national daily ''The Hindu'', and is one of the founding editors of the Indian digital news portal ''The Wire'', along with ...
.
Contents
The book has the following sections: "Introduction", "The Violence", "The Aftermath", and "Essays and Analysis" together with two appendices. Besides two chapters penned by Varadarajan (one as co-author), titled 'The Truth Hurts—Gujarat and the Role of the Media', and 'I salute you Geetaben', the book collects contributions from several journalists, activists, and scholars including
Ramachandra Guha
Ramachandra "Ram" Guha (born 29 April 1958) is an Indian historian, environmentalist, writer and public intellectual whose research interests include social, political, contemporary, environmental and cricket history, and the field of economics. ...
,
Rajdeep Sardesai
Rajdeep Sardesai (born 24 May 1965) is an Indian news anchor, reporter, journalist and author. He is a consulting editor and an anchor of India Today Television. He was the Editor-in-Chief of Global Broadcast News, that included CNN-IBN, IBN7 ...
,
Barkha Dutt
Barkha Dutt is an Indian television journalist and author. She has been a reporter and news anchor at NDTV and Tiranga TV. She currently runs her own digital news channel called 'MoJo Story'. She is also an opinion columnist with ''The Hindus ...
,
Teesta Setalvad
Teesta Setalvad (born 9 February 1962) is an Indian civil rights activist and journalist. She is the secretary of ''Citizens for Justice and Peace'' (CJP), an organisation formed to advocate for the victims of 2002 Gujarat riots.
Personal life
...
Vrinda Grover
Vrinda Grover is a lawyer, researcher, and human rights and women's rights activist based in New Delhi, India. As a lawyer, she has appeared in prominent human rights cases and represented women and child survivors of domestic and sexual violenc ...
, Shail Mayaram,
Mahasweta Devi
Mahasweta Devi (14 January 1926 – 28 July 2016) ''
,
Vibhuti Narain Rai
Vibhuti Narain Rai (born 28 November 1950) is an ex police officer and author from India. He obtained an M.A. in English literature from Allahabad University in 1971 and joined the Indian Police Service in 1975 as a part of the Uttar Pradesh ...
In a review of the book published in ''India Today'' magazine,
Karan Thapar
Karan Thapar (born 5 November 1955) is an Indian journalist, news presenter and interviewer working with The Wire. Thapar was associated with CNN-IBN and hosted ''The Devil's Advocate'' and ''The Last Word''. He was also associated with India T ...
writes:
Thapar has claimed that just as there is no direct evidence for Hitler's personal complicity in the
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
, and his complicity has to be inferred, so also
Narendra Modi
Narendra Damodardas Modi (; born 17 September 1950) is an Indian politician serving as the 14th and current Prime Minister of India since 2014. Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and is the Member of Parliament from ...
's complicity in the 2002 Gujarat riots will have to be inferred after constructing and reconstructing the available evidence.
Times of India
In an op-ed in the ''Times of India'', Vrinda Nabar writes that reading this book is a 'numbing' experience. Nabar writes that reading this book makes it obvious that the effort required from the State of Gujarat towards rehabilitation of victims and relief work was found wanting and that ghettoization increased significantly since the riots. Nabar states that this incident was a turning point for pluralism in India.
The Hindu
In an op-ed in ''The Hindu'', Sohail Hashmi writes that the contents of this book point to a collusion between the police and the administration with respect to either direct or indirect complicity in the riots. Hashmi compares the book to a knife piercing through middle class decency to expose prejudice and fanaticism. Hashmi writes that just as
Nazis
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
would place the
Star of David
The Star of David (). is a generally recognized symbol of both Jewish identity and Judaism. Its shape is that of a hexagram: the compound of two equilateral triangles.
A derivation of the ''seal of Solomon'', which was used for decorative ...
before every Jewish house to avoid "mistakes", so the RSS, VHP, Bajrang Dal and their affiliated groups would place posters of
Hanuman
Hanuman (; sa, हनुमान, ), also called Anjaneya (), is a Hindu god and a divine '' vanara'' companion of the god Rama. Hanuman is one of the central characters of the Hindu epic ''Ramayana''. He is an ardent devotee of Rama and on ...
outside a Hindu house during the 2002 Gujarat violence. Hashmi quotes
Golwalkar
Madhav Sadashivrao Golwalkar (19 February 1906 – 5 June 1973), popularly known as Guruji was the second ''Sarsanghchalak'' ("Chief") of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Golwalkar is considered one of the most influential and prominent fi ...
's endorsement of 1939 Germany and writes :
The Telegraph
In an op-ed in ''The Telegraph'', Sreyashi Dastidar writes that this book presents a chronology of the attacks on minorities that had been taking place since the 90s which finally culminated in the 'state-sponsored pogrom'. She writes that numerous investigating teams indicted the
Bharatiya Janata Party
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; ; ) is a political party in India, and one of the two major Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. Since 2014, it has been the ruling political party in India under Narendra Modi ...
ruling the state and the center, and the media--excepting the Gujarati media--supported the indictment. But the December 2002 electoral victory of Narendra Modi in the Gujarat elections nullified the arraignment. Dastidar goes on to write that although the book wants to make a distinction between "Hindus" and those who participated in the violence, in her opinion most Hindus in Gujarat became complicit in the violence by voting Modi back to power, and that only those Hindus who did not vote for Modi can escape this culpability.
Dastidar is critical of the Congress party for not strongly raising the issue of the death of 76-year-old
Ehsan Jafri
Ehsan Jafri (1929 – 28 February 2002) was an Indian politician and former member of the 6th Lok Sabha for the Congress Party, who was killed in the Gulbarg Society massacre.
A Special Investigating Team appointed by the Supreme Court of ...
, a former Congress MP, who had been sheltering more than 60 people in his house when he was butchered during the riots. Dastidar also criticizes the Muslim ministers in the BJP who became complicit in the violence through their silence; none of them resigned. Shahnawaz Hussain wanted to be sent to Gujarat for relief work, but did not protest when his demand was rejected.
Dastidar goes on to admire the 'clockwork precision' with which the whole operation was executed--from the burning of the train to the swearing-in ceremony at Modi's second term as Chief Minister. The same 'precision', writes Dastidar, was responsible for the multiple 'sporadic' incidents of violence ten months after Godhra. Dastidar writes that the burning of the S-6 coach was pre-planned as per independent probes and forensic reports, and the theory of a 'spontaneous' attack on one compartment of the train is 'absurd' considering that no one jumped out of it to save themselves. Dastidar goes on to write that what emerges from reading this book is:
Dastidar also writes that, according to a senior IPS officer, no riot can go on for more than 24 hours unless the state is complicit in it. In Gujarat, writes Dastidar, the state became a cheerleader for the riots while the opposition was not heard because its protest was muted. Although the complicity of the state in the violence is often pointed out, writes Dastidar, the role played by the opposition is not analyzed sufficiently.
Books
Varadarajan, Siddharth (ed)(2002). ''Gujarat: The Making of a Tragedy''. Penguin.