The Hindu : 'Hate campaign led to post-Godhra riots'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Dec 06, 2002

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National

'Hate campaign led to post-Godhra riots'

By Mahesh Vijapurkar

MUMBAI Dec. 6. The Godhra train carnage and the violence against the minorities in Gujarat would not have happened but for a hate campaign that preceded, according to John Dayal, secretary-general of the All India Christian Council, who edited a book Gujarat 2002 — Untold and Re-told Stories of the Hindutva Lab, which was released here today.

Mr. Dayal said the events had a "link to the past and the political forces there''.

It was time "we seek legal remedies'' and "explore it internationally'' to bring "the criminals there to book'', Mr. Dayal said.

World governments should probe where the money donated to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad from across the world, including charities, was going, he said.

Godhra itself, "despite its tragedy, is inconsequential'', because what happened later was rooted in the "logic of a hate campaign'' that is not new.

Mr. Dayal pointed out that Gujarat's Hindutva was a "primer with roots in Hitler's Nazism''.

The book "was a passionate but clinical, cold-blooded analysis of events there''.

Releasing the book, Mahesh Bhat, film-maker who has been championing the cause of human rights, said: "The country will not be destroyed by Islamic fundamentalists but by the Hindu fundamentalists''.

"The enemy within will destroy the country by the alienation they were causing Muslims and Hindus. The onus to make them feel a part of the country is on the majority community which claims this solely as their land.''

Mr. Dayal said the book gave a "feeling of deja vu because all stories on Gujarat had been told and re-told'' but a book like this one "would help understand the magnitude of the issue''.

It was, in another way, "a fight back'' against the VHP which was "India's Taliban'', he said.

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