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A Visit to Amdavad (TidBits.009) And it was in a long time that I was drawn away from the comfortable shores of Goa, the relatively unpolluted heaven of the konkan coast, to the distant land of Ahmedabad, lovingly called Amdavad by the locals, which is nearing the anniversary of the Genocide in the last year's Godhra carnage. And suffice it to say that my visit was a mix of a bit of pleasure and business, not the kind of pleasure the ministers from Rajasthan are purported to have mixed with their political business in the high flying 5 star hotels of Amdavad with the equally high flying muster of call girls. My stay was at the simple adobe of the "Sisters of Charity" who share their lives with the slum school drop-outs, to give them the basic respectable education so that they can be on their own feet, if that is possible at all in the city filled with hate for each other. The first hit that got me was the burning sensation in the face, the eyes , the nose, when I entered to precincts of the old city of Amdavad from the railway station. The unmistakable aroma of kerosene in the air foretold the story of the concoction of kerosene mixed with solvents in petrol and diesel by one and all of two, three and four wheelers to cut costs in rising fuel prices. Add to it the dust and the industrial spillage of pollutants in the air, it is a small wonder that Amdavad should register 433 points in suspended particles in the air as against 193 for Bangalore, 319 for Mumbai and 200 odd for Hyderabad and Kolkata. The first vow I made in Amdavad is to keep on fighting like a fighting cock, in my limited individual capacity, back at home, to keep the atmosphere of our dear old Goa as pure as can be, so that the people of Goa remain well and healthy as well as the visitors to Goa find the difference in breathing clean and unpolluted God given air. And this fight will have to be intensified on the double to match the lack of sensitivity harboured by our authorities in controlling the ever growing vehicular, industrial and other environmental pollution in Goa. It is a miracle that the city of Amdavad should wake up in the morning at all, with all this heavy doze of poisons it breathes during the day. And our dear Prime Minister should re-evaluate his decision to give tax holidays for pharmaceutical industries to set shop in Himachal Pradesh. This would do well for Amdavad, cause, their services will be most required here, rather then in the clean hills of Himachal, in the very near future, if things persist as they do, in Amdavad. And it is amazing that reconstruction of buildings and lives of people can be so dramatic after the death and destruction that was the order of the day during the genocide in Amdavad. But if it was possible for us to have a peek at the hearts of the people, we would see that unlike mended lives, they would remain broken forever. I had a distinct opportunity to visit the library of the NHRC "Prashant" at Amdavad, which has documented the genocide in a systematic manner and whose director is Fr. Cedric Prakash. He had kept the gruesome reports coming out of Gujarat during the carnage to keep the world informed at all times. I would have loved to meet and talk to him where he not gone to Poona on a short visit. However, I shall treasure the copy of " Communalism COMBAT - GENOCIDE GUJARAT 2002" with its vivid display of photographs that show what hate filled humans can do to their fellow humans and the sad and unsettling story it has to relate. And a good friend took the trouble to put me at the back of his two wheeler and take me around JUVAPURA, the Muslim enclave which was the battle ground during the carnage, the area where some of the relief camps were located. And, the tale that went along with the tour was equally unsettling, the tale where family members had to collect the arms and legs and even severed heads of their relatives and friends in gunny sacks, who got unlucky, and take them home for burial. And when at last I said good-bye to dear Amdavad, I settled down on the train to devour the "GENOCIDE GUJARAT 2002" in real earnest. And I have come to realize that, among the many pre-Godhra statements and comments reproduced there-in which have been made by the communal vipers in the persons of Pravin Togadia, Ashok Singhal, Acharya Giriraj Kishore, Ramchandra Paramhans and others, the statement owned by our Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee seems to stand out as the fuelling root cause of the genocide. On February 22, 2002, Atal Behari Vajpayee, PM, at an election rally in Varanasi, reported by Asian Age, said "BJP DOES NOT NEED MUSLIMS TO FORM GOVERNMENT IN UP" The effects of this massive green signal against the muslims of India took shape in Gujarat. If it was not a planned conspiracy by the BJP of Vajpayee's fame, then we would have seen the army taking over in Gujarat with the imposition of dusk to dawn curfew during the riots if not immediately, atleast the second or the third day. The country is paying through its nose to have a standing army. What for?? Is it only to tackle the outside threat to the security of its citizens? Are not the services of our armed forces to be utilized to control the riots and genocide within? The Congress government headed by Narashima Rao did the disservice to the nation by not mobilizing the army to block Advani's rath yatra and the kar sevaks from demolishing the Babri Masjid. This, inspite of the ruling of the Supreme Court that status quo should be maintained. Was'nt this the dereliction of duty by the highest office of the elected central government? Narashima Rao got away with it. He has set a precedent of impotency of action by central government to use the services of the armed forces in national crisis. The same thing has been repeated by Vajpayee's government vis a vis Gujarat genocide. Any state government is subservient to the central government when it comes to national crisis. The governments that cannot utilize the country's armed forces prudently to control anarchy within should be thrown out and the head of state, which in this case is the Prime Minister, should be tried in the court of law and jailed for dereliction of duty towards the nation and its people. Vajpayee and his crony Advani who stood together, side by side, in their smart ghadhis, with smug, contrite and sorry faces, first thing when the earthquake struck Gujarat earlier, did nothing to prevent this carnage. Why? Are we to believe that this genocide did not have their blessings? This duo owns the sole responsibility for the Gujarat carnage and for sheltering the Gujarat Nazi, Mr. Narendra Modi in his ethnic cleansing scheme, and for getting him re-elected against the wishes of the entire revulsed and shocked nation. This nation needs to set a precedent to try our defaulting leaders in the International Human Rights Court in the Hague for violations of human rights, in the same manner that the criminals of Bosnia are being tried, if this nation is to be exorcised of the growing religious intolerance it is building up with them as the kingpins of it all. Cheers Floriano _______________________________________________ Goanet mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.goanet.org/mailman/listinfo/goanet
