On above subject line, four Goanet members namely Marshall Mendonza, Jose Colaco, Santosh Helekar and Augusto Pinto expressed their own views. I thought of answering all those responses in one message.
My comments on the interview were relating to the link that I had sent, and not the full interview. And the link is sent from the NDTV website, and it is the only part of the interview that they have posted as a separate video. Thus, I presume NDTV thinks that it is probably the most important part! Marshall Mendoza has an opinion of Shekar Gupta which is different from mine. We will agree to disagree! J Colaco has given a response to Marhsall, with which I substantially agree! As usual tactic, Marshall introduced new topic in this conversation on the unprofessionalism (or otherwise) of Shekar Gupta! His second question to me is: Does he condone the violence and subsequent hijacking of justice? Can any sane person condone the unnecessary death of even one person anywhere in the world? Re the hijacking of justice, this is a loaded statement, and is actually a sort of condemnation of the Supreme Court which has appointed its own investigation team, etc. Re: What is Dr Barad's view on the Gujarat 2002 pogrom. Does he accept that Narendra Modi is innocent? I trust Marhsall is aware of the recent articles of Madhu Kishwar on her visits to Gujarat to make her own study on the subject of the post-Godhra riots and the situation of the Muslims in Gujarat since 2002. These are available at: http://www.manushi.in/articleList.php Marshall must be aware that in 2005 Narendra Modi was honored for leading the best-governed state in India by the Congress Party-connected Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. The foundations trustees include the current Congress Party president Sonia Gandhi, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P. Chidambaram. As far as the cases stand today, it is clear that Narendra Modis only fault can be termed as that the riots happened in his term as chief minister! Santosh Helekar has pitched in with this comment: My own impression of this interview is that Mr. Gupta was not tough enough on Mr. Parrikar. The question should have been whether Modi was culpable in the killing of 2000 innocent human beings or not, by an act of commission or omission? That is the only question that matters in respect of Modi, in my opinion. The answer in my opinion is yes. My guess is that Parrikar would have refused to answer that question? Augusto Pinto expressed: Personally, I think that Gupta has done an excellent job. For instance while I would agree with Santosh that he was not too persistent, Gupta's style is quite relaxed and un-aggressive. If he were to suddenly change it he may have offended his subject, who has come prepared for this style of an interview. If it was a Karan Thapar for instance then Parrikar could have been expected to be put into a spot and he may not have agreed to an interview in the first place. However in a skillful way, Gupta allowed Parrikar to come out with many frank and controversial admissions. This is why I think he was quite successful. Perhaps Shekar Gupta has read the Kishwar articles, which does provide the answers to the questions that Santosh wanted to ask, and so he did not ask them. As far as the killing of 2000 innocent people is concerned, the official government figure is around 1100, of which a quarter of them were Hindus. And of the Hindus, a large number were killed in police firing. This too is mentioned by Kishwar in one of her articles. Of course, as I had said earlier, the killing of even one innocent person has to be condemned, which I do. And I am sure everyone on this list does too. Best regards, U. G. Barad
