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Journalism of Courage
Amit Thakar
Intolerance has often found a fine breeding ground in universities. On the Gujarat University campus, it ran into a willing prey in Amit Thakar. The 30-something Brahmin from Ahmedabad, who has made a career out of rebellion, started with protests against fee hike and morality as an ABVP activist. Fostered by politics and tutored by the late BJP leader Haren Pandya, Thakar began to blossom. He was soon rewarded by the Keshubhai Patel government with a seat in the syndicate of Gujarat’s largest varsity.
His stock in the party rose through the late 1990s due to his proximity to the Patel group and to National General Secretary Sanjay Joshi. Despite Patel’s fall in 2001 but with Joshi in Delhi, Thakar’s ascent continued and he became first the general secretary and then president of the state BJP youth wing.
He shot to fame in April 2002, when he heckled Medha Patkar and her group at the Sabarmati Ashram as they protested for peace in the city hit by communal riots after the Godhra carnage. Blaming her for much of Gujarat’s water woes and banking on the all-party opposition to her stance on the Sardar Sarovar Project, Thakkar stormed the ashram with a bunch of people, including present Ahmedabad Mayor Amit Shah, and abused and manhandled her even as the media and the police looked on. “You don’t let us get water and you have come to give us peace,” he screamed, demanding that she be handed over to him and that he would “teach her a lesson”. Police intervention came much later, even then it was to lathicharge the media, which left 15 journalists injured.
But his moment of glory came only in May last year. Thakar imposed a blanket ban on the screening of Aamir Khan-starrer, Fanaa, because Khan had dared to show solidarity with NBA and Medha Patkar’s stand on the Narmada oustees. The “enemies of Gujarat” slogan was raised again and the actor pilloried for having an opinion.
A scared Theatre Owners Association reacted by withdrawing the film. When a theatre in Jamnagar tried to show the film, a man attempted suicide and died later. The film is yet to be screened at any theatre in the state.
For both the incidents, the party rewarded him with an elevation this January. Thakkar is the BJP National Youth Wing president. He also runs three colleges, one each for education, computer application and commerce from the same campus—a commercial building in the satellite area of Ahmedabad—under the banner of Lokmanya College.
—Abhishek Kapoor
Babu Bajrangi
He is the man Gujarat has learnt to fear. The police are reluctant to engage with him, the public avoids him. He is bereft of any political titles or positions in the state government, but was, till recently, VHP’s favourite child (the VHP has distanced itself from him after the Parzania controversy). Babu Bajrangi or Babubhai Patel has emerged as the frontsman of the moral brigade.
In his early 40s, Bajrangi claims to be a “social reformer” and runs an NGO, Navchetan Trust, in Vadodara, which has taken upon itself the responsibility of “rescuing” Patel girls from being married to non-Patel men. Under a Trust campaign, he distributed 1.25 lakh pamphlets across the state saying: “Rescuing a girl marrying outside the community is equal to saving 100 cows”. So far, he claims to have “saved” 700 girls, with neither the relatives nor the husbands taking the legal recourse. Though some criminal case were filed in Maharashtra, no action has ever been taken. This is the platform that hauled Bajrangi into prominence.
Of course, his career took off when he reportedly started beating up youth on campuses on the pretext that they were enticing girls of different communities. Then Godhra happened, bringing instant national recognition. He was the man alleged to have led a group that rioted in Naroda-Patia area of Ahmedabad. He was booked as the main accused, but wasn’t arrested.
His latest claim to infamy is Parzania. Bajrangi has ensured that the film—about a Parsi boy missing since the 2002 riots—has not been screened in the state. The multiplex owners docilely accepted his diktat after he threatened them with dire consequence and the police maintained a conspicuous silence. In fact, he had forced film director Rahul Dholakia, a Gujarati, to screen the film for himself and the 40-50 members of his brigade, so that they could decide whether it should be screened or not. Though Dholakia flew to Ahmedabad from Mumbai, he refused to obey Bajrangi. The result is for all to see.
—Syed Khalique Ahmed
The onerous responsibility of “cultural policing” in Gujarat falls on Niraj Jain. The erstwhile VHP leader—“I am now a BJP leader, the secretary of Vadodara city BJP”—Jain has recently stood up for his chosen cause by creating a furore over one Chandramohan’s art work. The object of his “outrage” was an art work featuring a cross at the fine arts faculty of the MS University.
He managed to get Chandramohan arrested and wooed Christian leaders for a joint condemnation of the art works. Ironically, it was at the same Christian missionary school where he had assaulted a priest in 1998 for an alleged conversion meeting in Vadodara that he now pleaded with leaders to join his cause. But as senior BJP leaders admit, the lawyer who headed Vadodara city BJP legal cell as its convenor made a tactical error. “He should have submitted a written complaint to MSU. Why did he step inside the campus with the police?” asks a senior leader.
Consolation lies in the fact that the MSU chancellor appealed to him to withdraw charges against the student. Chandramohan has been bailed out and Jain is on the lookout for another cause.
Jain, dressed in white and sporting a tilak, began his political career on the MS University campus as an ABVP leader by taking up eve-teasing issues, but hogged limelight as a VHP leader who ransacked a fashion show in Vadodara. Surprisingly, electoral success has eluded him so far. His first attempt in the previous civic elections in Vadodara on a BJP ticket was a failure; he was one of the only half dozen losers.
Among his other “achievements” are saving 15 lakh cows from slaughter—in a state with an effective cow slaughter ban. Also, like Bajrangi, Jain “saved” Hindu girls from marrying non-Hindu boys, and pelted a Vadodara official with eggs when the Shankersinh Vaghela regime wanted to introduce eggs at mid-day meals.
—Ayesha Khan
