Excuse me, Ms Jaitly

As an ordinary citizen of India, I can only respond to Jaitly’s article with anger and sorrow. Anger, because her concern lies only in preserving the credibility of a disgraced Government and in attacking those in the media who make it transparent. And sorrow, that ‘‘leaders’’ such as her have no concept of the depth of injustice and bestiality unleashed on innocent people.

Whether the horror of Godhra, or the carnage thereafter in Gujarat, whether the massacre of Sikhs in Delhi, the Bhagalpur blindings, Bhiwandi or the Bombay riots and consequent bomb blasts, whether Hindu, Muslim, Christian or Sikh, the single truth is that all of these were once ordinary people, who died at the behest of vested interests.

The truth is that governments facilitate such carnage simply because they have the power to do so. The truth is, the ordinary citizens that Jaitly speaks of are used as fodder to realise their ends. The rot begins from the top. It is in the seats of governmental and industrial power. In the fashionable homes of has-been Maharajas and socialites — in these areas of munificence, the circle of hate begins unfurling and percolates into the insecurities of the middle class, where it is made complete.

The poor do not matter. They are mere pawns in the grand game.

In fact, Jaitly further adds, ‘‘Let us have the honesty to admit the sad truth that Hindus and Muslims attacked each other violently through a series of events that fuelled each group…’’ She is here, ‘‘honestly’’ propagating lies, deliberately being simplistic to waive off the checks and balances, the business of accountability.

The sad, honest truth is that Muslims attacked the coach in Godhra after they were humiliated and provoked into rage by a swaggering bunch of hoodlum kar sevaks. The truth is that the act of burning the coach is to be absolutely condemned. But the horrific truth is thereafter, a state government, instead of punishing the guilty, strutted on the streets of Gujarat to ensure that the police and the mob of wild-eyed Hindus wrecked, raped, murdered, burnt, chopped people’s hands and feet, urinated on them, destroyed minority homes and shops with cylinders and petrol bombs (how truckloads of these were collected in so short a time is anybody’s guess)…The truth is that the government ‘‘allowed’’ and endorsed the carnage for over two gruesome months.

The truth is, when the government is looking for a fig leaf to cover its nakedness, it feels threatened by the smallest breeze blowing its way.

If Jaitly thinks the three writers in question, ‘‘oppress fellow citizens with their superior morality’’ and are a threat to the ‘‘real’’ secular fabric of a nation which as it were, is increasingly neo-fascist, then, as an ordinary citizen I would like to tell her that she couldn’t be more wrong and her years of experience in positions of leadership have taught her nothing. She has knowledge of how to hold on to power but no wisdom to understand the essence of life, ethics and truth.

More oppressive to us as ordinary citizens is that the RSS and Vishwa Hindu Parishad rewrite history in textbooks, when a government creates nuclear bombs, when peoples’ money in crores is used for arms proliferation, instead of for basic human needs, schools, healthcare and clean drinking water in our villages, when a genocide of the scale we are experiencing can only elicit hollow mumbles from the Government. When in fact, the state is the instrument of destruction, when Defence Minister George Fernandes can be brazen enough to dismiss the enormity of the carnage with a chillingly cynical, ‘‘There have been rapes before…’’ And when all these men of power can get away with murder, nothing can be more oppressive than being at their mercy.

We, the ordinary citizens, are to blame for electing a government whose sinister and insidious agendas are now eating into our ordinary lives. And we must suffer for it. But not for long, Jaitly. As you know the old weather-worn good sense: you can fool some of the people some of the time, you can fool all of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time…

(The writer is editor, Gallerie)