How Keshubhai keeps looking the other way

* Last week, a mob of trishul-wielding youths, angry over the demolition of a “temple”, attacked the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation head office, beat up security staff, smashed window panes and furniture. They were looking for Municipal Commissioner B K Sinha. Sinha managed to escape. The police is yet to register an FIR.

* In Surat, the Bajrang Dal has threatened to resort to “all means, including violence” to stop a New Year programme just because one of theperformers will be film actress Kashmira Shah. And her crime: She said those attacking the film Fire “had nothing else to do.” So far, the administration has done nothing.

* When Bajrang Dal men attacked delegates at a Christian convention in Vadodara in late October, arrests were made only when Governor Anshuman Singh decided to visit the place to see things for himself. Says P K Dutta, a retired director general of police: “How can you allow somebody to hold out a threat of violence, actually indulge in it, and then get away with it? Such incidents cannot take place if the government is determined”.

A senior officer says the administration could not act in a firm and fair manner because top men in the government are “sympathetic to law-breakers”. He recalls that when Coca-Cola and Pepsi vehicles were attacked in Ahmedabad, Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel saw in it “a resurgence of the spirit of swadeshi of the freedom movement”.

The signals from the government has always been encouraging forthe VHP, Bajrang Dal activists.

Father Cedric Prakash, coordinator of the United Christian Forum for Human Rights (Gujarat), says they have failed to get an audience with the Chief Minister in spite of several attempts. “He has not condemned the attacks on the minorities. We expect him to condemn these and assure that the guilty would be punished,” he adds. The bureaucracy and police keep passing thebuck. For example, a senior police officer says that the AMC has not registered a complaint. An AMC officer says they had informed the police when the trouble began, and they reached well in time, but didn’t do anything. And nobody wants to go on record.

So the have reason enough to believe that acting tough will cost too much. “Nobody wants to stick his neck out,” says an officer.