How to counter falsehood

Is it really better to forget? Let us remember first what it is that we are being asked to forget. A city in flames. Streets overrun by murderous gangs. Widespread damage to homes and business establishments. People burnt, stabbed and shot to death. Families forcibly ejected from their homes.

Refugees crowding stations and camps. The final toll: 872 dead, 1829 injured, 443 missing. Justice cannot restore life or limb, so apart from some monetary assistance, what can justice really achieve?

Justice Richard Goldstone, head of the Commission of Inquiry Regarding Public Violence and Intimidationin South Africa, and later prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague believes that justice, in the context of human rights violations, serves a variety of purposes:quot;First, it can expose the guilt of individual perpetrators thus avoiding the human tendency to assign collective guilt to an ethnic group or a religion.

Second, it can record the truth in the public record. Which makes it extremely difficult for perpetrators or their sympathisers to deny the truth. Third, truth and justice help in the dismantling of the institutions of society that have played a role in injustice and oppression. And fourth, criminal justice is a deterrent to further human rights violations.quot;All these are as applicable to the Mumbai riots as they probably are to crimes in Bosnia or Rwanda. The riots have created a schism that continues to be an uneasy wedge between Mumbai8217;s two biggest communities. Time and propaganda have also served to distort the truth in many minds. Repeated assertions by the Shiv Senahave given the riots an appearance of even-handedness when in actual fact the overwhelming majority of sufferers, in both rounds of rioting were Muslims. Official recognition of the evidence would allow the identification of both the aggressors and the victims.

Moreover, the Srikrishna commission had found the state government negligent and the police guilty of using excessive force against the minority community. Some amount of introspection and serious remedial action surely is called for if faith is to be restored in these public institutions.

Goldstone8217;s last point is the one generally overlooked in most post-riot scenarios. Which is the power of justice to quot;provide acknowledgment of crimes against the victims.quot; This of course flies against the perception that victims need to forget rather than remember. But, according to Goldstone, acknowledgment is such a significant part of the healing pro-cess that victims, in his experience were willing to risk the consequences, however dangerous, of publictestimony even when offered anonymity.

Mumbai8217;s Muslims have always complain-ed of discrimination. In fact, most disturbances in Muslim-majority areas were wont to follow a familiar pattern: some provocation would bring the excitable populace onto the streets, the police would resort to firing and the resultant casualties would create further bitterness. In the late Eighties the rise of the Shiv Sena found an increasingly belligerent response in the minority strongholds.

But in December 1992 with the fall of the Babri Masjid it was the familiar clash with the police that found repetition. When I visited the Mohamadali Road area where much of the rioting had taken place, I found hurt, anger and a determination to teach the ruling Congress a lesson. After the second, far more devastating campaign of violence, I found no anger, nor surprisingly much grief. Instead, I found what appeared to be a cold, dispassionate obsession with dates and numbers and proof. A women whose aged husband had been shot as heascended the rickety staircase of his house, displayed a well-preserved bullet. A teenager took me around a building and pointed out bullet holes and blood stains with the ease of a professional guide. A woman stood outside her burnt hut brandishing her ration card and sale deeds. A shopkeeper said, quot;We are ready for revolution. Call BBC, call CNN, we will tell them.quot; Later events have done little to allay such cynicism.

The appointment of a commission of inquiry was absolutely essential following the harrowing events of 1992-3. But not taking its findings seriously could have worse consequences than not having had one at all. Apart from the message it sends out to the perpetrators of violence it also withholds from the victims an acknowledgment of the crimes committed against them. And the significance of state acknowledgment when it comes to a minority cannot be overestimated. When anger erupted in Mumbai on December 6, 1992, many observers were of the view that it was not the fall of the mosque that hadtriggered off the reaction as much as seeing the security forces standing by doing nothing to prevent it. The other factor that comes into play is, of course, those with a vested interest in our shortcomings.

Some weeks ago I heard the then Pakistani foreign minister Sartaj Aziz address a gathering of opinion makers in Washington D.C. In his speech he accused India of being a religious fundamentalist state which perpetuated the systematic killing of Muslims. Five thousand, he claimed had been killed in Mumbai in 1993. How could one react to such an allegation? By saying that the number was smaller, closer to a thousand? Or by saying whatever the number, what happened was an aberration? A deeply regretted one. Reopen the report, punish the guilty and these words would carry more conviction.