India, after Godhra

It was a day that should never have come. And it is a day that has not yet fully passed. In many ways, the torching of coach S-6 of Sabarmat...

It was a day that should never have come. And it is a day that has not yet fully passed. In many ways, the torching of coach S-6 of Sabarmati Express at Godhra last year is still with us. The nation is still in the process of confronting the meaning and the implications of the gruesome crimes committed at Godhra and elsewhere in Gujarat in its aftermath. The burning of the train and the pogrom in its wake are not yet events that can be relegated to the nation8217;s memory with any degree of resolution. One year on, they are a live turbulence and a churning. This year February 27 reminded us of a nation searching for closure.

It reminded us that closure of any kind demands justice. The guilty must be identified and brought to book, the ones who set fire to the train on February 27, 2002, as well as the rampaging mobs who took to the streets soon after that. By all accounts, the probe into the Godhra carnage is floundering. As this paper has spotlighted, though officials claim to have cracked the case, there are more questions than answers. The police have recently arrested one Maulana Hussain Umarji, alleged conspirator-in-chief who put together and funded the team which carried out the planned attack. But why did the Maulana8217;s name never crop up before this in the year-long investigations? And why has Pota been slapped against all the 123 people who have been accused in the case so far when the evidence at hand has still not been able to settle the fundamental query: Was Godhra a conspiracy amounting to an act of terrorism or a spontaneous act of violence? In the circumstances, the slapping of the draconian law would appear to confirm suspicions that it is being used to paper over the cracks in the case the police has been able to frame so far. In the case of the inquiry into the post-Godhra riots, the narrative gets yet more opaque. Here, even the pretence of any credible intent to prosecute the guilty seems to be missing. Here, the story so far is about the refusal to register cases, diluted chargesheets, deliberate sabotage, delay. In the probes into both crimes, the inquiry has not been able to keep its head above the politics that swirls around it.

On the political field, the action is doomed to be forever, or at least in the foreseeable future, divided into pre- and post-Godhra. Be it the electoral triumph of Narendra Modi, the forging of the 8216;Gujarat model8217;, the BJP8217;s newly assertive old agenda, or the Congress8217;s ungainly floundering for a response 8212; politics is astir. A lot more soul-searching, much more conversation is needed before the nation can hope for clarity, much less a resolution.