If the violence of 2002 brought out the pathologies of the Gujarati society in its worst and most perverse form, the 2001 earthquake had different lessons for us. It represented all that is caring, compassionate, generous and charitable in Gujarati society. If the riots were unprecedented in their brutality; the responses of Gujarat to the earthquake were a lesson in a society’s capacity to deal with a disaster of huge proportions. But that part of the story was forgotten, or at least was not fore-grounded in the post-riot descriptions of Gujarati society. And maybe, we erred there. Gujarati civil society had possibilities of compassion and justice that were forgotten in this discourse. In 2001, the administration, religious organisations, the RSS, NGOs and citizens forums, industry associations and even affected citizens worked together to bring relief and rehabilitation to those who had lost their all. The acts of giving were done in a way that maintained the dignity of those who received. These were acts of sharing rather that charity. The fortitude of people in face of loss and grief told the story of Gujarati society’s resilient industry. But post-2002, these possibilities appeared distant and the divisions appeared impermeable. The non-availability of justice, even in its most elementary judicial sense seemed to suggest that the caring civil society of 2001was an aberration. Nothing that happened in the last five years seemed to suggest otherwise. But it took another tragedy to bring what was so far recessive, to the fore. I write of it as a tragedy but there are other narratives possible. It was an act of terror in the most perverse form imaginable. The choice of the eastern parts of Ahmedabad was designed to re-ignite communal carnage. The systematic attack on two main hospitals was most diabolic. It broke both strategic calculations and normative expectations of war and terror. With the choice of hospitals and doctors as possible targets of terror, those who perpetrate this terror have broken free of some age-old limits that governed even acts of terror. In its pathology, in its disregard for even tenuous normative codes, it was terror in its most clinical form designed to gain maximum impact and disrupt all efforts at providing relief to the victims. It was possible to construe these attacks in communal terms. The attackers had made it amply clear that this was a revenge for 2002. They had challenged all-powerful Narendra Modi and his home minister by engineering series of blasts in the constituencies that they represent. This was not lost on anyone; the media was quick to discern the pattern. The attackers had hoped that this narrative would perpetuate itself in the fragile Gujarati society. These attacks were designed to invite retributive and punitive actions on the Muslim community of Gujarat. But the people of Ahmedabad, the Gujarati media and even the political parties and their outfits chose to respond to these attacks as a tragedy. A tragedy speaks of distress, of misery, of terrible misfortune. Tragedy as a distressing, dreadful tale invokes the response of sorrow. The most fitting response to tragedy is passionate lamentation and a resolve to overcome it. By turning the terror strike into a tragedy the people of Ahmedabad changed the semantic ground. This one creative semiotic act was not part of the expected response. People came together in grief, in loss to mourn, to lament, providing succour and care. But not in purposeless, misdirected anger. Retribution was not on their mind. It foreclosed a spiral of violence, at least in the immediate aftermath. In a way this was the best immediate political response possible. It created the semantic framework within which the political parties and the media had to respond. The unequivocal condemnation of the attacks as entirely un-Islamic by persons such as J.S. Bandukwala further narrowed the possibility of retributive violence. What was remarkable in the immediate hours and days of the deadly attacks was the absence of two groups. Political parties qua political parties were absent from the relief, rescue and healing efforts, and so were the organised NGOs. The people made it their tragedy. Doctors and medical students responded as citizens; so did the countless people who went on their own to donate blood and care for the injured and hold hands of the bereaved families. In its genuineness and authenticity this was reminiscent of the Gujarat of 2001. And it is important for Gujarat that we recognise this. But this recognition should not blind us to our lack of preparedness to deal with terror. We should also remember that such attacks are not possible by ‘outsiders’ acting without significant support networks within Gujarati society. Gujarat remains an unequal society. It has come to celebrate and display its affluence. And this display is aggressive and hence somewhat uncaring. It was a different kind of crisis in 1917 that had been cataclysmic for the older Gandhian imagination of being a trustee. That imagination survived in post-independent India and gave Ahmedabad its social imagination around the PRL, the ATIRA, the IIM, the NID and the BM Institute of Mental Health. The challenge before Gujarat is to invent new and modern forms of trusteeship. Non-violence in face of terror, loss and grief is the first but significant step not only in healing the scars of 2002 but also towards a possible recovery of a compassionate society. The writer is a social scientist based in Ahmedabad
