Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi doesn’t want anyone to mention the 2002 massacres. His response always has been: don’t drag me back to the past, look at the bright future that I promise lies ahead. In fact, just days ago, he said he would like to be known as the Chief Minister who won an election by campaigning on development and governance. Yes, he has demonstrated enviable skills as administrator and politician, he has ensured consistently high growth for his state, introduced comprehensive reforms, cut down on government spending and ushered in major power and labour reforms. And yet as the campaign heats up in the last stretch, he hops from rally to rally reviving the ghosts he is so familiar with: the ghosts of fear and hatred.So Mian Musharraf, his pet theme the last time around, may not be the flavour of the season (the poor General has had to shed his uniform!) but Modi has begun once again using terror to underline the communal divide he and his party thrive on in his state.His own government told the Supreme Court in an affidavit that the killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh was a fake encounter, that it would take the strongest action possible against the police officers involved. And yet the Chief Minister crows about the death, uses it as shameful testimony to argue that he is a tough man and those who criticise him for this are the ones willing to spread a chadar on Sohrabuddin’s grave. In effect, he is justifying murder, he is betraying the constitutional responsibilities of a chief minister and openly endorsing the law of the jungle. This amounts to thumbing a nose and more at the highest court of the land. The extra-judicial slaying of Sheikh — and that of his wife, Kauserbi, and associate, Tulsi Prajapati, subsequently — had caused national outrage earlier this year. The case is at present going on in an Ahmedabad court and senior police officers who had allegedly stagemanaged the encounters, including D G Vanjhara and Rajkumar Pandian, are in jail.Given all this, it is an outrage that a Chief Minister gets applause from a crowd to support such behaviour and to suggest himself that the dead man got what he deserved. It goes to show why Modi starts squirming every time anyone asks him about the massacres of 2002. It goes to show why he will always be asked about that — irrespective of what happens in this election.
