When pride is prejudice

While privately many Gujarati Hindus talk about Muslims needing to be taught a lesson, this is rationalised by such self-serving arguments in print as regretting that the minority community refuses to be part of the mainstream and accept India8217;s cultural heritage; that instead it looks to Pakistan for inspiration. And then that familiar argument of everyone being insensitive to Godhra.

To set the record straight, Gujarat does not have a history of communal disharmony. The divide between Hindus and Muslims has been artificially created in the past three decades. The major Gujarati Muslim communities, such as Bohras, Khojahs and Memons, do not conform to the long beards and burkha-wearing, Islamic fundamentalist stereotype.

Hindus and Muslims of Gujarat have quite a few common characteristics in social customs and dress and have common business interests too. They even share the same surnames 8212; names like Shah, Kapadia, Patel, Contractor, Vora are based on job occupation and not religion. In fact, even the founder of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, had a Hindu surname 8212; his father was Jinnabhai. The language of both communities is Gujarati. In fact, after Urdu, the best ghazals are written not in Hindi but in Gujarati.

Gujarati Muslims were part of the freedom struggle. At the time of Partition, this border state remained peaceful. Except for a few Sindhi Muslims moving out, there was almost no transfer of population. The Gujarati Muslim business and professional classes were confident that their future lay in secular India.

The list of prominent Gujarati Muslims in a population of just around a million testifies to the community8217;s prosperity and progressiveness. India8217;s richest citizen, Azim Premji, is a Gujarati Muslim, as are many other respected business families, such as the Nadiadwallahs, Moranis and Khorakiwallahs. Illustrious members of the community include former Chief Justice Ahmadi, architect Iftar Kadri, actors Farooq Sheikh and Johny Walker, Congress political secretary Ahmed Patel, film director Ismail Merchant, painters Ghulam Sheikh, Akbar Padamsee and Tayeb Mehta, and advertising icon Alyque Padamsee.

Not to forget the remarkable Tayabjee family, which settled in Mumbai at the beginning of the last century. These are the sort of people who set an example and are certainly not those who need to be made an example of.

But the purveyors of the doctrine of hate have instead built their stereotype of the community around Abdul Latif, a mafia boss of Ahmedabad who controlled the illicit liquor trade in the eighties and won several municipal elections as an independent.

It was a fellow Muslim, Rauf Vallilulah, Congress leader and former Rajya Sabha MP, who took him on and paid with his life.

It is by now evident that any spark would have lighted the communal tinderbox. Strangely, three months after Godhra, the administration has still not provided the official version of what happened that fateful morning. And no one has been punished.

The transformation of Gujarat from a broadminded, progressive and tolerant society where the trading community welcomed outsiders 8212; the IAS officers were usually from south India, the police force from the north, the manual labour for factories and agriculture from all over India and non-Gujaratis like Kurien headed some of the state8217;s premier institutions 8212; to an insular, parochial and intolerant society happened due to several factors.

The imposition of Gujrati even in higher education, including professional degrees, has led to a fall in standards and insulated the state. Congress Chief Minister Madhavsinh Solanki who formulated the KHAM vote-bank a combine of Kshatriyas, Harijans, Adivasis and Muslims antagonised the powerful Patidar Patels community and the upper castes. The anti-reservation riots in the mid eighties degenerated eventually into communal riots.

But the present madness has to be blamed mainly on the VHP, which wields extraordinary clout in the state thanks to its proximity to the ruling party. The three lakh Ram sevaks, many of them unemployed lumpen, have succeeded in injecting the communal virus deep into Gujarat society.

For some years the VHP with the help of the authorities prevented Muslims and Dalits from occupying houses or building flats in the better colonies in Ahmedabad, even when they happened to be the owners. Former Chief Justice Ahmadi8217;s fears that 8216;8216;They will convert the state into dormitories where those within will not go out and those out will not come in8217;8217; is borne out by the near-total divide in Ahmedabad today. Thousands of fearful Muslims, reported in this paper, have migrated to the predominantly Muslim Juhapura area.

Nothing establishes the complicity and guilt of the VHP and its supporters more than the fact that they have somehow linked Gujarati pride asmita with covering up and trying to protect those responsible for the pogroms. Surely, Gujarat8217;s asmita demands that the guilty must be brought to book without any further loss of time. Otherwise, suppressed feelings of fear, hatred, ignorance and vengeance will continue to fester and the cycle of violence will renew.