March.13 : Eight years on, it is clear that the ghost of the hair-raising violence committed against the Muslim minority in Gujarat is still not dead. The Special Investigation Team, constituted by the Supreme Court to conduct a fresh examination of several important cases, has issued a summons to chief minister Narendra Modi to appear before it on March 21. This is an awkward reminder that system cleansing remains a work in progress.
While society has sought to come to terms with the monstrous events of 2002 in a variety of ways, there is no judicial closure yet to the happenings that shook the country and raised questions in the international arena. The world had been taken aback because there was nothing in India’s social system, political structures, or belief paradigms that would have prepared it for the shaming episodes that were witnessed over a period of several months. It is well known that the conduct of Mr Modi’s government, and those of its leading functionaries in the police and the state administration, in those fateful days has been a subject of strictures by the Supreme Court. However, the examination of the chief minister himself under the orders of the highest court in the land marks a new low. Leading functionaries in India have been hauled up before the law for a variety of reasons, but none has suffered the ignominy of being personally investigated in a case of mass murder.
It is this which imbues the prospective investigation of Mr Modi with extraordinary significance. No head of government in a democracy has been in such a position before. It has to be clearly understood, of course, that investigation is only a stage in the judicial process. It would be wrong to pronounce the chief minister guilty in a juridical sense at this stage, although it would be hard for the man at the helm to shake off charges of moral culpability. Such had been the scale of barbarity witnessed in Gujarat in those days that then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajapyee, who is from the same party as the chief minister, has been revealed to have desired his removal but was unable to effect this on account of political opposition within his party. Mr Modi, along with dozens of others, is under scrutiny in the case of the murder in cold blood of 60-odd individuals at Gulberg Society, a residential complex in Baroda. The most well known of these was a former Congress MP, Ehsan Jafri, whose widow Zakia Jafri has persevered in her efforts to bring the guilty to book. Moved by her plea, the Supreme Court ordered the SIT to investigate the chief minister. The evidence that the SIT gathers will naturally be evaluated by a trial judge before anything can be said about Mr Modi’s role in this particular case. There can be little doubt, however, that if he is shown in an adverse light in the proceedings, he will be in no position to continue as chief minister or hold any constitutional position. If guilt sticks, the chief minister will naturally receive appropriate punishment under the law. How soon the case can be wound up even under fast-track procedures is anybody’s guess. But political opponents of the chief minister may be expected to try and drive him from office if there is the slightest judicial opening. The SIT has been asked to examine nine cases of that grisly era. Mr Modi will be investigated for only one of these. That’s his luck.
