Being the Other: The Muslim in India by Naqvi Saeed

Author:Naqvi, Saeed [Naqvi, Saeed]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9789384067762
Publisher: Aleph Book Company
Published: 2016-07-01T16:00:00+00:00

GUJARAT—1969 AND 2002

In September–October 1969, Ahmedabad in Gujarat became the epicentre of terrible Hindu–Muslim riots which saw widespread arson, looting and killings. According to the Justice Jaganmohan Reddy Commission report, the riots claimed 512 lives, mostly Muslim. The state was then ruled by the Congress and on the watch of Chief Minister Hitendra Desai whose handling of the riots came in for severe criticism. It would be another two years before the government appointed the Reddy Commission, which submitted its report in 1971. It blamed ‘Hindu nationalist groups’ for the carnage which targeted Muslims. It also questioned the role of the police and cited six examples where Muslim places of worship were attacked without the police trying to protect them. According to official records, eighty-seven mosques, dargahs and three temples were destroyed.

It was virtually on the day violence erupted in Ahmedabad that I accompanied Pashtun leader Badshah Khan, as Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan was fondly known, to Gujarat as his press secretary. I am in Kuldip Nayar’s debt for many things in my life. When the political leader and activist Jayaprakash Narayan requested Kuldip for a reporter from The Statesman to be loaned to him for a year, he named me. JP in turn asked me to function as Badshah Khan’s press secretary.

On his return from the US in 1929, Jayaprakash Narayan was invited by Nehru to, first, join the Indian National Congress and later lead the Congress Socialist Party within the Congress. He played a key role during the 1942 Quit India Movement. Later on, JP grew close to Acharya Vinoba Bhave and joined his Bhoodan (land gift) movement. He then renounced politics. Ramnath Goenka, the publisher of the Indian Express, and his RSS friend, Nanaji Deshmukh, decided that JP would be the perfect person to be pitted against Indira Gandhi who, in the early seventies, seemed invincible after winning the Bangladesh War in 1971. She had achieved this victory with the help of the Soviet Union. This factor, plus her growing dependence on the Indian Left, alarmed the Indian Right.

RNG fell back on the theory that Indians revere renunciation. JP had renounced political power and he, therefore, would be the right person around whom a movement could be launched. The idea had started germinating ever since Indira Gandhi split the Congress in 1969. The Navnirman Youth Movement in Gujarat gave further impetus to the idea of a Bihar Movement under JP’s leadership. This framework was already in some minds when Badshah Khan, the Frontier Gandhi, was invited to India. A yearlong Bharat Darshan would keep JP in steady focus by association.

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan was born in the Peshawar Valley in British India, and over the years gained much respect as a man of peace. He was strongly opposed to the partition of India, as we have noted in an earlier chapter. Despite a close friendship with Gandhiji, after Partition he felt an acute sense of betrayal.

Badshah Khan arrived in New Delhi in 1969. Given his VIP status as a special guest of the Indian government, the Intelligence Bureau appointed B.

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