E-Paper
An ?incident? at Godhra
The finding scotches the ?petrol and miscreant? theory as well as the notion that the fatal incident could have started from an electrical fire.
If we are to accept the findings of the U.C. Banerjee report investigating the Godhra carnage, we will now know what the 59 killed in the ill-fated Train No. 9166 Sabarmati Express did not die of: they did not perish from a fire caused by the use of any inflammable material. Instead, their death was, we are told, ‘accidental’, an observation that is in line with the committee’s interim report tabled on January 17, 2005. The finding scotches the ‘petrol and miscreant’ theory as well as the notion that the fatal incident could have started from an electrical fire. So, more than four years since the tragic event, there’s only one fact before us: 59 people died in a train fire.
The horror of Godhra, however, turned out to be much more than just another ‘railway accident’, rail accidents in this country being the regular footnotes that they are. Because of the identity of the victims — kar sevaks returning from Ayodhya — February 27, 2002, became the cause of the horrifying effect that was the Gujarat massacres. The Nanavati Commission, probing into the Gujarat carnage in its totality, will not have the luxury of having the word ‘accidental’ in its lexicon. But the danger facing any sort of closure on the Gujarat episode lies in what appears to be the futility of getting to ‘the bottom of things’, an integral part of any justice-seeking mechanism. The Godhra-Gujarat ‘incidents’ are, at least, events that have already occurred and are, in fits and starts, in the state of repair. This is an option not available for future communal conflicts. If the Banerjee report is a yardstick, violent deaths in the future — whether they are ‘accidental’ or ‘murder’ — will also enter the smog of opinion and ‘non-facts’. This does not augur well for justice in India.
The Godhra ‘incident’ may or may not have been an act of communal violence. The fact is that it was converted into one by a communally-charged state government machinery and used as the ‘reason’ for full-blown carnage. There are reasons why one should be seriously concerned about similar incidents — whether it be anti-Bush rallies turning violent or ‘high-risk accidents’ leading to riots. There is no excuse for governments unable (or unwilling) to control mobs sparked by an ‘accident’ or otherwise. But then, deeming the death of 59 people as merely ‘accidental’ can’t help matters at all.