There have been calls from many people that all the lamenting and ruing about Gujarat should be stopped and we must move on and stop digging up the issue over and over again. However it seems that the brutal genocide will not stop haunting all those people who stand affected thereby, be it the victims or the rescuers or human rights activists. Although a bit late, yet, ANHAD came up with a book to mark the decennial of the gruesome and brutal state-led Gujarat genocide of 2002.
Releasing the book “and miles to go” on Apr 20, in New Delhi, Prof. Abhijit Sen, Member, Planning Commission, Government of India, made a point and said, “Gujarat 2002 does question the concept of Universal Indian.”
Introducing the book, Mr. Apoorvanand, a well-known literary critic and columnist, called the book a mixture of all the genres namely autobiography, reminiscences, reporting, etc., and lamented the fact that the social and secular fabric of the country has been ruptured by the gruesome event of Gujarat.
Mr. Apoorvanand further said that the kind of pact that was there between the Muslims and independent India has been brutally broken by the atrocious and inhumane act. “There were many Muslims who were moving on in their lives and were well set in their modern-secular-selves and plurality of the country, but the incident of 2002 ruptured their own thinking and the idea of modern-secular-selves was shattered,” he said.
For all those who say that there has been much on Gujarat and we must bury it somewhere, Apoorvanand replied by reading out a quote from Rousseau where he says, “Though the truth may be immediate and spontaneous, its communication to the reader on the other hand, must be prolonged and insistent. It is not enough for my story to be truthful; it must be detailed as well.”
“Total breakdown of communication is also a fact with which we can understand Gujarat. There were so many things that were written and said, yet people were unwilling to listen and paid no attention to the stories of all the hapless people. It was breakdown of communication as despite seeing the facts no one was ready to listen….It is more important for the Hindus of India to understand this tragic incident,” he lamented. He further said that and miles to go is not a book, in fact it is a document of pain.
And miles to go is a pocket book which documents the journey of five women, Muslim or from Muslim descent, who responded to the Gujarat 2002 carnage and confronted the reality and then penned down how the intensity of hatred in the society changed their perspectives. The idea of writing a book came to their mind only 10 days before it is released; hence quite a few proof and editing mistakes, however the intriguing and soul-shaking stories mentioned in the book completely sideline the language aspect of the book. The five women, namely Noorjahan Diwan, Shabnam Hashmi, Sofiya Khan, Sayeda Hameed and Zakia Soman, coming from different backgrounds, write as to how the event of 2002 transformed and changed their perspectives which they earlier had for the society.
Noorjahan Diwan, who earlier broke down and wept profusely in front of the audience, later collected herself and narrated her story from being a housewife to an activist. Sayeda Hameed expressed shock and awe over the answer Maya Kodnani gave to her in an interview post-Gujarat genocide where she said, “This is the nature of the people of Gujarat,” as if whatever has happened is something very trivial to be discussed. “Moving on is not possible in Gujarat case,” she stressed.
Zakia Soman, who studied along with Gujarati elites, read out some portions of the book which she has written. After witnessing all the brutalities, her perspective of the society underwent a summersault. It was her identity which was being targeted and then she made a resolve. She read out, “Damn all those who call me communal! Damn all those who call me Muslim!”
Shabnam Hashmi, who has written the longest piece in the book, read out one of the paragraphs which narrates the atrocities of the police on the hapless Muslims after the dreaded genocide. The paragraph reads as;
“Zaheer could not stop sobbing while narrating how they tied a black band on his eyes and took him away to some ashram. All five of them landed in the same ashram. They were brutally beaten up for four days. Zaheer was stripped naked and given electric shocks all over his body. Iqbal (one of the five men) was given electric shocks around his waist and private parts….Neither Zaheer nor Iqbal were allowed to open [break] their rozas, the filthiest abuses were used against them….abusing their mothers and sisters….They did not know whether it was day or night, the torture continued unstopped wanting them to accept they were going to bomb the Ganesh VisarjanYatra.”
After a few years all were set free, she said.