Thursday, August 09, 2007, Cybernoon.COM

The Maharashtra government’s ‘Memorandum of Action to be Taken (ATR) by government’ in response to the report of the Srikrishna Commission of Inquiry, reiterates the familiar Hindutuawaadi version of the factors responsible for the riots:

"Mumbai is the economic and commercial capital of the country and hence inimical forces were at work, both inside (read Muslims) and outside (read Pakistan’s ISI) the country, had planned to destroy the economic base of the country by fomenting trouble (December 1992 and January 1993 riots). This line of reasoning is amply borne out by the subsequent events of March 1993”. (Pg. 243, para25)

"Anti—national Muslim forces, within and outside the country, instigated these communal riots, continued them for a long period and carried out serial bomb blasts on March 12, 1993”. (Pg.242,para 18)

“A series of stabbings (in January 1993) and these two incidents (the killing of Mathadi workers on January and the burning to death of a Hindu family in Radhabai Chawl in Jogeshwari on January 8, 1993) worried the Hindus about their future and a spontaneous reaction for self-protection followed.”(Pg. 242, para20)

The ATR has been submitted by a government led by a party several of whose top leaders — including the party chief, Bal Thackeray and Chief Minister, Manohar Joshi — and a large number of whose workers have been indicted for their role in the violence. It is hardly surprising then that the ATR engages in a perversion of discourse that is typical of the Shiv Sena — no evidence to substantiate the prevarications. In keeping with this party’s utter contempt and disregard for constitutional authority and the judiciary, there is not even a token attempt to deal with the series of serious cases and instances enumerated in the report. Instead of applying itself to the issue by issue findings of the Judge, the ATR merely reiterates the series of generalisations that the Shiv Sena and Hindutva combine always use to cloud their criminal acts, generalisations for which neither the party nor the state could offer any worthwhile evidence before the Commission of Inquiry.

The ISI bogey

A significant contribution of the Justice Srikrishna Commission report is that it debunks the unsubstantiated theory peddled by the Sena—BJP—RSS combine — and conveniently accepted by the then Congress government and the administration — that the Mumbai riots in December 1992-January 1993 and the serial bomb blasts in March 1993 were part of a common design and were the result of a Pakistan-inspired ISI (Inter Services Intelligence) conspiracy to de— stabilise India.

This argument has been used repeatedly to justify acts of venom and violence unleashed by Sena leaders and their cadres on sections of Bombay’s minorities on the ground that they were carried out in self-defence and were “retaliatory” in character. Soon after the violence of December 1992-January 1993, Gopinath Munde, then leader of the Opposition in the state assembly, and presently the deputy chief minister of Maharashtra (BJP) had alleged that it was the areas infested by the ‘infiltrators’ from Bangladesh and Pakistan (read Muslim-dominated areas) that had provoked the violence in Mumbai. This theory has been conclusively exposed as malicious by the Commission of Inquiry since no witness, including the Shiv Sena Member of Parliament, Madhukar Sarpotdar, was able to provide any evidence to substantiate this spurious version. (Pg. 165, para 21.42). As to how widely prevalent this theory was is evident from the fact that even the then Governor of Maharashtra, C. Subramanium, had made an entirely unsubstantiated statement alleging a foreign hand behind the riots. (Pg. 220, para 1.21 & Pg.222,para 2.13).

In Chapter VI, Volume 1 of the report that deals with this issue, Justice Srikrishna has concluded that a causative link is in evidence between the two riots and the bomb blasts: “Tiger Memon, the key figure in the serial bomb blasts case, and his family had suffered extensively during the riots and therefore can be said to have deep—rooted motives for revenge. It would appear that one of his trusted accomplices, Javed Dawood Tailor alias Javed Chikna, had also suffered a bullet injury during the riots and therefore he also had a motive for revenge”.

The Judge adds: “Apart from these two specific cases, there was a large, amorphous body of angry, frustrated and desperate Muslims keen to seek revenge for the perceived injustice done to and atrocities perpetrated on them or to others of their community and it is this sense of revenge which spawned the conspiracy of the serial bomb blasts. This body of angry, frustrated and desperate Muslims provided the material upon which the anti-national and criminal elements succeeded in building up their conspiracy for the serial bomb blasts.” (Pg. 45, Term No.VII, para iii).

After the terms of reference of the Srikrishna Commission were expanded to investigate the “common design” between the riots of 1992-1993 and the serial bomb blasts of 1993, the Commission by an order dated January 22, 1997 directed the government of Maharashtra to disclose the material available before it in this context. By an affidavit of the Additional Chief Secretary (Home) dated February 5,1997, the Commission was informed that all the material in the possession of the government on this issue had already been disclosed in the affidavits of former Mumbai Police Commissioner, Amarjit Singh Samra, former Additional Commissioner, Mumbai, Vasant Narsingrao Deshmukh, head of investigators, CBI, Mahesh Narain Singh, former Mumbai Police Commissioner, Satish Sahney and two other police officers.

The deposition of Srikant Bapat — Police Commissioner of Mumbai during the riots of December 1992-January 1993 who has been directly and indirectly implicated for his inability in firmly putting down the violence — has been systematically examined and dissected by the Judge, especially with relation to his reluctance both in his affidavit and in court to dub the Shiv Sena as a communal organisation. This officer was also specifically examined by the Commission on the issue of an ISI hand in the two riots. According to his affidavit on oath, the ISI was a factor that contributed to the violence.

However, while in the witness box, Bapat could give no evidence to show that the disturbances which took place on December 6, 1992 “was the result of a tactical plan executed by the ISI, nor was there any material to show that the ISI was responsible for the disturbances in January 1993. All that Bapat has been able to say, in the true fashion of a trained intelligence officer, is that the destabilising activities of the ISI weregoing on for quite some time, but there was no material elicited from the interrogation of the accused in the riot-related cases to establish a link between such cases and ISI agents or destabilises.”  (PgPg. 197, para 2.10).