“Dharma was killed in Gujarat. The rulers who failed to protect the innocent citizens are guilty of adharma and if Ram had been alive he would have used his ‘Gandiva’ against the ‘asura’ rulers of Gujarat… These anti-Hindus call themselves Hindus but they belong to
the dogmas of the dark ages”.
-- K Subrahmanyam, in his article, ‘Dharma was killed in Gujarat, in The Times of India, April 4, 2002.
“We talk of terrorism as the basis of religious fundamentalism. How can we face the world when we are practising terrorism in Gujarat?”
-- VP Singh, former Prime Minister, warning that the country is heading towards a Bosnia-type situation
“‘It is for all of you to study the pattern of crime graph. The condition these minority boys (Muslim youth in Gujarat) are in today are ideal for igniting fire of terrorism. He says with frustration setting in, the boys would soon lose faith in the system and ‘look for alternative means to ventilate their grievances’”.
-- A senior police officer, not identified by name, quoted in a PTI (India’s top news agency) news report, in The Free Press Journal, March 15, 2002.
“It will take me two more days to overcome what I have seen and heard in various violence-hit areas in Gujarat… I cannot even narrate what I have been told by the women victims. It is horrible and inhuman… I do not think the people who perpetrated violence have anything to do with religion, whether it was in Godhra or the carnage after that. They all should be treated as criminals and punished uniformly”.
-- J.S. Varma, chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, on his return from a field visit to Ahmedabad, Godhra and Vadodra, in The Hindu, March 24, 2002.
“The government banned SIMI on the grounds that it is anti-national. But what has it done in the case of VHP and Bajrang Dal? They are not only anti-national but also anti-social and anti-human. Gujarat is just an example”.
-- Jagat Guru Shankaracharya of Goverdhan Math Swami Sri Adhokanand Dev Teerthji Maharaj, quoted in The Asian Age, March 3, 2002.
“Gujarat is the only Indian state ruled by (Hindutva) ideology. As such, it offers the starkest image of what Hindu nationalism, should it ever gain unrestrained control of the Indian state, will mean for India and its future”.
-- Sunil Khilnani, author of The Idea of India, currently a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, in his article, ‘A totalitarian vision defiles Indian civilisation, India is not for Hindus alone, The Telegraph, March 24, 2002.
No human can celebrate children being roasted alive. Only barbarians can. This is because they believe neither in religion nor in humanity. That is why, each day, Modi reminds us of Idi Amin and Pinochet. And Goebbels.
-- Amit Sengupta, in his article ‘A poem for Asif’, in The Hindustan Times, March 23, 2002.
“Is a gathering of 2,000 people armed with rods and carrying petrol cans and torches such a normal occurrence in Godhra that the police didn’t notice? If action had been taken then as it should have by any competent administration, our nation would have been saved from the present trauma and so many tragedies would have been avoided. But the incompetence doesn’t stop there…You and I and other people like us, who have no hand in running any government, anticipated the consequences and did so in minutes. So what was the government of Narendra Modi doing in Gujarat? So what was the government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee doing in Delhi? I will tell you what they were doing: nothing. That’s wrong: they were doing worse than nothing. Modi was saying, “The people of Gujarat have observed restraint in the wake of grave provocation,” thus hinting that they shouldn’t be observing this restraint”.
Anil Dharkar, in his column, ‘Dharkar’s Dilemma’, in The Bombay Times, March 4, 2002.
SOURCE:
http://www.sabrang.com/gujarat/statement/trindi.htm