Narendra Modi on Gujarat riots: I was shaken to the core

NEW DELHI: From Newton’s law to the law of nature, BJP’s PM candidate Narendra Modi has come a long way since the Gujarat riots of February 2002. In his moment of triumph at the trial court verdict, which on Thursday absolved him of any complicity in the riots, the chief minister on Friday wrote about the episode for the first time, using words such as ‘pain’, ‘anguish’ and ‘agony’ to describe his feelings at the episode that has defined his political identity.

In the run-up to the 2014 elections, Modi seems to be seeking out those who identify with the riot victims “to understand and connect with the real Narendra Modi” who felt “absolute emptiness” on witnessing the “inhumanity” of the 2002 riots.

Modi’s 1,000-word blog on his website explains his silence all these years about the deaths and suffering of the riot victims. And that too by keeping the 2001 earthquake deaths and disaster in the foreground.

“During those challenging times, I often recollected the wisdom in our scriptures; explaining how those in positions of power did not have the right to share their own pain and anguish. They had to suffer it in solitude. I lived through the same, experiencing this anguish in searingly sharp intensity… This is the first time I am sharing the harrowing ordeal I had gone through.”

Even while writing the riots shook him to the core and that mere words — “grief, sadness, misery, pain, anguish, agony” — cannot capture the emptiness he felt on witnessing such inhumanity, Modi insisted that he all along expressed “the political will as well as moral responsibility of the government to ensure peace, deliver justice and punish all guilty”.
Reactions to Modi’s carefully crafted attempt at contrition, which did not contain an outright apology long demanded by his critics, were predictably mixed.

BJP president Rajnath Singh termed it as the “heartfelt pain of an innocent”. “He has been accused of being communal despite the court’s clean chit. If it is not an abuse, then what is it? Several riots have happened in Congress regimes but no leader has had to undergo scrutiny in this way,” Singh said. Senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley called Modi’s words as an expression of his inner emotions. “Today, after he has been vindicated by the court, was an appropriate day to write it. Immediately after 2002, he was being attacked, there was a presumption of guilt and there was no scope for a rational debate.” Saying that he was “satisfied and reassured man today”, “liberated and at peace” by the latest court verdict, Modi himself made it clear he did not expect his detractors to forgive him. And they didn’t.

“This is too little and too late... and, he is yet to say sorry,” said Tanveer Jafri, who lost his father Ehsan Jafri, a former Congress MP from Ahmedabad, in the Gulbarg Society massacre. His father and 68 others were killed in one of the worst instances of violence. In Vadodara, Professor JS Bandukwala, who lost his home and barely escaped death during the carnage, is far from impressed with Modi’s side of the story. “He is ready to express remorse, but does not say sorry. We have seen him operate in Gujarat and completely polarise the communities. He is crying just because he wants to be prime minister.”