Gujarat riots

The print media, bar sections of the Gujarati press in Ahmedabad, have done the nation proud by its objective coverage of the Gujarat carnage. So have the electronic media. Rattled by the bad press it has been getting, the Narendra Modi government has asked three news agencies in Ahmedabad to put out positive stories to refurbish the government's image and thereafter to act as informers on which newspapers print the planted features and which do not.

In spite of the anti-communal rhetoric of the opposition, Manohar Joshi walked to the Lok Sabha speaker's chair in all royal glory. To have put a Shiv Sena man in that seat right when the communal carnage is going on in Gujarat is, to say the least, a tragic mockery. The opposition has a lot to answer for.

For years to come, the recent communal violence in Gujarat is going to remain a reference point in identity narratives about the 'self' and the 'other'. Therefore, the different narratives of the violence discussed here, along with their internal nuances, will continue to shape and influence collective memories. In a sense, these narratives, in the larger context of the environmental factors, will influence the political orientations of the people.

A history of 'anti-national' activity is being woven for Godhra putting together a series of incidents from the past. A clear examination of one such incident of 1928 reveals that as in February 2002, then too the hostility was rooted in pernicious but local political traditions, requiring only a spark to prompt a sudden and tragic escalation of violence.

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