Recently, the magazine “Tehelka” came out with a graphic exposure of how the Gujarat massacres of 2002 were carried out, based on a six-month long sting operation conducted by one of its journalists. What comes out in all its stark detail is this: every level of the state machinery, from the Chief Minister Narendra Modi, the ministers, venerable judges, high level officials and police officers, to the criminal investigation department and jail officials, public prosecutors and all levels of the police, worked in concert with members of the political establishment – the MPs and MLAs and local level functionaries – to carry out a planned, systematic carnage of people of the Muslim community. Believing that they were talking to a sympathizer, those directly involved and who were fully in the know of what went on, revealed the gruesome facts without holding anything back and were caught doing so on camera.

Some of the salient facts are as follows:

• The Gujarat government counsel Arvind Pandya (who has subsequently resigned in the wake of the exposure) described Justice Shah of the Nanavati-Shah Commission probing the Gujarat massacre as “our man”.
• n The minister of state for home, Gordhan Zadaphia, was kept personally informed by phone of the death count while it was happening by one of the chief perpetrators, VHP leader Babu Bajrangi.
• The worst of the massacres, at Naroda in Ahmedabad, was conducted under the direct leadership of the MLA Mayaben Kodnani who drove around the locality in an open vehicle egging on the killings.
• n The MLA from Godhra, Haresh Bhatt, explained how bombs and even rocket launchers used in the attacks were manufactured in his fireworks factory. “Experts” were used to help construct the bombs.
• Police Commissioner Pandey was responsible for carting off more than 700 bodies and dumping them in different places to disguise the actual murder count.
• At least two judges were transferred by the Chief Minister personally to ensure bail for one of those who had indulged in killings.
• The MLA Haresh Bhatt revealed that at a top level meeting just after the Godhra train burning, the Chief Minister “had given us three days...to do whatever we could. He said he would not give us time after that...He said this openly...After three days, he asked us to stop and everything came to a halt.”

The list of revelations goes on and on....

The real significance of the “Tehelka” exposures is that it amounts to a blow-by-blow description of the operation of state terrorism in India. What was sought to be passed off as “riots” between different sections of the people in Gujarat in 2002 stands clearly as a criminal conspiracy against the people, master-minded and carried out by the state for a very definite political purpose. The taking of innocent human life, including that of the old, of women and children, and even unborn foetuses, as well as committing truly bestial atrocities with the purpose of inspiring terror – none of this is considered too low for the “guardians of law and order”, including the topmost representatives of the ruling class. In recent times, our people have witnessed a series of bomb blasts in different parts of the country, which have taken countless lives and maimed even more. Whenever this occurs, the state and its agencies immediately point fingers at some shadowy “terrorist” groups, and uses this to step up its harassment of various sections of the people, strengthen its laws and apparatus of repression, and commit gross violations of the human rights of people. The “Tehelka” exposure confirms that the biggest terrorist is none other than the state itself, and it shows exactly how its terrorist operations are carried out.

The attempts being made in Congress circles, in the media and even in the democratic movement, in the wake of the revelations, to show this as just the work of the “Sangh Parivar” and Narendra Modi in particular, is an attempt to put blinkers on the people's eyes. This exposure of the Gujarat carnage in fact reads just like a description of what went on in Delhi, Kanpur and other places during the anti-Sikh “riots” in November 1984, when the Congress Party headed by Rajiv Gandhi was in power. While the Congress and the BJP are busy pointing fingers at one another, the lesson that all thinking people must draw is this – that this country is ruled by a criminal class of exploiters who use terrorism as a preferred method to keep the people cowed down and subjugated. How else can it be explained that, even when the opposition party is in power, the top criminals who organise such conspiracies are never given their due punishment, and the charges against them are never even pursued seriously? How is it that all the investigative agencies, law enforcement agencies and judicial system put together are “unable” to get to the bottom of such atrocities and bring the real culprits to book?

Unless the source of such outrages – that is, the ruling class and its political system – is identified, unless the people organise to get rid of this system as a whole, the stark reality is that there are many more Gujarats, November 1984s and post-Babri Masjid type massacres waiting to happen. All Indians of conscience must grasp this truth and come together to take the action needed to prevent such things from ever happening again.