In India, Sufi shrines are symbols of Hindu-Muslim unity, so rarely are they targeted during a communal carnage. But such was the mob frenzy during the 2002 Gujarat riots—described the most horrendous in post-independence India—that most of the religious structures destroyed were the tombs of Muslim Sufi-saints, among them, that of Wali Gujarati, the state’s most revered Sufi site.
Official figures suggest that of an estimated 562 religious places that were desecrated by rioters in the state, Sufi shrines numbered as many as 302. And the destroyed sites also included three churches, 200 mosques and 18 temples. “That was madness at its peak,” laments R B Sreekumar, a former Director-General of Gujarat Police.
An Indian Police Service (IPS) officer of Gujarat cadre, he headed the state’s reserve police units at the time the riots broke out on February 28, 2002. Sreekumar was haunted by state chief minister Narendra Modi for filing nine affidavits in a row against him stressing that he and his government should be faulted for the violence that eventually claimed 2,000 lives, a majority of them Muslims.
Internal inquiries were set up to harass him, said Sreekumar, who retired in 2007 but claimed he got his first pension only two years later. Sreekumar was here to attend a seminar to mark the anniversary of Kerala’s formation in 1956. He hails from Kerala but lives in Gandhinagar, Gujarat’s capital city located next to the former capital Ahmedabad, after retirement.
In a brief interview the former Gujarat police official told this newspaper earlier this week that Modi asked the state apparatus to lie low for three days beginning February 28, 2002 and let the rioters have a field day. Riots spread after Modi decided to parade the bodies of the 58 Hindu victims of Godhra violence a day earlier. One victim died later.
As per the law, the bodies should have been handed to the next of kin of the deceased but they were instead left in the care of a militant Hindu outfit, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP or World Hindu Council) and its chief Jaideep Patel, said Sreekumar. “Modi decided to get the bodies to Ahmedabad despite being told by some top state police officials that it was illegal and would lead to widespread carnage.”
Sreekumar said that though Muslims were at the receiving end, rising extremism in their midst in the wake of Babri Masjid’s demolition in December 1992 had left them largely communalised and isolated from majority Hindus. So Muslims too were to partly blame for the violence. Citing examples, he said Muslim clerics trained in conservative Islam came over from states like Bihar into regions such as Kutch in Gujarat and imparted religious teachings that created avoidable Hindu-Muslim cleavages.
Sreekumar took over as additional DGP, state intelligence, on April 9, 2002 and was the first police official in the state to blow the whistle on the Hindu extremists who he said were hand in glove with Modi. He said he began reporting about how they (Hindu extremists) were trying to tamper with and manipulate the criminal justice system.
Sreekumar, a brave and honest police official, has been provided security after he received threats from the VHP for his bold role in the riots probe and his anti-Modi and secular stance. Interestingly, in Gandhinagar, he stays close to the chief minister’s residence.
The Peninsula
