The many Media Channels (especially Electronic Media), hungry for their sound bites and desperate for visuals with greater gore and signs of damage, only add to the confusion and pressure. Please recall how the Media can make even a single car accident look so horrific and how they gather sound bites from the victims to make it sound catastrophic. To each victim his injury and loss is of primary importance and is deserving of our sympathy and consideration, but do we call out the entire army in response to each such desperate call? To this, we today need to also consider the effects of Social Media.

It is easy in hindsight to blame the Authority at each level for inadequate or improper or delayed response but common sense and an unbiased judgment would not go about blaming them for such lack. Though they could, and should, be held accountable for not foreseeing such breakdowns of law and order and putting in place contingency plans to react appropriately to them, which would include the call-up of additional forces from the Centre and call up of the Army as appropriate.

It is true that inaction or indecisiveness has consequences and at most times is not the right answer, but the precondition for right action or decisiveness is proper consideration of available facts and an understanding of the consequences and at least an adequate level of prior training.

Hence, sending in the few available forces without back up, or directing the Army to move in without clear operational and firing authority, would not only be counterproductive but could also, be disastrous. Ofcourse, the decision to send in the Forces is political, but the execution and control of the operation on the field/site, should be left to the Force Commander.

Recall, how the Naval Marine Commandos (MARCOS) were not allowed to deal with the 26/11 Mumbai attackers, while the Authorities debated on the risk to the hostages and on what sort of directions for engagement could be given to them, and by whom, when dealing with this threat. Even getting a District Magistrate or higher-level officer to the site, as required under the Laws of the Country, to allow operation and escalation as the Commander would have thought appropriate to the situation, could not be arranged for as no one was ready to take responsibility. If in this instance inaction brought about by lack of preparation and leadership was deemed understandable, then why is it not understandable in the case of the much greater disruption and chaos of the Gujarat riots?

What then could we realistically have expected from the Authorities, or the Chief Minister, in Gujarat in 2002. It is true the Army could perhaps have been moved into action almost a day earlier, but with what strength and asked to operate within what limits or rules of engagement? – in this case the Army was requested for by the State Government from the Centre, but it was not immediately made available as the neighbouring states were ruled by Parties in opposition who claimed their own need for protection. When no one really had a clear idea of what was happening. Only ‘Flag marches’, without the Authority to fire, if required and as deemed appropriate by the
Force Commander on site, would have been even more disastrous. Wouldn’t directing the Police to just act, without guidelines or understanding of how and in what way, also, be more disastrous?

Let us recall the time line. – The Godhra train burning took place on 27th, the riots started across the State on the 28th and the efforts of the Authorities and the Police to prevent escalation were overwhelmed by the number, spread and scale of the outbreaks of the violence. However, for whatever it was worth, it may be noted that such efforts were far more than the response to the 1984 riots in Delhi and other major riots elsewhere.

Perhaps, if at the very start, they understood what was happening and were able to respond with a real heavy hand to crush each, or as many of the outbreaks as they could, it could have made a difference. But then, who would have taken the responsibility for the toll, wouldn’t all the Civil rights activists and NGOs and the Media scream ‘Human rights violations and massacre’? – How can one know the horrendousness of the crime, with no concept of it and no precedent for it, till it happens and with no prior plan to be activated, how do you even begin to react to it?

From the 1st, coordinated action started, and by the 2^nd it was pretty near under control (See Annexure). It is thus evident that to say there was no action is false. Yes, even this action was not enough and a lot of lives, from both the Communities, were lost by then, many of them innocents caught in the virulence of the attack by each of the Communities on the other, and called in the subsequent reports as “collateral damage”. We can be sure that each of the concerned victims perceived nothing “collateral” about what happened to them.

Now about the Media, and the Public reacting to the Media Visuals and Sound bites in the days after, recall the Media only saying that from 28th to 1st there was no action for 3 days, conveniently forgetting that it started on 28^th February and therefore 1st March is the next day and not three days after.

One need hold no brief for the then recently elected Chief Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, to see that he and the other Authorities, are being victimized by unqualified / uninformed persons and even some qualified persons with partial information, who have allowed their emotions, egos and interests to overcome their understanding and to take the stand and make comments on how, in hindsight, things should have been done and to try and find some scapegoat to blame for it all.

Blame those who over the years have encouraged divisions amongst our people. Blame those who always see the expenditure for contingency planning and for preparing and arming the Police suitably, as avoidable with the ‘head in the sand’ policy of an Ostrich, as something they do not see the need for now.

To try and portray Shri Modi as a ‘Hitler’, who within a day could coordinate such a “pogrom”, (does a pogrom get over in a few days?), across the State (actually even Hitler took many years) is to give him credit for greater ability than he has; and to top it all off, to call what happened a ‘genocide’ (study the ‘Holocaust’ to understand the meaning of genocide, or even Armenia, Bosnia and Rwanda) and to attempt to justify their coverage and reactions by repeatedly broadcasting some of the same shots of the mobs and of the ruins of the riots, and to add provocative sound bites to them, some not even true, from the victims or even some self-declared alleged victims, who could have had their own axe to grind is, to say the least, uncalled for. (Google) – the report of the French journalist Ms. Nicole Elfi on ‘Godhra – The True Story, to understand how the Media, acting at the behest of vested interests projected the wrong story.

In any case, the majority of those living in the State, including many from the Minority Community, all of whom are more involved and informed about what happened then than all of us outside the State, have clearly again and again not held Shri Narendra Modi responsible and it is about time we accept that, unless there is clear evidence directly implicating him in any manner, and obviously even the many commissions of enquiry and the many Courts, up to even Supreme Court, that have held him ‘Not Guilty’, have found no such evidence. Hence, we today should stop discussing about and blaming him.

This does not mean, we forget what happened. No, because what happened was ‘terrible and an ‘outrage’. It means that we let the Investigating Authorities and the Courts do their job and identify and punish those who were actually involved on the ground, identify and act against those persons and vested interests that falsely accused authorities and also spread false propaganda, and recommend all necessary steps to avoid such happenings in future. Also call on the State Government to rehabilitate and recompense the victims as best as possible.

It is not revenge we should be demanding, it is justice and rehabilitation, that we should aim for, and ensure that appropriate lessons are learnt to respond in a better way, if such situations arise in future.

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