People who defend Mr. Modi and the Godhra riots always come up with plausible claims like this is not the only riot that this country has witnessed and we have always been harsh on Gujarat CM for no fault of his.But what many people tend to forget is that, Gujarat riots were peculiar than the other riots like 1984 many aspects.
High television penetration, the various cases still being alive in various courts of laws, no effort by Mr. Modi to emend his non-secular image, all have been able to keep the ghost of Godhra alive very successfully.
The magnitude at which heinous and barbaric activities were committed, the least Mr. Modi could have done was to take a moral responsibility. Whether Mr Modi did anything wrong or not is something that can be debated, but being the head of the state administration he certainly had a moral responsibility to protect its citizens cutting across religious lines.That he failed in that duty of his the least one could have expected of him was a public apology and a sense of contrition. Probably he feared that if he extends a public apology it will be construed as an admission of his complicity.
Mr. Modi’s direct complicity is still to be proven in a court of law, but no attempts by him to correct his image as a Hindu lunatic and a hardcore Hindu hardliner has not helped his cause. In the latest Gujarat Assembly election he did not give a single Muslim candidate his party ticket and even refused to wear Taqiyah (cap) in full public glare only reaffirmed people of his orthodox right wing Hindu image. Gulberg Society case, Bilkis Bano case, all these cases are still there in court of laws, which every now and then comes to haunt people and Mr Modi with Godhra memories. Implication of Maya Kodnani (his own party MLA from Naroda ) in Naroda Patiya massacre has not helped his caused either. Admission by IPS officers like Sanjiv Bhatt that they were receiving direct orders from Modi has only brought more disrepute to Mr. Modi.
Though it is worth mentioning here is that none of the claims mentioned above against Mr. Modi have neither been corroborated nor been proved in a court of law. But politics is more about public perception than always having corroborative evidence.
Mr Modi’s great oratorical skills coupled with his burgeoning appeal among youth as a messiah of development gives people a hope at a time when faith with government and governance at large has touched its nadir. So, it’s high time that Mr Modi give a thought to setting the record straights when it comes to Godhra so that more and more allies join NDA and country gets a stable government and more importantly gets rid of the incumbent, because the last thing the country would want now is a fractured mandate and an unstable government.