The judgement of history

Responsibility & Accountability

The Supreme Court judgement which gave a clean chit to Narendra Modi over his role as Chief Minister of Gujarat during the 2002 communal riots in the state has finally taken the event from the realm of the judiciary to history. There are individual cases of violence that are yet to be decided by the courts. Some people have been convicted and punished and many others are known to have escaped the hands of the law. Some have got justice, and many others have not. Some of the more well-known cases in post-Independence India of victims of violence and atrocities being awarded justice in an adverse environment are from the records of the 2002 Gujarat violence. They include the Best Bakery case of Vadodara and the Bilkis Bano case of Dahod. Considering the pace at which courts move in the country, it may be years before all cases find closure.

The case of Modi is also an individual case because the charges against him were that he did not take timely action to put a stop to the riots and that he was involved “in a larger conspiracy”, along with some officials, against members of the minority community in the wake of the killings in Godhra. But since he was the Chief Minister of the state and a large number of officials were also involved, the charges made by Zakia Jafri, widow of Congress leader Ehsan Jafri who was killed in the riots, were also about the State’s role in, and response to, the riots.

The Supreme Court bench, headed by Justice A M Khanwilkar, rejected the charges and said that the inaction or failure of some officials of one section of the state administration cannot be the basis to infer that there was a pre-planned criminal conspiracy by the state government. It did not find evidence of a conspiracy at the highest level and upheld the decisions of lower courts that had agreed with the clean chit given by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to Modi and others.

It is clear that the decision marks the end of the judicial road for any move to fix collective accountability for the riots on the then Gujarat establishment and, in the course of that, to find out who all were responsible for its failures. Modi also gets the personal benefit of this absolution. But it will be wrong to conclude that it will mark the end of the debate on Gujarat riots which, along with the 1975 Emergency, is perhaps the most discussed public event in the country’s recent history. Judicial orders and judgements do not easily change opinions, views and perceptions. Even if the Supreme Court had found merit in the contentions of Zakia Zafri and decided that there were collective and individual lapses that need to be probed again, that would not have changed the views of most of those who have believed that Modi was unfairly targeted in the matter. Similarly, the court’s judgement is unlikely to effect a change of mind in those who have criticised his conduct during the riots and his handling of them. Facts and circumstances will be cited by both sides to justify their positions.

There have been other court verdicts, even in recent years, like the Sabarimala judgement of 2018, which show that judicial orders do not change entrenched views, especially if they have social and political dimensions. This will be true of the judgement in the Gujarat riots case, too.

The court was unhappy with those who were involved in “keeping the pot boiling with false revelations and ulterior designs”. But it cannot prevent discussions in public and political fora about the riots and persons who may or may not have been involved in them.

The Gujarat riots are a part of history, and the court’s final word on it is also part of that history. Even as the judgement will be accepted, it may be criticised for some of its arguments, affirmations and observations. The riots will continue to be discussed, with people taking different positions on it, as in the case of the Emergency and the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. There are many other pots of the past that are kept boiling for various purposes and ends, and the Gujarat pot will be one of them.

The court did not find a larger conspiracy and a “meeting of minds of all concerned at some level” which would have been indicative of a criminal conspiracy behind the riots. Conspiracies are difficult to prove even in small cases of individual criminality. So, the lack of any evidence of conspiracy will not be taken as an absence of conspiracy by those who have always believed that the Gujarat riots were a result of a conspiracy hatched at high levels.

The same is the case with responsibility. Responsibility has many dimensions — legal, moral, political and the like at personal and collective levels. The responsibility of a government for a public event or incident will be examined in all these aspects in a democracy.

The Supreme Court’s decision in the case will be considered by many to have settled the question of the legal responsibility of the government, including politicians and officials, for the riots. But issues relating to moral and political responsibility would remain because these are not for the courts to settle. There is the court’s judgement, in view of the evidence available to it. There’s former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s exhortation to the then Gujarat Chief Minister to follow “raj dharma”.

That shows how difficult it is to make judgements on events in history. We do not have enough information on many events to take a call on them and to arrive at an objective conclusion. More importantly, many historical events are seen through the prism of personal or political biases and prejudices. That is human nature. This will be the case with the Gujarat riots, too.

History, recent or ancient, presents many challenges. Understanding a recent event may be as difficult as comprehending the meaning of a long-ago event. If there is so much controversy over the role of a person in a historical event that happened just two decades ago, how do we make judgements on Tipu Sultan, Akbar, or Alexander?

(The writer is a former Associate Editor and Editorial Adviser, Deccan Herald)