State Repression in Gujarat

Shri Nawal Kishore Sharma,
Honble Governor of Gujarat,
Gandhinagar,
Gujarat
Fax: 079-23260110/23243171-172-173

Sir,

The horror of state repression in Gujarat keeps on growing. The list of its victims, and of the reasons why they became victims, includes:

Muslims: Attacked for being Muslims.
Christians: Attacked for practicing and propagating their own religion i.e., for exercising a right that the Indian Constitution gives to all its citizens.
Parziana, a film: Attacked for showing the reality of State sponsored terrorism in Ahmedabad during the post Godhra pogrom. The film is based on the life of a 10 years old Parsee boy who went missing at the time and has never been found. The film was banned in Gujarat, in early 2007.
Chandramohan Srilamantula, a Fine Arts department student at Maharaja Shivajirao University (MSU), Vadodara: Arrested on May 9, 2007 following Bharatiya Janata Party leader Neeraj Jain's allegation that his art work offended Hindu religious sensibilities.
Dr. Shivaji Pannikar, Dean, Arts Faculty, MSU: He angered the VHP and the Bajrang Dal by coming out in support of Chandramohan. The University responded by suspending his Deanship.

On July 6th Dr. Shivaji Pannikar was attacked again, this time in Ahmedabad. He had been invited there to inaugurate an exhibition in connection with a National Student's Festival for Peace, Communal Harmony and Justice to inaugurate an exhibition of student paintings and documentary films.

Leader of Lok Sangharsh Morcha, Bhikhu Bhai Tadvi was ordered to quit his home district Narmada, and to the nearby districts of Vadodara, Surat, and Bharuchh for two years, by the Collector, Narmada district. Bhikhu Bhai, a Tribal leader and one of LSMs National Secretarys, has been erroneously charged with instigating tribals for Naxalite ends.

Dr Pannikar has paid the price of daring to suggest that peace, communal harmony and justice are not available in Gujarat. The driver of his car was beaten up, presumably for daring to drive him to the exhibition site. The organizers of the festival have paid for inviting Pannikar to a place so close to Gandhinagar, the State capital and inner sanctum of Hindutva, Gujarat-style. Gandhinagar is 20 miles from Ahmedabad. Bhikhu Bhai is paying an even higher price for holding and propagating ideas that the State of Gujarat is uncomfortable with.

The citizens of India, who have not paid so far, will have to pay a heavy price in the future. Gujarat is now a religious State, unofficially but truly. Converting it into a religious state is a matter of time only, unless the citizens of India raise their voices in effective protest. If they fail to do so, all Indians will have to digest the absurdity of being citizens of the first secular State in history to have a part that is officially religious.

An outfit that claims to protect all Hindus but attacks those Hindus who do not prostrate themselves before its version of Hindutva is a fascist outfit. Fascism is the true face of the BJP (Narendra Modi).

The brave Indians who assembled in Ahmedabad on July 6, 2007 have shown all Indians how to protest.

We need to praise them; we do so here. We need to protest the violence done to them; we do so here. Most of all, we need to follow the fine example that they have set.

We condemn the attacks on Dr. Shivaji Pannikar and on Shri Bhiku Bhai Tadvi. We demand that the order externing Shri Tadvi from Narmada and other districts be withdrawn. We demand that Dr Pannikar be reinstated as Dean, MSU. We demand that action be taken against all those, in Government, who are using the rule of law for partisan political ends.