A tomb of death in Ahmedabad

The young boy comes running up to the complex of burnt houses where wild bougainvillaea grows, its pink flowers covering the bent rusted gates. Asif is a class seven student who lives in the only inhabited home in Gulberg Society in Ahmedabad’s Chamanpura area, where on February 28, 2002, all the houses spread across the complex were burnt, and 69 people killed, including former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri.

In February this year, the 20th anniversary of the many massacres of Gujarat passed, but Gulberg Society stands there, a tomb of death, where the homes, with their burnt walls, carry echoes of what must have been normal lives of happiness and sorrow. Asif is at the site with a friend named Sunil, holding a kite they are planning to fly. The children know the way up the stairs from inside the Jafri home to the roof, where they can look upon their private playground of ghost houses that must entomb ghastly memories.

But they have blithe spirits and innocence as only children can, and Asif says while scrambling through the rooms and up the stairs that 19 members of his family were killed, but he adds that he was not born to see it. His father, Rafiq Mansoor, later appears and says that among the 19 dead from his family was a five-month-old son and wife. Asif came later as Rafiq would remarry, rebuild his small business and try to move on. His right eye is still scarred from an attack on that night of murder 20 years ago, but he has rebuilt his house. His current home has wallpaper with elaborate floral patterns, all built with his own resources, as he says there has never been any government offer to repair, renovate or rehabilitate.

His former neighbours have either died or fled into the satellite townships such as Juhapura, one of Asia's largest ghettos, that sprang up after the 2002 riots. The average middle-class resident of Ahmedabad has forgotten that Gulberg still stands there; the night before my visit, an otherwise well-informed local journalist says that he thinks the society has been rebuilt and new families now live there. But all that remains are ruins and a museum of death.

If there is a project of erasing memories, it is highly selective. For among the current candidates of the ruling BJP--that will no doubt continue its uninterrupted reign in Gujarat--are some associated with the 2002 riots. Within Ahmedabad, in the Naroda constituency, the BJP candidate is the daughter of one of the men convicted for the Naroda Patiya massacre who is currently out on bail after a conviction, one of those extraordinary luxuries given to many convicted for different crimes ranging from murder to rape in the 2002 riots.

While filing her nomination, the BJP's young Naroda candidate, who would have been nine years old when her father presumably participated in the massacre, was accompanied by Maya Kodnani, a former Gujarat minister who was acquitted in the Naroda Patiya case but is still facing trial in the Naroda Gam massacre case. The Naroda seat is a certainty for the BJP that wins the constituency with large margins, with the Congress last winning in 1985 when under Madhavsinh Solanki, the party set the still unbroken record of winning 149 of the state's 182 assembly seats.

In 2022, the BJP is not just honouring those associated with the 2002 bloodbath; it is extending the honours to defectors from the Congress as long as they show a commitment to the party ideology. For instance, the party has renominated C K Raulji from Godhra, where the 2002 violence began when bogies of the Sabarmati Express were set on fire. Raulji is a former Congressman who defected to the BJP ahead of the 2017 Rajya Sabha election from the state. He had a narrow victory margin in the 2017 assembly election of just 258 votes when he won the Godhra seat on a BJP ticket. In 2007 and 2012, he won the seat on a Congress ticket. Now he has passed the ideological fire test as he was on the committee that cleared the remission of 11 men convicted for the rape of Bilkis Bano and the murder of her family members in 2002. He had later called the convicts "Sanskaari Brahmins."

A star witness in the Gulberg society massacre case, Imtiyaz Pathan, is also contesting the election from the Bapunagar seat in Ahmedabad on a ticket given by Nitish Kumar's JD (U). Pathan had lived in the home next to Jafri and is quoted as saying in the local media that if elected, he would like to build something at Gulberg Society and hopefully renovate it. Presumably, respective administrations in the state and city have not cared to renovate such homes or rebuild shattered lives. Possibly, they see no shame in the burnt cluster of houses standing there in a city that's otherwise looking smarter with every visit.

Personally, I feel Gulberg Society should stand there as it is to give all those who care to visit, a gut-wrenching reminder of what did happen in Gujarat. Let visitors meet living children who can bring out the ghosts of the past in those haunted and achingly moving ruins.

(Saba Naqvi is a journalist and author)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.