Can’t forget or forgive so, have to live with it

One of my friends spoke about how his Grandmother can never look beyond what happened during the partition of India and Pakistan. It takes a very long time even generations and huge effort to go beyond those horrors. Like the Solitary Reaper, the memories lingered long after the incident.

I find this consistently true and cry for social empathy. There are quite a few examples of the same I see globally, from Immigration Crisis, Civil Wars to war-shattered economies. I want to particularly concentrate on the current Modi fervour in India and the Gujarat riot of 2002.

I am strictly looking at this from the eyes of the victims and the impacted. I do not want to consider the viewpoints of people who have scavenged on the misery of the victims to make a name for themselves. I recently read posts where people from rest of India, especially the young folks want people to get over this issue. I also see people using that to dismiss everything that Narendra Modi has done post that. There is less merit in both these cases. Let me take the first point.

Can’t get over the issue

The victims are still living the life that they didn’t imagine. This was a politically motivated riot exploiting the religious divide in people. Most of the victims irrespective of their religion were actually not in favour of violence. I can say this because they were innocent kids. Most of them were regular fathers, mothers, uncles and aunts we meet every day. They were brutally killed in this political struggle. Modi who was then the Chief Minister of the state didn’t do much to prevent it. Even if his claim of innocence is true as far as instigating and perpetuating this, it is definitely not true as far as being inept at handling such a situation. It is not a line item expected in the CV of an able administrator as he is portrayed. For rest of India, this was a news flash. I can say this with confidence as that is how Tamil Nadu looked at it. We were more bothered about the failure of Rajini movie Baba than the Gujarat riots. It is not for anyone to ask the victims or his detractors to forget or forgive Modi.

Dismiss everything that Modi does

The systemic flaws in the India government mean it depends on an able administrator to lead the country. At present, there is no one visible who is able to provide stability and leadership other than Narendra Modi. There are policies where I agree with him and there are policies where I don’t, but that is at a policy level and not at an individual level. There are policies which actually benefit the people and bring economic growth to the bottom 20%. The pundits and journalists will dismiss that at their own peril. As rational human beings, we need to fight policies and the situation now. India needs to create more leaders so that we can replace Modi with someone better. No other party is doing that and that is exactly why the Modi’s party is winning some big states. The families of the victims get this point and they have just learnt to live with that burden. The burden of seeing the person who wrecked the lives flourish.

Overall, it will be insane to expect the impacted to ignore or forget what happened in Gujarat. It is worse to ask victims and their sympathisers to forgive. Rest have to share their feelings and acknowledge the situation. At the same time, it is of no use trying to dismiss the current actions using past results. It will not help the victims, it will only give a short term boost to your image.