NEW DELHI: Congress leader Sonia Gandhi encountered a “most wrenching moment” in the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat riots when a father held up the slumped figure of his young daughter, who had been sexually assaulted and cried to her for help, leaving her shattered and gripped with horror.
Gandhi was visiting a riot-ravaged Ahmedabad with an all-party delegation and finding relief camps “crowded by traumatised men, women, and children squatting in a makeshift hall”, she says in her memoir Belonging: A Journey of Love.
“The atmosphere was still chilling. Groups of young men could be seen on the streets shouting anti-Muslim slogans. Our delegation met with the administration, which presented a report devoid of any feeling – only to be expected.
“After the meeting, we were herded into a bus 'for security reasons,' then taken to some of the relief camps housing the survivors of the massacre. It was in one of the camps…that the most wrenching moment came for me,” Gandhi, who was then the leader of opposition, writes in the book that hit the stands on Tuesday.
As the group of leaders entered the camp, a tall, emaciated man held up to them, “cradled in his arms, the slumped figure of a young girl, her face gaunt and dazed”.
“His voice broke as he said, ‘Here, this is my child, take a look at her, take a good look. The rakshasas (demons) raped her again and again.’ He burst into sobs, pleading, ‘Main kya karun, kya karun? Kuch karo, kuch karo.’ (What am I to do? What can I do? Do something, help us),” Gandhi recalls.
The Congress leader says she found herself “shattered, in a state of stupor, gripped by horror, and unable to speak or react beyond a few mumbled words of sympathy”.
Riots were triggered in Ahmedabad when four coaches of the Sabarmati Express, which was returning from Ayodhya carrying Hindu kar sevaks, were set on fire and 59 pilgrims died.
“The cause of the fire remains disputed, but the turmoil that followed spread to many parts of the state, and the victims were overwhelmingly Muslims. We watched the live reports in horror, and tried to get help to our colleagues in Gujarat who were calling us in desperation, but the administration failed to respond.
“The riots were said to have been fuelled by a fanatical fringe of the BJP and RSS, the Bajrang Dal. The chief minister of the state at the time was Narendra Modi,” Gandhi writes in the book.
She adds that prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was widely expected to dismiss chief minister Modi, but “it's said that pressure from within his party compelled him to desist”. Gandhi also notes that international governments felicitated Modi 12 years later even when they had declared never to grant him a visa.
“There was an international outcry and the governments of the US, UK, and some European countries declared in 2005 that they would not grant the Gujarat chief minister a visa. Twelve years later, they would all felicitate him when he became prime minister of India.”
The 526-page book, published by HarperCollins India, covers the arc of Gandhi's remarkable life -- her childhood in post-war Italy, her marriage into the Nehru-Gandhi family, the assassination of her husband Rajiv Gandhi and her entry into politics.
