Gory tale of survival

FEAR continues to haunt the lives of those who resisted the storms of "hate and divide" with compassion and courage in Gujarat. Even a firecracker sends people scurrying in terror. A cricket match between India and Pakistan creates only dread, as it raises for them the spectre of a possible riot.

Every festival, Hindu or Muslim, is no longer an occasion for festivities, it’s only dark memories of brutal violence that has become an integral part of the life of an estimated 200,000, people whose homes were destroyed, reducing them to a status of a refugee in their own homeland.

Mander, a former IAS officer, was among the very first people to take stock of the gravity of the situation in Gujarat, when a storm of engineered sectarian hatred broke out and raged for months in the state in 2002. He realised that the people of Gujarat had survived not a savage riot but a "state-sponsored" programme, which was "systematically planned and executed" to target the minority community.

Disappointed with the role of state authorities, who "refused" to reach out with resources to support people to rebuild their lives, the unsympathetic attitude of his colleagues, and shocked to see the plight of survivors in the relief camps, he resigned from the civil service and began to work directly with survivors of the Gujarat tragedy.

Fear and Forgiveness gives an account of how everything was planned, how minority localities were electrocuted, how places of worship were damaged and how the state government turned hostile against a segment of citizens merely because they worshipped a "different" God.

The author writes about the climate of fear and hostility, as well as the economic and social boycott. This book is a saga of survivors who suffered without hope, security, homes and livelihoods. Mander tells the untold stories of most extraordinary human courage—Rabiya of Ratanpur village, whose shops were burnt by her neighbours, lives with the hope that one day her village people will call her back and another of an activist who walked several kilometers to explain through her song what she aspires: "A new religion which teaches people to be human."

The writer describes those people who risked their own lives and those of their families to save others and help the betrayed people rebuild their lives. He narrates the horrific burnings in Godhra and explains how important it is for the survivors to understand that neither did the cycle of hatred begin in the railway compartments of Godhra and nor will it end in the killing fields of Gujarat. He provides that the difficult and troubled path to reconciliation must involve a fair challenge from the local to the highest levels to bridge the gap between separated groups in order to heal the old wounds. This book draws our attention to the flaws in our judicial and social systems and upholds that "forgiveness is the attribute of the strong" and the only way to move ahead.