Comment: In the depressingly dark scenario, there is still some light

Last week, I met 52-year-old Saira Bibi in Ahmedabad's Naroda-Patiya area. Saira, like so many others in this area, doesn't have an address at the moment. On the night of February 28, her house was destroyed, her husband was burnt alive, and her brother-in-law was stabbed to death.

Saira had lost virtually everything. For the last six months, she had been staying in the Shah Alam refugee camp, too scared to even return to her home in the night. All she had to cling onto was a 21-year-old daughter who had somehow managed to escape the carnage.

President Abdul Kalam was visiting Naroda-Patiya that day. I asked Saira Bibi what her expectations from the presidential visit were. Her wrinkles stretching ever wider, Saira confessed that she had never heard of Abdul Kalam.

"All I know is that some 'bada aadmi' (VIP) is coming to meet us today," she said. I asked her again what she would like to talk to the 'Bada Aadmi' about. "I only want someone to help me rebuild my house, that's all."

In the last six months, Saira has received just two cheques of Rs1,250 each for rebuilding a house, a home in which every item of clothing, jewellery and utensils had been taken away by the mob which had descended on the area on that fearful night.

Saira Bibi was then expected to use this Rs2,500 to rebuild her home and life as part of the Gujarat government's "rehabilitation" package. All she wanted to do was to tell the president that the amount that had been handed over to her was simply not enough to survive.

In the end, Saira Bibi was unable to meet the president. Nor were several other riot-affected people who are still struggling to come to terms with their condition. Unfortunately, President Abdul Kalam's visit, as is often the case with a VIP ('Bada Aadmi') visit, turned out to be a bit of a stage-managed affair.

The president was "escorted" by Chief Minister Narendra Modi and government officials, taken to a bylane in Naroda-Patiya for a few minutes, introduced to a couple of children who had lost their families, and then whisked away from the area almost as quickly as he had come.

But at least President Abdul Kalam ventured beyond the grandeur of Rashtrapati Bhavan into the heat and dust of Naroda-Patiya. For most public figures in this country, Naroda-Patiya, where more than 90 people were killed in the single worst massacre during the post-Godhra riots, has simply fallen off the map.

Government and opposition politicians are ready to debate the legal intricacies of whether the Election Commission is justified in postponing polls in Gujarat, but none of them have even bothered to focus on the human dimension of the Gujarat tragedy.

Naroda-Patiya falls within Home Minister L.K. Advani's Gandhinagar Lok Sabha constituency, yet the self-styled Sardar Patel hasn't ventured into the locality. The Chote Sardar of Gujarat Narendra Modi also did not think it necessary to visit the area till the day when he chose to be at the side of the president.

On the other side of the political divide, Sonia Gandhi has spent most of the summer in the air-cool confines of 10 Janpath, choosing to issue the occasional statement on Gujarat, but doing little else in the pro-active sense of the term.

As for her Congress party colleagues in Gujarat, they seem too busy settling personal scores to even worry about long-term relief and rehabilitation measures.

The real tragedy is that in this political vacuum, even the process of relief has been communalised. The main group working in the Naroda-Patiya area is the Islamic Relief Committee, set up by some local Muslim leaders in Ahmedabad. While this group confines its activities to co-religionists who were affected by the riots, the Sangh Parivar and its affiliates like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad cannot see beyond the Godhra tragedy.

So, while the VHP converts the S-6 coach of the Sabarmati Express into a national symbol of their hate campaign against the minorities (posters of the burnt coach are being plastered in different parts of the city), some local Muslim leaders too have done very little to reach out to their neighbours.

In this highly polarised atmosphere, compassion seems to have become a dangerously obsolete word. Ironically, during the Gujarat earthquake thousands of people, in India and abroad, had generously donated to provide relief to the victims. Unfortunately, in post-riot Gujarat, even charity seems to be seen through a narrow religious compass.

What would Gujarat's greatest son, the Mahatma have done in this situation is a question that must still haunt the political class. I have little doubt that Gandhi would have spent almost the entire six months in places like Naroda-Patiya, helping to wipe the tear from every eye.

He would have reached out to the victims of the Godhra tragedy, and he would have empathised with those targeted in the riots. Without entering into any lengthy polemical debate on secularism, or a legal debate on whether Article 324 of the Constitution gives the Election Commission supreme powers to decide on election dates, he would have simply plunged into the relief and rehabilitation measures.

For him, religion would have been immaterial in this process of healing. All that would have mattered to him would be to stand with the victim at all times.

Indeed, if it had been Gujarat this month, it could well have been Jammu and Kashmir the next, where he might have spent time with Hindus and Muslims who have both been victims of the terrorist's bullet.

And such was the man's stamina that he would have then gone and spent a month in the insurgency-affected north-east, then some time in flood-ravaged Bihar, then in drought-affected Bundelkhand, and then among the victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy. At no stage, would he have sat in a Lutyens bungalow in Delhi while people were suffering.

The guiding principle of the Mahatma was always compassion. It's this quality that is increasingly absent from our politicians today. You can't be compassionate if you base your social and political agenda on reviving communal hatred.

You also cannot be compassionate if you spend time hankering after Delhi's ultimate status symbol, the white ambassador with the red light, or the new one, a petrol pump for life.

In this depressingly dark scenario, there is still some light though. In Naroda-Patiya, I met a group of college students who had spent their entire summer working among the riot victims.

They had come from all over the country, Hindus, Muslims and other communities, with the simple hope of helping those who had given up hope. Their spirit suggests that the Mahatma's soul is still there to guide us.

The writer is managing editor, New Delhi Television.