Answering a Critique of Edward Said

Edward Said, it turned out, was a Palestinian Arab in the US.
It should not have mattered, given the lofty ideals of that country.
But it did.
This would invariably give a feeling of loneliness to any one.
Said too felt it.
And then he talked about it.
But he talked about it in a manner that was robust and hence unassailable.
Clearly the representatives of the cultural hegemony would not appreciate that.
They did not.
Unfortunately for them there was little they could do.

Then there are some who resorted to sheer lying, after a decade of Said's demise.

Here is one such attempt at lying.

My remarks, in the material below, are after the quotations from the original critique.

Enough Said: The False Scholarship of Edward Said

 

  Columbia University’s English Department may seem a surprising place from which to move the world, but this is what Professor Edward Said accomplished. He not only transformed the West’s perception of the Israel-Arab conflict, he also led the way toward a new, post-socialist life for leftism in which the proletariat was replaced by “people of color” as the redeemers of humankind. During the ten years that have passed since his death there have been no signs that his extraordinary influence is diminishing.

Said might be accused of post-colonialism and post-leftism accusation is unfair. His focus was on Islamophobic, orientalist branch of racism and that is it. To introduce extra parameters into the discourse will betray various levels of academic failing on part of the critique.

To complain against undiminished influence of said is plain jealousy. The normal course for a healthy society is to make amends regarding the issues in which it was found to be failing.

To take up issues along the lines that this critique does amounts to lack of courage in regards to a monumental failing of western society, European to begin with and finally American.

 According to a 2005 search on the utility “Syllabus finder,” Said’s books were assigned as reading in eight hundred and sixty-eight courses in American colleges and universities (counting only courses whose syllabi were available online). These ranged across literary criticism, politics, anthropology, Middle East studies, and other disciplines including postcolonial studies, a field widely credited with having grown out of Said’s work. More than forty books have been published about him, including even a few critical ones, but mostly adulatory, such as The Cambridge Introduction to Edward Said, published seven years after his death of leukemia in 2003. Georgetown University, UCLA, and other schools offer courses about him. A 2001 review for the Guardian called him “arguably the most influential intellectual of our time.”

 One can only thank the critique for bringing this monumental adulation to the fore.

The book that made Edward Said famous was Orientalism, published in 1978 when he was forty-three. Said’s objective was to expose the worm at the core of Western civilization, namely, its inability to define itself except over and against an imagined “other.” That “other” was the Oriental, a figure “to be feared . . . or to be controlled.” Ergo, Said claimed that “every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was . . . a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric.” Elsewhere in the text he made clear that what was true for Europeans held equally for Americans.

True again. And again a nice summary of the effects of Said's scholarship. The things he said will look sweeping in nature but he did assert the same. He was not apologetic about it. That his assertions look incredible and vertiginous is an indication of dual kind - Said's courage and the sheer amount of injustice in the western approach towards the orient.

This echoed a theme of 1960s radicalism that was forged in the movements against Jim Crow and against America’s war in Vietnam, namely that the Caucasian race was the scourge of humanity. Rather than shout this accusation from a soapbox, as others had done, Said delivered it in tones that awed readers with erudition. The names of abstruse contemporary theoreticians and obscure bygone academicians rolled off pages strewn with words that sent readers scurrying to their dictionaries. Never mind that some of these words could not be found in dictionaries (“paradeutic”) or that some were misused (“eschatological” where “scatological” was the intended meaning); never mind that some of the citations were pretentious (“the names of Levi-Strauss, Gramsci, and Michel Foucault drop with a dull thud,” commented historian J. H. Plumb, reviewing the book for the New York Times”)—never mind any of this, the important point that evoked frissons of pleasure and excitement was that here was a “person of color” delivering a withering condemnation of the white man and, so to speak, beating him at his own game of intellectual elegance.

Finally the critique commits to something and says something assertive.
Let us get a few things right. Americans did behave as scourge of Vietnam. There is no doubt about it. In the context of the so called orient said did not examine the scourge angle so there is no point in making that analogy. That orientalism is debilitating, overarching, dominating, intimidating, inimical and so on - that said did talk about and he did so with evidence. It was all academic and for all to see. He assiduously avoided the ground effects of orientalism - the west simply can not take that responsibility. Just for example who would be held responsible for Sikh-Muslim massacres at the time of partition of India?

And pray if Said awed his audience with his erudition and beat the western intelligentsia at their own game should that be held against him?

If references to "abstruse contemporary theoreticians and obscure bygone academicians" is so bothersome then what about leaving the discourse to competent people? Said's fault was that he scrambled the most potent concepts against a formidable discourse and succeeded at it. So far the criticism is the one of a loser.

Then if you do not find a word in one dictionary then you go for another one. Said was a man from philology and anyone approaching him must be prepared to the fact that his inventory of arms will be formidable.

Then only people of bad faith bicker about typos like “eschatological” in place of “scatological".

 The complain about Levi-Strauss, Gramsci, and Michel Foucault too is silly. Old and contemporary sociological concepts help academicians to put the things in perspective and Said helped them. If someone can not fathom these concepts then he should engage himself in other pastimes while complaining about them after understanding betrays worse - lack of integrity. The so called orient has been mishandled for so long and when she confronted it was pooh-poohed and now when the confrontation is water tight then this complain about obscurity. One comes only to one unmistakable conclusion - orientalist game is up. Tough rather late but the writing is finally on the wall.

 In truth, Said was an unlikely symbol of the wretched of the earth. His father, who called himself William, had emigrated from Jerusalem (a place he hated, according to Edward) to America in 1911, served in World War I, and become a US citizen. Reluctantly yielding to family pressures, he returned to the Middle East in the 1920s and settled in Cairo, where he made his fortune in business and married an Egyptian woman. Edward, their eldest after a first-born had perished in infancy, was told he was named after the Prince of Wales. He and his four sisters were reared in the Protestant church and in relative opulence, with a box at the opera, membership in country clubs, and piano lessons. They were educated at British and American primary and secondary schools in Cairo until Edward was sent to an elite New England prep school at fifteen, then to Princeton. After graduate studies at Harvard, he began to teach literary criticism, rising to the award of an endowed chair at Columbia by the time he was forty and later to the rank of university professor, Columbia’s highest faculty title.

In the 1995 printing of Orientalism Edward Said wrote an Afterword. There he looks irked at those people who thought of Oruientalism as some sort of the Wretched of the Earth analysis as was done by Franz Fanon.

 A year after Orientalism sent his personal stock soaring, Said published The Question of Palestine. Fifteen years earlier, the Palestine Liberation Organization had been founded in the effort to consecrate a distinctive Palestinian identity, and the announcement of that identity to the world had mostly taken the form of spectacular acts of terror whose purpose was in large measure to draw attention to Palestinian grievances. Now, Columbia University’s Parr Professor of English and Comparative Literature gave the Palestinian cause a dramatically different face.

Someone's freedom fighter is someone else's terrorist. Said argued from Palestinian point of view. Any objective reader can see for herself which view makes more sense. Unfortunately US view can not be taken as objective or unbiased for they in US have been so thoroughly brain washed that any criticism of Israel and its policies towards Palestinian people is either not heard and once you do manage to say your view then you will face the music for the US as well as the Zionist lobby is sure to damn you as anti-Semitic.

He brought authenticity to this task because of his origins and authority because of his membership in the Palestinian National Council, the nominal governing body of the PLO. Assuring his readers that the PLO had, since its bombings and hijackings in the early 1970s, “avoided and condemned terror,” presenting PLO leader Yasir Arafat as “a much misunderstood and maligned political personality,” and asserting his own belief in a Palestinian state alongside—rather than in place of—Israel, Said argued in behalf of “a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.” This was so compelling as to sweep up New York Times reviewer Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, who wrote: “So logically and eloquently does Professor Said make [his] case, that one momentarily forgets the many countervailing arguments posed by the Israelis.”

This paragraph is both motivated as well as loaded. It would have looked like a summary of status of the issue under consideration but in view of the bias of the critique  it serves only one duplicitous purpose - Said is not reliable because he is using his reliability in favour of the cause of Palastine.

These two books—Orientalism and The Question of Palestine—each of which was followed by various sequels and elaborations, established the twin pillars of Said’s career as the avenging voice of the Palestinians against Israel, and more broadly of the Arabs, Muslims, and other “Orientals” against the West as a whole.

An avenger is a negative avtar for Said. He simply argued the Palestinian cause. To satisfy the blood thirst of the enemies of Palestine he even admitted as being a partisan for Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians.

Palestine atrocity because of Zionists might be some 68 years old but orientalism is about two hundred and fifty years old. Mostly the intellectuals of the society that perpetrated above atrocities knew that their game was long up and hence the disappearance of orientalism at the literary level. But stray supporters, like the present critique, still remain there.

Said rolled American racism and European colonialism into one mélange of white oppression of darker-skinned peoples. He was not the only thinker to have forged this amalgam, but his unique further contribution was to represent “Orientals” as the epitome of the dark-skinned; Muslims as the modal Orientals; Arabs as the essential Muslims; and, finally, Palestinians as the ultimate Arabs. Abracadabra—Israel was transformed from a redemptive refuge from two thousand years of persecution to the very embodiment of white supremacy.

This is excessive perfidy, subterfuge and deception.

What Said did was to extract the pure academic content from the history of colonialism, that irrefutable core of the western attitudes towards the orientals. After that the west has no escape from their responsibilities in creation and maintenance of orientalism including its extension in the form of racism in US and their support for Israeli policies.

There was one final step in this progression: Edward Said as the emblematic Palestinian. From the time he came into the public eye, Said presented himself as an “exile” who had been born and raised in Jerusalem until forced from there at age twelve by the Jews. A sympathetic writer in the Guardian put it: “His evocation of his own experience of exile has led many of his readers in the west to see him as the embodiment of the Palestinian tragedy.” Indeed, he wrote and narrated a 1998 BBC documentary, In Search of Palestine, which presented his personal story as a microcosm of this ongoing Nakba (or catastrophe, as Palestinians call the birth of Israel).

This is ad hominem.

The exile said referred to is the feeling of loneliness in US for a coloured person, specifically an Arab, even if a Christian. It was very noble of him to take up the Palestinian cause and make unity with their cause. To accuse him of opportunism is at best a wrong representation of the reality.

But in September 1999, Commentary published an investigative article by Justus Reid Weiner presenting evidence that Said had largely falsified his background. A trove of documents showed that until he moved to the United States to attend prep school in 1951, Said had resided his entire life in Cairo, not Palestine. A few months later, Said published his autobiography, which confirmed this charge without acknowledging or making any attempt to explain the earlier contrary claims that he had made in discussing his background.

In reaction to the exposé, Said and several of his supporters unleashed a ferocious assault on Weiner. Said sneered that “because he is relatively unknown, Weiner tries to make a name for himself by attacking a better known person’s reputation.” And eleven ideological soul mates of Said’s, styling themselves “The Arab-Jewish Peace Group,” co-signed a letter to the editor that likened Weiner’s article to “deny[ing] the Holocaust.”

Much of the debate between Weiner and Said revolved around the house in which Said was born and that viewers of his BBC documentary were given to understand was the home where he had grown up. Weiner showed from tax and land registry documents that the house never belonged to Said’s father but rather to his aunt. In his rebuttal, Said had written somewhat implausibly: “The family house was indeed a family house in the Arab sense,” meaning that in the eyes of the extended family it belonged to them all even if the official records showed it to be the property only of Edward’s aunt and her offspring.

These are three paragraphs in an article that are ad hominem in character and discuss a single issue - Weiner's calumny against Said. It is sufficient to say that Christopher Hitchens, no Islamophile, called Weiner's article an act of extraordinary mendacity.

 Said’s cynical modus operandi was to stop short, where possible, of telling an outright lie while deliberately leaving a false impression. Even so, he did not always avoid crossing the line or dancing so close to it that whether his words should be labeled a lie or merely a deception amounted to a difference without a distinction. “I have never claimed to have been made a refugee, but rather that my extended family . . . in fact was,” he wrote in response to Weiner. But what was a reader supposed to have inferred from his book, The Pen and the Sword, where he had spoken of his “recollections of . . . the first twelve or thirteen years of my life before I left Palestine?” Or from the article, in the London Review of Books, where he had written: “I was born in Jerusalem and spent most of my formative years there and, after 1948, when my entire family became refugees, in Egypt?”

This is the paragraph that makes the article worthy of refutation and that too not because of its veracity but the nature of sabotage involved in it. To represent reality in a deliberately insinuating manner so as to create a false impression without resorting to outright lies is the forte of orientalist writing. In above paragraph the present critique has tried to slap the same charges on Said that latter tried to establish against the orientalists. What said wrote is there in open and what orientalits wrote is there in public view. The instances present author mentions simply do not prove the case he is trying to make.

It may be that Said, as he claimed, “scrupulously” recounted his life in his autobiography where at last the true facts of his education and residence emerge. But, as his critics continued to ask, does finally telling his story truthfully wipe away twenty years of lying about it? In the end, Said downplayed the matter. In a late interview with the New York Times he said: “I don’t think it’s that important, in any case. . . . I never have represented my case as the issue to be treated. I’ve represented the case of my people.”

At this juncture two issues need attention. The sheer tenacity to continue along the ad hominem lines. Joshua Muravchik who? Either he is terribly disconnected from reality or the current US reality has become so devoid of integrity that their academic reputation has been completely run down. We hope that it is he who is not aware of the fact that he is dragging his own reputation into mud.


Second issue concerns the same issue but at a moral level. To call someone a liar at point blank level is bad manners. Yet lies of the the present critic as well as those of Weiner have to be pointed out point blank for they both have used that as a weapon. Clearly this process can not be elongated ad infinitum. Academic value of both Muravchik and Weiner are nil.

What was important, however, was the light shed on Said’s disingenuous and misleading methods, becasue they also turn out to be the foundation of his scholarly work. The intellectual deceit was especially obvious in his most important book, Orientalism. Its central idea is that Western imperial conquest of Asia and North Africa was entwined with the study and depiction of the native societies, which inevitably entailed misrepresenting and denigrating them.

The critic makes a vitriolic accusation but fails to provide the evidence. The attempt is Goebbelsian.

Said explained: “Knowledge of subject races or Orientals is what makes their management easy and profitable; knowledge gives power, more power requires more knowledge, and so on in an increasingly profitable dialectic of information and control.”

The archetype of those who provided this knowledge was the “Orientalist,” a formal designation for those scholars, most of them Europeans, whose specialties were the languages, culture, history, and sociology of societies of the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. However, Said explained that he used the term even more broadly to indicate a “Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.”

 This is true. Said said this. This is also an accurate diagnosis. Knowledge not as a source of freedom but as a source of control over the orient. Readers please beware of a quote within a quote in the next paragraph.

Orientalism, he said, embodied “dogmas” that “exist . . . in their purest form today in studies of the Arabs and Islam.” He identified the four “principal” ones as these:

one is the absolute and systematic difference between the West, which is rational, developed, humane, superior, and the Orient, which is aberrant, undeveloped, inferior. Another dogma is that abstractions about the Orient . . . are always preferable to direct evidence drawn from modern Oriental realities. A third dogma is that the Orient is eternal, uniform, and incapable of defining itself . . . A fourth dogma is that the Orient is at bottom something either to be feared . . . or to be controlled.

This all is there in Said's original book.

Initial reviews of the book, often by specialists, were mixed, but it appeared at a time when “multiculturalism” was becoming the new dogma of the intellectual elites and took on a life of its own, eventually being translated into more than three dozen languages and becoming one of the most influential and widely assigned texts of the latter part of the twentieth century.

The critic leaves out a few points. He has already mentioned the wide spread acceptance of the book as a reading material. This is a tribute to the accuracy of the analysis by said. But the critic doesn't forget to mention mixed nature of reviews. This overplays the mixed part. It really does. The response to the book was of critical acclaim, of silence as well as stupefaction.  Critical acclaim because his case was not only compelling but decisive, as one reviewer put it. Silence was because of the stark nature of the conclusion. This was the proverbial bump in the carpet when you keep sweeping the dirt under it, the elephant in the drawing room that Said had put the under spot light. No wonder from silence the book went straight to university syllabus. Finally stupefaction too was a reaction for some of the people who simply could not fathom the import of the book called it anti-west thereby exposing their pathetic limitations in assimilating the Saidian narrative.

Critics pointed out a variety of errors in Orientalism, starting with bloopers that suggested Said’s grasp of Middle Eastern history was shaky. Said claimed that “Britain and France dominated the Eastern Mediterranean from about the end of the seventeenth century on,” whereas for another hundred years it was the Ottomans who ruled that area. He had written that the Muslim conquest of Turkey preceded that of North Africa, but in reality it followed by about four hundred years. And he had referred to British “colonial administrators” of Pakistan whereas Pakistan was formed in the wake of decolonization.

The European colonial push was not a single day affair. The critic himself got to revise the Gulf history. And what is that silly bickering about Pakistan?

More serious still was his lack of scruple in the use of sources.

He admits that he has been toying with trifles.

Anthropologist Daniel Martin Varisco, who actually agreed with Said on many ideological issues, observed in his book Reading Orientalism that “one of Said’s rhetorical means for a polemical end is to partially . . . quote a phrase while judiciously neglecting words that would qualify and at times refute what the phrase alone might imply.”

Said was just accused of  falsification by misrepresentation. Let us see whether this one holds water.

He offered as an example of this duplicitous method Said’s use of two quotes from the writings of Sania Hamady, an Arab-American who wrote critically of Arabs. The quotes put her in a bad light, but both times, says Varisco, they were taken from passages where Hamady is merely summarizing someone else’s view, not giving her own. In the same vein, John Rodenbeck, a professor of comparative literature at the American University of Cairo, found that Said’s “persistent misconstruction and misquotation of [the nineteenth century Orientalist Edward] Lane’s words are so clearly willful that they suggest . . . bad faith.”

Did Hamady overcome colonial bias? Apparently someone called Rodenbeck proved that lane, a prototypical orientalist, was not an orientalist!  Orientalism consists of layers upon layers of inaccurate representation and biased views. Said opened all these layers. The poor guinea pigs simply got caught in the whirlwind of that deconstruction. Basically when a western is praising the orient people like present critic as well as the people he quotes in above paragraph would like us to believe that at face value. The reality, most of the time, is that the western is simply posing a facade of fairness and his real agenda is to peddle his own magnanimity. Said ruthlessly exposed this duplicity. That Varisco, Rodenbeck present critic should be calling said duplicitous is pathetic at best. Their slip is showing.

Said’s misleading use of quotes shows the problem with his work in microcosm. On a broad view, Said fundamentally misrepresented his subject.

Said took care of micro details and he presented the broadband conclusions too.
To label former misleading and latter a misrepresentation is monumental claim. Can he back it with evidence?

In challenging Said’s first alleged “dogma” of Orientalism, which ascribes all virtue to the West and its opposite to the Orient, Varisco says that Said is describing “a stereotype that at the time of his writing would have been similarly rejected by the vast majority of those [Said] lumps together as Orientalists.” And the British writer Robert Irwin, whose book Dangerous Knowledge offers a thorough history of Orientalism and also a rebuttal of Said, notes that, historically, “there has been a marked tendency for Orientalists to be anti-imperialists, as their enthusiasm for Arab or Persian or Turkish culture often went hand in hand with a dislike of seeing those people defeated and dominated by the Italians, Russians, British, or French.” (Like Varisco, Irwin makes clear that he is no opponent of Said’s political position, but is offended by his travesty of scholarship.)
This is but a small instance of a large methodological problem that invalidates Said’s work entirely, namely, his selectivity with evidence. Said made clear that his indictment was aimed not at this or that individual but at “Orientalists” per se, which, as we have seen, was a category in which he included all Westerners who said anything about the Orient. Thus, he wrote, “all academic knowledge about India and Egypt is somehow tinged and impressed with, violated by, the gross political fact of empire.” And: “No one writing, thinking, or acting on the Orient could do so without taking account of the limitations on thought and action imposed by Orientalism.”
Why did Said choose to paint with such a broad brush? Because he knew that if he had asserted merely that some Westerners wrote pejoratively or condescendingly or misleadingly about the East while others did not, his argument would have lost much of its provocation. It would have demanded clarification about the relative numbers or influence of the two groups, about variations within the groups, about reciprocal attitudes among Easterners toward the West. Above all, it would have drawn the inevitable retort: so what? Was it news that some individuals favored their own societies over others?
The only way Said could make his generalized indictment seem plausible was to select whatever examples fit it and leave out the rest. When challenged on his omissions, Said replied with hauteur that he was under no obligation to include “every Orientalist who ever lived.” But of course the real issue was whether the ones he included made a representative sample (and whether he presented them faithfully).

The most logical thing to do in this case would be to do a better sampling than said and draw counter conclusion. This is a game that has been already won by Said. How many scholars or worth, might and mettle can take us a task of such gigantic proportions? None. Said might not have been the best academician of his generation but he certainly was one of the best. Any any good academician will weigh his options - is the effort worth it? A bad academician, like the present critic, would not be up to the task while a good one will not have it on his mind - the game was up in 1978. The best conclusion an academician can hope for is that some orientalists were good enough to be not patronizing. This is is not a very attractive proposition as a reward. This is an insignificant footnote. What is worse that one is not likely to come across such a species for orientalism belongs to those times when the west was having a ball at the expense of the orient and people thinking impartially about the orient is possible only in most wild imagination. Yet let the present critic take up this unpromising task.

These methodological failings were mostly lost in the dazzle. What made the book electrifying was that Said had found a new way to condemn the West for its most grievous sins: racism and the subjugation of others.

What methodological problems? Well said himself mentioned the methodological problems. Should one use micro-analysis and lose track of overall contours informing the field? Or use the overall conclusions and a polemic devoid of supporting microscopic evidence? He hit upon the brilliant solution - use personal circumstances to navigate through a few centuries and do a sampling of both. Thus he uses geography and he uses history and he uses culture and he uses particular orientalists and extracts a discourse that, though ugly, is intricately woven and self-supporting and detrimental to the subject - the orient. people finding methodological problems perhaps are hoping that readers will accept their thesis without reading the original book.

This danger can not be overlooked. The book Orientalism is a painful reading because of the sheer pugnacity of the construct, excruciating tenacity, diabolical perseverance and obnoxious gay abandon of the discourse.

With great originality, Said even extended the indictment through the millennia, a depiction that drew a protest from Sadiq al-Azm, a Syrian philosopher of Marxist bent (and one of that country’s most admired dissidents). Wrote Azm:

Said . . . trac[es] the origins of Orientalism all the way back to Homer, Aeschylus, Euripides, and Dante. In other words, Orientalism is not really a thoroughly modern phenomenon, but is the natural product of an ancient and almost irresistible European bent of mind to misrepresent other . . . cultures . . . in favor of Occidental self-affirmation, domination, and ascendency.

We can again summarize the  accusation : Said did not leave any scope even in the past to hide face and absolve the west of responsibility for what they did to the orient. That the west has a long standing fear and hence antagonism should be taken an argument against the orientalist attitude and not against the postman - in this case Said.

Azm may have thought this wrong, but it was heady stuff. If we are talking about a mentality that is continuous before and after Christ then we are talking less about European culture, which is in large measure defined by Christianity, than about the European race. Thus did Orientalism fit the temper of a time when it was widely asserted that all white people were inherently bigoted, and “encounter groups” met at campuses and workplaces so that whites could discover and confront their inner racist. And nowhere was the evidence of this white evil laid out in greater depth and seeming sophistication than in Said’s pages.

The problem with any narrative that begins at pathetic foundations, as this critique does, is that it can only get worse. Above paragraph is a nonconsequential insertion of text hoping that may be some reader will find some point in this that can be used against Said. To begin with this is pathetic. At the end it is dishonest. A dubious improvement if  it was one.

In this atmosphere, wrote the New York Times in its obituary for Said, “Orientalism established Dr. Said as a figure of enormous influence in American and European universities, a hero to many, especially younger faculty and graduate students on the left for whom that book became an intellectual credo and the founding document of what came to be called postcolonial studies.”

Yet another cribbing. No one accused Said for being a leftist. Indeed he made a very non-leftist claim by identifying a very serious lapse on part of Karl Marx. If the left still took to it as a credo then it a tribute to Said's erudition and  courage and honesty of the leftists. That someone should be holding it against said or his thesis is at best a betrayal of integrity.

It was not only American leftists who seized on the book. The Guardian, in its own obituary, observed that:

Orientalism appeared at an opportune time, enabling upwardly mobile academics from non-western countries (many of whom came from families who had benefited from colonialism) to take advantage of the mood of political correctness it helped to engender by associating themselves with “narratives of oppression,” creating successful careers out of transmitting, interpreting and debating representations of the non-western “other.”

This is yet another disingenuous complain. Upwardly mobile non-western academics had already made their mark, in spite of colonialism. A residual orientalist taint is a blot on this article.

Orientalism, added the Guardian, “is credited with helping to change the direction of several disciplines,” a thought echoed by supporters and detractors alike. Admiringly, Stuart Schaar, a professor emeritus of Middle East history at Brooklyn College, wrote that “the academic community has been transformed and the field of literary criticism has been revolutionized as a result of his legacy.”

Clearly this is pure praise for Said's work. Somehow we are supposed to conclude something negative about him from these type of quotations. everytime he goes it becomes worse.

Without ever relinquishing his claim to personify a “glamour-garlanded ideal of ‘outsiderdom,’” as one disillusioned reviewer of a series of lectures Said delivered in London put it, Said and his disciples took power in academia, as reflected in the astonishing number of courses that assigned his books and the frequency with which they were cited. Varisco observed that “a generation of students across disciplines has grown up with limited challenges to the polemical charge by Said that scholars who study the Middle East and Islam still do so institutionally through an interpretive sieve that divides a superior West from an inferior East.” The new Saidian orthodoxy became so utterly dominant in the Middle East Studies Association, and so unfriendly to dissenting voices, that in 2007 Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami took the lead in forming an alternative professional organization, the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa.

A 1978 book is being termed as Saidian orthodoxy. The American phase of orientalism, the neo-colonial era, is just coming to its end . This can not be the era of Saidian orthodoxy. That American academia accepted Said's proposition leads to only two conclusions - the decisiveness and conclusive nature of his thesis. The rest is bickering and crying over spilled milk.

Bernard Lewis is still  with us. He was engaged by Said personally and everybody can read those exchanges. It left Lewis badly exposed. He is the person infamous for coining the phrase clash of civilizations made more infamous by late Samuel P. Huntington. Late Fouad Ajami though valiantly took on Huntington but his overall disposition was of a self-hating oriental. less said about such people better it is.

Said was fond of invoking the mantra of “speaking truth to power.” This was an easy boast for someone who opted to live in America, or for that matter to live anywhere, and make a career of denouncing the West and Israel. But while a daring Promethean in the West, Said was more careful closer to native ground. Habib Malik, a historian at the Lebanese American University and a cousin of Said’s, recalls hearing him deliver a talk at the American University of Beirut: “On one occasion he blasted Saddam Hussein and a number of other Arab dictators but stopped short of mentioning [then Syrian dictator] Hafez Assad for obvious reasons: the Syrian mukhabarat [secret police] in Beirut would have picked him up right after the lecture!”

The reviewer has injected Israel for the first time in the narrative. Said was a master craftsman. His analysis of the issue was so dispassionate that this introduction of Israel merely bolsters the pathetic nature of this article. (Yet he goes on and on.) If US boasts of freedom of speech then how does it become a vice to use it, especially if the user, like said, is an Arab? Then should said have spoken against Asad and got arrested? That is a diabolical device to get rid of a person who had shown mirror to the west.

Said’s career, the deviousness and posturing and ineffable vanity of it, would have been mostly an academic matter if he had not been so successful in redefining Arabs and Muslims as the moral equivalent of blacks and in casting Israel as the racist white oppressor.

There is racism and there is colonialism, yes both exist as of now. No two ways about any of them.

Four years after the UN General Assembly had declared Zionism to be a form of racism, Said gave this same idea a highbrow reiteration. Israel did not give Arabs the same right of immigration as Jews, he said mockingly, because they are “‘less developed.’”

Yes Israel is an oppressor. Was all this an attempt to absolve Israel of her crimes?

By this time following has become clear, if it it was still not so for some people. The west had an unfair control of the orient and moreover it did not admit it. Every assertion to that effect could be refuted by the entrenched western academia. Said's Orientalism changed all that. yet there are people like the present critic who would not give up on old ways - most due to lack of understanding.

Decades after Orientalism was published, Said explained that Israel had been its covert target all along:

I don’t think I would have written that book had I not been politically associated with a struggle. The struggle of Arab and Palestinian nationalism is very important to that book. Orientalism is not meant to be an abstract account of some historical formation but rather a part of the liberation from such stereotypes and such domination of my own people, whether they are Arabs, Muslims, or Palestinians.

Again a remark in bad faith. Said's only crime is that he successfully intellectually defended his people. That every single of those people are still physically still abused should be taken as an argument against the case that present critic is trying to make with no success whatsoever.

Said had not acknowledged such an agenda in the pages of Orientalism or at the time of its publication, although this ideological subtext could be discerned in his ferocity toward Bernard Lewis, who, observed Irwin, “was not really attacked by Said for being a bad scholar (which he is not), but for being a supporter of Zionism (which he is).”

This reviewer does not understand the book Orientalism. My apologies for the repetition. In that book said very explicitly mentions personal circumstances being behind the writing of as well as formation of the thesis.

It was also implicit in the identity of those Said exempted from his generalization about Westerners.

If he is exempting some people then he must not be accused of stereotyping.

In the concluding pages of Orientalism, he allowed that a very few “decolonializing” voices could be heard in the West, and in a footnote he offered just two American examples, Noam Chomsky and MERIP, the Middle East Research and Information Project. Chomsky of course is not a Middle East expert or someone who writes often on the Middle East, but he had already carved out a place for himself as the leading Jewish voice of vituperation against Israel.

Noam Chomsky does speak about  these issues.

MERIP, a New Left group formed to cheer Palestinian guerrillas and other Arab revolutionaries, was so single-minded in its devotion to this cause that it praised the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics for causing “a boost in morale among Palestinians” and “halt[ing]” moves “for a ‘settlement’ between Israel and the Arab regimes.”

Criticizing Israel is a taboo in US and hence the world intelligentsia. What said did is no disentangle the subject matter from this construct. the western perfidy, among other things, consists in asserting that so what even if you are talking sense you after all is anti-Zionist. Hence discredited. Unfortunately for them the nuanced analysis in the Orientalism took away that pleasure by sheer dispassionate separation of orientalist paradigm from the, today, 68 years old problem of a homeland for Palestine people.

Although Said’s assault on the Jewish state was thus initially camouflaged, it was devastatingly effective, as his stance on Arab/Israel questions came to dominate Middle East studies. The UCLA historian of the Middle East Nikki Keddie, whose sympathetic work on revolutionary Iran had won Said’s praise in his book Covering Islam, commented:

There has been a tendency in the Middle East field to adopt the word “Orientalism” as a generalized swear-word essentially referring to people who take the “wrong” position on the Arab-Israeli dispute or to people who are judged too “conservative.” It has nothing to do with whether they are good or not good in their disciplines.

This is certainly a surprising assertion by Nikki Keddie. But was said himself guilty of that? An academician of that stature will not assert such an absurd claim.

His reputation made by the success of Orientalism, Said devoted much of the rest of his career to more direct advocacy of the Arab/Muslim/Palestinian cause, starting with the publication of The Question of Palestine in 1979, by which time he was already a member of the PLO’s top official body, the Palestinian National Council.

What said accomplished in the Orientalism is a life time achievement. That he went on about doing something more than writing a mighty book is tribute to his energies as well as commitment. That Said used his reputation in favour of his people is again a complain lacking in integrity. Why should a person not use his abilities for a just cause?

The book was a full-throated polemic. The Jews were the aggressors; and the Palestinians their victims—on all counts and with little nuance.

This is plain silly argument. Israeli persecution of Palestinian people is stark reality and gross injustice. Polemics is not only the first possible reaction but the only rhetoric option in such a case.

Even on the matter of terrorism, Said asserted, “There is nothing in Palestinian history, absolutely nothing at all to rival the record of Zionist terror.”

Another truism from a person who not only knows his issue but happens to be a man who is intimately connected with it. his involvement is personal.

Said proclaimed himself “horrified” by the terrorist acts that “Palestinian men and women . . . were driven to do.” But all blame ultimately rested with Israel, which had “literally produced, manufactured . . . the ‘terrorist.’”

If the truth be told the terrorist label does not look so easy to slap on Palestinian people any more. They are fighting for their very legitimate rights.

The reviewer by now has jumped from Orientalism to the so called terrorism. Anyone who is concerned with Said's work on former might feel like disconnecting now. i shall continue along with the reviewer hoping that at the end of this laboured review I shall be done with him once and for all.

He wrote, with what even a New York Times reviewer called “stunning disingenuousness,” that “at least since the early seventies, the PLO had avoided and condemned terror.” These words appeared just one year after the organization’s bloodiest attack on Israeli civilians, the March 1978 “coastal road massacre,” in which thirty-eight civilians, thirteen of them children, were randomly gunned down, with scores of others injured—and not by any “renegade” faction but by the PLO’s mainstream group, Fatah. (Said himself was already a member of the PLO’s governing body when this “action” was carried out.)

The insinuation is that said himself was responsible for some terrorist acts. If there was even a remote iota of truth in that Said would have been terminated by the Mossad in the US itself - so near complete is the Zionist control on that society. In the beginning the reviewer was miserable and now he has become vicious. Strange level of current US academics.

Said worked hard to solidify the myth that for years Arafat had tried to make peace and been rebuffed: “On occasion after occasion the PLO stated its willingness to accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza,” citing resolutions of the Palestinian National Council in 1974 and 1977. This was true, but these resolutions did not convey, as Said went on disingenuously to claim, “an implicit recognition of Israel.” Rather, they envisioned a strategy in which Palestinians would form a government in the West Bank and Gaza, in the event that international diplomacy afforded them this opportunity, not as a step toward peace but with the declared intent of using this territory as a base to fight on to “liberate” the rest of Palestine, i.e., Israel proper. As the PNC’s 1974 resolution stated: “The PLO will struggle against any plan for the establishment of a Palestinian entity the price of which is recognition [of Israel], conciliation, secure borders, and renunciation of the national rights of our people, its right to return, and self-determination on its national soil.”

The reviewer is disingenuous. What Palestian people were opposing was a Palestine with Zionist occupation. In what way is that different from status quo?

In 1988, a decade after Said’s book appeared, the PLO did renounce terror and imply its willingness to acquiesce in Israel’s existence, albeit equivocally. These two pivotal concessions were clearly avowed only in the 1993 Oslo Accords. When Arafat finally took this indispensable step toward peace, one might have expected Said, who had been claiming that this had happened avant la lettre, to praise him. Instead, Said denounced his hero. Arafat, he complained, had “sold his people into enslavement,” and he called Oslo—in which Israel and the PLO recognized each other and pledged to hammer out a two-state settlement—an “instrument of Palestinian surrender.” Back in Arafat’s terrorist days, Said had seen him as “a man of genius” and said that “his people . . . loved him.” (Indeed, “Arafat and the Palestinian will . . . were in a sense interchangeable,” he once gushed.) But signing this agreement with Israel had, at a stroke, transformed Arafat, in Said’s eyes, into “a strutting dictator.” Arafat and his circle had become a bunch of “losers and has-beens” who “should step aside.”
Said himself adopted a new position on the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Arafat did not live to see the final solution therefore it is meaningless to go over these details.

No longer did he envision a two-state solution, as he had professed to do back when the idea was theoretical, since the main Palestinian organization (on whose board he sat) was not prepared to suffer the existence of Israel in any shape or form. Now, however, he sought instead “to devise a means where the two peoples can live together in one nation as equals.”
This was not a proposal to be taken seriously. In Israel, large numbers of Arabs did live freely but not in complete equality, a fact over which Said often protested. In the Arab states, many Jews had once lived but nearly all had been expelled. In other words, Said’s new formula was nothing more than a fancy way of opposing the only genuine possibility of peace.
This bitter ender’s position was, of course, phrased in terms chosen to sound idealistic. In that sense it was characteristic of Said’s oeuvre and of the movement of which he was such a critical part.

It is clear that the Zionist paradigm has not fooled the Palestianian people. What is worse that the world is waking upto the unjust reality - the miserable condition to which the Palestinians have been reduced under Zionist occupation. Zionism was not a viable idea from day one and now its dangers in reality have become clear to the whole world. If Palestinians have not yet got their homeland then it is a clear indication that the colonial creators of Israel remain successful in their design till today.

Leftism is the stance of those who aspire to make the world a better place, according to their own view, through political action. For roughly a century its modal idea was Marxism, which identified the proletariat as the engine of redemption, a choice that resonated with the age-old Christian belief that the meek shall inherit the earth. As the twentieth century wore on, however, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela displaced Joe Hill, Mother Bloor, and Henry Wallace as objects of veneration. People of color and strugglers against colonial oppression stirred the hearts of idealists more than leaders of strikes and fighters for a fair day’s pay. Once, Zionism had tapped into that older leftism, seeing itself as a workers’ movement. But instead in the latter twentieth century—and in considerable part thanks to the impact of Edward Said—it became redefined as a movement of white people competing for land with people of color. This transformation meant that from then on the left would be aligned overwhelmingly and ardently against Israel.

Blah, blah, blah.

Joshua Muravchik, a fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and a frequent contributor to World Affairs, is completing a book on the anti-Israel lobby, from which this article is adapted.

Unfortunately Zionism still lives on.

A Mode to Thank Allah SWT

I know my acts of thanklessness far outstrip any words of your praise that I may conjure up but then who am I to live up to the level your benevolence demands when even your Prophets (AS) can hardly measure up to them.

Didn't beloved Prophet (SAW) tell the mother of believers Hazrat Ayesha (RA) that he who accounting begins is doomed?

I know I have every possible shortcoming that one can think of but I have deeply fallen into the thinking that if you gave me birth in a family that follows the Deen of your beloved Prophet (SAW) then I have ultimately to fear nothing.

I do get perturbed by the trials I face on the daily basis but in that also I have chosen to believe that this all is for driving me closer to you.

In know that my beloved Prophet (SAW) smiled a lot. From there I have started hoping that it will not be my fate that will wipe out the smile from his face.

When you tried our Prophet (SAW) it was was most painful trial but the tears we have shed on his trials will be acceptable to you for we accept all of your injunctions and we deny no part of your Deen.

And then you told me about Deoband. In the glitter of this modern world these villagers have kept the flame of faith alight. Will it be in vain that you brought me to them? These self-less servants of your Deen have been raising the curtains from the reality that the materialism has cast upon the pristine teachings of the your Rasool (SAW). I am deceiving myself that if you showed them to me it only means that I will be in their company on the Day of Judgement.

You sent me to this world in the Ummah of beloved Prophet Muhammed (SAW). This has lead me to cheat myself into believing that this blessing will not be my last one. This is the blessing that other Prophets (AS) wanted but was denied to them except for Hazrat Isa (AS). I know you will not crack the most cruel joke on me by sending me in his Ummah but denying me an accounting in his company.

When I write these words I see that nearly all signs of the end times are in place. May be I shall see Mehdi (AS) but even if I don't I know he is very close by. I am only scared that this piling on of blessings upon each other is too good but it is nothing as compared to your Mercy that knows no bound.

So if we are in a tight corner in India then so what? We are in the Hizb of your Prophet (SAW) and we know that you are with us for that is your Hizb.

If the Muslims of the land of Amir Kabir Shah Hamadani (RA) are being tortured on the daily basis we know this is certainly the price we have to pay for our lack of commitment to your Deen.

If we are being killed mercilessly in Palestine I know your help is very near. We are weak and in no way can deliver the rights of your deen but you Mercy is boundless.

If Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya are destroyed then it certainly is because of our ignoring your Deen.

If we are ineffective in the rest of the world then that too is because of our shortcomings. You are Most Kind, do this favour to us and make our hearts strong against our enemies. Remove the love of this world from our hearts and from our hearts remove the fear of death. Include us amongst those who love you intensely.

Definition of Evil

According to M. Scott Peck, an evil person:

1. Is consistently self deceiving, with the intent of avoiding guilt and maintaining a self image of perfection

2. Deceives others as a consequence of their own self deception

3. Projects his or her evils and sins onto very specific targets while being apparently normal with everyone else.

4. Commonly hates with the pretense of love, for the purposes of self deception as much as deception of others

5. Abuses political & emotional power ("the imposition of one's will upon others by overt or covert coercion".)

6. Maintains a high level of respectability, and lies incessantly in order to do so

7. Is consistent in his or her sins. Evil persons are characterized not so much by the magnitude of their sins, but by their consistency of destructiveness.

8. Is unable to think from the viewpoint of their victim

9. Has a covert intolerance to criticism and other forms of narcissistic injury

10. Most evil people realize the evil deep within themselves but are unable to tolerate the pain of introspection or admit to themselves that they are evil. Thus, they constantly run away from their evil by putting themselves in a position of moral superiority and putting the focus of evil on others.

Evil is an extreme form of a character disorder.

Great Urdu Oratory

When good speakers deliver in Urdu the effect is other worldly.

I shall collect some of that in this post.

Example One : A colleague

Hazrat-e-girami mein guzarish karta hoon ke is mehfil ko zindagi dene ke liye shuara ke kalam par dad-o-tehseen se nawazein.

Example Two : Dileep Kumar

Janab-e-sadr sahab, mu-azziz shoara-e-karam, mere aziz aur mohtaram bhai kunwar mahendra singh bedi, aaj ki taqreeb ke digar mu-azziz mehman, bahi-o aur behno,

Kaifiyat taqreeban aisee hai ki

Sukoon-e-dil ke liye kuchh to ahtimam karoon
Zara nazar jo mile phir unhein salam karoon

Mujhe to hosh nahin aap mashwira dijiye
Kahan se chhedoon fasana kahan tamam karoon

Aj ki is shab ke liye jahan tak mera ta-alluq hai bahut si yadein bahut se saal bahut si taqreebein, bahut kuchh wabasta hai. sab se pehle to mein apni jo association hai Karachi students ki unko mubarakbat doonga ki un hon ne, sanglakh to keh nahin sakte lekin phisalti zameen mein jo dagh boote jo hain, ye lagaye aur is ki shadabi aur mahak jo hai woh masha allah door door takphail gayee hai. Bambai ki hawa main bhi kabhi yahan ki mehfilon ki mahak mehsoos huyee. Aur us ke liye mein ma-azrat khwah hoon ki mein is platform par pehle hazir na ho saka. Us ke liye meine saleem bhai se ma-afi bhi mangi hai. Hamare samne khumar sahab baithe huway hain unse bhi ma-afi ka talabgar hoon mein. Ab to qibla ye dekhiye ye public ma-azrat hai. Allah inko salamat rak-khe aur inke iradon ko aur farogh de aur inko apne maqasid mein surkh roo aur kaamyab kare ki itni khoobsoorat mehfil is khoobsoorat zaban ki saji hain. Hum aur aap yahan kisi ke liye, ya-ani ek doosre ki bat sun ne ke liye nahin aye balki sher-o-adab, naghm-o-sukhan ki chashni aur husn jo urdu zaban mein jazb hai us ke liye hum sab yahan par aye hain.

Diqqat ka daur raha, mushkil ka daur raha.Ek waqt tha ki hindustan mein urdu zaban taqreeban yateem ho chali thi magar mein apna ye akhlaqi farz samajhta hoon ki do shakhsiatein numayan thin ki hindustan ke mukhtalif kaunon mein diqqat talab aur sabrazma halat mein bhi is zaban ke husn ko mushayron ke zariye barkarar rakha hai. Ye munis-o-ghamkhwar, wo muawin hamari Urdu zaban ke jahan V Shankar Sahab bhi the aur Kunwar Mahendra Singh Bedi Sahar bhi - Allah inko salamat rakhe.

Sanjiv Bhatt Affidavit

Ever wondered why Modi and his goons hate me with so much of hostility? This is just one of the reasons. Read on...

BEFORE THE NATIONAL COMMISSION FOR MINORITIES,

NEW DELHI

Re: NCM File No. MIDL/30/0036/12

COMPLAINT OF MALEK NIYAZBIBI BANNUMIYAN dated 10.2.2012.

AFFIDAVIT OF SANJIV RAJENDRA BHATT

I, SANJIV RAJENDRA BHATT, aged about 48 years residing at Bungalow No.2, Sushi' Nagar Part II, Opposite Mahatma Gandhi Labour Institute, Drive-in Road, Ahmedabad 380 052, do hereby state and solemnly affirm as under:

1. I am filing this Affidavit in accordance with the directions issued by this Honourable Commission in the matter of File No. MIDL/30/0036/12 pertaining to a Complaint dated 10.02.2012 filed by Malek Niyazbibi Banumiyan.

2. I state that I am filing this Affidavit in order to bring on record certain facts which are within my personal knowledge and which are likely to assist this Honourable Commission in deciding upon the right course of to be taken in the matter of this complaint. It is respectfully submitted that the incidents at Ongaj Village of Ahmedabad District were the part of a much wider orchestration aimed at selectively targeting the person and property of Muslims across Gujarat. I believe that in order to properly appreciate and act upon this complaint it is necessary to keep in mind the entire background of the Gujarat Riots of 2002 as these riots were not purely spontaneous events but were -deliberately orchestrated by various groups and were fully supported by the high constitutional authorities of the State of Gujarat, including the Chief Minister Mr. Narendra Modi. It is also averred that several functionaries and agencies working for and at the behest of the State of Gujarat have constantly sought to undermine any and every legitimate Inquiry/Investigation which has been legally mandated with the task of unraveling the truth behind the Gujarat Riots of 2002. The State of Gujarat has spared no effort to thwart the Inquiry being conducted by the Nanavati-Mehta Commission, as well as the Investigations/Enquiries conducted by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) appointed by the Hon'ble Supreme Court, and has thereby succeeded in shielding high constitutional functionaries who were responsible for the Gujarat carnage of 2002.

3. I am a Post Graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai. After completing my post-graduation, I joined the Indian Police Service (IPS) in 1988 and was allotted to the Gujarat cadre. Over the last 24 years, I have served in different capacities in various Districts, Police Commissionerates and other Police Units. It is submitted that I was constrained to approach the Honourable Supreme Court of India by way of Writ Petition (Criminal) No.135 of 2011. A copy of the Petition Memo is produced herewith on page 104 to 136.

I was posted as the Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence, State Intelligence Bureau, Gandhinagar, from December 1999 to September 2002. As the Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence with the State Intelligence-Bureau, I used to look after all the matters pertaining to the Internal Security of Gujarat; including matters pertaining to the Border Security, Coastal Security, and Security of Vital Installations in Gujarat as also matters pertaining to VVIP Security, including the security of the Chief Minister. I was also designated as the Nodal Officer for sharing of intelligence with various Central Agencies and the Armed Forces of the Union of India. This was the post I was occupying at the time when the 2002 Gujarat Riots took place.

5. I respectfully state that owing to the post I was occupying in the State Intelligence Bureau, I came across huge amounts of intelligence and information pertaining to the events that had transpired prior to, as well as during the Gujarat Riots of 2002. By virtue of the office held by me during the said period, I had the occasion to frequently interact with various high-level functionaries of the State and the Union of India and was therefore, privy to a plethora of information including some very sensitive information pertaining to the various acts of commission and omission attributable to certain high ranking functionaries of the State. The information and documentary evidence, which I have already shared with the SIT, can throw light on the real nature of events that led to the incident of burning of the S6 Coach of the Sabarmati Express at Godhra on 27th February 2002 and the larger conspiracy and official orchestration behind the subsequent Gujarat Riots of 2002.

6. It may kindly be appreciated that I was privy to the said information in my capacity as an officer serving with the Intelligence Bureau, therefore, I was constrained to maintain confidentiality and could not have disclosed information of such sensitive nature, unless, called upon to do so under a binding legal obligation. Accordingly, on being summoned by SIT for the first time in November 2009, I had provided the SIT with certain relevant information and documents, including original floppy discs containing the entire cell phone/cell-site records of Godhra Town for 26th and 27th February 2002; as well as the original print-outs of very important call records of certain high-ranking functionaries of the State for 27th and 28th February 2002. It may kindly be noted that I have deposed before the SIT on several occasions and have endeavored to assist the SIT to the best of my ability. As conveyed to the SIT in November 2009, and even during subsequent interactions, I was present at the meeting called by the Chief Minister on the lke night of 27.2.2002 and was personally aware about the instructions given in the meeting and the events that transpired thereafter. I had also provided the SIT with verifiable details regarding the on-going cover up operation; including the contemporaneous efforts made by high officials of the State administration to undermine the proceedings of Writ Petition (Civil) No. 221 of 2002., which was pending before the Hon'ble Supreme Court in 2002. I have time and again tried to bring these facts to the notice of the Special Investigation Team but they seem to be disinclined to follow-up these important leads in the course of the enquiry/investigation being carried out by them. The closure report filed by the SIT in the matter pertaining to the complaint of Mrs. Zakia Jafri has given further credence to the doubts about the intent and functioning of the SIT.

7. I was summoned by the Justice Nanavati and Justice Mehta Commission of Inquiry in the month of April 2011 and have similarly deposed before the Justice Nanavati and Justice Mehta Commission of Inquiry on several occasions, and have filed various documents and Applications before the Commission, without much avail.

EVENTS OF 27.02.2002

8. In the morning hours of 27th February 2002, the tragic incident of burning of S-6 coach of Sabarmati Express happened at Godhra Railway Station leading to the death of a large number of passengers including many Kar-Sevaks who were returning from Ayodhya. The Chief Minister visited Godhra on that very day and as per his instructions it was decided that the dead bodies of the Kar-Sevaks would be brought to Ahmedabad for being taken out in funeral processions prior to their cremation at Ahmedabad on 28.02.2002. The said decision of the Chief Minister was fraught with potential calamitous consequences as the VHP had called for a Bandh on the next day viz. 28.02.2002 and the BJP had declared support to the said Bandh Call.

9. During the day I kept on receiving inforMation and intelligence about sporadic incidents of violence against Muslims as well as large scale mobilization of VHP, Bajrang Dal and BJP cadres all across the State. Accordingly several Alert Messages and Advisories were sent out to the jurisdictional units of the Police under intimation to the Chief Minister's Office (CMO). Copies of the relevant Alert Messages and Advisories are produced herewith on Page-176-177.

10. On the same evening the Director General and Inspector General of Police sent a message to the Home Department requisitioning additional paramilitary forces as situation was likely to worsen on the next day. A copy of this message is produced herewith on Page- 283.

On the night of 27.02.2002 while I was sitting with a BBC Journalist Mr. Subhranshu Chaudhary at my Ahmedabad Residence, I was instructed by the State Control Room of the DGP and IGP as well the State Intelligence Bureau Control Room to attend a meeting at Chief Minister's residence along with the then DG and IGP Shri. K. Chakravarthi. I cut short my meeting with Mr. Subhranshu Chaudhary and rushed to Gandhinagar for the meeting. The said meeting was attended by various officers whom I have named in my deposition before the SIT as well as the Nanavati-Mehta Commission. Some of the Police Officers present at the said meeting tried to impress upon the Chief Minister that it was not a good idea for the BJP to support the proposed Bandh on 28.02.2002 as it could lead to a genuine misconception in the minds of the potential trouble makers that it was a State-sponsored Bandh and this would have very serious repercussions on the law and order situation across the State. We further tried to impress upon him that it would be calamitous to transport the dead bodies from Godhra to Ahmedabad and take them out in funeral processions as it would lead to further flare-up of passions. I also tried to impress upon the Chief Minister that as per our information large scale mobilization of Sangh Parivar cadres including VHP, Bajrang Dal and BJP was underway not only in the major cities but also in the rural areas of Gujarat, and if the Bandh call was supported by the ruling political party-the BJP, it would stretch the Police deployment to its limits.

12. However the Chief Minister stated that the Bandh call had already been given and the party had decided to support the same, as incidents like burning of Kar-Sevaks at Godhra could not be tolerated. He further impressed upon the gathering that for too long the Gujarat Police had been following the principle of balancing the actions against the Hindus and Muslims while dealing with the communal riots in Gujarat. He said that this time the situation warranted that the Muslims be taught a lesson to ensure that such incidents do not recur ever again. The Chief Minister expressed the view that the emotions were running very high amongst the Hindus and it was imperative that they be allowed to vent out their anger.

13. The effects of these directions given by the Chief Minister were widely manifested in the half-hearted approach and lack of determination by the police while dealing with widespread instances of violence on the following days. I say that I have narrated these facts in an Affidavit filed before the Hon'ble Supreme Court a copy of which is produced herewith on Page- 54- to 85

14. After the meeting I returned to my office and sent an Alert Message to Commissioner of Police, Ahmedabad and also marked a copy of the same to the CM's Office. A copy of the said Alert Message is produced herewith on Page- 171 and 178.

15. Subsequent to disclosure regarding the deliberations that had taken place during the late-night meeting held at the residence of the Chief Minister, the State authorities and other parties holding vested interests have been claiming that I was not present at the meeting of 27th February, 2002. A number of persons have filed affidavits supporting the fact of my having attended the late-night at the residence of the Chief Minister on 27th February 2002. Affidavits filed by 7 Police Head Constable Mr. Naresh Brahmbhatt, Journalist Mr. Shubhranshu Chaudhary, Police Constable Mr. K.D. Panth and Driver Constable Mr. Tarachand Yadav are produced herewith on page 86, 89, 95 and 100 respectively.

EVENTS OF 28.02.2002

16. From the morning of 28th February 2002 the State Intelligence Bureau had started receiving numerous reports regarding build-up of mobs around Sola Civil Hospital and other places in Ahmedabad. The State Intelligence Bureau (SIB) alerted the Commissioner of Police, Ahmedabad and the Superintendent of Police Ahmedabad (Rural) under intimation to the Chief Minister's Office about funeral processions to be taken out from Sola Civil Hospital to Gota cremation grounds and the likelihood of violence. A copy of the Alert Message is produced herewith on Page:- 179

17. In the forenoon of 28th February 2002, I had a personal meeting with the Chief Minister where inter alia, I briefed him about the build-up of mobs across Ahmedabad and about the general inaction of police in Ahmedabad City.

18. Subsequently, upon getting additional information, I spoke to the Chief Minister on telephone and informed him about the fact that lives of Ex-MP Ehsan Jafri, his family members and other residents of Gulberg Society were in imminent danger. The Commissioner of Police Ahmedabad was also apprised of the situation and was requested to take immediate effective action. A copy of the said Fax Message is produced herewith on Page- I80.

19. In the afternoon of 28th February 2002, I had another meeting with the Chief Minister wherein I apprised him about the worsening law and order situation and apparent inaction of the Police. I also advised him to immediately requisition additional forces, including Armed Forces of the Union of India. I personally informed the CM about the imminent threat to the lives of Mr. Ehsan Jafri, his family members and other residents of Gulberg Society. In response to my briefing he asked me to find out details about past instances wherein Mr. Ehsan Jafri had opened fire on Hindu mobs during earlier communal riots. Upon coming out of the said meeting with the Chief Minister I came to be informed by my Control Room that there were reports of Mr. Ehsan Jafri actually having opened fire on the riotous mobs a few minutes ago. This made me realize that the Chief Minister had already been getting real-time information about the situation that was developing at Gulberg Society and had yet chosen not to do anything about it. While exiting from the said meeting with the Chief Minister I was met by Mr. Amarsingh Chaudhri, the Ex Chief Minister of Gujarat. He apprised me about the threat to Mr. Ehsan Jafri and requested me to do something to help Mr. Ehsan Jafri and his family. I told Shri. Amarsingh Chaudhary that I had already briefed the Chief Minister in this regard. A copy of the Affidavit of Amarsingh Chaudhri is produced herewith on Page- 370 to 390.

20. Soon after I returned to my office, I was visited by two staff members from CM's office who were seeking information about past offences registered against Mr. Ehsan Jafri with respect to incidents where had opened fire on Hindu mobs during earlier communal riots. A similar telephonic request was received by me from Cabinet Minister Mr. Ashok Bhatt, who at that time was stationed at the Police Control Room of Ahmedabad City. Shortly thereafter, I received information about the killing of Mr. Ehsan Jafri and his family members. The said information was immediately communicated to the Chief Minister by phone. I also conveyed this information to CM by way of a written message. A copy of the said message is produced herewith on Page- l81.

21. The above details have been communicated to the SIT during the course of my deposition and have been subsequently reiterated in my letter dated 25.01.2012 addressed to SIT. A copy of the said letter is produced herewith on Page- I72 to 280.

EVENTS OF 01.03.2002

22. Targeted violence against Muslims continued unabated amidst reports of widespread Police inaction. The violence started spreading to the rural areas of Gujarat. Army was finally requisitioned by the State Government, but curiously, was not deployed in the Riot affected areas. I met the Chief Minister in the afternoon of 1st March 2002 and briefed him about the details of the carnage that had taken place on the previous day at Naroda Patiya and Naroda Gaam. It was at this meeting that the Chief Minister came out with the conspiracy theory regarding the burning of the S/6 Coach of the Sabarmati Express at Godhra Railway Station. It is submitted that the dubious conduct of the Chief Minister and certain other officers during the said meeting prompted me to obtain the call records of certain areas of Gujarat including Godhra Town and of certain high' dignitaries including the Chief Minister. The State Intelligence Bureau collected relevant information about the sequence of events that led to the tragedy at the Godhra Railway Station, analyzed the call records of Godhra Town and tried to reconstruct the facts and circumstances surrounding the tragic events that took place at Godhra Railway Station on 27th February 2002 and came up with an internal document: "Godhra Incident of 27.02.2002- An Intelligence Analysis". The said analytical exercise carried out by the State Intelligence Bureau completely demolished the conspiracy theory behind the burning of the S/6 Coach of Sabarmati Express at Godhra. All these facts were conveyed to the SIT during the course of my deposition. The said facts have also been reiterated in my letters to SIT dated 02.02.2012, 09.02.2002 and 23.02.2002 addressed/marked to SIT. Copies of the said letter are produced herewith on Page-312, 324 and 325 respectively.

23. On the same day Mr. Amarsingh Chaudhri and Mr. Shankarsinh Vaghela met the Chief Minister and sat on a dharna demanding effective police action to control the ongoing violence. Chief Minister dissuaded Mr. Chaudhri by telling him that he should refrain from sitting on Dharna as tempers of Hindus were running high and he might meet the same fate as the Muslims. These facts have been deposed by me before the SIT as well as the Nanavati-Mehta Commission. A copy of my deposition before the NanavatiMehta Commission is produced herewith on Page- 182 to 280.

EVENTS OF 02.03.2002

24. Violence continued to spread across newer areas in the State. There seemed to be a general failure on the part of the Police and the Administration in effectively dealing with the spread of communal violence. Areas of Ahmedabad District including Ongnaj Village in respect of which the present complaint is filed, were affected by targeted communal violence. Chief Minister was briefed by me about general inaction of the police and reported complicity in certain specific areas.

25. I also met and briefed the Union Defence Minister and the Army Commanders about the then prevalent Law and Order situation in the State. The Army Commanders were still awaiting specific orders of the State Government concerning their deployment in the Riot affected areas. The Deployment Statement depicting the deployment status of all the forces in Gujarat as on 19.30 hours of 02.03.2002 is produced herewith on Page- 289 to 293.

26. The figures provided by the Special Branch of the Ahmedabad City Police concerning police action in Ahmedabad City clearly reveal the failure to take preventive action on 27.02.2002 as well as the completely lopsided and prejudiced action of the police during the first two days of the carnage. Copies of these statements and figures are produced herewith on Page- 215. tt 306

EVENTS OF 3.3.2002

27. The Union Home Minister Shri L.K. Advani holds a meeting at Circuit House Annexe, Ahmedabad. A brief Note on the Law and Order situation was handed over by me to the Union Home Minister before the meeting. A copy of the said Note is produced herewith on Page- 284 to 294.

28. During the course of the meeting, the Union Home Minister ( Shri. L. K. Advani was also briefed by me about the failure of the administration to isolate the Godhra incident of 27th February 2002, adverse impact of the decision of the BJP to support to the Bandh Call of 28th February 2002, the instructions issued by the CM during the meeting on 27th February 2002 regarding teaching a lesson to Muslims and the resultant inaction of police, delay in imposition of curfew, delay in deployment of army, etc. The copy of a sheet containing the contemporaneous jottings regarding the points on which I had briefed the Union Home Minister is produced herewith on Page- 294.

29. The Note submitted to the Union Home Minister also contained details regarding the imposition of curfew in different parts of Gujarat. These details clear indicate the laxity of the State Administration even in the imposition of curfew. The SIT has been apprised about these facts during the course of my deposition. I have reiterated the said facts in my letter dated 28.1.2012 addressed to the SIT. A copy of the said letter is produced herewith on Page- – 281 to 306.

30. It was only from this date that the Administrative machinery of the State started showing some firmness in dealing with the riots.

EVENTS OF 18/03/2002 AND 19/03/2002

31. The SIB received information regarding illegal disposal of dead bodies of victims of the Naroda Patia and Naroda Gaam carnage in an abandoned well called Teesra Kuan. A letter in this regard was sent to the Commissioner of Police Ahmedabad City on 18.3.2002. A copy of the said letter is produced herewith on Page-308. However, the Ahmedabad City Police completely misdirected itself and did not make adequate efforts to exhume the illegally disposed bodies. The contemporaneous correspondence in this regard, between the SIB and the Commissioner of Police Ahmedabad City is produced herewith on Page-309-311. (Till date no genuine efforts have been made to excavate the site and exhume the illegally disposed bodies, These facts were time and again brought to the notice of the SIT. A copy of the letter dated 30.01.2012, addressed to SIT in this regard is produced herewith on Page- 307 to 311.

MISUSE OF SECRET SERVICE FUNDS

32. Ms. Mallika Sarabhai and others had filed a Writ Petition (Civil) No. 221 of 2002 before the Hon'ble Supreme Court concerning the Gujarat riots. The said Writ Petition sought wide ranging reliefs and directions against the State Government. The granting of these reliefs or issuance of certain directions would have greatly embarrassed the State Government of Gujarat. On April, 12, 2002 Rupees Ten Lakhs were withdrawn from the Secret Service Fund of the State Intelligence Bureau at the instance of the Chief Minister Mr. Narendra Modi and as instructed, were delivered to him on the very same day. The details regarding the gross misuse of the Secret Service Funds of the Government of Gujarat and the abuse of the Office of the Chief Minister for undermining the proceedings of Writ Petition (Civil) 221 of 2002 have already been deposed before the SIT. The said facts have also been communicated to the Nanavati-Mehta Commission by way of letters/applications dated 31st October, 2011, 9th November, 2011, 7th December, 2011, 15th December, 2011 and 23rd December, 2011. By these communications I not only brought to the notice of the Commission the fact about the misuse of the Secret Service Funds but also requested the Commission to provide me with access to certain relevant records and documents which would enable me to file a detailed and comprehensive Affidavit in this regard. However, till date, I have received no response from the Nanavati-Mehta Commission. A proper inquiry/investigation into these aspects would clearly establish the misuse of office by the Chief Minister. Copies of my letters dated 31.10.2011, 09.11.2011, 07.12.2011, 15.12.2011 and 23.12.2011 are produced herewith on Page-137, 138, 139, 141 and 145 respectively.

INADEQUACIES OF THE SIT INVESTIGATION AND DUBIOUS ROLE OF THE STATE GOVERNMENT.

33. The Special Investigating Team appointed by the Hon'ble Supreme Court has been investigating certain major incidents that took place during the Gujarat Riots of 2002. The same SIT was also directed to look into/ investigate into the Complaint made by Mrs. Zakia Jafri into various allegations concerning larger conspiracy and orchestration behind the Gujarat Riots of 2002.

34. I was contacted by the office of Special Investigation Team in the month of November, 2009 and was asked to meet Shri A.K. Malhotra- SIT on a particular date. I was subsequently contacted once again by the office of the SIT and informed that the appointed date had been changed and postponed. In the meantime, despite my having maintained complete confidentiality regarding the telephonic summons received from SIT, I was approached by a very high level functionary in the Government of Gujarat and was sought to be appropriately briefed prior to my scheduled interaction with SIT. When I first met Shri. A. K. Malhotra-Member SIT, at the very outset, I had appraised him about the leak from his office and the consequential attempt to appropriately brief me for the deposition before SIT. During the course of my deposition before SIT, which were highly indicative of real-time leakage of information from within the SIT. These occurrences were brought to the notice of Shri A. K. Malhotra-Member SIT, at that point of time itself. Despite my well founded apprehensions regarding the confidentiality of my deposition, I had truthfully and fearlessly responded to all the queries put forth to me. I had also provided Shri. A. K. Malhotra Member SIT, with certain relevant documents and records pertaining to the Godhra Riots of 2002. All the documentary evidence tendered by me was verified and received-on record by Shri. A. K. Malhotra-Member SIT. It needs to be mentioned! that during the First phase of my interaction with SIT in 2009 and 2010, my statements were recorded in connection with the enquiry into the complaint made by Mrs. Zakia lard and not in connection with any investigation under the Code of Criminal Procedure. My signed statements should be available with the SIT. Despite my professional constraints as an Intelligence Officer, I shared substantial information with the SIT and informed them that I would be duty-bound and willing to reveal all the information within my knowledge, as and when I was under a binding' legal obligation to do so.

35. My fears regarding the confidentiality of my deposition before SIT were eventually confirmed as the contents of my signed deposition as well as the details of my interaction with Shri. A. K. Malhotra and Shri. Paramveer Singh-Members SIT, were somehow available to the highest echelons of the Government of Gujarat. As a result and consequence of the said breach of confidentiality, I was visited and continue to be visited with unpleasant consequences. The leakage of details regarding my earlier deposition and interaction with SIT have eventually found their way to the media and have further jeopardized my safety and the safety and security of my family members. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the details regarding my testimony before the Special Investigation Team, were first reported in the issue of Tehelka Magazine Volume 8 Issue 06 dated 12 th February 2011, and once again in Tehelka Magazine Volume 8 Issue 07 dated 19Th February 2011; which I crave leave to refer to and rely upon. I sate that, prior to the publication of the said articles in Tehelka Magazine, I had never disclosed the details of my interaction with the Special Investigation Team to anybody. In view of the sensitive nature of the information, as also the situation prevalent in Gujarat, I had exercised utmost discretion and chosen to maintain complete confidentiality regarding the contents of my deposition and he details of my interaction with the Special Investigation Team.

In view of the leakage of my confidential deposition as well as the leakage of the details pertaining to my interaction with the SIT to the highest echelons of the Government of Gujarat and the subsequent publication of the said details by some sections of the media, I became highly apprehensive about my security and the safety and security of my family members. In view of the perceived security threat, I requested the Government of Gujarat to provide me and my family members with adequate and fool-proof security cover. Unfortunately, the Government of Gujarat has chosen not only to disregard my repeated requests, but has time and again, sought to jeopardize my security by withdrawing even the existing make-shift and minimal security arrangement, worked out from within the meager resources at my disposal. Copies of my letters dated 14.2.2011, 5.3.2011 and 13.4.2011; addressed to the Government of Gujarat are produced herewith on Page- 72, 73 and 75 respectively.

37. I respectfully state and submit that on 16.3.2011 I received a summons dated 15.3.2011 from the SIT, calling upon me to remain present before them on 21.3.2011 at 11.30 a.m. for the purpose of giving my statement in Meghaninagar Police Station I C.R. No. 67 of 2002. On the copy of said summons, I made a written endorsement, requesting the SIT to provide me with a copy of the FIR pertaining to Meghaninagar Police Station 1 C.R. No. 67 of 2002 as well as copies of my earlier statements before SIT, as copies of the same had not been provided to me. Subsequently, a copy of the FIR was provided to me, but copies of my earlier statements have not been provided to me till date. A copy of the Summons dated 15.03.2011 along with my endorsement thereupon is produced herewith on Page- 78.

38. On 18 March, 2011 I wrote a detailed letter to the Chairman of SIT, placing the above facts on record and reiterated my request for the provision of certain necessary documents. I further requested the Chairman to kindly ensure that all the officers as well as support staff, working under the control or in the employ of the Government of Gujarat, be completely dissociated from the tasks of recording, processing or safekeeping of my forthcoming deposition. I further expressed willingness to have my statement recorded under Section. 164(1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure. A copy of my letter dated 181h March, 2011 is produced herewith on Page- 79 to 81.

39. In accordance with the Summons, I reported to office of t SIT at Gandhinagar, on 21st March 2011, for the purpose getting my statement recorded in connection with the furthe investigation of Meghaninagar Police Station I C.R.No. 67 a 2002. Despite my repeated written requests, I was no provided with a copy of my earlier deposition before SIT an was informed that it would not be possible to provide me with a copy of the earlier statement or any of the contemporaneous documents and records requested for, vide my letter dated 18 March 2011. The said facts were put on cord by way of my letter dated 22.3.2011, addressed to Chairman SIT. The said letter is produced herewith on Page- 82.

40. My statement was recorded by the SIT on 21st, 22nd, 23rd and 25Th March, 2011. Thereafter I was informed that I was required to remain available as I would be called for further clarifications during the course of the ongoing investigation, as also for the purpose of confronting me with other witnesses, if necessary, During the course of my deposition before SIT, I time and again sought to bring out the relevant information pertaining the facts and circumstances; including the directions given by the Chief Minister, during the course of the crucial meeting held at his residence on the late night of 27th February 2002; that led to and facilitated the communal carnage of 2002. In my opinion, this was evidently a very important aspect of the investigation, since the events that transpired in my presence, at the said meeting had a huge impact and bearing on the conduct of the Police force and the State administration while dealing with the violence that stated on 28th February 2002. It was submitted to the SIT that the course of subsequent incidents of communal violence could be fully appreciated only in the light of the directions given by the Chief Minister, during the said meeting. However, I was informed by the SIT that all these aspects could not be gone into, as my statement was being recorded in the further investigation of Meghaninagar Police Station C.R.No. 67 of 2002 and therefore had to be confined to the scope, of the FIR pertaining to the events at Guiberg Society on 28.2.2002.

41. I submitted to the members of the SIT that this procedural constraint on their part defeated the very purpose of ascertaining the existence of any larger conspiracy or official orchestration behind the Gujarat Riots of 2002. At my insistence, the SIT finally agreed to record the details of the events that had transpired in my presence, during the meeting with the Chief Minister on- the late night of 27.2.2002. Upon my request, the SIT provided me with a relevant portion of the transcript of my testimony, pertaining to the instructions given by the Chief Minister, at the conclusion of meeting held on 27-02-2002, where it was tried to impress upon him that the decision to bring the dead bodies to Ahmedabad and the BJP announcement of supporting the VHP Bandh Call would definitely lead to outbreak of communal violence in Ahmedabad and across the State; and the Gujarat police did not have the manpower resources to deal with such a situation.

42. I submit that on 251h March 2011, when I again tried to bring up the issue of a larger conspiracy or official orchestration behind the Gujarat Riots of 2002, as also the ongoing attempts at cover-up, I faced unconcealed hostility from the members of SIT. This was even more obvious when I gave names of witnesses who could corroborate the fact of my having attended the said meeting with the Chief Minister on 27.2.2002.

43. Despite the strong reluctance of the SIT to record inconvenient details, I stated before them the names of witnesses who could substantiate the fact that I had accompanied the DG&IGP to the meeting with the Chief Minister on 27.2.2002. I was hopeful that this information would be gone into thoroughly by the SIT, to unravel the true nature of events that had transpired. However, the SIT has chosen to intimidate certain witnesses and coerce them in to refraining from stating the true facts and thereby has created an impression that the SIT is becoming a party to the ongoing cover-up operation in Gujarat. My apprehensions were substantiated when one of the witnesses I had named, Shri K.D. Panth, (Assistant Intelligence Officer with the State Intelligence Bureau in 2002) informed me that he had been called before the Special Investigative Team on 5.4.2011 and was virtually treated like an accused and was threatened with arrest and other dire consequences. It appears that other witnesses may have been similarly coerced into submission. I have put these facts on record by way of a letter addressed to Chairman SIT. My said letter dated 06.04.2011 is produced herewith on Page- 83 – 84

44. It is my genuine apprehension that the SIT, while carrying out the further investigation of Meghaninagar Police Station I C.R. No. 67 of 2002, was disinclined and reluctant to take on record and appropriately examine the evidence indicating the existence of any larger conspiracy or official orchestration behind the Gujarat Riots of 2002. As an officer serving with, the State Intelligence Bureau at that relevant point of time, I was not only present at the meeting held at the residence of Chief Minister on the night of 27.2.2002, but had also witnessed the apparent lack of firmness on part of many Police Units while dealing with the emergent situation on 28th February 2002 and thereafter. As the Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence in-charge of Internal Security for the State of Gujarat, I was required to constantly monitor and assess the developing situations and appropriately advice and apprise various organs and officials of the Government, including the Chief Minister. As stated by me before the SIT, and substantiated by documentary and other verifiable evidence, I had the occasion to inter alia, apprise the Commissioner of Police Ahmedabad City and the Chief Minister regarding the situation developing at Gulberg Society on 28th February 2002. I have stated before the SIT that many serious incidents of communal violence, including the carnage at Gulberg Society, could have been easily prevented by firm and determined action on part of the Police.

45. Some details of what transpired before SIT are contained in an Affidavit filed by me before the Hon'ble Supreme Court on 14th April 2011. A copy of the said Affidavit along with all the Annexures is produced herewith on Page- 52. To 85.

46. Some of the relevant communication between me and the SIT has been placed at Page-168 to 171 and 312 to 323.

INTERACTION WITH THE AMICUS CAUIAE

47. Subsequent to my having filed the above referred Affidavit, by an Order dated 05.05.2011, the Honourable Supreme Court of India directed the Amicus Curiae Mr. Raju Ramchandran, Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India to independently examine the report of the SIT and also interact directly with witnesses. A copy of the Supreme Court order dated 5.5.2011 is produced herewith on Page- 92 to 94. Affidavits were filed before the Supreme Court on 11.05.2011 by Police Head Constable Mr. Nareshbhai Brahmbhatt, and on 15.05.2011 by Mr. Shubhranshu Chaudhary both of whom were aware about my having been summoned to the meeting of the Chief Minister as well as my departure from Ahmedabad for attending the meeting with the Chief Minister on the night of 27.02.2002. Copies of these Affidavits are produced herewith on Page-86, and 89, respectively. On 27th May, 2011 the Amicus addressed a letter to me stating that he was to be in Ahmedabad on 18th and 19th June 2011 and that I should contact him for the purpose of interaction. A copy of the letter of the Amicus dated 27.05.2011 is produced herewith on Page- 91.

48. On 16.06.2011 the Amicus confirmed with me telephonically about the venue and time of the meeting. The said information was in turn conveyed to Police Constable Mr, K.D. Panth and Driver Constable Mr. Tarachand Yadav on the very same day.

49. On 17.06.2011 Police Constable K.D. Panth and Driver Constable Tarachand Yadav filed affidavits to be submitted before the Amicus Curiae confirming that I had gone for a meeting with the Chief Minister on the night of 27.02.2002, as also the fact regarding their ill-treatment at the hands of the SIT. Copies of these Affidavits are produced herewith on Page-95 and 100 respectively.

50. On 18.6.2011 asper the prior appointment I went and met the Amicus. Driver Constable Mr. Tarachand Yadav also met the Amicus Curiae and handed over his Affidavit in person. However, Police Constable Mr. K.D. Panth, despite having filed the Affidavit on 17.06.2011, did not turn up for the appointed meeting with the Amicus Curiae. It was later learnt that Mr. K.D.Panth had been contacted and pressurized by certain officials of the State in order to prevent him from stating the truth before the learned Amicus Curiae.

ROLE OF STATE BEFORE THE JUSTICE NANAVATIMEHTA COMMISSION

51. It has been my contention and that of a number of other persons that Chief Minister Mr. Narendra Modi was involved in acts of commission and omission in respect of riots of 2002. If he had acted as he ought to have in the capacity of the Chief Minister much of the targeted loss of human lives and destruction of property could have been completely averted. Many attempts have been made to have Chief Minister Mr. Narendra Modi testify before the Nanavati-Mehta Commission but all these attempts have been successfully thwarted by the State of Gujarat. All attempts to secure safe custody and/or obtain access to relevant contemporaneous records and documents have also been constantly stonewalled by the State of Gujarat who enjoys the continual indulgence of the Nanavati-Mehta Commission. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the State of Gujarat is fully exploiting the indulgence afforded to it by the NanavatiMehta Commission to ensure that the actual facts and circumstances that led to and facilitated the Gujarat Carnage of 2002 are continued to be effectively suppressed from all inquisitorial proceedings.

52. The State Government by notification dated 6th March 2002, set up a fact finding Commission under the Commissions of Inquiry Act, 1952 ('the Act' for short). The terms of reference were as follows:

The following shall be the terms of reference of the said commission namely:-

(1) To inquire into-

(a) the facts, circumstances and the course of events of the incidents that led to setting on fire some coaches of the Sabarmati Express train on 27.02.2002 near Godhra Railway Station;

(b) the facts, circumstances and the course of events of the subsequent incidents of violence in the State in the aftermath of the Godhra incident; and

(c) the adequacy of administrative measures taken to prevent and deal with disturbances in Godhra and subsequent disturbances in the State.

(2) To ascertain as to whether the incident at Godhra was pre-planned and whether information was available with the agencies, which could have been used to prevent the incident;

(3) To recommend suitable measures to prevent recurrence of such incidents in future.

53. By subsequent notification dated 20th July 2004, terms of reference were expanded. This was principally done on the basis that the Government received representations for inquiring into the role and conduct of the Chief Minister, Ministers, Officers of the Government, other individuals and organizations. Additions made in the previous notification dated 6th March 2002 were as follows:-

Now, therefore, in exercise of the powers conferred by section 3 of the commission of Inquiry Act, 1962 (60 of 1952) the Government of Gujarat hereby amend the above referred the Government Notification, Legal Department No.:GK/07/2004-COI/102002/797-D dated 6th March 2002, for the aforesaid purpose as follows namely:-

In the said notification –

I. After clause (c) in sub-Para (1) of Para-2, following clauses (d) and (e) be added, namely:-

(d) Role and conduct of the then Chief Minister and / or any other Minister(s) in his Council of Ministers, Police Officers, other individuals and organizations in both the events referred to in clauses (a) and (b).

(e) Role and conduct of the then Chief Minister and / or any other Minister(s) in his Council of Ministers, Police Officers

(i) in dealing with any political or non-political organization which may be founded to have been involved in any other events referred to hereinabove,

(ii) in the matter of providing protection, relief and rehabilitation to the victims of communal riots

(iii) in the matter of recommendations and directions given by National Human Rights Commissions from time to time.

II. In para 2: in sub-para (1) in clause (b), after the words, 'incidence of violence, for the words and figures, 'that took place on and from 27th FebruarY 2002 to 30th March 2002, the words and figures 'that took place on and from 27th February,2002 to 31st May 2002' be substituted.

54. In addition to the evidence before the Nanavati-Mehta Commission and the Supreme Court appointed SIT, there is a plethora of incriminating and germane evidence available in the Public domain. It is my genuine apprehension that very crucial and relevant records have been deviously suppressed and/or destroyed by the Government of Gujarat as well as the SIT headed by Mr. R. K. Raghavan, with the diabolical motive of shielding powerful persons from legal punishment; by ensuring that crucial and relevant incriminating evidence is not brought before any inquisitorial bodies like the Nanavati-Mehta Commission or the Courts of law. In view of the aforesaid facts and circumstances, certain facts that were already before the commission along with other facts which were in public domain in respect of the Terms of Reference were brought to the notice of the Nanavati-Mehta Commission by way of a detailed Application dated 10th March, 2012 filed before the Commission. The said application also reiterated the demand that Chief Minister Mr. Narendra Modi should be summoned and examined as a witness by the Nanavati-Mehta Commission. A copy of the said Application dated 10.3.2012 is produced herewith on Page- 328 to 350.

55. Based on the facts and circumstances already on the record of the Nanavati-Mehta Commission as well as the information available in the public domain, some of the allegations against Mr. Narendra Modi, both in his personal capacity as well as a constitutional functionary being the CM can be briefly summarized as hereunder:

(a) Instructions to the director general of police (DGP), the chief secretary and other senior officials to give vent to the Hindu anger against minority Muslims in the wake of the Godhra incident. Meeting held in Gandhinagar on the evening of February 27, 2002.

(b) The Chief Minister's decision to bring dead bodies of those killed in the Godhra train fire to Ahmedabad and parade them in Ahmedabad city, as testified by Ashok Narayan, former addl. chief secretary, home department, in his cross-examination before the

(c) The CM, Narendra Modi, did not visit the riot affected areas during the initial days of the violence though he visited the Godhra railway station on February 27, 2002 itself.

(d) Deliberate failure to respond to the law and order situation developing at Gulberg Society on February 28, 2002, resulting in the gruesome massacre at Gulberg Society.

(e) The press statement by Narendra Modi that the reaction against the Muslim community was the operation of Newton's law of action and reaction.

(f) Numerous illegal instructions given verbally to officials as detailed in Affidavit No. 3 dated April 9, 2005 of RB Sreekumar before the Nanavati-Shah Commission.

(g) No minutes or written notes of the meetings held by the CM and senior bureaucrats were issued, and instructions were mainly conveyed, on the telephone. The non-issuance of such minutes/notes served the twin objectives of 1) Field officers carrying out the conspiracy of a pogrom against the minority and 2) Avoidance of subsequent monitoring of actions by jurisdictional officers in the field.

(h) Positioning cabinet ministers, IK Jadeja and Ashok Bhatt, in the DGP's office and Ahmedabad city control room respectively. DGP Chakravarti was critical of the minister, IK Jadeja, remaining in his office, as testified by RB Sreekumar in para 85 of his fourth affidavit before the Nanavati-Shah Commission.

(i) Transfer of officers from field executive posts in the thick of the riots in 2002 despite the DGP's objections (as per media reports), to facilitate placement of those who were willing to subvert the system for political and electoral benefits.

(j) Partisan investigations betraying prejudice against riot victims belonging to the minority community, as indicated by Rahul Sharma during his cross-examination before the Nanavati-Shah Commission.

(k) Numerous instances of rewarding of senior officials with undue benefits even while their conduct is under scrutiny at the Nanavati-Shah Commission.

(l) Deliberate failure to initiate punitive action against senior police officers, despite grave dereliction of duty in the supervision of the investigation of serious offences as envisaged by Rules 24, 134, 135 and 240 of the Gujarat Police Manual-Vol. III, as noted in Para 94 of RB Sreekumar's fourth affidavit before the Nanavati-Shah Commission.

(m) Did not initiate departmental action against the then Superintendent of Police Dahod, for his gross misconduct and negligence during investigations into the Bilkees Bano case despite recommendations to that effect by the CBI which reinvestigated the case as per the directions of the Supreme Court.

(n) No action has been taken against officers like K. Chakravarti, then DGP; PC Pande, then Commissioner of Police, Ahmedabad City; Ashok Narayan, then Add!. Chief Secretary (Home), and a large number of senior government functionaries who filed incomplete, inaccurate, vague and inadequate affidavits before the Nanavati-Shah Commission. Virtually no officer provided important documents relevant to the terms of reference of the commission as exhibits either in affidavits or during their cross-examination.

(o) No follow-up action on the reports sent by Mr. RB Sreekumar on April 24, 2002, June 15, 2002, August 20, 2002 and August 28, 2002 about the administration's anti-minority stance. Copies of these reports are appended in Affidavit No. 2 dated October 6, 2004 of RB Sreekumar before the Nanavati-Shah Commission.

(p) No direction from Chief Minister Narendra Modi to Bhartiya Janta Party and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and other Sangh Parivar Organisations against the observance of a bandh on February 28, 2002, despite the settled legal position that Forced Bandhs are illegal.

(q) Delay in the requisition and deployment of the Army although anti-minority violence had broken out on the afternoon of February 27, 2002 itself, in the cities of Vadodara, Ahmedabad, etc.

(r) Appointment of pro-VHP advocates as public prosecutors in riot cases though as home minister (cabinet rank) the CM had the necessary means at his disposal to verify the credentials and integrity of these advocates.

(s) Refusal to transfer officers from the grass root level, as per the State Intelligence Bureau (SIB)'s recommendation as indicated in Mr. RB Sreekumar's second affidavit before the Nanavati-Shah Commission.

(t) No action taken by the Home Department against the print media carrying communally inflammatory reports although the SIB and some field officers had recommended such action, as noted in Affidavit No. 1. of RB Sreekumar dated July 6, 2002 and during his cross-examination before the Nanavati-Shah Commission on August 31, 2004.

(u) The Home Department of the State of Gujarat provided misleading reports about normalcy in the state to the Chief Election Commission (CEC) so as to ensure early assembly elections. The home department's assessment was adjudged as false by the CEC in its open order dated August 16, 2002. As per the register recording verbal instructions from higher echelons of government (the CM and others) maintained by RB Sreekumar, in his third affidavit before the NanavatiShah Commission it is noted that he was directed by Home Department officials to give favourable reports about the law and order situation so as to facilitate the holding of early elections.

(v) Secretary, Home Department, Mr. GC Murmu, was presumably specially assigned to tutor, cajole and even intimidate officials deposing before the Nanavati-Shah Commission, to prevent them from telling the truth and harming the interests of the CM and the ruling party, as noted in RB Sreekumar's third affidavit before the Nanavati-Shah Commission. GC Murmu's mission was to try and ensure that officials did not file affidavits relating to the second term of reference of the Nanavati-Shah Commission, in particular, the role of the CM and other ministers in the riots.

(w) Misused Secret Service Funds of the State Intelligence Bureau to subvert Writ Petition (Civil) No. 221 of 2002.

(x) The fact that the main victims of the riots were Muslims, and the violence and police firing were targeted predominantly at the Muslim community will establish that rioters, the administration, cohorts of the ruling party (BJP), were working in collaboration to achieve the vile objectives of the CM. Statistics in this respect may be seen in RB Sreekumar's second affidavit before the Nanavati-Shah Commission.

56. On 13th March, 2012 I submitted another letter before the Commission adding a few grounds. A copy of this Application is produced herewith on Page-354 On 26.3.2012 a reply was filed to this Application on behalf of the State Government which was followed by my Rejoinder as well as Written Submissions dated 30.3.2012 which are is produced herewith on Page 356 and 359 to 368 respectively.

57. Till date no order has been passed on my application. What is obvious from the above is that despite there being sufficient evidence against Mr. Modi and despite the Terms of Reference of the Commission requiring it to go into the role of the Chief Minister Mr. Narendra Modi during riots, the Commission is consistently refusing to examine Mr. Modi as a witness.

58. As indicated in Para 47 and Para 48 above, It is very pertinent to note that Reference (c) was not included while expanding the scope of the Terms of Reference of the Commission to include the "Role and conduct of the then Chief Minister and / or any other Minister(s) in his Council of Ministers, Police Officers, other individuals and organizations" while adding clauses (d) and (e) sub-Para (1) of Para-2of the original Terms of Reference. The deliberate exclusion of Reference (c) has ensured that the Role and conduct of the then Chief Minister and / or any other Minister(s) in his Council of Ministers, Police Officers, other individuals and organizations is not examined with respect to the adequacy of administrative measures taken to prevent and deal with disturbances in Godhra and subsequent disturbances in the State. That even as per the deficient Terms of Reference, the role of the State Government of Gujarat, inter alia, should have been one of discharging its constitutional obligation of diligently and honestly assisting the Honourable Commission in unearthing the truth regarding the facts and circumstances that resulted in and facilitated the incidents of violence, as also the adequacy or otherwise, of the measures taken by the then administration in dealing with the same.

59. It is indeed ironic that the State Government of Gujarat instead of conducting itself as a neutral and dispassionate Constitutional Entity has chosen to act in a partisan manner by identifying with and espousing the cause of the Functionaries of the State Administration, including the Chief Minister, whose very role and conduct is squarely covered by the Terms of Reference of the Inquiry. It is a matter of record that the State Government of Gujarat, through its officials like Mr. Dinesh Kapadia and Mr. Girish Chandra Murmu IAS, tried to tutor and influence witnesses with the sole purpose of ensuring that the truth regarding the role and conduct of the administration headed by the Chief Minister was not exposed before the Honourable Commission. It is even more unfortunate that the Counsel for the Honourable Nanavati Commission, Advocate Mr. Arvind Pandya was also involved in tutoring and dissuading witnesses from deposing the truth before the Honourable Commission. Even today, the Counsels appearing before the Commission on behalf of the state continue to enjoy the indulgence of the Honourable Commission in effectively and successfully stonewalling any inquiry into the role and conduct of the Chief Minister. In fact, the State Government of Gujarat continues to frustrate all attempts at even summoning and questioning certain high functionaries of the administration, including the Chief Minister.

60. It is well established that the rationale for a Commission of Inquiry flows from the right of the People of India, as enshrined in Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution of India, to be informed as to the what, why and how regarding the events of definite public importance. The State of Gujarat by its despicable conduct has continued to fraudulently deprive the people of India of their Constitutional Right to be informed about the real facts and circumstances that led to and facilitated the Gujarat Riots of 2002. I have petitioned Her Excellency the President of India with a prayer to rectify the above lacuna. The said petition is produced herewith on Page-391 to 397

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS

61. It is obvious from the above that what followed after the gruesome incident at Godhra Railway Station was an orchestrated attempt to commit violence on the person and property of Muslims with total State support and complicity. All these facts have been brought to the notice of the SIT as well as the Nanavati Commission but despite this they are bent upon giving a clean chit to these tragic events by branding them as spontaneous outrage against the Godhra riots. What is most important to note is that there is enough documentary as well as oral evidence available to establish the complicity of the state and its high functionaries in these riots but the Commission and SIT are deliberately turning a blind eye to the overwhelming evidence and any persons who try to bring out the truth are victimized.

62. I say and submit that I have brought these facts on record only in order to ensure that justice is delivered to all the innocent victims of the Gujarat Riots of 2002 and that the masterminds behind the riots are exposed and dealt with in accordance with the law of the land.

63. I further submit that once I am allowed access to the requisite and relevant information/records/documents as prayed in Para5 of my Application dated 12th March 2012, to this Honourable Commission, I shall be in a position to file a more detailed and comprehensive Affidavit regarding the events, factors and circumstances that facilitated the Gujarat riots of 2002 as also the ongoing attempts at deliberate disregard/ destruction of crucial and relevant evidence with a view to deprive the minorities in Gujarat the justice due to them and the right to fair investigation/ inquiry into offences pertaining to systematic destruction of their life and property. My Application dated 12th March 2012, to this Honourable Commission is produced herewith on Page-351 to 353.

Solemnly Affirmed & Signed before me on the 25th day of April, 2012.

DEPONENT

[Sanjiv Bhatt]


Source : SCRIBD