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The chapter, which lauds two IPS officers including Sreekumar, and an IAS officer, for taking on the government, “has relevant information for the commission”, Sreekumar said. “Now, it is up to the commission to call Chowdhury for a deposition.”
The book, The Insider’s View, Memoirs of a Public Servant, by Javid Chowdhury, a Gujarat cadre officer of the 1965 batch, says Modi’s government did not want a central team to visit the Shah-e-Alam relief camp in 2002, and the late Ashok Bhatt, then the health minister of Gujarat, had actually threatened to jump from the car if the union health minister insisted on going to the camp.
The book was published last year and widely reviewed. In 2002, Chowdhury was union health secretary, and part of a health ministry team that visited Gujarat on the instructions of the Prime Minister’s Office.
Asked if he would be willing to depose before the Nanavati-Shah Commission, Chowdhury said, “What I have stated in the book (on the riots) is anecdotal. I have no evidence. So there is nothing to depose.”
Chowdhury has written: “Within a day or so of the breakout of the violence, it had become clear to all that the NDA government was embarassed... The PMO suggested that the union health ministry should intervene at least by way of providing medical relief. However, there was no scope for this, as the state government insisted that everything was back to normal, and no central assistance was required. I learnt that the PM had called the health minister and asked him to devise a modality to intervene without raising the hackles of Narendra Modi.”
According to Chowdhury, when he communicated to the PMO that “any attempt on our part without a request from the state government would create a conflict”, the PM “desired that the intervention be taken up under the flag of the Indian Red Cross Society”.
Chowdhury writes that Vajpayee told the health minister — presumably C P Thakur — to proceed to Ahmedabad immediately, taking Chowdhury along. “The insistence that I accompany the minister was perhaps because I was the seniormost Muslim officer of the central government...”
According to Chowdhury, the programme drawn up by the then Gujarat chief secretary “avoided a visit to the relief camps in the worst-hit areas”. The health minister “had received information from the PMO about the dismal living conditions at the camp located at Shah-e-Alam; he was keen on visiting that relief camp”, Chowdhury writes. But the Gujarat government “opposed it firmly”, and the minister “had to agree... as there was no other way of obtaining cooperation for the uninvited trip”.
According to Chowdhury, “plain-clothes men” took the minister away when riot victims tried to raise the issue of their rehabilitation. He narrates a dramatic exchange between the central minister and Gujarat’s Ashok Bhatt:
“...My minister had again raised the question of visiting the Shah-e-Alam camp... Ashokbhai went completely berserk. He screamed that my minister doubted his word when he said that the Shah-e-Alam camp was in good order. He was flushed in the face and stammering to the point of incoherence. At one stage, with a manic glint in his eye, he told my minister that if he pressed for going to that particular camp, he would jump out of the moving car in protest!”
During Modi’s first visit to Delhi after the riots, the chief minister, Chowdhury writes, “in his usual declamatory style announced how the response of the state machinery had been prompt and effective”, and “the PM sat slouched in his seat bearing his trademark pout. He looked distinctly uncomfortable.”
The then deputy prime minister L K Advani, who was present, “did not utter a word”, Chowdhury says. “He was reported to be suffering from laryngitis — no one clarified whether it was viral or diplomatic!”
He made some very valid and irrefutable points in the beginning about Sangh Parivaar but later went into a disgusting diatribe. Muslims and non-Muslims have the right not to have their religious beliefs mocked. But no other religion in the world is as fair as Islam to people of other faiths. God has also forbidden Muslims from speaking ill of the gods and deities worshipped by non-Muslims. If the polytheists were to hear Muslims speak ill of their gods, it might lead them to speak ill of Allah. Also, if Muslims were to speak ill of pagan gods, it might instigate the polytheists to soothe their wounded feelings by hurting the feelings of Muslims. God says in the Holy Quran: %u201CDo not revile those whom they call upon besides God, lest they revile God out of spite in their ignorance. Thus, We have made alluring to each people its own doings. In the end will they return to their Lord and He shall then tell them the truth of what they did.%u201D (6:108)
He made some very valid and irrefutable points in the beginning about Sangh Parivaar but later went into a disgusting diatribe. Muslims and non-Muslims have the right not to have their religious beliefs mocked. But no other religion in the world is as fair as Islam to people of other faiths. God has also forbidden Muslims from speaking ill of the gods and deities worshipped by non-Muslims. If the polytheists were to hear Muslims speak ill of their gods, it might lead them to speak ill of Allah. Also, if Muslims were to speak ill of pagan gods, it might instigate the polytheists to soothe their wounded feelings by hurting the feelings of Muslims. God says in the Holy Quran: %u201CDo not revile those whom they call upon besides God, lest they revile God out of spite in their ignorance. Thus, We have made alluring to each people its own doings. In the end will they return to their Lord and He shall then tell them the truth of what they did.%u201D (6:108)
This is why Owaisi sahab demanded to hang him
You forgot India is amjority Hindu.Minority shd learn to live like a minority.
Mr Shekhar Gupta!Have you and your IE forgotten that someone is taken into custody in A.P. for giving Anti-National speech?No doubt,Guj Govt might not be paying for giving/not giving news as Congress/MIM or an Anti-majority English News-channel might be paying for giving/not giving bias news.Your Anti-Hindu attitude is seen in line with your favourite NDTV Channel.But better to preserve minimum norms of journalism if for selfish interest,one cannot be an ideal journalist.Those Media-Houses which are doing injustice in giving news out of their filthy arrangement with corrupt parties and that too to take wrong advantage will have to answer the public in near future.
Good that the media is interested in Guj 2002 issue. how come none of the national media is interested in Akbaruddin speech. Guys, he made such a huge noise to get attention. Atleast, give him that. poor chap, he has taken all the hardship for nothing
IE is Pro Muslim and anti Hindu!Why he is not harpening on Owais Speech in Hydrabad? If that speech would have been by Narendra Modi then these would have been on lime light for months and years! Alas no mention or rigours follow us as done in Post Godhra!
Surprising 2002 riots of Gujrat get all the attention as if India has never seen riots before. What about the killing of Kashmiri Hindus and their subsequent rufigee status till now with any help from so called secular politicians? Not even words of sympathy. How many riots have happened in UP even during the past year? Any body counting? Godra train burning and pelting of train by Muslim crowd, preventing Hindu pilgrims to escape alive---Is that a concern to any one? As all public opinion polls show Mr. Modi is the most revered leader not only in Gujrat but across India. I hope Narendrabhai Modi would be our next PM.
About Godhra, people have read the interview of wellknown doctor of Gujarat that the burning act of godhra train was by RSS. As per his information his wife was a part of those pilgrims acompanied by RSS leaders. The RSS activist who invite her for pilgrimage, are alive and she and some other like her burned because it was pre planned massacre by same RSS leaders. They set the train boggy on fire and ran to the another boggy and left innocent hindus burning.
Mr. Indian. Have u got any proofs for what u are talking about? You are running out of your mind.
Was this officer sleeping for 10 years? or Is it the beginning of 2014 national election campaign? Victimhood cry of a specific minority has started by paid officers so that antinational congress and such can gain from votebank politics. So, on one side there will be victimhood cry which will be used by all secular parties NGO media and their intelligentsia,.. while on the other hand there will be Owaisi type from Kashmir to Hyderabad, Kerala to Assam... Hindu, as expected by all, keep on doing bajans of "Ahimsa paramo dharma"
Was this officer sleeping for 10 years? or Is it the beginning of 2014 national election campaign? Victimhood cry of a specific minority has started by paid officers so that antinational congress and such can gain from votebank politics. So, on one side there will be victimhood cry which will be used by all secular parties NGO media and their intelligentsia,.. while on the other hand there will be Owaisi type from Kashmir to Hyderabad, Kerala to Assam... Hindu, as expected by all, keep on doing bajans of "Ahimsa paramo dharma"
Was this officer sleeping for 10 years? or Is it the beginning of 2014 national election campaign? Victimhood cry of a specific minority has started by paid officers so that antinational congress and such can gain from votebank politics. So, on one side there will be victimhood cry which will be used by all secular parties NGO media and their intelligentsia,.. while on the other hand there will be Owaisi type from Kashmir to Hyderabad, Kerala to Assam... Hindu, as expected by all, keep on doing bajans of "Ahimsa paramo dharma"
Was this officer sleeping for 10 years? or Is it the beginning of 2014 national election campaign? Victimhood cry of a specific minority has started by paid officers so that antinational congress and such can gain from votebank politics. So, on one side there will be victimhood cry which will be used by all secular parties NGO media and their intelligentsia,.. while on the other hand there will be Owaisi type from Kashmir to Hyderabad, Kerala to Assam... Hindu, as expected by all, keep on doing bajans of "Ahimsa paramo dharma"
Don't how long how our (pseudo)secularists led by Congress will continue to cook their own stories against Narendra Modi to defame him. Sreekumar has always been known as staunch anti-Modi Congress pawn, and since it has been written by Javid Chowdhury, one can easily understand their motive to malign Modi and BJP. And not surprisingly Indian Express, the official mouth speak of Congress, using Javid Choudhury in its campaign against Modi.
Very interesting inside story revealing facts of post Gujarat riots of 2002. Surprisingly, details of riots and subsequent developments are coming up even after a period of long ten years.
