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Ramachandra Guha: On the 20th anniversary of the Gujarat pogrom, will Modi finally apologise?
This year, 2022, shall be a year of anniversaries. The 150th anniversary of Aurobindo’s birth. The 100th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s arrest during the Non-Cooperation movement. The 80th anniversary of the launching of the Quit India movement. The 75th anniversary of India’s independence from British rule. The 70th anniversary of the first general election. The 60th anniversary of the India-China war.
These anniversaries shall surely be celebrated by the prime minister and his government with characteristic bombast and gusto, each event being used to further promote the personality cult of Narendra Modi. Stirring speeches will be made by the prime minister, about the spiritual greatness of Aurobindo, of the struggle and sacrifice of our freedom fighters, of the apparently deep and enduring roots of India’s democratic traditions, of the resolve by his government never to allow Indian troops to be underprepared when facing a foreign adversary.
There will, however, be one anniversary whose commemoration will, I suspect, be missing from the prime minister’s official calendar. This is the 20th anniversary of the Gujarat riots of February-March 2002. The word, “riots”, is, in fact, a euphemism; the more accurate term for what happened is “pogrom”, since the violence was chiefly targeted at one community, Muslims.
Striking similarities
To the…