The Hindu is to be complimented on the detailed analyses it is offering on l'affaire SIT report (Vidya Subrahmaniam, May 11 and 12).
As the Gujarat 2002 onion peels, one stinking layer after another, I am reminded of the proceedings of the Watergate scandal in America which I had the experience of observing on American soil. The same cast of characters in high places persisting in twisted and brazen ways to keep the stink from spreading and to protect the chieftain in the high chair along with their own complicit skins. A circumstance that highlights with force the extraordinary perseverance of committed individuals and institutions to get to the inner sanctum of the onion at what enormous personal and public cost. If Adam's curse was to be humankind's fate after the Fall, what a deal of labour must go into unravelling perfidies like Gujarat 2002 has been the instructive story of the last decade. It is to be hoped that having come thus far, the full truth of what lay behind the carnage will be out before long, regardless of who is proved innocent or guilty. Such a consummation must be seen as relevant not just to Guajrat, but to the future of the Indian state, the shape of its justice-delivery mechanisms and its will to deliver justice, and to the social remaking of vast segments of the polity.
Badri Raina,
Delhi
