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Modi to be boycotted during Vajpayee's visit

Sheela Bhatt in Ahmedabad

On Thursday at around 1330 IST, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee is expected to visit the relief camp within the Shah Alam Dargah in Ahmedabad where 10,535 Muslims have been sheltered since February 28.

On Tuesday when the organisers of the camp met the advance team from the Special Protection Group, which guards the prime minister, they made one thing clear to the officers: "If (Chief Minister) Narendra Modi accompanies the PM when he arrives at the relief camp, we don't guarantee order."

Sharief Khan, one of the organisers, said, "The riot victims are very disturbed and hurt. They are abusing Modi and they believe he is responsible for their pain. We want Modi to go. We have told the security men that PM should not bring Modi along with him."

The impending visit has made the relief camp a centre of attraction, all of a sudden. More than 30 toilets are being set up overnight. More water has been made available. And for the first time in 30 days, municipal sweepers were seen cleaning the roads and clearing the heaps of garbage.

Even the quality of the provisions supplied by the government has improved -- they are no longer the worm-infested lentils and low-quality grains that the refugees had to make do with so far.

The camp shelters, among others, more than 1,000 homeless riot victims of the Naroda Patia area where 92 people were burnt alive in the brutal orgy following the carnage in Godhra.

It houses about 3,000 children. Thirteen women in the camp have also delivered babies over the last 30 days.

The cash dole that these victims are collectively entitled to works to about Rs 1.6 million, but the collector's office has so far given them only Rs 225,000.

And not one of the relatives of the 92 persons killed in Naroda Patia have been given the compensation of Rs 100,000 announced by the chief minister.

No one has been allotted the kit comprising household goods worth Rs 1250 that they are entitled to as per the rules. The camp has not received a donation of a single rupee from any Hindu organisation, though, to their pleasant surprise, the organisers on Wednesday received Rs 10,000 from a Shiv Shanker in Bangalore.

Except for Gujarat Governor Sunder Singh Bhandari, Congress Working Committee member Ahmed Patel, former chief minister Shankersinh Vaghela and National Human Rights Commission Chairman Jagdish Sharan Verma, no VIP has cared to visit the Shah Alam camp.

Vajpayee will be welcomed here because of these very reasons. "Muslims want security and who better than the PM to talk to?" remarked an organiser.

A visit to the camp is an education in what the psyche of the Gujarati Muslim today is. People are scared to move out of the camp. Children are all the time inquiring about the dead. The impact of the carnage they have witnessed is unfathomable. Boys and girls in their teens and twenties are simmering with anger. And those who are a little cool are hungering for justice to be done with an impartial police inquiry.

"I feeling helpless sometimes," Sharief Khan confessed. "A few boys came to me and told me, 'make us suicide bombers'! It's difficult to control them when people are still being burnt alive. I am worried. In the absence of any confidence-building measures from the politicians, police or administration, the victims are eagerly waiting for PM Vajpayee. They want to cry on his shoulder."

Khan and three other organisers -- advocate Mohsin Kadri, Shafi Memon and Mujib Khan -- will meet Vajpayee. Ten riot victims will also be allowed to talk to the prime minister.

According to the Muslim leaders, they will seek Chief Minister Modi's resignation in their memorandum to the prime minister. They will also demand a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation, government land to build homes for the homeless and, above all, justice without political interference.

"We also want the PM to provide security to Muslim families in villages so that the exodus from there can be contained. We want the mass killings to stop," he said.

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