Thread by @ZahirJ

Thread on Gujarat 2002, part 3 of 3

47/ By enablers, I mean those who looked away, who trivialized, who decided, even after interviewing Muslims, that their story was not fit for publication. "That's the Muslim view," one journalist told me in 2014 after he asked me in Gujarat about 2002. "Not the objective view."

48/ On some days, in 2002, I would return from the camps and vomit and cry uncontrollably. My host family in A'bad was a Brahmin Hindu family. They loved me, and I loved them, but they would also tell me: "Muslims only go to the camps for free biryani." That, too, is enabling.

49/ The anthropologist Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi, author of "Pogrom in Gujarat," was also an eye-witness to 2002 like I was. I can't recommend his book enough. He grew up in Germany and makes comparisons between Gujarat 2002 and the Holocaust. press.princeton.edu/books/paperbac…

50/ I should say: I am generally not a fan of comparisons, esp with the Holocaust. At Amnesty International, where I once worked, I learned not to make comparisons. A tragedy is tragic not because of its comparative size but because of what it does to a person.

51/ But Ghassem-Fachandi, a German national, writes about the chilling complacency he saw widespread in Gujarat that also once existed in Germany. And he does so with sensitivity, rigor, and a tremendous amount of compassion for Hindus, Muslims, Jews.

52/ He writes: "For me, the single most disturbing experience during the violence in Gujarat was not the complicity of politicians and orchestrations of large parts of the state machinery but the psychological coordination of 'ordinary' Gujaratis with whom I was acquainted.”

53/ Ghassem-Fachandi uses the German word "gleichschaltung" in that passage. The BBC writes about that term: "The Nazis took a number of measures to control the lives of the German people. This control was called Gleichschaltung or 'co-ordination.'" bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guide…

54/ Today, I can't help but think of the Hindu kids on my street in Ahmedabad 2002. They kept asking me to take them to see Spiderman. "Sure," I said, "but let's wait for the violence to end." Their parents would come to me later, anger on their faces, and say: "What violence?"

55/ I also think about my parents' Hindu friends in California, some of whom who stopped talking to my parents after I started writing about 2002 and Modi. Many still won't speak to them 20 yrs later. It's silly. It's cruel. My parents have never said a word about 2002 or Modi.

56/ Sometimes, yes, I wish I had not spoken up about 2002 and Modi. I wish I had not put my parents through what I put them through. I wish my work on Gujarat 2002 had not made them so isolated, and so loathed, by some Hindus in California. These were their friends, once.

57/ It's ridiculous, if you think about it. Gujarat was home to generations of my family before they moved to Tanzania and later to the US.

I love Ahmedabad. Someday, I want to introduce my newborn son to the people, and to the city, I love. But I fear what India is becoming.

58/ In closing, what then, to paraphrase Raymond Carver, do we talk about when we talk about 2002? If it's only Modi, then we are, I argue, having too easy a conversation.

It's the society and the culture that we have to interrogate, too. And it's the very nature of memory.

59/ I always found it curious, when interviewing BJP leaders in Ahmedabad, when they would tell me that Indians should remember what the Congress party and the Mughals did, as well as 1984 and Somnath. Great, I would say. What about 2002? Uh, no, they would say, kicking me out.

60/ So no, I won't forget. Why should I? Why should anyone? Memory, I have learned, can be a form of beauty, a form of resistance, a form of justice. It can also be a form of love. Anyone who tells you not to remember 2002 is denying to others, and to themselves, that love.

61/ And if you want to help, please support--financially, morally--the brave Muslim journalists, writers, filmmakers, and artists of India, especially Muslim women. Too many to name here. My love, respect, and solidarity to them, as well as to the people of Kashmir and Ukraine.