Revati Laul

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India has seen enough instances of horrific hate violence. We tend to imagine the perpertrators of these crimes of hate and bigotry as faceless mobs. We tend to forget that these men are also humans and have lived a normal lives full with dreams, aspirations, love as well as hate. Most of them have families they will go back to after they have murdered/raped/plundered.

Revati is looking for answers. She is a reputed investigative and TV journalist. Her quest for answers. Took 10 years and talked to 100 men who joined the crimes and foiund few who were willing to reveal the story.

  • Talks of Gujarat 2002 riots
  • The viciousness spread resulted in all kinds of crime that included rape, merciless killing, loot of Muslims
  • Naroda Patiya massacre
  • How easily who were friends before became foes (Jai Bhawani who killed Majid’s family)
  • Graphic description of the details of the incident with a lot of detail
  • A display of the amount of hatred that was fillled in the Hindus by the VHP/Bajrang Dal
  • 3 men part of the Hindu right mob - Pranav, Dungar, Suresh Judeja (Suresh Langdo)
  • Build up to the Gujarat riot
  • Aftermath
  • Suresh Langdo
    • Charranagar, adjacent to Naroda Patiya
    • Father used to say that he is not my son.
    • He had seen his friends going to study in English medium schools while he could not.
    • He contracted polio when he was a kid.
    • Had a wife named Farzana Bano
    • Family of theives
    • Pure hate for Muslims because his sister ran away with one
    • Boasts of raping and pulping to death Muslim women, and who is charged with murdering a pregnant woman and killing her foetus.
    • Marriage to Farzana who he batter, abuses, loves
  • Dungar
    • Low caste - Bhil (largest tribal group in Gujarat) - they had a century of opression behind them, which made fear their single driving force.
    • Intelligent kid
    • Bhils wanted government job status which was a position of official authority and replace their fear of the upper castes.
    • Watched Ramayana on TV, and was inspired to read Mahabharata, Shiv Puran, Garud Puran, the Vishwakarma Puran along with construction job.
    • Sent to live with his teacher who was
    • The VHP knew this and told them that they were being watched to keep a check on them from wavering. (fear of Sangh + police)
    • There was this one time after the train burning when a friend named Irfan bhai shot a bullet in the air, fearing danger, this triggerred Dungar and he proclaimed that there would be no Muslims in the village.
    • The houses were torched
    • Member of the VHP
    • Jealous of the riches Muslims had collected
    • Becomes a power grabbing politician
  • Pranav
    • 28 then MA in college
    • most socially and politically dominant caste group
    • Tried egg when he was young (they were like drugs in Gujarat and were sold coooked on the street)
    • Saved a Christian teacher and escorted her to safety before violence erupted.
    • The police said they had 10 minutes to loot from the Muslim stores after which no one would be beaten up.
    • Atheist cricket matches (engaging Hindus in rebuiliding Muslim homes)
  • Build up
    • Aspirational people like Dungar with no place for their dreams to grow, the VHP knew how to harness that anger for their needs.
    • All the existing narrative at a national level was already there in Gujrat pre-2002, i.e. Muslims belong to Pakistan, Hindustan is for Hindus.
    • They had no clue on how things would improve if Muslims were kicked out.
    • In the run up to the elections the VHP-BJP had created a narrative to show Hindu victimhood, and claimed that the Congress favoured the Muslims and hence must be voted out of power.
    • Anger and an imagined opressor was uniting them.
    • The VHP’s Ayodhya campaign added to all the heat.
    • Sangh Parivar; VHP - aspirational Hindus, RSS - the intellectual arm, Banjrang Dal - the millitant arm
    • Dungar declared to the people to “burn the Muslims” and seek revenge.
    • They were also anti-Christian and anti-NGO
  • “The 28th was not a calendar day. It was a black hole that bent time. In the lives of Suresh, Dungar and Pranav, it re-arranged all previous days and experiences.”