Communal Cleaving That Fragmented The Hindu Caste Fabric !
BY R.K.MISRA Pebble-stirred ripples both caution and crush. In either case they leave a lasting impact. Three news items that appeared in the course of this week bear eloquent testimony to it. The first, pertains to the account of Lt Gen.Zameer Uddin Shah(retd.) who had been dispatched at the head of a 3000 strong army contingent to control the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat. His memoirs only confirm, what is internally well known, that the response of the state administration was ’tardy’ and that the army was delayed transport for over a day despite a request to the then chief minister, Narendra Modi. The former vice-chief of the army staff said that the sequence of events has been recorded in the ‘war diaries ‘ of the army. General S. Padmanabhan, the then chief of Army Staff had backed the assertions of Shah. Thus it is that crucial time was lost in the statewide deployment of the army while the cops gave a free hand to the rioting mobs targeting the minoriti