Parita Mukta

I have outlined above the major conditions for bringing about repair. I summarise below:

1. Ensure that the movement for reparative justice for the survivors continues to be actively supported from the diaspora, as does the movement to secure the livelihoods of the survivors.

2. Actively take up work against the politics of hate, within the community, within your organisations, in the cultural and public sphere. Disallow casual, dinner-table communal comments too. Know that all this forms a complex of poisonous hate. It is not adequate to take a morally distant stance on the Gujarat genocide: to see it as distant both in time and geographical space.

3. Become knowledgeable about the plethora of groups that exist in the diaspora that are linked up with the Hindu right. Is a charity that promises to care for the poor in India really what it seems? And the guru who teaches you asanas to promote your life? Is he a supporter of turning India into a `Bharat’ state and do you know and have you seen the implications of this view on the lives of minorities in India? Inform yourself on this. Take a clear stand. Know that you have your conscience to live with.

4. Ensure that your voice speaks up for tolerance and for peace. Consistently write letters supporting this, and giving examples of this, specifically within the pages of the ethnic minority papers in the West.

5. Unlink yourself irrevocably from the tentacles of the Indian nation-state: it needs you to bolster up its image, and it feeds off your praise. Assert yourself as global citizens of the Indian diaspora and say loud and clear that you will not forget what was done to innocent people in 2002. Live the politics of care and peace and walk the talk.

6. Troubled politics between India and Pakistan makes the conditions of religious minorities even more vulnerable. Divest yourself of that sneaky feeling of a topsy-turvy ‘anti-imperialist’ pride when the Indian (and Pakistani) nation-state thumbs its nose at the West by testing nuclear bombs. Know that this upside-down anti-imperialism will cost the peoples of S. Asia very dear – in human lives.

Place your sense of esteem and sense of worth in speaking out against and working against all forms of sectarian strife. Let us ensure that no more Gujarats ever take place.