Arundati Roy EXPOSED

02-07-2003, 01:11 PM

FROM SULEKHA.COM

Writing>about the Gujarat riots, Arundhati Roy had this to say
(Outlook, May
>6,2002). "A mob surrounded the house of ex-Congress MP Iqbal Ehsan
Jaffri. His
>phone calls to the director-general of police, the police
>commissioner, the chief secretary, the additional chief secretary
>(home) were ignored. The mobile police vans around his house did not
>intervene. The mob broke into the house. They stripped his daughters
>and burnt them alive. Then they beheaded Jaffri and dismembered
him."
> The description is graphic; the veracity of the incident taken
almost
>for granted coming from a writer of Arundhati Roy's reputation. But,
>alas, that's where we make the mistake. Fame and honesty are not
>interlinked as the following paragraph clearly indicates.
> Jaffri was killed in the riots but his daughters were
>neither 'stripped' nor 'burnt alive.' T.A. Jafri, his son, in a
front-
>page interview titled Nobody knew my father's house was the target
>(Asian Age, May 2, Delhi edition), says, "among my brothers and
>sisters, I am the only one living in India. And I am the eldest in
>the family. My sister and brother live in the US. I am 40 years old
>and I have been born and brought up in Ahmedabad."
> So if Ehsan Jaffri had only one daughter (singular) who was safe
and
>sound in the US, where did Roy get her facts about not one, but
>daughters (plural) being stripped and burnt? Was it the fantasy of a
>writer's mind? Or was it willful deceit aimed at maligning her
>ideological adversaries?
>
>
>Arundhati Roy did apologise for her mistake in a letter published in
Outlook May 27, 2002. Could this have been a genuine mistake, one is
tempted to ask? But when such 'mistakes' occur periodically, the
>chances of them being accidental appear remote. They appear to be in
>fact calculated machinations aimed at achieving a specific goal as
>the following incident further proves.
> In the same article, Roy claims. Last night a friend from Baroda
called. Weeping. It took her fifteen
>minutes to tell me what the matter was. It wasn't very complicated.
>Only that Sayeeda, a friend of hers, had been caught by a mob. Only
>that her stomach had been ripped open and stuffed with burning rags.
>Only that after she died, someone carved 'OM' on her forehead."
>Disturbed by the thought of such a ghastly act, Balbir Punj (a BJP
>MP) had this matter investigated. In Outlook (Jul 08, 2002) he
wrote.
> Shocked by this despicable 'incident,' I got in touch with the
>Gujarat Government. The police investigations revealed that no such
>case, involving someone called Sayeeda, had been reported either in
>urban or rural Baroda. Subsequently, the police sought Roy's help to
>identify the victim and seek access to witnesses who could lead them
>to those guilty of this crime. But the police got no cooperation.
>Instead, Roy, through her lawyer, replied that the police had no
>power to issue summons. Why is she hedging behind technical
excuses?"
> So when asked to prove her allegations, Arundhati Roy developed
cold
>feet; definitely not the attitude of a crusader for truth.
> Similarly you must have read some accounts of what preceded Godhra.
>There were wild accounts of an altercation between Ram sevaks and
>Muslim stall-owners, and of the abduction of a Muslim girl by Ram
>sevaks. All this emanated on the basis of a fictitious e-mail as
>revealed by Prem Shankar Jha (Outlook, March 25)
>
>