11 people have been sentenced to life imprisonment for the Gulbarg society massacre. Calling the massacre of 69 people at the Gulbarg Society in Gujarat the “darkest day in the history of civil society”, a judge (special court) today sentenced 11 to life in jail but announced no death sentence for any of the 24 convicts.The attack took place on February 28, 2002, a day after a mob set afire coaches of the Sabarmati Express train at Godhra station leaving 59 people dead.

The most prominent name in the 69 people killed in Gulbarg massacre was former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, who was dragged out, hacked and burnt to death. His frantic phone calls to police officers and senior politicians for help allegedly went unanswered.

‘’Darkest day in the history of civil society’’ is what the judge giving the verdict called the Gulbarg massacre. But what about Godhra massacre, just a day earlier, where 59 people were burnt alive in a train coach, which included infants? Was it not even a sad day, if not the darkest day? Does it not even deserve a mention by any lawmaker?

Those 59 people were murdered in the worst way possible by a jihadi mob who had planned the whole thing beforehand. They made sure that the train was surrounded, with zero chance of anyone escaping. They set the entire coach ablaze from outside, roasting 59 men, women and children alive in the most gruesome manner. Because they were Hindus returning from kar seva in Ayodhya. Because they were polytheist kafirs, and in the eyes of believers, worse than dogs, as they volunteered to go for building the foundation of Ram Mandir where the invasive Babri Masjid once stood (on Ram janmabhoomi ruins).

Even when we compare these two events, we find that the S4 coach burning was a pre-planned event with chilling accuracy, and the next day’s massacre of Gulbarg society was retaliation. There can be no justification for any kind of violence and loss of life, but to trivialize Hindu lives and sensationalize Muslim lives is not justice. Its opportunism of the worst kind. You can’t assemble thousands of people holding inflammable material in a matter of few hours, it needs meticulous and calculated planning. But the secular polity wants to whitewash this crime as if never happened. From judicial probes that stated that the fire was lighted from inside the coach (?) to NGOs tutoring and creating “witnesses” out of thin air to give statements of “foetuses torn out of pregnant women”, “mass graves”, “Modi abusing Jafri (who’s own anti Hindu activities are conveniently whitewashed) and giving instructions to kill him”, “Muslims being terrified to exist in India” to various smear campaigns against Narendra Modi and the Gujarat government, they left no stone unturned to bring him down. Unfortunately for them, he won the 2002 elections again, and yet again in 2007 and 2012. The smear campaign did not end in 2012, it has been going on ever since, with them blocking his entry to US in 2005.

In contrast, what has been done for the Godhra victims? While the names “Gulbarg society” and “Best Bakery” and “Naroda Patiya” are puked out by news traders all the time, why is the name “Sabarmati Express” not invoked even once?

Also is never told that Gujarat had numerous riots under successive Congress governments (notably 1969), but just one under BJP, and that has proven to be the last. Or that the much larger Bhagalpur riot (1989) in Bihar costed Congress power in Bihar, which it has never recovered. Or that the town of Godhra is severly under the influence of Ghanchi Muslim gangs, in one of which Haji Bilal, one of the main perpetrators of the train burning belonged.

Why is there zero media support for justice for the victims of Godhra carnage? Why no hue and cry for the perpetrators of the S4 coach burning to be tried and sentenced? You see reams and reams of pages being written on Gujarat ‘genocide’ of Muslims in 2002 (a laughable term for this since the toll was no more than 2000-10000 odd, and 20% of the dead were Hindus), but absolutely nothing about the aftermath for the families of the 59 dead people. Were they not humans?

No they weren’t. They have joined the list of Kashmiri Pandits, Pakistani and Bangladeshi Hindus, whose sufferings have been pushed under the secular carpet. This is secular India. Hindu lives don’t matter. Everything else does. After all, the “Idea of India” has to be scrubbed clean of anything Hindu, be it culture, or life.