“The Fiction of Fact Finding - Modi & Godhra” has
been floating around the house for some time now. Enticing with its
promise of investigating the investigators and the investigations of Modi 2002.
“...clear-eyed, unsparing of no one...” is the resounding endorsement of a previous work on the dust jacket of Mr. Mitta’s new book. The endorser is Sagarika Ghosh, one of the shrillest screamers on our journalistic firmament. As with many of her ilk, her linguistic reach exceeds her grasp by a long chalk. That, by itself, does not concern us but it does reflect on the author and his editors.
Finally we pick up the book and get off to a promising start. Mr. Mitta tells us in the very first pages about how he single-handedly stopped the VHP from creating nationwide mayhem shortly after the Godhra incident.
Fact 1: On 13 March 2002, the Supremes rejected a Vajpayee Government request to allow the VHP to conduct a symbolic pooja on the 15th at the Ayodhya site sacred to them.
Fact 2: The rejection order, instead of specifying all 100 odd revenue sites involved in the dispute or using a wider description like “nowhere within 100 miles of ...”, specified two revenue sites as barred.
Fact 3: VHP chief Ashok Singhal caught on to this error and, interpreting it as permission to pooj away at any adjoining site, proclaimed victory. He was all over the visual media all day.
What followed was remarkable. The whole country heard him. Multiple times. Yet no one understood. Except, of course, Mr. Mitta, who promptly wrote about it for the Indian Express, to appear the following morning, “pointing out the error and explaining how it had crept in”.
Chief Justice B N Kirpal read Mr. Mitta’s write up and, to his credit, quickly understood that he had slipped. He promptly scheduled a hearing to correct the “ambiguity”.
Mr. Mitta does not share with us how he happens to be privy to CJ Kirpal’s news reading habits. Living as they do in a cloistered world, it is entirely possible that CJ Kirpal, his staff, colleagues, family or friends did not hear, or hear of, Singhal boasting of victory till they heard from Mr. Mitta.
Mr. Mitta does quote jurist A G Noorani who commends Mr. Mitta’s “...mention of an inadvertent error...” for helping the court. Noorani’s early morning or otherwise equation with Justice Kirpal remains unexplored.
Having told us about this singular history shaping act, Mr. Mitta is quick to reassure us that he is not recounting it “to blow his own trumpet” but that, and get this, he has in the course of his career routinely “sought to expose mistakes, even if by the Supreme Court...” both “inadvertent” and “deliberate”. He has a closetful of trumpets.
To research this book, Mr. Mitta has, apart from poring over thousands of documents, met with a host of lawyers, activists and whistle-blowers all intent on digging up or covering up dirt. His own efforts to assist the whistleblower cop Sanjiv Bhatt are trivial he says in the overall scheme of things, and have been overblown by the investigators.
Mr. Bhatt famously has a clear recollection of some events at a meeting where he was not present according to dozens of other people who were. Mr. Mitta avers that those others do not really count. It is all about credibility and not about numbers.
We will never know how big a debt of gratitude we owe Mr. Mitta.
Next: Modi:Mitta::The Godhra Incident
“...clear-eyed, unsparing of no one...” is the resounding endorsement of a previous work on the dust jacket of Mr. Mitta’s new book. The endorser is Sagarika Ghosh, one of the shrillest screamers on our journalistic firmament. As with many of her ilk, her linguistic reach exceeds her grasp by a long chalk. That, by itself, does not concern us but it does reflect on the author and his editors.
Finally we pick up the book and get off to a promising start. Mr. Mitta tells us in the very first pages about how he single-handedly stopped the VHP from creating nationwide mayhem shortly after the Godhra incident.
Fact 1: On 13 March 2002, the Supremes rejected a Vajpayee Government request to allow the VHP to conduct a symbolic pooja on the 15th at the Ayodhya site sacred to them.
Fact 2: The rejection order, instead of specifying all 100 odd revenue sites involved in the dispute or using a wider description like “nowhere within 100 miles of ...”, specified two revenue sites as barred.
Fact 3: VHP chief Ashok Singhal caught on to this error and, interpreting it as permission to pooj away at any adjoining site, proclaimed victory. He was all over the visual media all day.
What followed was remarkable. The whole country heard him. Multiple times. Yet no one understood. Except, of course, Mr. Mitta, who promptly wrote about it for the Indian Express, to appear the following morning, “pointing out the error and explaining how it had crept in”.
Chief Justice B N Kirpal read Mr. Mitta’s write up and, to his credit, quickly understood that he had slipped. He promptly scheduled a hearing to correct the “ambiguity”.
Mr. Mitta does not share with us how he happens to be privy to CJ Kirpal’s news reading habits. Living as they do in a cloistered world, it is entirely possible that CJ Kirpal, his staff, colleagues, family or friends did not hear, or hear of, Singhal boasting of victory till they heard from Mr. Mitta.
Mr. Mitta does quote jurist A G Noorani who commends Mr. Mitta’s “...mention of an inadvertent error...” for helping the court. Noorani’s early morning or otherwise equation with Justice Kirpal remains unexplored.
Having told us about this singular history shaping act, Mr. Mitta is quick to reassure us that he is not recounting it “to blow his own trumpet” but that, and get this, he has in the course of his career routinely “sought to expose mistakes, even if by the Supreme Court...” both “inadvertent” and “deliberate”. He has a closetful of trumpets.
To research this book, Mr. Mitta has, apart from poring over thousands of documents, met with a host of lawyers, activists and whistle-blowers all intent on digging up or covering up dirt. His own efforts to assist the whistleblower cop Sanjiv Bhatt are trivial he says in the overall scheme of things, and have been overblown by the investigators.
Mr. Bhatt famously has a clear recollection of some events at a meeting where he was not present according to dozens of other people who were. Mr. Mitta avers that those others do not really count. It is all about credibility and not about numbers.
We will never know how big a debt of gratitude we owe Mr. Mitta.
Next: Modi:Mitta::The Godhra Incident
