The Sabarmati Report

In an interview that went viral ahead of The Sabarmati Report, actor Vikrant Massey, briefly turning political analyst, reflected on the state of the nation. “People say that Hindus are in danger, that Muslims are in danger. No one is in danger; everything is going fine. This is the best country to live in the world,” he declared in a podcast. The nervous naivety of Hindi film actors ahead of a controversial release is always enlightening to witness. It’s a balancing act no gymnast or slackliner can fathom.

News is the truth that you choose to bring out, a cunning television journalist tells her artless subordinate early on in The Sabarmati Report. She’s the villain of the piece for concealing inconvenient realities and conveying only what suits her purpose and politics. Funny how The Sabarmati Report’s poorly crafted propaganda masquerading as a crusade for justice is nothing but a blatant embodiment of these very ideals.

The communal bloodshed that tainted Gujarat in 2002 has been told and retold on film, in books, on TV debates. But there’s been a lid on the Godhra tragedy that preceded the riots, a lid that’s lifted occasionally to put out theories that suppress and mislead more than reveal. A gas cylinder, a cigarette? What sparked the fire that roasted 59 kar sevaks including tiny children inside a bogey of the Sabarmati Express outside Godhra station in 2002?

On February 27, 2002, several coaches of the Sabarmati Express at Godhra station caught fire, causing the deaths of 59 people, many of them women and children. The train from Ayodhya, bound for Ahmedabad, was full of ‘karsevaks’ returning after a ceremony held under the aegis of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). Flames could be seen in four coaches, according to reports, but the worst hit was Coach 6, where the deaths took place. The horrific incident was followed by three days of rioting in Gujarat: according to several accounts, the number of the dead was well over 2000. The Nanavati-Mehta commission, appointed by the state government, concluded that the fire was the result of a pre-planned arson by a large Muslim mob; the one-member Banerjee commission instituted in 2004 by the government at the Centre declared that it was an accident.