Twenty years ago, on February 27 2002, an enraged Muslim mob burnt 59 innocent Hindus, including women and children, to avenge the demolition of Mughal-era Babri Masjid Ayodhya. A group of Hindus travelling from Ayodhya in Sabarmati Express were mercilessly burnt alive inside the train by a riotous Muslim mob. The raging mob of over 2,000 people had killed the innocent Hindus for the simple reason that they had visited the Ayodhya to perform karseva for the Ram Mandir.

Since then, there have been ruthless efforts to ignore not only the deaths of innocent Hindus at Godhra but also whitewash the crimes of Muslim mobs that burnt down the S6 coach of Sabarmati express that led to the death of 59 innocent Hindus. As a result, the portrayal of Gujarat riots has been skewed and one-sided, with left-liberal and Islamist harping on the narrative of Muslims being the victims of the carnage while carefully ignoring the Godhra massacre simply because it was the Hindus who had lost their lives. 

Sadly, twenty years down the line, nothing has changed. Even today, the left-liberals and Islamists continue to exonerate Muslims from their crimes and, at times, have also been successful in making people believe that the Hindu deaths were just an ‘accident’ and not a pre-planned attack.

Siddharth Varadarajan, one of the founders of the far-left portal ‘The Wire’, took to Twitter on Friday to further the same propaganda to claim that the Godhra killings were just a conspiracy.

In a tweet, Siddharth Varadarajan claimed that even after twenty years of the Godhra killings, people are still living a lie that “anti-Hindu conspirators” forcibly entered a railway coach filled to the brim with karsevaks, who poured 60 litres of petrol and set it on fire without even a single passenger seeing them do this.

Siddharth Varadarajan insinuated that the Godhra killings never happened as it is being projected. As per the far-left ‘journalist’, the burning of Hindus inside the Sabarmati express was a lie because nobody saw it. Unsurprisingly, Varadarajan did not even mention it was Muslim mob that burnt the Hindus alive and instead referred to them as “anti-Hindu conspirators”.

The assertions made by Siddharth Varadarajan to deny the killings of Hindus by terming it as some sort of conspiracy even surprised a few left-liberals, who otherwise join the likes of Varadarajan to peddle the anti-Hindu agenda.

Jyoti Punwani, another far-left ‘liberal’ journalist, responded to Varadarajan’s shocking tweets saying that eyewitnesses saw them (Muslim mobs) throwing fireballs, stones at the Sabarmati express.

However, Siddharth Varadarajan was in no mood to accept the facts. Instead, he claimed the police said the stones and fireballs did not cause the fire.

“The official fire theory is of a pre-planned conspiracy—repeated by the Nanavati Commission,” said Siddharth Varadarajan.

Left-liberals push “perpetual victimhood” theory to exonerate Muslims

Essentially, Siddharth Varadarajan hinted that the Godhra killings were a conspiracy to target the Muslims of the country. The underlying message of his tweet is that nobody killed Hindus on that fateful day as no one inside the train saw it. Unfortunately, none of the victims is alive today to narrate what transpired inside the coach on that fateful day.

And Siddharth is acutely aware of this fact and therefore, exploits it to the hilt to spin a web of brazen lies, alluding that the Godhra train burning incident was a conspiracy to villainise the Muslim community. As Siddharth Varadarajan carefully omits to mention eyewitness accounts that held the Muslim mob responsible for burning the Sabarmati express, he knows it well that the dead Hindus are not going to come out from their graves to disclose the turn of events that took place in Godhra on February 27, 2002.

Siddharth, who claims to be a ‘journalist’, should ideally have been reporting the truth on how a Muslim mob burnt Hindus to death. However, the far-left journalist resorted to shameless propaganda not only to forgive the murderous Muslim mob but also to create a wave of a conspiracy by denying the fact that it was a Muslim mob that killed Hindus.

With this, Siddharth intended to portray that Muslims were being simply blamed for the Godhra killings. Siddharth Varadarajan’s tweet is a classic example of how the Indian “liberal-secular” establishment furthers the “perpetual Muslim victimhood” narrative. This is not just limited to India alone.

OpIndia CEO and author Rahul Roushan in his book “Sanghi Who Never Went To A Shakha”, talks about why such conspiracy theories are so popular, especially in the Muslim world.

Just as Varadarajan’s attempts to portray the Godhra killings as a conspiracy, several attempts were made to brush off terror acts committed by Islamic terrorists as a conspiracy created to target Muslims.

In his book, Rahul Roushan writes, “This is why conspiracy theories are so popular in the Muslim world-9/11 was an inside job, ISIS was created by the US, Mumbai terror attacks were carried out by the RSS, the Pulwama terror attack was done by the Government of India, the Godhra train carnage was an accident, no Muslim mob ever attacked doctors or policemen during the coronavirus lockdown—you name a conspiracy theory, and it has an audience.”

Explaining the ‘perpetual victimhood’ displayed by the Muslims, Rahul Roushan writes, “An average Muslim is perpetually in victimhood mode due to this. Such theories convince him that everyone else is conspiring to give Muslims and Islam a bad name. Such conspiracy theories not only get support from the Right-wing groups among the Muslim community but from seemingly neutral and erudite intellectuals of the society too. Ironically, the Islamists privately celebrate or take pride in each of these incidents, but with active support from the leftists and liberals, they publicly deny it. And the common person is left confused about what reality is and what is fiction.”

“Not only the boundaries of what is acceptable and normal have been pushed too far, your ability to identify this boundary has been compromised too. It has been made very difficult for you to spot an Islamist around you,” he adds.

Left-liberals blames Hindus for the Godhra carnage

Most importantly, it is not just Siddharth Varadarajan alone who pushes this bogey of ‘conspiracy against Muslims’ to claim that Godhra killing never happened and instead, it was an attempt to gaslight innocent Muslims in the country.

Last week, as nations mourned the victims of the Godhra killings on the twentieth anniversary, the left-liberal media establishment had tried to whitewash the burning alive of 59 Hindus at Godhra. The media, which should ideally have been reporting the truth on how a Muslim mob burnt Hindus to death, was far more bothered about being politically correct than standing with the unvarnished truth of how Hindus had been massacred.

After exhausting all their tricks to absolve Muslims of their involvement in the carnage, the Left has now proceeded to deem the Godhra train burning incident as a conspiracy to target the Muslim community. Varadarajan’s latest assertion that the killing of Hindus by a communally charged-up Muslim mob is a part of the longstanding effort of the Left to brush off the tragedy and push the blame on the victims, i.e Hindus.