Her feeling of desertion will undoubtedly be heightened by the Gujarat government’s latest decision to seek the death penalty for her before the high court. Considering how her success in successive elections – her margin of victory increased from 1,10,000 votes in 2002 to 1,80,000 in 2007 - led to her appointment as a minister in Narendra Modi’s cabinet, she is now bound to feel that she is being let down in her hour of distress by those who had earlier elevated her.

Given the nature of the charges for which she was found guilty by the trial court – she was said to have distributed swords to the rioters and fired from a pistol while exhorting the saffron mob to attack Muslims - it can be assumed that her backers in the party and the government, including the chief minister, were aware of her murderous role during the outbreak when they decided to make her a minister.

It was probably the horrifying conduct of politicians like Kodnani and Babu Bajrangi, who was given a life sentence along with her, during the riots which made Atal Behari Vajpayee admit that there were people in the BJP who were guided by their emotions – bhavnao se parichalit thhey. That these were communal sentiments was obvious. Yet, when they were caught several years later, they were left high and dry by their political patrons.

It is worth noting that L.K. Advani was regarded as one of Kodnani’s mentors presumably because of their common Sindhi background. When Vajpayee found that there were people who succumbed to their anti-Muslim feelings, Advani, too, must have received the same information since he was deputy prime minister and home minister at the time. Yet, there was not a squeak from him. Not only did he maintain a deafening silence about the criminal charges against his protege, this “tallest leader”, as Mulayam Singh Yadav recently called him, was among those who persuaded Vajpayee – along with Pramod Mahajan and Arun Jaitley – not to sack Modi.

For Kodnani, however, the course of politics has now taken an even more vicious turn with the possibility of a death sentence for her. Not surprisingly, the move has been seen as yet another of Modi’s efforts to pose as secular, persuading the Shiv Sena to say that seeking death penalty for Kodnani and Bajrangi is a “deadly attack on Hindus”. This saffron ally of the BJP is all the more outraged because “Hindus … have different expectations from Modi”, who is seen as a “protector of Hindus”.

Kodnani may be no more than a pawn in the larger game of politics. But, events surrounding her are pointers to the cynicism and anti-democratic outlook of the Hindutva camp. To start with the second aspect, the Shiv Sena’s response shows how little it cares about the deaths of nearly 100 Muslims in the attack by the riotous mob led by Kodnani in the Naroda Patiya area. The carnage is as infamous as the Gubarga housing society massacre in which the culpabilities of Modi himself are still being probed. For the Shiv Sena, however, it is the punishment of the criminal which is a “deadly attack” and not the killing of the innocent.

For Modi, on the other hand, Kodnani and Bajrangi are evidently dispensable elements. They played their allotted role during the action-reaction outbreak which was Modi’s explanation for the murder and mayhem, which lasted for nearly two months and claimed 1,200 lives officially and more than 2,000 in unofficial estimates. Since he regarded the disturbances as “stray incidents” which did not require an apology, it is not surprising that he is not bothered about the saffron foot soldiers who fell foul of the law.

Not only that, the Modi government seems to believe that by calling for a harsher punishment than what was given by the lower court, it is demonstrating its concern for the rule of law, which was not evident when it closed nearly 2,000 cases of rioting for want of evidence. These were subsequently reopened on the Supreme Court’s orders and some of them, like the Best bakery and Bilkis Bano cases, had to be tried outside Gujarat since the dispensation of justice was not possible in the venomous, anti-Muslim atmosphere prevailing in the state.

As the Kodnani case shows, the last word on the riots is yet to be said. Besides, it is not only the death and destruction in February-March, 2002, which will haunt Modi and perhaps derail his prime ministerial ambitions, the slow turning of the wheels of justice on the various incidents of murder, arson and rape will continue to keep the focus on the horrendous “stray incidents” in the foreseeable future. (IPA Service)