
Interestingly, while the book provides statements and detailed meetings of how the PUCL represented to the top state and national authorities against the authorities’ “failure” to deal with the 2002 communal riots, it does not seem to think that untouchability, or manual scavenging, is a human rights issue in Gujarat – despite its reference in Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International reports. Worse, the report ignores attack on Dalits, including the Golana tragedy in which six of Macwan’s and Sethi’s colleagues were gunned down by dominant caste people in 1986, or the murder of Dalit youth in Thangadh in 2012.
Edited by Gautam Thaker, PUCL’s Gujarat head, the book addresses Setalvad as a “well-known and fearless journalist” (sic!). A senior activist said, “Setalvad has established herself as top rights defender, and all-India PUCL recently representing before the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) seeking justice to her, pleading to stop harassment to her and her colleagues by seeking to implicate her in a fake embezzlement case. Gujarat authorities are doing this because it was her intervention in the Supreme Court and other courts which led to over 110 convictions so far with other trials nearing completion.”
Interestingly, the reference to Setalvad as journalist runs parallel the editor of the book, Thaker, in his introductory remarks praising RSS’ mouthpiece “Sadhana” as a "fearless" periodical. At two other places, the book refers to – albeit in passing – contributions by Vishnu Pandya, a former “Sadhana” editor and currently a top Sangh Parivar “intellectual” in Gujarat known to gone close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in the civil rights movement. The book’s cover has a huge photograph of anti-emergency fighter Jay Prakash Narayan, referring to him as the symbol of “light in times of darkness.”
When contacted for reaction, Yagnik told Counterview, “Yes, I have noticed. I have been ignored in the book, and my colleagues are upset about it. Even the invitation card which I received did not have my name, though I headed PUCL once. I don’t want to make an issue. I appeal for unity when there are fresh signs of attack on civil liberty.” Others, who did not want to be named, added, “Publishers of the book have taken one-sided picture of the human rights movement in Gujarat, suggesting how divisions in it find reflected in PUCL’s Gujarat literature as well. It is not known if this has happened because of ignorance.”
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