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Father Cedric Prakash, human rights and peace activist interviewed by Radhika Ramaseshan

Father Cedric Prakash is a human rights and peace activist based in Ahmedabad. He has campaigned for the justice of the victims of the 2002 communal violence on peril of being publicly branded as “non-Gujarati and non-Hindu” by chief minister Narendra Modi.

A resident of Gujarat for nearly 40 years, Prakash is the founding director of Prashant, a centre for human rights, peace and justice. He was named Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, a prestigious French civilian award and was conferred the Kabir Puraskar by the President of India in 1995.

He spoke to The Telegraph on a range of issues including Modi’s ongoing “Sadhbhavna Mission” and of his own experiences in communally polarised Gujarat. Excerpts:

Q: What does this mission mean because the Muslims of Sardarpura are not being able to return to their homes even after the conviction of some rioters?

It is very clear that Muslims won’t be able to go back. Ideally, the Sadbhavna Mission should not be a lip service. It should be about creating an atmosphere where everybody can live without fear for his life and property, fear of being a Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Parsi, high caste, low caste. This is not happening in Gujarat. I challenge you, please take off your bindi, call yourself Mona Sheikh and try and buy or rent a place in a co-operative housing society. Nobody will give you one. Even someone like Hanif Lakdawala (the director of Sanchetna, an Ahmedabad-based NGO working with Muslims and Dalits) lives in a place in his wife’s name. She was Sheeba George. There are by-laws in housing societies that forbid the sale of properties to Muslims.

So this Sadbhavna Mission was a farce. But it is also true that a lot of the Bohra Muslims know which way the wind blows. What matters to them are their commercial interests. They were affected for the first time in 2002.

Q: You, Teesta Setalvad, Shabnam Hashmi and Harsh Mander have campaigned and seriously worked for years to get justice for the 2002 victims. Where is the Congress in all this?

The point is in Gujarat there is no concerted political opposition. To deal with Modi is a political game. While NGOs and civil society can play a role, we cannot take the place of a political movement. We have a two-party system…. Any third front that tried to find its bearings got lost. But for the last several years, the Congress has not been able to put its act together. There is no charismatic leader, no cadre-building at the grassroots.

Q: And Modi…?

To Modi’s credit, he is a demagogue. He speaks a bitter kind of populist language, he turns every adversity into opportunity. Somebody who could have taken him on is (Shanker Sinh) Vaghela. But the so-called original Congress won’t allow him to have a say.

Q: Surely there’s an underbelly to Modi’s growth story?

Modi’s a master strategist and publicist who has been able to sophisticate the art of telling a lie. How does he overnight clear so many mega projects through the so-called single-window clearance process? Has he really levelled the playing field? I don’t know. What I do see is that those pushing bullock carts are now driving cars but this kind of artificial land appreciation at three times or more of its real value is going to be counterproductive in 10 or 15 years. Gujarat’s social indices are very bad. Bihar and Uttar Pradesh fare much better than us. Lots of MoUs are being signed but there’s no way of telling how many of them have been put into practice.

Q: Who’s been looped out of the growth narrative because you said someone pushing a bullock cart owns a car today?

Many tribals, Dalits and backward castes are disenchanted with Modi’s government. Whether this will translate into votes against him, I don’t know. At the last minute he brings in an angle of being the sole protector of every Hindu caste and sub-caste…. He has created a strategy of successfully appropriating the credit for every central scheme, be it the Golden Quadrilateral or any other scheme.

Q: There’s a sense of despondency among Muslims with the community leadership, with the Congress.

There is a crisis of leadership among Muslims. Who represents them? In the Catholic Church, we have a hierarchy, we know the position of the bishop. There’s no hierarchy with the Muslims. The gentleman who tried to put the skullcap on Modi (in the Sadbhavna Mission) is the custodian of two dargahs

Q: There was a time when Modi, the BJP and the Sangh fraternity went after the Christians viciously.

Modi has a huge programme on the anvil in Dangs in February. They will rave and rant against the Christians and launch their re-conversion programme in the Shabari Kumbh Mela. There’s a flip side to Modi’s Christian agenda. He has not been able to prosecute a single person under the anti-conversion law. It has been in force for the past four years. His dilemma is if he pushes too hard he won’t easily get the European Union to grant him a Schengen visa. He has to prove he guarantees religious freedom to all whereas this law prevents it.

Q: Is the issue only conversions? After all Christians are less than one percent of Gujarat’s population and in a perverse sense, they are not a threat to the dominant Hindus?

In Gujarat we are 0.53 of the population in the major cities. Obviously the figures of conversions and re-conversions are exaggerated. The Church to them is a threat because we give education and legal aid to the Dalits and tribals. We have a Right to Food campaign in which we have taken the government to task for leakage and corruption in the food distribution mechanisms. So conversions are a bogey because from our records, the Christian population is coming down.

May I add that the social indices of the position of the poor in Gujarat are terrible. We have malnutrition, child labour in the cotton fields, the municipal schooling is bad. There is a soon-to-be-released study by IIM Ahmedabad that shows that economic and infrastructure development would have reached this stage or more, Modi or no Modi, Congress or BJP.