Former Gujarat DGP R B Sreekumar, perhaps the most painful thorn in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's flesh, has after months of struggle brought out the Gujarati translation of 'Gujarat: Behind the Curtain', a hugely controversial book that offers an insider's account of how Modi and his police subverted the criminal justice system during the 2002 Godhra riots.
The book had already come out in Urdu, Hindi, Tamil and Malayalam. But to get the Gujarati translation out was akin to challenging the lion in its own lair.
“I had tried to submit my book to more than 20 reputed publishers in Gujarati. All of them rejected. Some of them did not want to even so much as talk to me. Clearly, they didn't want trouble,” said Sreekumar, seated at his house in Thiruvananthapuram that he has put up for sale. (He lives with his family in Gandhinagar, the capital of Gujarat. Sreekumar is in Thiruvananthapuram to deliver a lecture on Ambedkar and to find a buyer for his house.)
Many of his close friends and relatives, too, had tried to dissuade him from going ahead with the Gujarati translation. It was as if they knew it would be futile to even attempt. In 2017, when 'Gujarat: Behind the Curtain' was released, not a single vernacular daily in Gujarat had covered the event. A book that exposed Modi did not exist for them.
Poet's knock at night
But Sreekumar wanted the truth to be told in the language that mattered the most to those who suffered. Finally, Pharos Media, the media house that published the Urdu and Hindi versions, agreed.
Finding a translator was the next challenge. Not surprisingly, all the writers he approached politely declined. “No one in Gujarat wanted to be seen as closely associated with me. Why should they pick a snake lying on the fence and throw it around their shoulders,” Sreekumar said.
But one man was willing, though in a very cautious way. Poet Raman Lal Waghela. “He was understandably guarded. Once we decided to collaborate, Raman Lal would daily come to my house in Gandhinagar after dark and leave close to midnight,” Sreekumar said. Waghela also did not want his name on the book. “But after a time he got bolder and said it was fine to have his name on the book,” he said and added: “Even then his name is not on the front cover of the book as in my other translations.”
Vigilante no more
The book was released last month, on April 18. Some well-wishers had raised concerns that the local authorities would refuse permission. But nothing happened. It was a small function, and went off smoothly. “The Gujarat administration had long ceased to attribute even nuisance value to me,” the former DGP said with a chuckle. “A bodyguard given to me after some human rights lawyers sought protection for me was taken off the moment Modi became the prime minister,” he said. The new thinking was: Now that the whole world looks upon Sreekumar's charges with utter disdain, it would be preposterous to even suggest that anyone would want to harm him.
But even when it was apparent that he could no longer harm Modi, powerful publishers, not just Gujarati but even globally reputed ones, were wary of collaborating with him. “Harper Collins sat on my English manuscript for four months and then said no,” Sreekumar said. “When I asked them the reason they told me that they are an international company and therefore had constraints. I did not fully get what they said,” he said. Rupa Publications, too, rejected his manuscript. Penguin did not even respond.
ISRO spy mystery
It was a small publishing company, Manas Publications, that eventually brought out 'Gujarat: Behind the Curtain'. Its motto was inspiring (“we convert fighters into writers”, it said) but Sreekumar was shocked to find additions in the final manuscript that put him in a bad light. The editors had, behind his back, added that he had links to Teesta Setalvad's NGO Citizens for Justice and Peace and that he had interrogated Nambi Narayanan in the ISRO case.
“Both were false. I admire Teesta's work but I have no working relationship with CJP. As for the ISRO spy case, I had interrogated Sasikumar but not Nambi Narayanan. In fact, I had not even seen Nambi at that time,” he said. “These insertions were done at the instance of someone but I spotted them just in time to remove them. I have also cut my links with Manas after the first edition,” Sreekumar said.
Death of Gauri
He could take all this in his stride, can now casually laugh about them too, but not his failure to get the book translated into Kannada. His Kannada attempt will forever be linked to a deep loss. “After reading the English version, Gauri Lankesh had called me. She sounded excited and said she would get it translated into Kannada,” Sreekumar said.
Lankesh got a Kannada Sahithya Akademi winner to do the translation. “The translation deal was almost struck when Lankesh was shot dead,” Sreekumar said. “The writer who lived a few paces away from Lankesh's house called me up frantically and asked me to spare her from the translation job. I understood,” Sreekumar said.
Modi's nemesis
Sreekumar was ADGP (intelligence) in the days after the Godhra violence erupted. His book offers perhaps the most damning account of the role of the Gujarat administration and its chief minister Narendra Modi in the riots. The nine affidavits he had filed before the Nanavati Commission, together running into 430 pages, provide a documentary account of how Narendra Modi and his men subverted the rule of law.
It were his submissions that 152 out of 184 Assembly constituencies were affected by the riots, an absolute contradiction of Modi's claim of normalcy, which prompted the then Chief Election Commissioner J M Lyngdoh to refuse to entertain the chief minister's request for an early Assembly poll in Gujarat.
Sting operation
Sreekumar had also secretly taped the attempts made by top Gujarat civil servants and police officials to sweet-talk, cajole and threaten him to go soft on the then chief minister. Curiously, neither was he summoned nor his evidence taken into account by the Special Investigation Team led by R K Raghavan that eventually gave a clean chit to Narendra Modi.
Sreekumar's book also rubbishes the claim that the riot was an automatic fallout of the Godhra train carnage, a spontaneous reaction of Hindus. “Wherever effective action was taken, like in Surat city, normalcy could be restored fast,” Sreekumar said. Only seven were killed in Surat city as against 326 in Ahmedabad and 36 in Vadodara. “Pertinently, in 1992 after the Babri Masjid demolition, nearly 300 people were killed in Surat city,” he added.
Face to face with NaMo
During the four months he was heading the intelligence, he had frequently come into direct contact with the chief minister. Sreekumar writes that Modi's private secretary had asked him to snoop on the private life of Major General Zahiruddin Shah, brother of actor Naseeruddin Shah and a man who was widely lauded for helping the Godhra victims. He flatly refused.
On another occasion Modi himself asked Sreekumar to tap the phone calls of Shankar Singh Waghela, Modi's political rival. “I responded that the Intelligence Bureau could not tap the phone of the opposition leader and mount an aggressive surveillance because any exposure would result in legal action and embarrassment to the government,” Sreekumar said.
Four months later, on September 17, 2002, he was booted out of Intelligence when he refused to heed to the DGP's verbal diktat that he refrain from sending a report that reproduced the anti-Muslim tone and tenor of a speech made by Narendra Modi during Gaurav Yatra on September 15, 2002.
