Gulbarg to be preserved as riot relic

Leena Misra / TNN / Feb 14, 2008, 02:02 IST

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Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) plans to buy the 5,687-sq-yard plot in Meghaninagar area and give each of the society member equal share.

AHMEDABAD: Gulbarg Society, the place where at least 70 people, including former Congress MP Ahsan Jafri, were killed or missing in the post-Godhra riots of 2002, is set to be converted into a 'Museum of Resistance' on the lines of such memorials around the world that chronicle the Holocaust and World War crimes.
Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) plans to buy the 5,687-sq-yard plot in Meghaninagar area and give each of the society member equal share.
Secretary of CJP Teesta Setalvad told TOI: "Gulbarg Museum of Resistance will be a professionally built institution of resistance that acknowledges the horrors and scale of inter-community conflict that plagued independent India and will contain widespread documentation of the same."
All the survivors will be involved in this venture and will commemorate February 28 every year with prayers and remembrance. Films, documents, art and literature on the subject will be available on the site, which will become a centre of activity for the anti-communal movement in the country. "No one will leave Ahmedabad city without paying a visit to the place," said Setalvad.

As per police records, only 39 people were found dead at Gulbarg Society. According to police, no remains of Jafri were recovered from the site. His son, Tanvir Jafri, who lives in Surat, says: "This will be a fitting tribute to the victims and my father who had paid homage to the Jews killed in the Auschwitz camp complex in Poland in the 70s. He had made up his mind in the last hours of his life not to leave Gulbarg."
This society had 18 bungalows and eight flats, where 25 families lived. Among these was a Parsi family whose son, Azhar, went missing. The film

Parzania, which was banned in Gujarat, is about this missing boy. His mother, Rupa Mody, told TOI: "I am hopeful that those who come here and see pictures of my son will help me find him. If we had sold it to a builder, either a mall or a flat scheme would have come up, we would rather have a museum."
The Gulbarg Museum of Resistance will be housed in Sabrang Trust and CJP with survivors on the advisory board. It will have narrations on all the massacres during the 2002 riots.

About the Author

Leena Misra

Leena Misra is senior assistant editor at The Times of India, Ahmedabad. She has written on politics, crime, communal riots of 2002, people, city issues and a lot more. Loves all kinds of music, reading non-fiction and travelling.

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