By Kashif-ul-Huda, TwoCircles.net
Advocate Mukul Sinha passed away in Ahmedabad on May 12th. He had been battling lung cancer for about a year.
I met him when he visited the United States in 2010 to attend MIT Workshop on Communal Violence in India.
In that workshop organized by Dr. Omar Khalidi, Sinha presented the analysis that he along with his wife Nirjhari Sinha have done of the cell phone call records of Gujarat government officials. This was a crucial piece of evidence in connecting political machinery’s influence on law and order that resulted in the anti-Muslim genocide of 2002.
Mukul Sinha has a PhD in Physics but injustice around him prompted him to become a lawyer and civil rights activist.
One of the founding member of civil rights organization Jan Sangharsh Manch (JSM), he had been at the forefront of struggle for justice for victims of Gujarat genocide of 2002. Violence erupted in the aftermath of burning of a train near Godhra in Gujarat. The state government of BJP alleged that Godhra train burning was a case of Islamic terrorism and many Muslims of Godhra were charged under draconian POTA law. Mukul Sinha successfully fought to get the terrorism charges dropped.
A big believer in judicial process, he was against moving of cases outside Gujarat. He participated in Nanavati Commission inquiring into 2002 violence in Gujarat. Though he admitted that he didn’t see much hope from this Commission but he says that it was important to use this platform to raise awareness about issues and culprits.
He was instrumental in fake encounter cases, Naroda Patiya verdict, and conviction of Gujarat minister Maya Kodnani.
Mukul Sinha had good understanding of politics of communalism. In 2010, he told me that differences between Hindus and Muslims are “created contradictions.” Since they are unable to find anything from the present therefore contradictions are reinforced by bringing images from the past, he said, referring to Hindutva references to rules of Muslim kings, temple destructions or forced conversions that may or may not have happened hundreds of years ago. “Present is ours, past was theirs,” he said, smiling.