At 75, Valjibhai Patel is still active in
his not so attractive office of Council for Social Justice. From this office he
has filed some historical writ petitions in Gujarat High Court. Some people, quite
innocently, call
him ‘advocate.’ This man with LLB degree and without any 'sanad' has done something
extra-ordinary even a person with black robe might not achieve.
But, before scrolling legal mouse, Valjibhai
was an ardent journalist with irrevocable commitment and discreet insight. He narrated,
sometimes as an impartial historian or sometimes as a concerned citizen,
everything from anti-reservation riots of 1981 to state-sponsored genocide of
2002. In his magazine, ‘Dalit-Mitra’, he gave bit by bit account on how
Sangh Parivar spread its poisonous tentacles in Gujarat, how Gujarati news
papers started its vicious propaganda first, against Dalits and then against Muslims
and how the so-called intelligentsia became, first, silent and then vocal
supporter of Hindu communalism. All these articles have been published in a book ‘Karmashilni
Kalame’ (from the pen of an activist) edited by Chandu Maheriya.
Today, when secularism has become a
commodity for secularists and a punching bag for fundamentalist, Valjibhai’s
book gives penetrating analysis and useful insight in the real Gujarat.
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