Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a cover up Paperback – May 18, 2016

I couldn't take my eyes off your narrative Rana and having devoured the book in less than a day, I can say hand on heart that I have the greatest admiration not just for your spunk and your courage of conviction but even for your integrity and your ability to tell the unvarnished truth without artifice.Not only do we all not care enough, we do not even have the bare minimum decency to appreciate those who do by putting everything they have on the line. The fact that not one major publishing house had the guts to print your book should tell us all about the kind of tinpot democracy we have now become.Gujarat Files raises more uncomfortable questions than it answers, not only from the protagonists of the riots, but sometimes, even from those who have been on the right side of this battle.1. How do seemingly normal people with pretty ordinary and domestic preoccupations such as PC Pande and Maya Kodnani lose their moral centre so terribly?2. When is the right time to speak up for conscientious officers and bureaucrats?3. How did we get to a place where we now have a Home Minister so dangerous that he has historically never had any qualms employing dubious, extra-constitutional means to serve his ends?4. What chance does a petty criminal like Sohrabuddin or his wife have when even someone as powerful as Haren Pandya's death (Gujarat's powerful Home Minister), is mired in the most twisted details?5. How is it that so many Gujaratis throughout the State have internalised the vicious RSS-VHP rightwing ideology to an extent where they now don't even know, understand or acknowledge its poison seeping through the system?For those who want to trash this book with or without reading it, I have only one thing to say. You trashed Rakesh Sharma's Final Solution, you trashed Tehelka's sting on the likes of Babu Bajrangi, well, please go ahead and trash this too; but remember that when we are past this dark hour, your embarrassment will be even more acute, even more complete. Someday you will have to square up and answer that generation who will see the light in your own household, who will have the wisdom to raise the right questions, and on that day, you will not have much of your twisted logic coming to your rescue, for in their heart of hearts they will know what your morality was all about.Rana Ayyub, we should be celebrating the likes of you in this country, instead we have the unseemly spectacle of pulling you down because of your work and the surname you carry. It depresses me to know what we have become as citizens of this supposedly great civilisation. As a nation if we can survive this dark, terrible phase, I guess we can survive anything.

This is a book about a sting on the state's key officials during India's 2002 Gujarat bloodbath. Some gems:- most of the officers manipulated to perform sordid tasks happen to be from backward castes;- most of those in the helm of affairs, including those who manage to defy unlawful instructions from political masters and those that facilitate implementation, are from the upper caste;- all suffer from misplaced sense of self-worth and boast about themselves at the drop of a hat (hence the success of the sting);- most seek attractive job postings in exchange for their souls; and- none seem to really believe that they owe a duty to uphold the law, come what may.The book paints a sordid picture of India's officialdom. More disturbingly, it seems to cast India's current Prime Minister and Home Minister as disguised criminals and those around them as modern-day killers of Gandhi. In short, the book is shocking.But that is not all. Ayyub is a Muslim girl who pretends to be a Hindu cinematographer from the U.S. as she goes about interviewing officers at the helm of affairs during the 2002 events and recording those conversations. This book is a record of those conversations. At the climactic hour of that "investigation," she is stopped by her employer from proceeding further because the central character of the 2002 bloodbath was likely to become India's PM and as such, too powerful to war against. Ayyub stays quiet for some years and then speaks up. But only after first trying in vain to get her story broadcast or published. Finally, she self-publishes it via Amazon.The book could have been better written. Just how lonesome might have been her job in that she could not even find a decent editor? Ayyub's journalistic ethic in disclosing her sources also seems troubling.All said, her's courage stands out. She seems to have hit a diamond in a coal mine. Her implements are crude, and the challenge of taking it out is huge. These are challenging times for her, and the diamond and the digger are both at risk. And so is the rule of law. Let's hope for the best.

"Truth is stranger than Fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't!"An unputdownable book. A must read.This book bravely unravels the unimaginable depravity behind BJP and Modi. It boggles my mind that such a pathetic excuse of a man heads India now. Modi's Nazi inspired, Gandhi murdering, thrice banned terrorist organization - RSS and its allies- have stealthy infiltrated and corroded all aspects of Indian society. India currently undergoing a cultural revolution, is hurtling full speed towards becoming a Hindu Nazi state where a genocide of its minorities - Muslims and Christians - seems imminent. I can not imagine what depths of hatred propels Modi and his supporters that nothing - pogroms, mass murders, gang-rapes, assassinations, - nothing is off the table for them. And the current BJP president Amit Shah is possibly the worst gutter scum to have polluted my country. Read the book and you will know.Some of the famed Modi trolls are here with the sole agenda of criticizing the book and the author, none of them have actually brought or read the book.