Dear Rashtrapatiji,

IT is with a deep sense of sorrow that I write this letter to you. During the last one and a half months, I have been hoping against hope that there would be no occasion to write this letter. But I regret to point out that my hopes have been belied. Now I have no other option but to write this letter and bring to your attention what I believe is a major lapse on your part.

Lest I should be accused of bias, let me point out at the outset that I was one of the happiest persons when you first became Vice-President and then President of the country. Parochialism was certainly not the reason for my happiness. Your election as President was a recognition of your talent and greatness. I felt proud to be an Indian because you proved that even a person of the humblest origins could become the first citizen of the country. What's more, your candidature had the backing of almost all political parties in the country. Your election was a triumph of democracy.

Like most countrymen, I had great expectations from your Presidency. Though you were elected to the Lok Sabha three times on the Congress ticket, nobody saw you as a Congressman. You had risen above politics. You had acquired the stature of a statesman having held with distinction such posts as our envoy in Beijing, Washington, Vice-Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University and Union minister. Equally important for me, you were once a journalist and a close friend of the late Nikhil Chakravorty who made me a journalist. Incidentally, you were gracious enough to grant me an interview the day you were elected Vice-President. You were not unduly bothered by the fact that I had no prior appointment. Nor did you appear keen to be 'congratulated' by the large number of people who had assembled at your Lodhi Road residence.

I still remember you telling me that you saw your election as a victory of the marginalized, downtrodden sections of our society. You could not have put it better. All these years I have been watching your presidency and I must tell you that there were occasions when I felt really proud of you. Until you moved into Rashtrapati Bhavan, the image of the President etched in my memory was as depicted in a cartoon by Abu Abraham. I am sure you would recall that cartoon - Mr Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed in a bathtub signing an ordinance without as much as batting his eyelids.

Unlike Mr Ahmed, you showed that you have a mind of your own. You cannot be accused of being a textbook President. There were occasions when you spoke your mind. Be it on the Narmada dam, the Constitution Review Commission, the proposal to do away with adult suffrage, appointment of Dalits in High Courts and the Supreme Court and telling President Bill Clinton some harsh truths, you showed admirable courage. Some people might have questioned your propriety in summoning the Civil Aviation Secretary to seek some clarifications on privatizing the national airlines but you were not bothered by such criticism. It was obvious that you did not consider yourself a prisoner of rules and regulations.

Given the mayhem the Mandal Commission report had created in the country, which other President would have dared to mention the Bhopal Declaration in his Republic Day-eve address to the nation? For the benefit of the readers, let me recall that at a meeting of Dalit leaders, scholars and thinkers the Madhya Pradesh government had organized in Bhopal early this year a resolution seeking, among other things, reservation in the private sector was passed. You went beyond the Bhopal Declaration to say, "In the present economic system and of the future, it is necessary for the private sector to adopt social policies that are progressive and more egalitarian for these deprived classes to be uplifted from their state of deprivation and inequality and given the rights of citizens and civilized human beings. This is not to ask the private enterprise to accept socialism, but to do something like what the Diversity Bill and the affirmative action that a capitalist country like the United States of America has adopted and is implementing."

When I heard your speech on the radio while returning from work, I had a nagging doubt whether you were referring to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the US. Since most newspapers have done away with the practice of publishing the text of the President's address to the nation, it was difficult to ascertain your exact words. Though you did not mention the Commission by name, it was obvious that you had it in your mind when you drafted the speech.

For starters, in the US, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has special provisions, which require every organization or business house, which has 15 or more employees to fill up a form displaying the ethnic and racial composition of its workforce every year. This information is supplied to the Federal Government. If there is any breach of the diversity principle, if anyone belonging to the racial or ethnic minority feels that he or she is discriminated against owing to his racial and ethnic background, he can file a lawsuit. In other words, the Federal government monitors the presence of members of the racial and ethnic minorities in every company. Because of the huge penalty imposed for breach of the diversity principle, the private sector there has gone many steps ahead of the government in ensuring diversity through recruitment, supplies and the award of dealerships.

But some of the newspapers like the Indian Express and the Telegraph were so nasty in their comments that the venerable editor of the Radical Humanist was compelled to write an editorial note lambasting the media for attacking the President. One of the senior most journalists, G.S. Bhargava, also wrote in the same journal an article defending your speech. I am sure you would not have been surprised by the turn of events particularly after India Today once went to town with your gentle suggestion to the then Chief Justice of India, Mr Justice A.S. Anand, that in judicial appointments also it is advisable to give a fair representation to the Dalits. There was nothing objectionable in your stance. But some sections of the media used the so-called scoop to attack you little realizing that the same Justice Anand had delayed for as long as he could the appointment of Justice K.G. Balakrishnan - the third Dalit to become a Supreme Court judge - who is incidentally from your own state.

It was your foresight that enabled the recent appointment of Mr H.K. Sema from Nagaland as a judge of the Supreme Court. He could possibly be the first tribal to be selected for the post. There is no doubt at all that it was your presence in the Rashtrapati Bhavan that acted as a dampener for some of the Hindutva projects of the government. I recall your stirring words when the Australian missionary Graham Staines and his minor children were burnt alive in Orissa. In sharp contrast was the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee's call for a debate on conversion when churches were destroyed, Christian schools were attacked and tribal Christians were beaten up in the Dangs district in Gujarat. You proved yourself a man of courage and conviction.

You may ask why then am I writing this letter. I am forced to revise my opinion of your Presidency in the light of what happened in the country during the last one and a half months. Let me come to the crux of the matter. It is your silence on the happenings in Gujarat that has been worrying me. Yes, I remember your decision not to celebrate Holi this year which, incidentally, clashed with Good Friday. Of course, it was Gujarat which forced you take that decision. But it hardly moved me.

For one thing, your decision not to celebrate Holi came a day after the Prime Minister and the Home Minister announced their own decisions not to celebrate the festival of colour. And for another, since when did Malayalees begin celebrating Holi? Ask any Malayali in the North - irrespective of caste or religion - and he will tell you that Holi is one festival that he detests. The first time I ever saw Holi was at Lalitpur in UP thirty years ago. From the balcony of the house where I stayed, I could see a group of young men pouring used engine oil on everyone who passed by. What kind of a celebration is this, I wondered.

So it was more a convenience than a sacrifice for you not to celebrate Holi. Any way, I would not have minded if you celebrated Holi if you had also taken some decisive steps in Gujarat. What the state that gave birth to the apostle of peace - Mahatma Gandhi - has been experiencing is unprecedented. This country has witnessed many communal riots before and after independence but never before has the state collaborated with riotous mobs killing and looting people. At the latest count, nearly 900 people have lost their lives since February 27 when miscreants at Godhra torched a bogie of the Sabarmati Express killing 58 people. It was a heinous act, which was condemned by all right-thinking people in this country. Far from allowing the law to take its own course, the government allowed Hindu fundamentalists to organize a pogrom.

Newspapers have documented how some ministers in the Narendra Modi government had played a role in fanning the fires of communalism. What's worse, two of the ministers were sitting in the police control room at Ahmedabad during the critical hours obstructing the police in the discharge of their duties. Even a Muslim judge of the Gujarat High Court felt so insecure that he had to take shelter in a brother judge's house. Instead of containing the violence, the Chief Minister had been talking about the Newton's law to justify the action against Muslims.

There is no need for me to elaborate the kind of violence Gujarat witnessed as newspapers have been full with such details. If you have any doubts on this score, all you need to do is to speak to any of the non-political leaders like Swami Agnivesh, Mr Harsh Mander, who resigned from the IAS and the chairmen of the National Minorities Commission and the Human Rights Commission, who visited Gujarat and interacted with the people there. They will tell you about the horrific conditions in the shelter homes. You can even summon the Prime Minister and ask him to give his account of the situation there.

In fact, I wonder why you have not asked for a report from the Governor, who is your representative in the state. After all, the Governor, Mr Sunder Singh Bhandari, is good at sending reports on the law and order situation in a state. We learnt about this trait in him when he was the Governor of Bihar. Almost every week he used to send reports to you justifying imposition of President's rule in the state. His constant refrain was the so-called "jungle raj" in Bihar. He was so persuasive that even you had to succumb to Mr Bhandari's tactics. You even dismissed Mrs Rabri Devi's government to allow Mr Bhandari to take control of the state. However, you had to face a lot of embarrassment when Parliament refused to uphold President's rule forcing Mr Bhandari to bring Mrs Rabri Devi back to power. You were kind enough to accommodate Mr Bhandari at Gandhinagar.

In any case, " jungle raj" is much better than Modi raj. In the jungles, carnivorous animals kill herbivorous animals only for their flesh. But what did Gujarat witness? The mass murder of over 900 people! Many of them were burnt alive. The worst possible atrocities were committed on Muslims. Over a lakh of people have been rendered homeless. They have nowhere to go. Officials who took action against the mobs are being hounded out. Two IAS officers have already quit service in anger and anguish.

There is no remorse on the part of Modi and Company. They are so happy with the turn of events that they talk in terms of the BJP sweeping the polls whenever elections are held. Karthik Muralidharan, who is a doctoral candidate in economics at Harvard University and who campaigned for the BJP in the last elections in Gujarat is today totally disgusted with the party. He wrote, "At a seminar last week at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the VHP general secretary of the US eloquently quoted from the Gita and claimed to the audience that Godhra mein adharam hua, and said that he was surprised that there wasn't greater violence across the country" (Indian Express, April 11). This is a giveaway. If you have any doubt about the VHP programme, just read the latest issue of its monthly, Vishwa Hindu Samachar. It hails Modi as "Chhote Sardar'', the "Bada Sardar" being Sardar Patel. In an editorial, the mouthpiece of the VHP justifies the mayhem by quoting Lord Krishna: "There's no sin in chopping off the head after hearing abuses 99 times."

It's pointless to list the wrongs committed by the Sangh Parivar in Gujarat. But the point I want to make is, what have you done as the custodian of the Constitution to prevent the violence in Gujarat? Nearly five years ago when you were sworn in, did you not take an oath that "I will faithfully execute the office of President of India and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and the law and that I will devote myself to the service and well-being of the people of India"? I am sorry to say that you failed in the case of Gujarat.

It's not my contention that you should have straightaway dismissed the Modi government. You could have done a lot of other things also under the Constitution. Under Article 160, you could have made such provisions as you thought fit for the discharge of the functions of the Governor, who clearly failed. An open rebuke from you would have gone a long way to tame Modi. I do not understand why you hesitated even to lift a finger against the Gujarat government. For lesser offences, state governments have been pulled up in the past. When the DMK chief, Mr M. Karunanidhi, was roughed up in Chennai, the Central government threatened action against the Jayalalithaa government. You had nothing to fear and nothing to lose. The Vajpayee government could have done nothing against you. So why did you remain silent? I know many reporters in Gujarat who have been taking great risks in reporting the pogrom. They do not have the protection of the Constitution. But they have courage. Similarly, there are many police officers and bureaucrats who saw to it that the mobs were kept at bay. They too were not afraid of taking risks.

Before I conclude, let me narrate an anecdote. I once interviewed Dr George Jacob, who was the then Chairman of the University Grants Commission. In the course of the interview, he said, "A good man is a useless man if he is not able to assert his goodness." He must be turning in his grave over the failure of a fellow Malayali.

The writer's e-mail address: bharataputra@hotmail.com