My dear Mr.Modi,

Last Monday you called me the Taliban. No, not by name, but by suggesting that anyone who questioned your decision to make Mr Bachchan Gujarat’s brand ambassador is the Taliban.. I am the first, and in this State the only one, to have publicly questioned this move. Bingo. I become your Taliban agent no.1.

You have called me and “my ilk” other names before and we have let those pass. Desh Drohi, Gujarat Virodhi and pseudo –secularist. But Taliban? Are you really unaware of what the Taliban represents? The atrocities, the hundreds of thousands of innocent lives they have taken, the terror that they create, the venom that they spew, the threats, the horror? By using the word so lightly you insult the thousands of families who have lost dear ones in this horror in the name of religion and purification. And you demean the thousands of women who live in constant fear of rape as punishment and of stoning or being buried alive as reprisal against perceived insults of errant male family members.

Let us look at what you could possibly see as our gunah to be labeled so diversely. Our paths crossed each others’ when some of us objected to the events of 2002, when many citizens of our State, all belonging to one religion, were massacred. Knowing that a “riot” can be stopped by an honest and courageous IAS officer by calling in the army, in four or five hours, and knowing that no officer did, some of us decided to petition the courts for fellow citizens, dead and alive, to get justice. You and your administration were implicated by many fact finding teams, national and international for letting the carnage happen. That is when the name calling started. You equated yourself with the State, questioning your motives and actions with being anti_Gujarat, you took umbrage at our “gall” to take you on. And you called us desh-drohis.. But Mr. Modi, you are not Gujarat.

You unleashed a barrage of actions, threats and intimidations to make us shut our mouths – using the police and administration, and means legal and dicey. We have heard from the CAT report of Kuldeep Sharma and from the Assembly how you tried to fix me personally, and have me thrown in jail. Thankfully, the truth survives and my Gujarat still allows me a voice.

But what about those who cannot afford to voice their fears, their sorrows? Would you call them Taliban too?

Your own supporters from the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh who claim to have brought you to power are crying hoarse at being abandoned and used by you. The 21 lakh farmers ruined because of breaches in the Narmada canal – their plaintive cries fall on deaf ears. The widows of the farmers who committed suicide out of financial desperation still remain bereft and hungry, hounded by money lenders. (After all they are only farmers, not top industrial houses.) The widows of the Lattha Kand, the biggest such tragedy in the State, victims of the joke called Prohibition, still beg for help and rehabilitation.. The labourers who built the city of Gandhinagar , whose homes in sectors 13, 14 and 24 your government bulldozed two and a half years ago, still remain in homes that remind one of the devastation on the Gaza strip. The thousands of families whose houses were destroyed for the Kankaria Carnival still remain homeless. The Patan girl who was gang raped by teachers of your PTC college and had the courage to fight social boycott for the sake of justice was not even given a hearing by you. The two children charred at Asaram Bapu’s ashram, leading to a city-wide protest, still didn’t find a space in your heart, or diary. And the hundreds of link workers, fixed salary peons, sweepers and teachers who work for your administration and whom you exploit by giving them far less than the minimum wage, they too are threatened with the loss of jobs if they protest.

Threats, unilateral decisions, overriding protest, claiming divine blessings to act any which way, these are the ways of the Taliban. Dissidence, discussions, different points of view, open debate, these are the ways of democracy.

Mr. Modi, my case rests.

On behalf of the voiceless and frightened of my state,

Mallika Sarabhai