Hindu Americans keep away from fellow-Indian Shabnam Hashmi. They shun hearing tales of gore. Gujarat is too pesky a mention for these smooth-speaking dudes who sell ’secular’ India and its prime minister to gullible Americans on Capitol Hill, Washington’s canonical think-tanks, and at soirees arranged by swank sites, such as the Asia Society.

Still, Hashmi-haters cannot wish her away. She’s resuscitated Vajpayee government’s engineered genocide in Gujarat and resurrected the ghastliness of women raped and burnt to death. Her chilling testimony of ethnic cleansing by the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh), and a slew of other Hindutva fascists such as Shiv Sena, make the most skeptical of Americans drop their jaws!

The American media storied for going into a tizzy over one rape case, bombarding their viewers with interviews from the victim’s family and the whole neighbourhood, stomached coolly the details of the Gujarat gang rapes with a mere blip on their radar screens.

Now the inevitable has happened. The New York Times copiously carried a colour spread on Gujarat last month with visceral details of Hindu mayhem and how they systematically killed over 3,000 Muslims, brutally raped and burnt some 600 women and methodically destroyed all the businesses and homes of Muslims all over Gujarat. According to Hashmi, “they demolished 360 mosques and dargahs.”

What caused the conscience of NYT to be seared after a lapse of almost 5 months since Gujarat imploded? Talking to Shabnam Hashmi gave me an insight. On July 17, NYT correspondent, Barbara Crossette, heard Hashmi’s eloquent exposition and was visibly agitated at the lack of media coverage that Gujarat warranted. The NYT was jarred out of self-complacency to see photos of burnt women such as Kausar Bano, an 8-month-old pregnant victim whose unborn fetus could be seen clinging to the mother and incidents of gang rape where women were tortured and their breasts cut off before being burnt.

“Personally, I recorded 60 gang rape victims who described horrendous details of how they were stripped naked and then made to run for their lives with the mob following them, and those who got caught were burnt alive.”

A week later, we saw NYT resonate Hashmi’s cold facts on Gujarat followed by one full column write-up on her by Crossette. Hashmi was portrayed as a one-woman demolition team come to America to expose the fascist face of the Indian government and persuade Indian Americans not to bankroll charities here that fund right-wing Hindu militants. On the cards is yet another coup for Shabnam: setting up of an international tribunal comprising Indian and international women NGOs. Ideally, she wants Gujarat’s chief minister, Modi, to be in the dock like the Serb murderer, Milosovich.

Having worked as a rights’ activist for over 20 years, Shabnam lives in Delhi with her husband and two children, a 15-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter. She’s here at the invitation of the American Muslim Council (AMC), and has addressed around 25 gatherings: “The American women organizations have given me a full hearing and are driven enough to demand the setting up of an international tribunal in Gujarat.”

Belonging to a family with leftist loyalties, she says, “My father (Hanif Hashmi) was a freedom fighter who was jailed for four years by the British. As a teenager, I was brought up on stories of Gandhi and Nehru.” A favourite of young Shabnam was The Diary of Anne Frank.

One particular incident that spurred Shabnam to accelerate her rights’ campaign even at the risk of her life occurred in 1989, when a frenzied mob attacked and killed her brother, Safdar, during a street-theatre performance: “There was a huge industrial strike in Delhi and its surrounding areas, and Safdar and a group of three women were performing in support of the strikers when a politically-instigated mob was let loose on them.... He managed to save the women’s lives, but was himself bludgeoned to death.”

The more hardline elements of the BJP and its affiliates, who emphasize Hindu rites rather than human rights, have been thoroughly exposed by Hashmi who has irrefutable proof that the Gujarat killings were not a result of communal fighting, as Vajpayee touts, but a “cold-blooded and pre-planned” Hindu attack on Muslims. “The RSS claims that their 52 kar saveks (workers) were killed in bogey no ‘S-6’ of the ill-fated train set on fire by a Muslim mob at Godhra that fuelled the Hindu-Muslim riots. That is all lies. Only on Aug 19, the Indian railway ministry refuted the RSS claim by saying that according to their reserved passengers list, 42 out of 52 are alive and kicking!”

Further evidence of RSS’ concocted claims comes by looking at the photos of the burnt ‘S-6’ bogey. “If the bogey was fully gutted to burn 56 RSS workers, then how come the fans, the interior and exterior look unscathed?” According to her, the RSS themselves stage-managed the scene of murder by putting a pile of charred bodies one on top of each other (where they got hold of these bodies, no one knows), and locked the inside of ‘S-6’ bogey to conveniently show to the world that Muslims were responsible for such a heinous crime.

What comes to mind is Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass) when the Nazis unleashed a wave of pogroms against the Jews in 1938, blaming them for the assassination of a German diplomat.

Besides, “the Hindu fascists under Modi’s leadership planned the genocide months before and hoarded gas cylinders which disappeared from the market 15 days before the attack; trained their workers to first throw a gas cylinder at a home or business, and once the gas leaked out, throw a petrol bomb to gut out the place completely.”

Interestingly, the women’s wing of RSS called Durga Vahini participated in the violence, “There are many eyewitness reports of these middle-class women coming in their fancy cars to loot, some even burning other women.”

Shabnam Hashmi wants the huge amounts of money donated to right-wing organizations in India by Indian Americans and the US charities to stop: “The RSS runs 30,000 schools which poison the minds of kids against Muslims, who they say must be killed because they marry four wives and have lots of children that will soon convert the Hindus into a minority.”

She has no hope of official US intervention because the “State Department knows only too well the BJP’s complicity in the carnage. Their representatives were sitting in Delhi signing arms deals while Muslims were being killed in Gujarat. India is a very big market for the US, they don’t want to upset the apple cart.”

What about the Indian Muslims themselves?

“I don’t see this as a Hindu-Muslim fight. Gujarat is the manifestation of an extreme fascist attack on secularism and the only way to fight the fascists is to galvanize support by the minorities and secular Hindus to fight them. It has to have political backing.”

Shabnam Hashmi is an agnostic. “My parents were non-believers and they raised us as non-believers. My grandparents were Muslims and all I have is a Muslim name ... nothing more ... I don’t relate to any religion.”

She acknowledges that she’s fighting a losing battle, “Because the Hindu-Muslim hatred has seeped in too deep and will take centuries before it dries out.” Still, she’s not giving up!