Last night, I interviewed Junaid Khan’s father Jallaluddin when he said something that left me numb: ‘why do they hate us so much sir that they kill us because of our religion?’ He was responding to my question that some reports suggested that the 16 year old Junaid was stabbed to death in a train compartment over a seat dispute. “Itna gussa seat ko lekar nahi hota sir, woh mere bete ko ‘anti national’ keh rahe the, uski topi aur kapde ko lekar gaali de rahe the,’ he said. Jalalauddin was angry and yet remarkably restrained. He was gracious enough to admit that the killers of his son were not representative of society: “Paancho ungilyan ek jaisee nahi hoti sir, kuch log aisa sochte hain,” ….

In the world we live in, where nuance has little space, and where the news and instant opinion is polarised in black and white terms, I am dubbed, for better or worse, a Narendra Modi critic when all I am is a journalist in the trenches observing the unfolding events before me. I guess the fact that I covered the 2002 riots and its aftermath in Gujarat have left me stamped for life as a journalist who is a permanent Modi baiter. After all, like it or not, Gujarat 2002 was Modi’s darkest hour and the fact that the chief minister was unable to rein in the rioters, a majority of whom owed allegiance to the wider sangh parivar to which Mr Modi belongs, will go down as a black mark in his political