www.truthout.org
02 December 2005
Governments, Guns Cannot Prevent Another Gujarat
by J. Sri Raman
Can a pogrom, a state-aided carnage, be prevented by arming the police and other uniformed forces with more powers? The government of India proposes precisely such a method to prevent another Gujarat.
Nearly four years after the massacre of the minority community of Muslims in India's State of Gujarat, survivors in the thousands still await simple justice and secure rehabilitation. Hopes were held out to them after the Indian people voted the far right out and put Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's coalition in federal power a year and a half ago. The Singh government now, however, only plans a new law that can actually pave the way for more Gujarats.
The role of the state apparatus in the "riots" (the misleading official description of the massacre) is so well recorded that no one even in the redoubtable parivar (the far-right "family") questions it seriously. Chief minister Narendra Modi presided over the pogrom and defended it with pride, even as his police participated in it - even to the extent, in reported instances, of misdirecting victims to murderous mobs. Then-Prime Minister Atal Bihar Vajpayee, of the same Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as Modi, agonized much in public, but refused to rush any assistance to the minority under brutal and, in cases of women, even bestial attacks.
Gujarat, which galvanized public opinion in many other parts of India against the BJP in the general election of last year, had to find a place in the Common Minimum Program (CMP) of the victorious United Progressive Alliance (UPA), headed by Singh's Congress Party. The CMP skirted the subject of justice and relief to the victims of Gujarat, but promised a "comprehensive model law" to deal with religious-communal violence.
The Communal Disturbances (Suppression) Bill of 2005, presented now to the nation, however, is far from a glittering model, especially in Gujarat-type situations in which fascism has friends in the state apparatus, where Modi is still the monarch. The Bill empowers the federal or the state government to notify any area as "communally disturbed" for a month, on grounds that satisfy it and armed forces to act in a virtually unrestrained manner to restore law and order. The forces will then be free to arrest suspects without a warrant, to search premises at will, and to shoot at sight on mere suspicion. The notification can be extended for further one-month periods indefinitely, and citizens-turned-suspects cannot seek legal remedy without a large-hearted nod from the federal government.
Human rights organizations have pointed out that the Bill brings back through the back door provisions of the infamous Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA). The Singh government had earlier scrapped the POTA, denounced as a draconian law, and the Patriot Act of India, enacted by the previous regime under post-9/11 pressure from Washington. The proposed enactment also includes many obnoxious provisions of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which had provoked fierce popular opposition in India's northeast (covered in detail these columns before).
A single question would suffice to expose the irrelevance of the legislative exercise. Had such a law been on the statute book during the Gujarat pogrom, would it have afforded any protection to the victims? Obviously not, as long as the political masters in New Delhi and Gujarat preferred to protect the culprits.
Human rights activists point again to the Bill's presumption that people turn violent, while governments want religious-communal peace. The reality, in almost all cases, has been quite the reverse. The Bill, if enacted, will be a boon to the far right in the not unlikely event of its return to power. People's courts, which a section of activists have demanded, may constitute an unacceptable parallel judiciary. The Bill, however, would have served better purpose had it provided for popular participation or representation in the combat against or control of "communal disturbances."
While the legal advisors of the government have been drafting the Bill over all these months, the surviving victims of Gujarat have been waiting without hope. The cases have made very little progress, with even the public prosecutors of Gujarat showing no interest in pursuing them. The Supreme Court of India, not long ago, had to order a review of over 4,000 such cases, about a half of which had been declared "closed." Stories continue to surface in the media about witnesses in such cases facing intimidation even now from criminals "roaming freely" over rural Gujarat, as one of the victims has openly alleged.
Meanwhile, by all accounts, a process of ghettoization has made the predicament of the Gujarat Muslims much worse than before. The days of Hindu-Muslim coexistence in residential colonies have departed in several towns. Unreported, too, has gone the uprooting of sections of Muslims through a post-2002 campaign to pressure them into selling their land.
If Gujarat was a political laboratory for India's fascists, as they proudly proclaimed, the cruel experiments continue. It is through popular mobilization that Gujarats can be prevented, not through anti-people enactments.
A freelance journalist and a peace activist of India, J. Sri Raman is the author of Flashpoint (Common Courage Press, USA).
|
