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Democracy’s Coffin
They watched when it was being done to the Sikhs.
They watch when it is being done to the Muslims.
Sach Kanwal Singh 

Never can the Sikh community forget how the Indian establishment, including the judiciary, in fact, the highest judiciary, failed to protect the innocent Sikhs when all energies of the state were converged towards one single aim of annihilating the Sikhs. To my mind comes quickly an article that Fali S Nariman, one of India’s top Constitutional authorities, wrote in The Indian Express, on March 23, 1988, incidentally the martyrdom day of Shaheed Bhagat Singh. 

The article came in context of the Indian establishment’s efforts to prepare a noose for the alleged killers of Indira Gandhi, and was in response to the ruling of the then Chief Justice of India who had said that “Liberty is itself the gift of the law and may therefore by law be forfeited.” 

Here is my favorite quote from Nariman’s article: 

“When ... the Attorney General of India was asked if a man wrongly identified as a security risk (for instance, when by coincidence he bore the same name) was forcibly removed from his home and confined to prison, would he have right to recourse in a court of law, the answer was that he would not - that was the effect of the ‘suspension’ (of Article 21 of the Constitution)! When pressed further by the court to examine whether there were any constraints on the amplitude of power claimed, it was asserted that during a period of suspension of article 21, any person could be picked up by a police officer of the requisite seniority, taken outside and shot - with impunity. That was the consequence of suspension of the right.” 

Nothing much has changed. That was 1988. This is 2009. But then, perhaps, something has. Now, the state does not even suspend Article 21. It remains in suspended animation for the minorities and the disadvantaged anyway. The government and its minions can pick up, detain, imprison, torture, starve, or kill any citizen. Can? Well, they do. You know it, we know it, the government and the police know it. So do the courts. What do they do? They watch. Impotents of the system, they all watch.  

They watched when it was being done to the Sikhs.

They watch when it is being done to the Muslims. 

In 1988, Ram Jethmalani told five judges of the Supreme Court: “Democracy lies in the coffin. Government wants you to do a dirty deed to slam shut the coffin’s lid. I hope you won’t oblige. But oblige they did and a long dark night descended. Do we have the will and intelligence to foreclose its recurrence?” 

Nothing much has changed. That was 1988. This is 2009. But then perhaps, something has. Now, the state does not want the court to slam shut the coffin’s lid. Instead, the court slams shut its eyes and pretends the coffin isn’t there. 

The Sikhs knew then that democracy for them lay in a coffin. The Muslims know today that the coffin has long been carted away, and they are on their own to fend for themselves. 

A national convention of the Muslims under the banner of Anhad discussed in Delhi this week for three days ‘What it Means to be a Muslim in India’. From October 3 to 5, many victims and their relatives gathered at the Speaker Hall, Constitution Club, Rafi Marg, New Delhi to narrate their testimonies.  

Testimonies poured in from 15 States and the catharsis and fear psychosis amongst Muslim communities in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, and Maharashtra was all there to see. In all these states, as also in many other parts of the country, police is routinely picking up hundreds of Muslim youth, accusing them of crimes as heinous as terrorism. 

Some of the testimonies were so blatant that no self-respecting court worth its salt will need more than two hearings of consecutive days to convict the police and the state. But remember, we put a condition -- “self-respecting”. 

Listen to Saleha Khatoon. Her brother Zahid Sheikh owned a cell phone shop. He sold connections. After the July 26 blasts in Ahmedabad, cops wanted to ask him a few questions. We don’t know why but possibly some mobile phone could have been used, and it could have been bought from his shop, or there could be many other possibilities. Zahid got a call, and got on to his mobike to reach the Crime Branch office. 

Now, he is the alleged mastermind behind the blasts. Which terrorist, with knowledge of a SIM card having been used, would drive to the Crime Branch office on his own motorbike? Listen to Khatoon: “On the day of the blasts we called him and told him to get home. The next day he watched the news about the blasts on TV with the rest of us at home. A couple of days later on July 31, he was asked to report to the Crime Branch for some inquiry on SIM cards. He offered the namaz and went to the police station.  

“After several days my parents were allowed to meet him for a few minutes. He couldn’t walk and broke down. He told my parents that he was being mentally tortured. Later we were assured that he would be let off after August 15, but on August 16 he was shown as arrested along with several others,” recalled the sister, who wants justice for her brother. 

Recall the testimonies collected by men like Ram Narayan Kumar in Punjab. Recall the untiring efforts of men like Martyr Jaswant Singh Khalra to bring on record the years long spree of illegal killings of Sikhs and cremation of so-called “unidentified bodies” across the state. 

To quote from Ram Narayan Kumar and Georg Sieberer’s remarkable work “The Sikh Struggle”“ “Publicity of terrorist crimes was very helpful to the government which needed public sanction to introduce new measures of repression in Punjab...Not only manipulation of the media, but infiltration and even stage managing terrorist outrages were part of government policy to sustain the anti-Sikh hysteria.” (pp. 277). 

Is not the same thing happening to the Muslims in India today?

We all live under some kind of fear every day of our lives. But in what kind of democracy, the world’s biggest democracy, do people of a particular religion live every single day under the fear of being picked up by the police?  

Every single day, and even as you read this, Muslim youth, and that includes women too, are being accused of involvement in terror activities. Former bureaucrat and social activist par excellence, Harsh Mander, voiced the feelings of many when he said Muslims feel let down by the police and the judiciary in particular and by the media and the political parties to some extent as well. The same is true of the Sikhs. 

He said as part of the so-called “war on terror” sanctioned by the state-managed public opinion and encouraged by the brahamanical power lever handlers, “Muslim youths with no criminal records are picked up illegally by policemen in plain clothes, taken to farmhouse, etc., and kept for days on end and tortured brutally.” 

How many thanas in Punjab were famous for such actions? Landa Kothi is a synonym for what?  

Abu Zafar, a journalist who was detained after he met his brother Abu Baker also an accused in jail, rued that even the human rights commissions in the country had failed to step in and come to the aid of the affected people. “After I was detained I wrote to the Human Rights Commission several times, but never heard from them. This country is not secular, it is communal. There are no checks and balances and there is rampant injustice even in prisons. In Sabarmati Jail they have stopped prisoners from receiving or sending letters written in Urdu. They were not allowed to offer namaz on Id.” 

There is a visible reluctance on the part of the State to ignore the truth. And that reluctance cannot be without motive. Why will a judiciary, a government, turn a blind eye in the face of damning evidence? Because turning a blind eye is a political decision. It is this politics that then breeds hatred towards the state. 

In any other country with the most feeble of claims towards democracy, the State would have rushed to set up a Commission of Inquiry, possibly headed by 11 retired judges of the Supreme Court, to probe into the causes of so much mayhem in Punjab and the grievances of the Sikhs. In Punjab, at one stage, before going into the 1997 Assembly election, Prakash Singh Badal even promised to set up an inquiry to probe into the causes of violence and fix responsibility. He then went back on his word. Justice Kuldip Singh, having retired from the Supreme Court, sat as part of the People’s Commission, but soon the state co-opted him. Now, the Jathedar of Akal Takht, Giani Gurbachan Singh, says he will try to prevail upon the powers that be for release of Sikh youth, but we all know what that assurance is worth. 

Nothing very different is happening in case of Muslims. After the 3-day Anhad conclave, the top recommendation put forth by the judges’ panel suggested that a high-power judicial commission headed by a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court be appointed to examine all cases of terror across the country. Well, we are touched by the faith in the Indian judicial system. But we hail the sincerity of Anhad, and of the panelists. 

In fact, when it is not always possible to drag the guilty to the gallows, it should always be our endeavor to embarrass them no end, to shame them to the hilt.  

“Those that seem doubtful or fabricated should be handed over to a special investigation team. It should complete its task in a year so that prolonged detention of persons against whom there is little convincing evidence is not prolonged,” the Anhad panel recommended. Recall the number of years that Jodhpur detainees have spent in jail. 

Recall the glee with which the Indian establishment keeps parking KPS Gill in one or the other cushy jobs. Recall the complete lack of sense of outrage among Indian political class over the lack of justice for victims of 1984 carnage in Delhi and 2002 killings of Muslims in Gujarat. 

It is time for India’s civil society to rise to the occasion. Anhad is fine, but we need to do some more clearer truth speaking. The soft Hindutva variety of Congress and the hardcore version of RSS-BJP, the tacit understanding of the Indian left with the brahamanical forces, the near alliance of the haves in keeping the marginalized outside the pale of development and empowerment needs an expression. 

The poor express it everyday by the sheer fact of their living. Their survival is a form of resistance. The minorities express it every time a Bhai Daljit Singh Bittu is arrested in a false case, every time a Muslim youth is killed in a fake encounter, every time a church is attacked in Orissa. 

What we all need is an articulated and forceful expression from the civil society. So far, it has either failed or disappointed. Anhad was a good effort. Can we please do better?  

7 October 2009
 

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