Loud Thinking

Posts Tagged ‘Kashmir’

Isn’t it a court terrorism?

A must read to expose the genocide committed by the Indian Supreme Court in broad day light. These judges deserved to be tried for man slaughter.

An excellent must read article by NANDINI SUNDAR which appeared in The Hindustan Times of Lucknow dated 12 February 2013…………………………………………………..When Kashmiris say they don’t feel part of India, they are only reiterating a truth that Indian politicians and governments voice all the time. What else does it mean when politicians and large sections of the media talk of how happy ‘Indians’ are at the hanging of Afzal Guru, when his execution is touted as a cathartic closure for ‘India’.

The last time I checked, there was curfew in Kashmir and thousands of other justice-loving people were deeply unhappy at the secretive execution, and at the use of the death penalty to fulfil some atavistic blood lust. How else to read the judges’ pronouncement — even as they noted discrepancies in the police version of his guilt — that the hanging was required to satisfy the ‘collective conscience’? In fact, Durkheim’s phrase ‘collective consciousness’ conceals the manufacture of consent through the media, the courts and other institutions. And contrary to his prediction that in an interdependent and complex society we would see a growth in reparative justice, in India, what we see is the growth of a vulgar retributive justice, where primal passions are deliberately inflamed to create a divide between ‘us’ and ‘them’.

‘Us’ in the context of contemporary India means the Bajrang Dal who distributed sweets to celebrate the hanging and blackened the faces of people with opposite views; it means the rightwing goons who groped and sexually abused female protesters outside a Delhi college last week with full police connivance.

But ‘us’ also includes the cynical coterie of Congress politicians who periodically decide to join the BJP bandwagon for electoral purposes. If opening the locks of the Babri Masjid and legislating against the Shah Bano judgement were permanent blots on Rajiv Gandhi’s claim to be secular, his son’s installation in the formal pecking order of the Congress has been accompanied by the opportunistic hanging of Afzal Guru.

Sonia Gandhi may have pleaded against the death penalty for Rajiv’s killers, but unless her party takes a principled position against the death penalty for all, this will seem like the rest of her liberal outreach programme, designed to ensure her own good name.

‘Them’ includes all the ordinary people of India — who have had their lands forcibly acquired, their homes burnt, their relatives killed — in riots and pogroms. ‘Them’ are the seditious fisher folks of Kudankulam, the grave security threats who inhabit the mineral rich villages of Dantewada, the Naga elder and the Kashmiri woman.

And then there are some whose status as ‘us’ or ‘them’ depends on the political calculations of the day. Balwant Singh Rajoana, on death row for the assassination of former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh, may not be hanged because the Akali lobby is important to ‘us’. But clearly it is not important enough for the victims of 1984 to get justice, in which case they fall into the ‘them’ category.

We are told that the ‘Law’ has taken its course, the ‘Law has come full circle’. Where is this law when the widows of Delhi 1984 are still waiting for justice — and people like HKL Bhagat have died before they could be hung (not that this was ever a worry for him); when the murderers of Gujarat 2002 are still roaming free, and having the EU and others cosy up to their government? Did the law come full circle when the murderers of Bathani Tola were acquitted? Where was the law when thousands of mass graves were uncovered in Kashmir and thousands ‘disappeared’; where is this law when women are raped and their rapist officers or jawans get full protection under the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA)?

Deponents at the Verma Commission provided a number of cases in Kashmir where the courts had prima facie indicted army personnel, but the central government refused to give permission to prosecute. The Upendra Commission clearly found that Thangjam Manorama was raped and murdered by personnel of the Assam Rifles in Manipur, but not one person has been punished. In Chhattisgarh, young bravehearts who filed rape cases against special police forces with great difficulty — resulting in arrest warrants against the accused — are being coerced to take their statements back. But then, I forgot, Kashmiris, Manipuris, the adivasis of central India — are not ‘us’, they are not ‘Indian’.

When asked why the AFSPA is needed to protect armed personnel — since rape can never be done in the line of duty — high-ranking officers come on television to say that 99% of the charges against the army are false, and the women are put up to it by Maoists and militants. So shall we assume then, that the women of the North-east, of Kashmir and adivasi India are congenital liars? Or that the law is designed to ensure they are fair game, a welcome pastime in the ‘course of duty’? Or perhaps, more simply, these women are not ‘Indians’.

If to be Indian is to accept the death penalty, if to be Indian is to accept the unjust hanging of a tortured man born of a tortured and alienated people, if to be Indian is to accept the rapes of my sisters and the impunity of its officers, let me say in the words of the Turkish poet, Nazim Hikmet, “Yes, I am a traitor, if you are a patriot, if you are a defender of our homeland, I am a traitor to my homeland; I am a traitor to my country… if patriotism is the claws of your village lords, … if patriotism is the police club, if your allocations and your salaries are patriotism,… if patriotism is not escaping from our stinking black-minded ignorance, then I am a traitor.”

Nandini Sundar teaches sociology at Delhi University. The views expressed by the author are personal.

My replies to the Indian PM on his latest Twitter Messages after 12 Indian security personnel were reported to have been killed today in an ongoing insurgency in Indian held Kashmir.

1. @PMOIndia: “This is one more in a series of provocations and barbaric actions by the enemies of peace.” http://t.co/BJ8wKK01wt

Reply:- @nayyarahmad: @PMOIndia exactly we had the same feelings when Church was bombed in Pakistan.

2. @PMOIndia: We are firmly resolved to combat and defeat the terrorist menace that continues to receive encouragement from across the border. -PM

Reply:- @nayyarahmad: @PMOIndia Sir, pl also comment on the role of Indian consulates in Afghanistan in Swat, Balouchistan insurgencies & suicide attacks in Pak.

3. @PMOIndia: Such attacks will not deter us or succeed in derailing our efforts to find a resolution to all problems through a process of dialogue. PM

Reply:- @nayyarahmad: @PMOIndia no doubt your this statement reflects that it has come from a statesman. Fully appreciated.

An appeal to the PM Pakistan, to make conditional, the grant of the MFN status and the normalisation of relations with India, with the withdrawal of Indian military and para military forces, from the occupied Kashmir and the Siachin.

India kills unarmed protestors (a must read letter published on 21 July, 2013 by the daily “Pakistan Observer”

Professor Kabil Khan

Sunday, July 21, 2013 – This is with reference to the news of six unarmed protestors that were killed when the Indian security forces opened fire upon them. The mindset of the Indian army is evident from its brutal handling of the innocent and unarmed people of Kashmir and the grotesque manner in which they are maimed and killed. It is also reflective of the collective Indian psyche that has legitimized the use of brute force in order to attain and maintain a dominant status in the region.

After acting as a brute force, with full blessings from its government, the Indian army has surelyforgotten how to act as a civilized one. To raid a seminary in the holy month of Ramadan where Muslims are more emotional and sensitized towards religious activity, is nothing but sheer mischief making on the part of the Indian soldiers.

First the Imam of a mosque was harassed and the holy Quar’an desecrated upon which the local people were fired upon indiscriminately when they protested this act of brutal violence. This, manner in which the Indian forces operate is surely nothing new as they are regular customers of HR violations. And all this is being done with the relentless support of the institutional culture of moral, political and juridical impunity. Indian writer and human rights activist Arundhaty Roy states that India will suffer because of what it has done in Kashmir. That the “troops involved in various heinous crimes including custodial killings, disappearances, rapes and declared accused through FIRs and other reports have evaded action which has resulted in making them habitualoffenders. These habitual offenders when deployed in other states will commit the same offences against innocent people.”

—Peshawar

The silence of  world human rights champion governments & organizations, over India’s use of brute force, is very strange and to say the least, in-human.

During the decades’ long struggle of Kashmiri people, India has killed over 80,000 unarmed men, women & children, just for their un-pardonable crime of demand, for right of self-determination.

Lately, India has adopted a new method of genocide, by killing innocent children, sick, old ladies & men of Kashmir, by holding back availability of milk, medicines & other civil supplies for Kashmiris, through the imposition of curfew, stretched as long as, 15 days in one go.

We urgently appeal, to the conscious of the world peace loving people, organizations & governments, to stand up & help the poor Kashmiris in exercising their right of self determination; to overcome this 63 year old humanitarian issue, without any further delay.