Contours of Modified India

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

As the Narendra Modi government completed 100 days in office, there was good news from the economic front, with officials reporting an impressive growth rate of 5.7 per cent during the quarter from April to June against 4.7 per cent in the previous quarter.

The government of the day is entitled to claim credit for the favourable turn in the tide. However, since the quarter was already on its last leg when Modi took over, it has to share the credit with the previous regime. The coming quarters may well see even faster growth and also reveal the cost the poor have to pay for the promised economic miracle. The new government has already diluted several laws enacted to safeguard the interests of the poor and protect the environment to accelerate economic growth.

Both Manmohan Singh and Modi are enthusiastic supporters of globalisation with visions of India as an economic power. The differences in their approach are related not to policy but to the pace of its implementation. The change of government will, therefore, make little difference to the shape of things on the economic front.

Modi has replaced a number of state governors and bureaucrats appointed by the previous regime. The exercise has been undertaken not to tone up the system but to bring in a new set of cronies. A former Telecommunication Regulatory Authority Chairman was appointed the Prime Minister’s Principal Secretary after amending the law to overcome the ban on his re-employment. A former Chief Justice of India has been picked for appointment as governor. These moves may offer new temptations to persons holding high offices.

These are but minor aberrations in comparison with the developments on the social front. Ziya us Salam, a senior journalist of the highly regarded daily, The Hindu, summed up the dilemma that the Modi establishment’s majoritarian politics poses to minorities when he wrote, “It is not easy being a Muslim in India, it never has been, especially being a secular one.”

As is clear from his words, the problem is not new, but a continuing one. Its origin can be traced to the communal mobilisation that has been challenging the country’s secular traditions for more than a century.

Scholars have pointed out that the census operations, which began in the 19th century, have played a part in the growth of communalism. The census in Britain did not go into the religious affiliation of the people. But the British colonial administration tried to identify the people’s religious background and classified them into five broad divisions and a dozen subdivisions.

In 1909, one UN Mukherji, in a pamphlet, titled “Hindus: A Dying Race”, citing census figures, claimed that the Hindu population was declining. That paved the way for Hindu communal mobilisation, first under the auspices of the Arya Samaj and later under various other organisations espousing the Hindutva ideology enunciated by VD Savarkar. In its wake came Muslim communal mobilisation, which eventually resulted in the creation of Pakistan as a Muslim homeland.

In the first general election of 1951-52, held while the communal tempers raised by the Partition riots still ruled high, the Indian National Congress, which upheld the ideal of secularism, was challenged by three Hindu parties, the Hindu Mahasabha, the Jana Sangh, predecessor of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, and Ram Rajya Parishad, an outfit led by ascetics. Together they could get only 10 seats in the 489-member Lok Sabha against the Congress party’s 364.

In the Assembly elections in Punjab, the Congress put up Ghaffar Khan, whose was the only Muslim family in the Ambala constituency after migration by members of the minority community to Pakistan. He won the seat and was re-elected twice before death caught up with him.

Today the BJP has a majority in the Lok Sabha, which was won on a minority of votes. The Congress has been reduced to a party which is too small to earn recognition as the official opposition in the house.

Many factors contributed to the rout of the Congress. One of them is corruption. Another is its declining appeal as a secular force. While under Jawaharlal Nehru the Congress took communalism head on, later on it moved towards a soft Hindutva line.

Developments on the social front will determine the final shape of Modi’s India. Recently he called for a moratorium on communal violence. It remains to be seen if the Hindutva outfits which have sprung up in different parts of the country will heed the call. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, September 2, 2014

Communal violence in Dhule and other places in Maharashtra condemned

The following is a statement issued by a group of prominent citizens condemning the communal violence at Dhule and other places in Maharashtra:

 

The recent communal violence in Dhulia leading to the death of five people and injury to nearly 160 others is a matter of great shock and pain. The small incident of payment of hotel bill was used to instigate violence leading to mayhem, destruction and deaths. .Another petty incidence was also used in Akot town a couple of months ago to unleash violence in which many shops belonging to minority community were burnt. Similarly in Raver the skirmish between two communities led to violence.

We have seen the most tragic violence after the demolition of Babri mosque. Then the series of bomb blasts and riots all over the country from which our secular fabric has still to recover fully. Unfortunately, Maharashtra has suffered many a communal disturbances in these past two decades in places like Jalna, Parbhani, Malegon and others. Even 65 years after independence, our democracy seems to have failed our women and our minorities on whom violence in different forms is unleashed regularly with omissions or commissions of the state machinery. The biased role of police on most of these occasions is a matter of further worry. Communal violence is a bane of our society and is adversely affecting not just the minorities but the very progress of our country adversely.

Communal elements are trying to strengthen themselves through these activities. One is also fearful that these communal elements are stepping up their efforts as a prelude to the forthcoming elections of 2014.

While condemning these senseless acts of violence, we appeal to people to avoid provocation by communal elements. There is a need to set up Mohalla committees and increase intercommunity interactions at all levels. The prevalence of myths and biases against the ‘other communities’ has also to be overcome. The Government has to take urgent steps to ensure that the communal violence is prevented in future. The steps to sensitize the police; through workshops, lectures and literature of communal amity has to be undertaken on urgent basis.The Government should also urgently bring in the Communal Violence (Prevention) Bill as suggestd by NAC after suitable modifications and implement it as soon as possible.

We urge upon the State Government to ensure immediate and impartial action to bring the situation under control, establish fast track courts to punish the guilty and initiate long term measures, including sensitisation of the police, to prevent recurrence of riots.

Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer, Mumbai

Admiral L. Ramdas- Mumbai

Mahesh Bhatt- Mumbai

Ram Punyani- Mumbai

Irfan Engineer

L.S. Haredenia- Bhopal

Dr. Mazhar Hussain- Hyderabad 

Hurdles to communal harmony

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

A Bill drafted by the National Advisory Council headed by Congress President Sonia Gandhi, who is also chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance, which rules India, to check communal violence has met with wide opposition.

Called the Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, the measure seeks to enhance the state’s accountability and check discriminatory use of its powers in the context of attacks on religious and linguistic minorities and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

The Hindu rightwing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party, which has close links with it, are in the forefront of the campaign against it. They view it as one that targets them.

When the Bill was placed by the National Integration Council last month, the BJP leaders were joined by their National Democratic Alliance colleagues, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar (Janata Dal–United) and Punjab Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal (Akali Dal) and by Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik (Biju Janata Dal).

Leaders of the Trinamool Congress, which is a UPA constituent, and the Left parties also criticised the Bill. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati (Bahujan Samaj Party) avoided taking a stand, saying the time was not opportune to comment on it.

Harsh Mander, a member of the NAC, later complained that when the Bill came under attack in the NIC, the government failed to defend it.

Few countries have as varied and complex a society as India’s. The Hindus who constitute 80 per cent of the population are divided into numerous caste groups with distinct identities. Hindi, designated as the official language in the Constitution, is spoken by only 41 per cent of the people. About 54 per cent speak a dozen other major languages. The remaining five per cent speak a large number of minor languages, some of which are facing extinction.

Sectarian conflicts, confined to specific areas, are quite common, and occasionally there are big conflagrations like the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984 and the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat after the burning of RSS-mobilised volunteers in a rail coach at Godhra in 2002.

Those who instigate and perpetrate communal violence almost always go unpunished. This happens not because there is no law to deal with them but because the official agencies are in complicity with them or powerless to act against them as they enjoy political patronage.

Those indicted in the anti-Sikh riots were leaders of the Congress. The prime movers behind the Gujarat riots were RSS and BJP functionaries. An officer who testified that Chief Minister Narendra Modi had asked the police to let the Hindus wreak vengeance is now facing the wrath of the administration.

The law already has provisions to deal with sectarian violence. The Indian Penal Code has a section on “promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language etc and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony.” It has proved ineffective for two reasons. One is that the punishment prescribed is only three to five years of imprisonment and fine. The other is that instances of successful prosecution are few.

The proposed law provides for a new category of offence, namely “communal and targeted violence”. It will apply when violence is directed against anyone by virtue of membership of a group.

It seeks to set up a National Authority for Communal Harmony, Justice and Reparation (NACHR) and similar bodies at the state level. Apart from monitoring cases of communal violence and redressing grievances of affected people, it will have power to penalise officials for acts of commission as well as acts of omission.

Critics have raised two serious objections to the Bill. One is that it will undermine the republic’s federal character inasmuch as it will allow the Centre to proclaim ‘internal emergency’ and step in to deal with communal violence in a state. The other is that since the law will apply only to violence committed by a majority group against a minority group, and not to violence committed by a minority group against a majority group, in effect it creates separate laws to deal with similar offences by different groups.

Attempts to check communal violence must begin with meaningful efforts to eliminate communal thinking, which is sustained by cynical exploitation of caste and religious sentiments by political parties.--Gulf Today, Sharjah, October 24, 2011.

Communal Violence Bill: How useful to victims?

ASGHAR ALI ENGINEER
csss-isla.com

The Government has got clearance from the Cabinet for introducing the Communal Violence Bill in the coming session of parliament. The Bill was drafted originally in 2005 after 2004 elections in view of the Gujarat carnage of 2002 under the BJP Government headed by Narendra Modi. It was because of Gujarat carnage that Muslims voted for the Congress massively, as a result of which NDA was defeated.

The Congress party had promised in its manifesto that it would bring the bill to prevent Gujarat like carnage against minorities. It did draft the Bill in 2005 which we, along with several other NGOs, human rights activists and legal experts, studied and found it wanting in many respects. We organized number of consultations and suggested number of amendments to make it really serve the purpose for which the Bill was drafted.

Mr. Shivraj Patil, the then Home Minister, also held number of consultations in few cities and promised to consider various suggestions given by various NGOs and individuals but he did not incorporate these suggestions when final draft was presented. The present draft after going through standing committee and Cabinet too, is hardly better than the original draft. One wonders what Government wants. I would say this cure suggested is worse than the disease.

The present Bill already cleared by the Cabinet, seeks to give more power to the police. In fact police has always been the part of the problem, rather than part of the solution. Had police been fair and impartial, no communal riot can last for more than 24 hours. Those governments which have intended to control communal violence do nothing but ask the police to control violence within 24 hours else office in charge would be suspended. And communal violence stops before 24 hours.

All those who have investigated communal riots know what role police plays in communal riots from remaining spectators to actively helping the rioters instead of controlling it. In Gujarat and Kandhamal, to give two latest examples, but for the role of police, communal violence would have been controlled in no time. In all major riots police have played openly partisan role. In some cases they have even led rioting mobs.

And if you empower police more in such circumstances, as the present Bill seeks to do, one can very well imagine what havoc it is going to cause. It is victims who need to be empowered, not the police. In a consultation held in Delhi on 12-13 February by ANHAD, Institute of Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution, Mumbai (part of CSSS) and several other organizations. They all unanimously rejected the present draft.

Also, another provision of the present draft Bill is to declare an area as disturbed area, if communal riots are not controlled. This is even worse than giving the police more power. It means to give police absolute power. Even when curfew is declared, it is enforced only in minority areas and police hardly enforces its provision in majority areas. Vibhuti Narain's writings and his novel Shahar Mein Curfew brings this in sharp focus. Vibhuti Narain was a top police officer in the U.P. cadre.

If an area is declared disturbed area police will have powers to shoot anyone at its will. In Kashmir and in North Eastern states people have demanded repeal of disturbed areas act. The victims, instead of getting relief, would feel totally helpless. Any law which gives police more powers without making it accountable cannot be acceptable to those who care for human rights of victims.

Like any other official Bill, there is not a single clause to make administration, police or politicians accountable for their failure to control communal violence. If so, you don't need any fresh law at all. Human rights activists have always maintained that present laws, if enforced sincerely, can very well take care of any situation. After all the Left Front Government in West Bengal and the RJD in Bihar successfully prevented and controlled communal riots for more than three decades in WB and one and half decade in case of Bihar.

If only state governments enforces section 153-A of Indian Criminal Code in right earnest and arrests all those who make hate speeches and vitiate communal amity, there will be no communal disturbances. No politician would like to go to jail for three years. My experience shows that right from Jabalpur riot in 1961 to Gujarat riots in 2002 to anti-Christian riots in Kandhamal, Orissa, not a single politician was arrested for openly and blatantly provoking communal violence.

Also, no standard and objective method has been laid down for working out reparations and relief measures. It all depends on the whims of chief minister today. Narendra Modi Government offered ridiculous amounts of Rs.500/- and Rs.300/- for houses completely damaged and defying public opinion closed down relief camps much before any concrete measures to rehabilitate the victims were made. Thanks to the private agencies that these camps could be run for a longer period.

Also, there is not much in the present Bill for investigations and successful trial of cases and launching of FIRs. It is well known that police is extremely reluctant to register FIRs and even when it does, it refuses to enter the names of the accused. And less said about the subsequent investigations, the better. The investigation is so shoddy that courts often dismiss the cases against the accused.

In most of the cases the police close them saying not much evidence is available. In the case of Gujarat the police closed down hundreds of cases which could be reopened only under the Supreme Court orders. Despite all this the present Bill supposedly drafted to help the victims, make no provisions for all this.

It is, therefore, highly necessary to make drastic changes in the present Bill before it is discussed in the Parliament and if the Government is unwilling to introduce necessary changes, the M.P.s should study the Bill carefully and force the Government to bring about necessary amendments in the Bill. All the eminent participants of consultation in Delhi felt that the 59 amendments proposed by the government are nothing but mere tinkering.

The participants felt that neither do the proposed amendments make any structural changes to the Bill nor has the government factored in any of suggestions made by the civil society. The national consultation in Delhi on 12-13 February found fault even with the definition of the communal violence in the Bill. The consultation suggested the definition as "any targeted attack committed on the persons and property of individual or a group of persons on the basis of their religious identity, which can be inferred directly or from the nature or circumstances of the attack.

The consultation also felt that the government's proposal to declare certain areas as "communally disturbed" was rejected. In fact it demanded that the Chapter II of the Bill be dropped completely arguing that the State already has sufficient powers vested in it by law and further empowering the State and Central governments would, therefore not remedy the situation. The Consultation felt that co-relation between crimes and disturbed area is false, dangerous and untenable, and must not find place in a law on communal violence.

The consultation also felt that instead of doubling the punishment which courts would be reluctant to apply anyway, it noted that other forms of punishment - disqualification from public office, debarring from professional associations or running from public office - should be included in the case of culpability of public officials.

The good example of such disqualification form contesting elections etc. is from Mumbai High Court Judgment delivered by Justice Suresh in late nineties when Bal Thackeray of Shiv Sena made provocative speech in Vile Parle and won the seat for his candidate. Justice Suresh disqualified him for 6 years from voting in any election or contesting any election or even campaigning for his party.

It had restraining effect on him. But this was one instance which was exceptional. If politicians are made to meet such punishment, it would indeed have great effect on them and would desist from temptation to provoke communal violence to win elections in an easy way. The reason why some political leaders are tempted to provoke communal violence, more than ideological reasons, is to win elections by polarizing the voters.

It takes us to yet in another field i.e. that of electoral reforms. In highly diverse country like India with so much religious, linguistic and cultural diversity, the first past the post method which we have blindly copied from England which was then a mono-religious and mono-linguistic society, is highly problematic. We need to either introduce 51% votes for winning or proportional voting or combination of both to remedy the situation. Such electoral method would lead to inclusive rather than exclusive as it is today. Candidates win elections by excluding certain class of people rather than including everyone.

Well until then this Bill needs to be drastically amended to give relief from communal violence.

Courtesy: Countercurrents.org

Salute to a brave fighter for justice

Citizens for Justice and Peace, Communalism Combat, Muslims for Secular Democracy, Bombay Catholic Sabha and NEEDS have organized a collective felicitation of a victim-survivor of the Mumbai carnage of 1992-93 and his legal team.

They have invited other organizations to join them as co-organizers of the felicitation.

The following is the text of a communication from the organizations:

LET’S SALUTE FAROOQ MAPKAR, BRAVE FIGHTER FOR JUSTICE and A VICTIM-SURVIVOR OF 1992-1993 BOMBAY POGROM
And his legal team,
Yusuf Muchala, Vijay Pradhan and Shakeel Ahmed.

VENUE: K.C. COLLEGE AUDITORIUM, NEAR CHURCHGATE
DATE: TUESDAY MARCH 3, 2009
TIME: 5.30 p.m.

-------------------------------------

“The testimony of Hindu witnesses helped me more than the silence of Muslims. And I can proudly say, if you fight legally, there is justice in our country.”
- Farooq Mapkar, after one phase of his 16-year-old struggle for justice ended and another began.

On February 18, 2009, Judge RD Jadhav of the 25th Sessions Court ended a 16-year fight for justice of a man who survived police firing inside Hari Masjid during the 1992-93 communal riots but was slapped with charges ranging from murder to rioting. “Not guilty”, ruled the judge.

Farooq said: “The tension of attending court that has haunted me these 16 years is finally over. The accused has always got to be on time while everyone else — police, public prosecutor and even the magistrates — can walk in late. It’s unfair.”

The Hari Masjid Incident, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Marg, Wadala
In the midst of the communal carnage in January 1993, some policemen fired inside the mosque at Wadala killing at least seven persons. Injured in the unprovoked firing, Farooq Mapkar, a bank employee, was picked up along with 54 others from inside the mosque and booked for rioting and attempt to murder.

His fight for justice began 15 days later when he lodged a complaint after being released. Over the years, he has become the face of Mumbai’s riot victims who refuse to give up till the guilty are punished. “I have never rioted in my life,” recalls the son of a Bombay Port Trust employee. Like others in the area, Farooq had gone to Hari Masjid to pray that Sunday afternoon. He ended up being shot in the shoulder as police led by then sub-inspector Nikhil Kapse fired into the mosque. He saw four persons being shot while they prayed inside the mosque, and another who had came out with his hands up in the air.

Farooq, like others present there, told Justice B N Srikrishna what he saw. The judge indicted Kapse in his report, which was released in August 1998. Since then, Farooq has been fighting, not just to get acquitted, but also to ensure punishment for Kapse. Last month, on Farooq’s plea, the Bombay High Court ordered a CBI inquiry into the Hari Masjid firing.

What rankles with him most is not the tedious legal process, “but the way the Congress government has cheated us Muslims. The Sena withdrew riot cases against their own people, but the Congress didn’t withdraw even those cases against Muslims that Justice Srikrishna found to be false, like mine. Neither did it punish the indicted policemen. Then it has the nerve to claim that it has implemented the Srikrishna Commission Report.” During his 16-year-long struggle it was only human rights activists and lawyers who stood by him, said Farooq.

For further details please contact: Teesta Setalvad (09821314172), or Javed Anand (09870402556).

Orissa Bachao Andolan’s memorandum to State Human Rights Commission

The Orissa Bachao Andolan (Save Orissa Movement) has, in a memorandum to the State Human Rights Commission, given a detailed account of the attacks on Christian institutions in the State’s tribal belt by Hindu communal outfits.

The text of the memorandum is available at the Countercurrents website.

Countercurrents.org has also distributed to two articles on the Orissa developments:

Pogrom against Christians: by John Dayal and Shabnam Hashmi

Dance of Terror in Orissa: by Nikunj Bhutia