Four states, same story of discrimination By Suhasini Ali - Indian Express

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/four-states-same-story-of-discrimination/881210/0

Mon, 28 Nov 2011

 

 

Four states, same story of discrimination

Subhashini Ali
Tags : subhashini ali, columnist, indian express, indian express oped, Four states, same story of discrimination

Posted: Mon Nov 28 2011, 03:34 hrs

The last six months have witnessed attacks on members of the minority community [read: Indian Muslims-gm] in four different states: Forbesganj, Arhariya in Bihar, Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh, Rudrapur in Uttarakhand and Gopalgarh, Bharatpur in Rajasthan. All those who have been killed and suffered material losses have been members of the minority community. Despite the fact that the states concerned are ruled by very different political dispensations — the BSP in Uttar Pradesh, JD(U)-BJP in Bihar, the BJP in Uttarakhand and the Congress in Rajasthan — the unforgivable and dangerous communal bias displayed by the police and administration and the ways in which political rulers have sought to cover up, justify or downplay this bias, have been similar. Those who believe that all Indian citizens have the right to equal treatment from the administration and the judiciary must voice their concern. Affected families from Forbesganj, Moradabad and Gopalgarh attended a convention against communal conflict organised by the All India Democratic Women’s Association in the capital recently. Rudrapur went unrepresented because the families of victims have fled the town. They spoke at the convention about bereavement. It was not pity they sought, but recognition of injustice, and punishment of those responsible.

On June 3, Muslims in Forbesganj resisted the state government’s effort to deny them access to a road that was their only link to the mosque, schools and workplaces. The police version is that the protesters resorted to stone-throwing. The police responded by firing. Four Muslims, including a woman and an eight-month-old infant, were killed. One of those killed was 18-year-old Mustafa, and a policeman was filmed jumping on his dead body. His brother, Quddus, recited his poem at the convention: “Jo soch naheen sakti duniya, voh manzar kal dikhlaya hai, vardi mein darinda aaya hai, vardi mein darinda aaya hai...” Except for giving compensation to the dead infant’s family, the state has not taken any action — even the photographed constable has not been punished. A few days ago, after the Supreme Court’s intervention, a judicial inquiry was announced.

The trouble in Moradabad started on July 6, when local policemen went to enquire into a complaint, and allegedly slapped a12-year-old girl and kicked the Quran. News of this “desecration” spread like wildfire in areas heavily populated with Muslims, followed by road-blocks and the burning of police jeeps. Unfortunately, the DIG was attacked by a mob that he was trying to reason with while, inexplicably, the DM [District Magistrate] returned to Moradabad. Reinforcements brought the situation under control. While there are complaints of indiscriminate beatings, destruction of property and arrests — even of those who had been helping the administration — what is outrageous that three minors received bullet wounds and at least 12 minors are among those arrested. One of them, Rehan, the son of a daily-wage labourer who sold his entire holding of 2 bighas of land to have his son treated, died on October 19. No reports have been filed even though at least two of them were treated in government hospitals, and the administration and judiciary have refused to accept school certificates and send the minors to a juvenile home and their cases to a juvenile court. Salma, whose son Tauseef is one of the school-children, showed the convention his photograph.

Ten Meos [Muslims] belonging to Gopalgarh, Bharatpur were killed on September 14, most of them in police firing. A long-standing dispute over a graveyard that the administration was aware of, but did not resolve, led to an attack on some Meos. The police called both parties to the thana and reached a compromise that recognised the Meos’ right to the graveyard. This was not acceptable to some members of the majority community who surrounded the thana [Police Station], falsely alleging that they were being “massacred” by the Muslims. The DM and SP reacted by declaring that “they” [Muslims] would be taught a lesson. Indiscriminate firing on the Meos and on the mosque was resorted to. The Rajasthan government has made some interventions, but the villagers accused of killing and incitement have not been punished.

Rudrapur, Uttarakhand, saw a deliberate attempt to incite communal clashes when, in September, pig-meat wrapped in pages torn from the Koran was thrown near a temple. The police did nothing and, on October 2, the same thing happened again near a mosque. When Muslims demonstrated outside the thana, they were attacked by the police, who also encouraged others to follow suit. At least eight Muslims were killed, shops belonging to them were looted, and thousands have fled.

The events of recent months have emphasised the necessity of making the police, administration and judiciary free of bias and committed to secular principles. Exemplary punishment must be meted out to those who violate these principles. Governments must display much more sensitivity and commitment to rehabilitation. The state has to prove its commitment to the secular Constitution through action that cannot be half-hearted and tardy.

The writer is vice-president of the All India Democratic Women’s Association and member of the central committee of the CPM

Get out, leave AF to Pak - By Shekhar Gupta, Senior Editor, The Indian Express, Mumbai

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/get-out-leave-af-to-pak/877841/0

Sat, 19 Nov 2011

Get out, leave Af to Pak

Publish Post

Shekhar Gupta

Tags : shekhar gupta, columnist, indian express, Get out, leave Af to Pak

Posted: Sat Nov 19 2011, 03:12 hrs

The sharply polarised political debate on the nuclear deal was the most significant instance of the so-called holy national consensus on foreign policy breaking in India. Some of this spirit keeps returning vis-a-vis Pakistan any time the government reaches out to Pakistan, or when there is another terror attack. But beyond that, the larger consensus remains intact. It is not healthy for a democracy, and particularly not when it has a strategic community that has had even greater continuity than its establishment economists, defying all changes of government, leaders, ideology. That is why the time has come to question, or at least intellectually challenge, some other aspects of this lazy “consensus”. Even at the risk of inviting the charge of apostasy, therefore, the time might have come to question the wisdom and prudence of our totally unquestioned, un-debated idea of engaging in a dirty little cold war with Pakistan in Afghanistan once the Americans withdraw from there.

Today, everybody seems to be accepting the idea that Afghanistan is of great strategic significance to India, and we can neither cede it to Pakistan, nor leave them to fill the power vacuum that the Americans will leave behind. Similarly, that this is the Great Game country, and we are back to the Great Game, somehow inheriting the mantle of the British power in the 19th century, except that we might have to deal with an additional distraction called Pakistan. Further, that Afghanistan is a resource (mineral)-rich land where we have future commercial stakes, and is a gateway to Central Asia, making transit rights of such paramount importance for us.

There is some truth to some, but not all, of these. But the larger picture may look very different on closer examination. Also, engaging in a policy that puts us permanently and, inevitably, violently at odds with the Pakistanis is an idea that is being accepted much too readily. As if this is our destiny, part of an ongoing blood feud. As if we have no choice.

All of this, frankly, is lazy, self-serving rubbish, dished out by a strategic establishment that suffers terminally from a cold war mindset, and does not quite know, like all bigger powers (the US included), when to declare victory, and when to cut its losses.
The more curious thing is, some of this is happening under a prime minister who never tires of exhorting his policy-makers to “think out of the box” and a national security advisor who has built a formidable reputation for doing exactly this, not just now but over many decades of diplomatic service.

What kind of strategic importance does Afghanistan have for us now? Yes, we need transit to Central Asia. But to reach Afghanistan, we have to first persuade the Pakistanis to grant us transit. The more we jostle with them for influence in Afghanistan, the lesser the chances of their being so nice to us. Yes, Afghanistan is resource-rich and the Chinese may get there if we are not there. 

But what are we, meanwhile, doing with our own mineral resources? So many of our mines are shut, or not accessible. We might get a hundred times more value by either fighting, or bribing (as everybody eventually does with insurgents in Afghanistan), our own Maoists to be able to exploit our own mines. And the Chinese will get there before us anyway. And yes, there will be a power vacuum in Afghanistan. It will still be a country of great strategic importance. But for whom, is the question. It will be of no strategic importance to us. None of our supplies or trade come to Afghanistan. None of our bad guys hide there. No Afghan has ever been involved in a terror attack on India. In fact, almost never has a terror attack on us been even planned in the more precise Af-Pak region. They have all been planned and executed between Muzaffarabad, Muridke, Karachi and Multan. Almost never has an Afghan, Pakhtun, Baluch, Tajik, any ethnicity, been involved in a terror attack in India. It’s always been the Punjabis. Ask anybody in the Indian army who has served in Kashmir and he will tell you that the intruders he fought were exactly of the same ethnic stock as the bulk of the Pakistani army he may have to fight in a real war: the Punjabi Muslims.

Yes, as we said earlier, Afghanistan is still a country of great strategic importance. But for Pakistan, and certainly not for us. 

Pakistan has a long, unsettled border with it and a more-than-latent irredentist Pathan sentiment on both sides of the Durand Line that it dreads spinning out of control as (and if) Afghanistan breaks up along north-south-west ethnic lines. From tribal ties, to funny trade-links, like gun and drug-running, an unsettled Afghanistan will be a permanent thorn in Pakistan’s side when six divisions of its army are already not able to get the measure of the armed anarchy in FATA. 

Why should India then get into this unwinnable mess? More importantly, why should India give the Pakistani army and the ISI just what they need, a great, holy, moral justification to pour into Afghanistan to “fight the Indian challenge”?


Leave Afghanistan to the Pakistanis. If the Pakistani army thinks it can fix, subdue and control Afghanistan, after the British, Soviets and Americans have failed to do precisely this at the peak of each one’s superpower-dom, why not let the Pakistanis try their hand at it? If they pour another ten divisions and half of the ISI into that hapless country now, isn’t it that much of a relief for us on our western borders? What could serve our strategic interests better than having the Pakistanis discover a permanent strategic threat/ challenge/ opportunity along their western borders? Won’t that be some relief?

And if the Pakistani army thinks it can succeed in a mission in which their mightier predecessors, the British and the Soviet empires and the Americans, failed, good luck to them. Because it will fulfil a fantasy of “strategic depth” they have nursed since they were rocked by totally fictional visions of massive Indian tank assaults through the desert cutting their mainland into two during General Sundarji’s Operation Brasstacks in 1987. It is since then that the Pakistani strategic establishment has been seeking “strategic depth” in Afghanistan. Now, if any army wants to seek the “depth” of Afghanistan for its armour, vital air force assets, or even nukes, good luck to them. In fact, it would be interesting to see how the rest of the world, particularly the Americans, would react if such a thing was even contemplated. Far from being a security asset ever, Afghanistan, for the Pakistani army, will be exactly what it has been for any other invading army in its history: a permanent Waterloo in slow motion.

So shall we leave the Pakistani army and ISI to their own devices in Afghanistan? Whether they fail or succeed, it will confirm only one widely held view in the global strategic community: that howsoever dashing it may be tactically, the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment’s strategic thinking emerges not from its brains but that some place lower down in human anatomy. Maybe then, the best way we can serve our own strategic interests in Afghanistan is to stay out of their way.

sg@expressindia.com