Two news items appeared almost side by side in the newspapers recently. One was about New Delhi’s taking umbrage at the recent Pakistani statement expressing concern over the loss of innocent lives in the communal clashes in India. The Indian government considered such expression as “interference” in India’s internal affairs. The other report was about New Delhi’s expressing unhappiness with the new draft constitution of Fiji which it considered “unacceptable”.
The incongruity of the two announcements obviously did not strike the swollen-headed bureaucrats of the external affairs ministry who prepared the two official statements and briefed newsmen. If Pakistan’s official concern over communal riots in India is construed as interference in India’s internal affairs, India’s official expression of unhappiness with Fiji’s constitution can also be regarded by Fiji as Indian interference in its internal affairs. The Indian plea for coming out with a statement on Fiji sounds similar in tone with he Pakistani excuse in relation to the communal riots here. South block officials feel that the new Fiji constitution would reinforce racial discrimination against Fiji citizens of Indian origin, while Islamabad defends its concern for the Indian victims of communal clashes “with many of whom Pakistanis have bonds of family, culture and history.”
If one goes by strict legal niceties, it is none of India’s business to complain about Fiji’s constitution the drafting of which is the “Internal affair” of that country, carry on their struggle against discrimination on their own without New Delhi’s interference, just as the citizens of Indian origin in South Africa had been fighting, along with their black neighbors, against the racial system there.
But if it is the moral issue of human rights, New Delhi has a point in protesting against racial discrimination and persecution of people on racial grounds—whether it is in Fiji or in Britain, or in any part of the world. But then, once having taken that stand, the South Block bureaucrats cannot deny Islamabad the right to equally protest against the killings of Muslims in India killings carried out directly by the Indian state (in the shape of the UP Provincial Armed Constabulary in Meerut) and indirectly by allowing the Hindu fundamentalists to forment riots on the Ram Janmabhoomi Babri Masjid issue which are taking a heavy toll of Muslim lives. If New Delhi claims the right to express concern over the plight of ‘Fiji citizens of Indian origin’ (who settled there more than a century ago, have hardly any links with India in terms of family bonds), should we not accept Islamabad’s right to protest against the persecution of and killing of Muslim minorities, many among whom are still related by family bonds (even if we leave out the controversial claim of culture and history by Islamabad in its recent statement on the communal riots in India) to citizens of Pakistan? In human terms, how OES family in Pakistan which has its close relatives living 10 India (which many do) react when communal riots break out in India? If New Delhi cannot protect its minority community from persecution and killings, it forfeits its right to protest against racial discrimination in Fiji.
Article extracted from this publication >> December 15, 1989
