The Indian President issued an Ordinance last week and the govemment quickly acted upon it to establish a human rights commission. The Ordinance provides for similar commissions for states while high courts have been empowered to declare the entire district Judges” courts as human rights Courts. There will thus be a plethora of human night’s commissions and courts in India soon. Will these commissions and courts mitigaite the sufferings of lakhs of victims of excesses of India’s military, paramilitary and police forces? Many well-meaning Indians themselves do not entertain much hope from the commissions. and courts. Most human rights groups and individuals have reacted strongly against the Indian hoax on the world public opinion.
Mockery of Law: Former Indian Supreme Court judge Y.R. Krishna Tayer calls the commission a fraud and mockery of law. Only a small group of habitual apologists of the Indian state and its government such as ¢editors of some of the leading newspapers have welcomed the initiative as an improvement over the existing situation. “The Times of India”, for instance, writes editorially that the Ordinance fulfills a longfelt need but it never in the past pleaded for the establishment of such a commission. Most Indian newspapers and even many judges brush aside any complaints of human rights violations. It is said that there are standing in siructions in certain important newspapers in India to spike all news emanating from the states like Punjab and Kashmir on account of rights violations.
There are also reports that successive chief justices of Punjab and Haryana High Court have not even been entertaining complaints from the public for many years. No Indian newspaper has a regular column on human nights. The cases of most victims have been heard with compassion by international human rights groups including Amnesty International rather than by India’s political parties, its newspapers and courts. It was the failure of these so-called democratic organs of the Indian state that led many foreign govemments to voice their concem about the state of human rights in that country. The Intemational pressure reached its climax with President Clinton citing Kashmir as an international trouble spot.
Official Apathy: India first talked of a human rights commission more than 16 months ago. It had been dragging its feet during this period until suddenly Shankar Dayal Sharma signed an ordinance even as a bill on the subject is still pending before the Indian Parliament It is thus quite obvious that the formation of the commission is the result of pressure from the international public opinion rather than the result of the internally felt need. The provisions of the rights commission make it abundantly clear that the Indian state is still reluctant on the issue.
No Jurisdiction on Military: The commission at the national level will not hear any complaint against India’s vast military and paramilitary forces, This omission i$ a telling illustration of the state of affairs in that country where the military and the paramilitary forces decide what a human rights commission should do and what it should not do. But the main body of complaints by the vietms particularly in states like Punjab, Kashmir, Assam and the northeast is directed against the military and paramilitary forces directly recruited, deployed and retired by the Indian central government. The central Indian govemment forces as such will go scot free on account of any complaints of human rights violations, Even where the human rights commissions at the state levels have jurisdiction to investigate complaints against the states’ controlled police forces and other officers, their findings will be merely recommendatory to the government which, in turn, is not bound to accept and punish the guilty.
No Investigative Role; The govemmenthas the power even under the ordinance to disagree with the findings and throw away the recommendations. Even otherwise the proposed commissions at the State level have no independent machinery to investigate complaints of rights violations. All these commissions will have to rely for investigation on the police forces which are not expected to report against their own superiors. Perhaps, non govemment human rights Organizations could lend a helping hand to the commissions but the law does not recognize them at all. In fact, the Indian state ~ IS newspapers, Courts, political parties and their leaders have always been mocking at human rights activists and their interventions in favor of the vietims of the Indian state.
The establishment of a commission or commissions look like an alien plant rather than an indigenous growth. The human rights movement in India is extremely weak. The forces hostile to are aplenty.
Class Hostility: India’s upper and middle classes as a whole have aversion to any talk of human rights. This is because most of the security forces, more particularly the officer class, are drawn from India’s urban middle class. Class also stands to lose heavily the event of Punjab or Kashmir going out of India. As such the fight against militancy 1s being carried on with no holds barred and this fight has the active support of not only the Indian state but also the urban upper and middle classes.
If the western nations believe they have made a breakthrough in the form of India setting up a rights commission, they arc sadly mistaken and this reality will become known much too soon to them.
Faeist State: Unless the west recognizes the true nature of the Indian state fasetst, colonial, warlord it cannot help the cause of human rights. It should also understand that the Indian state is taking it for a ride in describing freedom movements in Punjab. Kashmir and elsewhere as terrorist.
The westem statesmen tragically tend to endorse the Indian state’s aggression on Punjab and other states on plea of India’s unity and integrity. In short, if India stays in one piece, it will have to crush human rights.
The human rights of the people of India can not be saved by its commissions. They can only be saved by freedom from Indian colonial yoke.
Is the west listening?
Article extracted from this publication >> October 8, 1993
