Indian’s home minister S.B. Chavan visited Canada and some of the western countries a few months ago. At Ottawa, he was presented a letter by Herb Dhaliwal, a member of the Canadian Federal Parliament. Dhaliwal gave a few suggestions to the Indian minister to improve that country’s human rights image. He asked, inter alia, for abrogation of TADA and the Armed Forces Act which give sweeping powers to the country’s armed forces to deal with political opponents including armed political groups. He recommended free access to Amnesty International and other human rights groups to investigate cases of human rights violations in India. Dhaliwal suggested that the 1984 guilty of crimes against Sikhs should be brought to trial speedily and that a full judicial enquiry should be held to investigate the deaths in police custody and of charges of torture. He demanded an international tribunal to study the human rights violations in Punjab, Kashmir and other Indian states and release of all prisoners of conscience. The Canadian M.P. further requested the Indian home minister to remove restrictions on the movement of political workers and community leaders within and outside India. He also demanded referendum in Punjab to determine the future of Punjab.

The letter evoked violent reaction from the Indian home minister. Further, India wrote a detailed reply to the M.P. virtually asking him to shut up. The tone and tenor of the letter speaks volumes of the Indian state’s arrogance and intolerance of any criticism. V.K. Jain, a special secretary of the Indian central government, in his letter even threatened “misunderstandings with the Canadian government if Herb’s views were found to represent the views or that government.

Herb Dhaliwal has no connection with any militant organization. He has no link with any political formation in Punjab or India either. In writing his letter to Chavan, he appears to have been motivated solely by his concern for human rights. He, of course, comes from Punjab. He must have been personally aware of the happenings in his home state. As an M.P. also, his constituents may have apprised him of the situation in Punjab in particular and India in general. Even otherwise, the misdeeds of India’s security forces in Punjab, Kashmir and certain other Indian states find prominent mention in the international media. Therefore, expression of concerns for the violations in India, more particularly in Punjab, illogical for the Sikh member of the Canadian Parliament Moreover, India itself recognized the need to tackle the problem of human rights violations in the country when it set up a human rights commission for the first time after Independence achieved in 1947. It is, of course, another matter that India is insincere about the rights and has given no powers to the commission to effectively deal with the problem. The “why” of it was exposed recently by a former Indian director general of police in Punjab, Dhillon, when he said that the Indian state’s leaders are dishonest because they want police to exercise extra legal powers to torture and kill political opponents) There was no need to set up a commission if India’s existing institutions were equal to the task. There was, 01 course, no occasion for thousands of Sikhs to leave their hearth and home or their human rights were protected in India. By keeping totally silent on the failure of the Indian state to ensure justice to the families more than 3000 of Sikh victims all these 11 years, V.K. Jain has all but confirmed that the self-sustaining democratic institutions to protect human rights are missing in the world’s largest democracy. India’s so-called anti-terrorist laws are communal in nature and are clearly directed against the country s minorities, and are not designed to meet any situation, extraordinary or dangerous. For the Brahman Bania dominated Indian state, the Muslims, Sikhs. Christians, Dalits, Backward castes are militants. It is due to this realization by these castes and groups that they are dead set against TADA. Even a vast section of India’s ruling party now is aware of the true meaning and application of the draconian law. It is this kind of law and the communal approach of rulers like Rao and Chavan and officers like Jain that has driven India’s minorities to vote solidly against the Congress(l) in the recently – held state Assembly elections. Scared of the repercussions of his tyrannical rule, the home minister now talks of abrogating TADA or at least modifying it.

India’s internal political developments are a sufficient proof of the absence of human rights under Congress (l)’s rule. The victims are joining hands to throw out the rank communal, fundamentalist and tyrannical government. The ruling party has been booted out in five of the six most populated Indian states in the recent elections. Even the Shiv Sena-BJP government of Maharashtra dare not defend the unabashedly communal application of TADA by the Indian state where babies have to be taken to jails to be fed by their Muslim mothers. Such is the ugly reality of India.

Herb Dhaliwal has rightly pointed his finger where it hurts India the most. Its ruling class is being cornered not so much by the international community as the national community. The Indian state with its oppressive machinery, is on the run. The days of the fascist-communal laws like TADA are numbered.

Article extracted from this publication >> April 7, 1995