The U.S. Congress has shown a rare unanimity on India’s human rights record. The Congress represents the people of America, one of the very sensitive world communities alie to the sufferings of the masses all congressmen over the world. Credit goes to Vic Fazio for championing the cause of human rights of the people of Punjab Kashmir and Assam where people aspiring for freedom are being tor turned and killed daily at the hands of India’s security forces while thousands, nay lakhs, are in detention for years without charges or trial. The Congress suggested at Fazio’s initiative that the U.S. administration cut all aid to India meant for military education and training. Until the President gave an assurance that India is taking steps to human rights problems. The message conveyed is clear and categories The people of America frown upon the way India is treating its minorities particularly in Punjab, Kashmir and Assam. Fazio is a respected popular leader with proximity to President Clinton. It is hoped that the views of the Congress will be institutionalized by the U.S. Senate and the President in due course.
It is obvious that the U.S. Congress is one on the crucial issue of its assessment of India’s unsatisfactory record of human rights. The differences are limited to the issue of how to handle India. Experience will being about unity also on the question of dealing with India. That country is unlikely to improve the situation in the foreseeable future. Because the rights violations are inbuilt into the Indian system and polity. The violations are not an aberration as claimed by India. The government steps to end the violations are an aberration. The Indian state is an artificial entity. It is inherited from the British Colonialism and sought to be nurtured into a nation-state. But the historical reality of several nations flourishing on the subcontinent for centuries in the past is seeking to reassert itself through upheavals of increasing intensity in Punjab, Kashmir and Assam. Secondly, the concentration of power in India in Dethi and in the hands of a small caste group namely Brahman is adding fuel to fire. Thirdly, unlike in demo cratie societies where all kinds of pressure groups interact to produce consensus on matters of state, it is the Prime Minister and a small coterie of officers around him who really matter. The army and the police as distinct identities take no decisions on their own. They are not even subordinate to the Parliament or the ministry. Even the home minister does not have the final say on what the security forces should do, in a particular situation. It is the Prime Minister and his “house” which extra judicially direct the security forces to kill, torture and arrest people. All the so called democratic institutions such as Parliament, the executive at the center and the states, the judiciary and the press, aid, rather than hinder, the execution of the Prime Minister plans to keep India in one peace. No wonder, men like Jagmohan and KP.S,Gill are treated as heroes rather than villains. There is yet another aspect of the working of India’s prime minister as an institution. A correlation resists between respect for human rights by the prime minister and his personal integrity, There were fewer violations during V.P.Singh’s leadership of the country. Greater the lack of personal integrity of the prime minister, higher the amount of violations of human rights. Thus Indian minorities shuttered the most in there games of Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Chander Shekhar and Narasimha Rao. All the four prime ministers have been thoroughly corrupt. No one in India disbelieves Harshad Mehta’s charge that he bribed Rao with Rs 1 crore. In the meantime, Sikh organizations in the U.S. and elsewhere may publicize the Congress resolution and send its copies to all members of the United Nations requesting them to pay violations by India and the need to take punitive action, so that eventually the victims get real relief.
Article extracted from this publication >>July 2, 1993
