November 2009 
Year 16    No.145
Editorial


An eye for an eye, making the whole world blind

Be it the justification for the massacre of Sikhs by influential men of the ruling Congress ably aided by policemen in 1984 – or the state-sponsored genocidal carnage in Gujarat in 2002 when the chief executive presided over a statewide massacre – brute violence by non-state actors while state agencies watched or joined in and the unchecked use of force against its own people, Sikh and Muslim, was the result. While most of the perpetrators of the 1984 massacre have escaped punishment or political isolation, the struggle for justice in Gujarat continues. Will the Indian state, which includes its investigating agencies and the judiciary, deliver? Latest developments in Gujarat reveal that eyewitnesses, reassured by the Supreme Court’s monitoring of the major trials, have been giving bold and forthright testimonies in courts within the state. It remains to be seen whether the grit and courage of the survivors succeed in punishing all the guilty. CC dedicates this issue to commemorating 25 years since the Sikh carnage of 1984.

Violence by the Indian state, and in reprisal by groups agitating for the people, also figures in this issue of CC. Be it the state of Jammu and Kashmir, reeling under the effects of two decades of systemic violence, or Operation Green Hunt in the Naxal-affected areas of central and eastern India, proposed by the union government ostensibly to counter the movement launched by those who call themselves Maoists, more violence against Adivasis (tribals) is likely to be the result. Extensive debates on this issue have dominated mainstream media attention over the past few weeks. The Indian state, directly through its own agencies and also through sponsored outfits like the Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh, has for some decades matched the violence of poverty and denial of basic rights in the tribal areas of central and eastern India with the actual creation of armed outfits to militarily control tribal populations.

Being cynically dismissive of non-violent and Gandhian movements by agricultural labourers and workers in these areas, the state, including the Indian judiciary, has allowed the systematic decimation of democratic rights-based mobilisations within Adivasi populations while privileging groups that are armed to the teeth and anti-democratic to the core. The struggles of the Adivasis have ranged from the non-violent to those by groups who openly espouse the violent overthrow of the state. With the easy flow of arms through the infamous arms bazaar that travels the length of the ‘Red corridor’, today cold-blooded mercenaries are also in the fray.

The brutal murder of Shankar Guha Niyogi, a leader of the non-violent Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha, in the 1990s, by hit men hired by corporate groups out to benefit if the movement was crushed (they were attempting unlawful land and resources grabs in the state), followed by the acquittal of his murderers by the Madhya Pradesh high court and the Supreme Court, signalled an all-time low for Indian democracy. Today the same representatives of the Indian state, its government, its lawyers and its courts, are involved in massive plans to permanently lease out tribal lands to companies in agreements (MoUs) that are being kept out of the democratic domain. Adivasis, threatened with displacement, hunger and genocide, are fighting back with any and all they have got.

Be it Jammu and Kashmir, or the states with large Adivasi populations, or those in the north-east of India (in Manipur, schools and colleges have been shut for over three months), democratic India faces its most serious challenge today. Though we have survived as a democracy, in itself no mean achievement, the disproportionate influence of money (and therefore corporate interests, builders and the underworld) during elections has diminished the glow of representative democracy. The media too, in large measure, is today controlled by the same interests which, using the money power needed during elections to bring in votes, control our politicians and through them, our institutions. When the people of India begin to feel that their elected representatives do not protect or represent the protection of their basic human rights of survival with dignity, where then should they turn??

– Editors


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