No Country For Good Men

On 24th December 2010, Dr. Binayak Sen- a man who has become cause célèbre across the country was sentence to life imprisonment by a sessions court of Chattisgrah .
                                           Sen, a Calcutta boy’s school’s student later acquiring his medical degree from Christian medical college, Vellore, dedicated his whole life advocating the cause of the deceased and the poor. He concentrated his work in the rural tribal areas of the Chattisgarh state, doubling up as a human rights activist. While Sen worked with the state government on health sector reform, he also strongly criticized the govt. on human rights violation during the anti-naxalite operations.

                                     However, criminal charges against him overshadowed all the limelight he was living in. 14th May 2007 was the day when Sen was arrested on the offence of acting as a courier between jailed Naxalite leader Narayan Sanyal and businessman Piyush Saha. Questions however may arise about his 33 visits to the Naxalite leader, though all there visits were with prior police permission. Since then Sen has experienced tremendous ups and downs in life.
                                There has been spontaneous surge of outrage in civil society and the media over this scandalous miscarriage of justice. But there was little that could be done . The state had itself timed it well. It was a day before Christmas. The high court and the Supreme Court were on vacation; most lawyers were away. It would be at least two weeks before Sen’s family could even appeal. Enough time for the news to sink in; the message to go out .
The Chattisgarh Director of Police (DGP) Vishwa Ranjan had himself admitted in an interview three years back that if possible he would Keep Sen under surveillance but not in prison. But ever since that day and even till now neither the DGP nor the state persecution has come up with a concrete and convincing evidence of his involvement and violation of law though it’s a different issue that he himself refuted what he had mentioned in his earlier interview. What the police and administration instead relied upon was creating baseless paranoia.
                                           The whole case persecution case built against Sen is itself ludicrous. Its replete with malevolent faux pax that its hard to believe that the State had the audacity to charge Sen of ‘Conspiracy against the State’. According to the state prosecutor Mr. TC Pandya , Sen who is the Vice President of People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) (set up by Late Freedom Fighter Jaiprakash Narayan in 1976 during emergency ) had met the jailed Naxal ideologue Nrayan Sanyal 33 times in prison between 26 May and 30 June ’06 . During this time he had smuggled out seditious letters from Sanyal and passed them on to tendu leaf contractor Piyush Guha , who supposedly acted as the courier for Maoists . Three of such letters were seized when he was captured in a May ’07 . Based on this Pandya established that he was trying to establish an urban network of Maoists . In fact the content of these three letters is itself ludicrous .They are addressed to a “Dear Mr. P”, “Friend V’ and a “Friend“ and are unsigned . They could have been written by anyone and planted on Guha .
There are other glaring discrepancies After Sen was arrested in ’07, the police had built such a miasma around him that he was denied the bail twice both by Chattisgarh Court and The Supreme Court and this is what an honest man has received from the Country’s Judiciary system .
                              Back in 2007 , when news had first started appearing in local newspapers that the police had declared "Naxal Leader Binayak Sen absconding" , far from running away or seeking anticipatory bail as his well wishers had urged .Sen who was in Kolkata on a visit to his mother’s house came back to Raipur immediately . His reaction was that there must have been some misunderstanding. And driven by his idealistic belief in Indian Democracy , his own good intention and years of public service , hew ent voluntarily to the police station to clear the air . They arrested him instead . The Chattisgarh Police , did not arrested some dreaded combatant on the run , they arrested a citizen who had gone to them in good faith .
                                        The irrational doggedness with which the police pursued the case has only driven the message home harder . On 31st December 2007 , seven months after his arrest , the Indian Academy of Social Sciences conferred the RR Keithan Gold Medal on Binayak Sen . On May 2008 , still in jail he was given the Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights . Around the same time , 22 Nobel Prize Winners appealed to the Indian Government for his release . On 24th December 2010, Sen was sentenced to life imprisonment.
                                    Now as the fight for his release stretches in the months ahead , he will become a test case for pulling back of some of the draconian laws that are threatening to change the very fabric of our Democracy . As Amartya Sen says ‘Democracy has to be judged not just by institutions that formally exist but by the extent to which different voices from diverse sections of the people can actually be heard. “ Let’s hope that the country where Barack Obama’s heroics are more sung and the ten year hunger strike of Irom Sharmila is barely even spoken of in media wakes up to the real philosophy of Democracy.

The Wounded Valley

Empathy is a word seldom used and even less understood. But its complete absence in the government , in the prime minister , In the UPA Chairperson Ms. Sonia Gandhi , and in P. Chidambaram , and in their retinue of spooks and bureaucrats , has all but decided the fate and although we don’t know it yet , Of India . Empathy should not be confused with Sympathy though. Sympathy is an easy statement – we can and do, turn it on and off at will, like a tap. But empathy is an altogether different, rare breed of animal.

                            In case of Kashmir it means the power of feeling what the Kashmiris feel and of seeing ourselves and our actions through their eyes. As I watched hour upon hour of television coverage of Kashmir. I was struck by its total absence not only in statement and actions of our so called leaders. Not a single person expressed shock, not to speak of outrage that the Jammu and Kashmir state had killed 63 unarmed youths in six weeks.

                                As one coffin upon another was carried to the graveyards of the valley, there were hardly any rare instances of honest acceptance by the Government. The so called national leaders, who haven’t even been to the valley to see the plight of the common people, were shouting on the top of their voices that the stone pelters were a rented mob hired by the government’s enemies. On some days they were paid by the separatists, on some day by the PDP (People Democratic Party ) and When the anger became uncontrollable then the allegations reverted towards our trusted enemy , ISI .

                                    Ever since Independence, both Hindus and Muslims, had grown together under the spirit of the Kashmiriyat that blossomed with the fragrance of the message of Nund Rishi, a Kashmiri saint in whose name stands the unique shrine of Charar-e-Sharief. They lived in peace and harmony for nearly 40 years, supported the secular character of the State and opposed any and every communal move of a microscopic section of the Jamat-e-Islami in the Valley. The question I am talking about is how and why the children and grandchildren of the Muslim Kashmiri-Freedom fighters took up the guns against India and started killing nationalist Muslims and the non-Muslims? How a Kashmiri who never touched even a knife gunned down his own neighbourers, mostly Muslims and pundits? How a Kashmiri Muslim youth managed to cross the most risky and difficult terrain on the LoC to Pakistan to receive arms training, seek indoctrination in fundamentalism only to return to Kashmir to cause death and destruction to his own people?

                                  The problem lies in the isolation of the Kashmiri youth. Besides political disenchantment, the alienation of the Kashmiri youth from the rest of India is mired in history, economics and psychology. Every day they see themselves being subjected to so many restrictions and precincts that they want to break free. Moreover, the Army has barely done anything good in the recent past to protect them or to even instill their faith on it which has constantly fallen ever since the Shopian Murder case. In fact it has been instrumental in adding fuel to the fire by attacking unarmed youth rallies which eventually led to stone pelting .There have been countless incidents of many innocents being captured by the army on pretext of Violation of law . In some cases , the condition is so grave that the captured boys are of as young as twelve boys . The Government is crippled, and the Captain of the Ship, Mr. Omar Abdullah barely has time to look into hearts of the Kashmiri people than to indulge in his iPad and sophisticated life. Even when he does so , he doesn’t knows how to reach out to them warmly . The Kashmiri youth wants to break free of the system which prohibits him from surfing the net, from making any calls after 7pm or even walking on the street and yet doesn’t even grants him even the Basic Human Rights about which India is so boastful of .

                                In this hour of crisis, Seperatist leaders like Masrat Alam who is believed by most as the successor of Syed Ali Shah Geelani ‘s political mantle are leaving no stone unturned to play with the fervent feelings of the Kashmiri Youth . They are even social networking sites to promote and proclaim their ideologies. They call it the Azaadi Calendar which actually is nothing but yet another opportunity of these people to rob the Kashmiris of their very existence.

                         Majority of Kashmiris want freedom as badly as we do. When they see their aspirations and freedom being brutely curbed by the puppets of the Chief Minister and devious Delhi Durbar Games they feel cheated. Our leaders have time and again used them as vote banks and have yielded them the pain and misery of isolation & alienation. Be it be the genocide Kashmiri Pundits , the detention of Sheikh Abdullah - the father-in-law of Dr. Farooq Abdullah who raised voice against Kashmir inclusion in the Indian province for two decades, the defeat of Bakshi Gulam Mohammed who was the second Chief Minister of the state or the Countless deaths and rapes that have occurred in the Valley . Kashmir has baered more atrocities than any other part of the World, even Ghaza is better off . Leaders of the centre have always played safe by remaining ensconced in the comfort of their air conditioned chambers and speaking about the Kashmiris . The harsh fact is that no one took the initiative to address the Kashmiris , to understand their real problems and to see what it takes to be a Kashmiri .

What needs to be accomplished to heal the wounds of the suffering people is a pertinent question which needs to be addressed to all the principal actors as well as victims of the situation. The short-term measures to restore the confidence of the people need to be taken on a war footing for the redress of the genuine and urgent grievances of the people. Schools, medical clinics, rural development projects, bridges and other public welfare schemes need to be brought on the working level. To fight growing isolation of the public from the political process, the political and the social activists should start an aggressive programme to interact with the masses. Nearly 500,000 Kashmiri migrants need to be rehabilitated in the Valley by ensuring them physical, social and financial security by the State. This requires involvement of the people of the Valley through social interaction and political will. Nearly 150,000 migrants of Doda, Udhampur, Rajouri and Poonch districts suffering at different places of Jammu should immediately be rehabilitated by providing them the same facilities which the Kashmiri migrants are entitled to. The electronic media should adopt a positive and constructive role to help create awareness among the people against the dangers posed by the militants and the terrorists to the very culture and identity of the people.

                               In the long-term process there is a necessity to reorganise the State of Jammu and Kashmir with its geographical boundaries as existed on August 16, 1947 before the aggression from Pakistan. This process can be worked out scientifically, objectively and with the cooperation and understanding of the citizens of all the regions of the State. The people of the Valley of Kashmir shall be satisfied if they have a guarantee of self-rule and right to govern themselves according to the mandate of the people. With a State of Kashmir Valley, the Kashmiris shall be free from fear from being dominated by the non-Kashmiris once they know that the PoK and Jammu will not unsettle their claim to rule themselves. Past record is witness to this fact that popular mandate of the Kashmiris was demolished by using Jammu legislators by demonising the Kashmiri leaders.

                                  It is important to reorient some of our security forces to look at dealing with law and order disturbances, equip, train and orient them accordingly. There are five battalions of the Indian Reserve Police who were to go for the specialized commando training so we could involve them in anti insurgency operations. Anti Insurgency are of less concern than maintenance of law and order of the state . Its imperative that the involvement of Army is reduced by some extent to gain the public confidence in Govt which has entirely lost it in the Army. Its imperative that rather than gaining brownie points and mud sledging each other , the political parties unite and show their resolve to serve the Kashmiri awaam above all political considerations .

There is a need to set up a Joint Parliamentary Committee by India as well as Pakistan to work out the modalities of the solution to resolve the situation. This can only be achieved through a dialogue between the representatives of both sides of Jammu and Kashmir and not like an All party Delegation which was sent recently.

                                    India and Pakistan are standing at the crossroads of history and it is only through dialogue and exchange of ideas that an era of peace and communal harmony can be ushered in at the threshold of this 21st Century.And as I write this article, I would expect BJP not to ruin Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s name & goodwill for his immense contribution towards establishing peace in the Valley by carrying out its Yatra Politics in Kashmir . Kashmir is a serious issue and we must be sensitive towards it. We should not sensationalise it . There are far more serious issues on which it can organize its Yatras to make a gallant portrayal of its sense of ‘Nationalism’. I am eagerly looking forward to the day when it starts taking out Yatra’s on the low Sex ratio in Punjab & Haryana but such things are distant dreams of my insane mind. Our lack of empathy has already caused unimaginable agony and suffering to people of the Valley in the past half century. Over 93,000 people have lost their lives, thousands still languishing in prisons and torture cells and there has been brutal rapes and burning of houses and properties by the occupation forces. Lets not repeat our mistakes again . Let’s hope that Kashmir breathes a fresh & peaceful air and let’s ensure that we bring smile on the faces of the Kashmiri awaam. The road to Kashmir lies at the heart of peace, not of arms.

                           I am in no way against Democracy or the very philosophy of it . I am against the setup , against the culture in which its running in our country. I just want political leaders to go there and understand the situation & problems of Kashmiri awaam rather than making speeches in their Cubicles of Delhi .This would boost their confidence and would restore their faith in the power of The Democracy Of India .