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Repository | February 20, 2007
Refuse to sit by and let the mass crimes go unpunished
by Teesta Setalvad
[On January 15, 2007 Teesta Setalvad
was honoured with the Nani A Palkhivala Civil Liberties Award, 2006.
Here is the full text of her acceptance speech.]
Friends,
As I stand here to accept this award given in memory of a man who has
been described alternately as a passionate democrat, a patriot and
above a good human being I cannot but recall how this one man
institution associated with us, Communalism Combat, in its nascent
years. In response to one of the darkest moment this great metropolis,
Mumbai (then Bombay) has lived through, December 1992 and January 1993,
he sat alongside the inimitable and unique, the late Mr HM Seervai to
speak to the then President of India to 'call in the army'. When a
subsequent government in the state reaped the benefits of hate politics
and in a stroke of executive arrogance scrapped the Justice Srikrishna
commission of inquiry investigating the mass murder and police
complicity behind the violence, Mr Palkhivala stepped down from Bombay
House and along with another captain of industry Mr SP Godrej joined us
in the nationwide protest that was one of the citizens actions that
eventually led to the reinstatement of the commission. That was January
30, 1996. A year earlier, two judicial decisions one of the Bombay High
Court and the other by the Supreme Court had shaken the common man's
faith in the judiciary. Citizens had challenged the hate writing in the
Saamna, and through a writ petition urged for a judicial directive to
compel the state government to prosecute the author of these speeches a
man who went unchallenged by the law and order machinery in this great
city, Mr Bal Thackeray. Mr Palkhiwala said the future of India was at
stake if the court did not compel the state to intervene and take
action against this kind of journalism.
Today, in 2007 we see a glittering and glamorous India everyday,
through the media and parts of our large cities ; an India that
suggests growth and wealth and prosperity yes, but only for a section
of our population. A third of Indians reel under rural hunger where the
lack of access to nutrients in their diet should be a matter of
national shame. Narrow and aggressive definitions of patriotism coupled
with rank unprofessional, if not biased conduct in the intelligence
services and the law and order machinery, have 'othered' many sections
of Indians, reducing them to irritants, trouble makers or rank
anti-nationals.
It is a moment of profound test for all our institutions. The paradigms
of fair play, equal rights to life and ownership of private property,
make both the shock of farmers being shot dead in communist West Bengal
and the shame of the mass victim survivors of the Gujarat carnage of
2002 a living reality. Closer home, in Maharashtra, protests following
the brutalization and murder of a Dalit family in Khairlanji allowed
the Nagpur police to pull out 55 year old women and other protestors
from their homes and thrash them into silence. In Amravati a rickshaw
driver protesting was shot point blank in the head by the police.
Does the Indian state need to answer, any more, to the largest number?
Does the executive initiate and take decisions of economic and social
policy after due consultation, through the vote, in a democratic manner?
Have our Courts shown due and democratic concern to issues of economic and social access, equity and non-discrimination?
Does our media, television and print reflect news at all, leave aside news and views of the majority of Indians?
Do institutions of Indian democracy adhere to the word and spirit of the Indian Constitution?
Is India a living and breathing democracy?
Be it West Bengal, Gujarat, Maharashtra or Orissa lands belonging to
voiceless Indians are being seized, without adequate debate,
transparency or Constitutional accountability. 'Globalisation' has come
here in partnership with vengeful and vindictive state terror and
repression. State force at its most brutal is being used to stifle
democratic protest and dissent. As I look forward to the memorial
lecture by an icon of modern India, a captain of industry, I urge this
prestigious audience here to ask some of these difficult questions. Of
themselves.
Friends, next month is the fifth anniversary of the Godhra mass arson
and the post Godhra genocidal killing. Justices VR Krishna Iyer and PB
Sawant both retired judges of the Supreme Court-- who headed a citizens
tribunal into the Gujarat carnage, have observed that “the post
Godhra carnage was an organized crime perpetuated by the state's chief
minister and his government" and held Gujarat’s CM Modi to be
"the chief Author and Architect of all that happened in Gujarat after
the arson of February 27, 2002.". The National Human Rights Commission
and the Supreme Court of India have drawn similar conclusions about the
head of the state of Gujarat.
Today for the same captains of industry who see the vision of a
glittering India exemplified in the 'strong political leadership of Mr
Narendra Modi'. I refer to the recent investments promises to the
state. I would like to place this reminder on record. All and each of
us, especially those who hail from Gujarat would like to see Gujarat
vibrant, and prosper. The community that Mr Palkhivala hailed from was
first given refuge within what is today known as Gujarat when the
Parsis migrated to India, from Persia. Strength, cohesion and
prosperity can be built through an enlightened administration and
polity that respects the rights of all, harbours dissent and respects
the struggle for rights and justice, a state of affairs that supports
the natural order of things.
However, when 'normalization' and strength' are equated with a
vindictive administration and political repression, when brute
compromise is thrust, when acknowledgement of the horrors of mass crime
are denied hundreds of thousands of victims, when villages, cities and
mohallas are divided by borders, when the victim survivors and human
rights defenders who stand up for justice are threatened arrest and
torture, it is repressive strength and state power that we are talking
about. Civil liberties, the struggle for the defence of which I am
being honoured here today, are severely trampled upon.
Friends, even what actually happened at Godhra railway station on
February 27, 2002 is hotly contested today. There is absolutely no
proof of the theory perpetuated shrilly by Mr Modi to justify state
sponsored mass rape, killings and murder. As we approach the fifth
anniversary of a truly bleak period in Indian post-Independence
history, I request each one of you present here, to remember. The
struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against
forgetting.
As I acknowledge the huge contribution of my family to my work, I would
like to laud the joint vision of my comrade in arms, Javed Anand that
launched us into this collective battle since 1993. Colleagues at
Sabrang and the board of trustees of Citizens for Justice and Peace and
its myriad supporters (even from captains of industry) who have the
vision to support the dissenting voice, Raisbhai and Suhel, my tribute.
Top lawyers of the Supreme Court and the High Courts, masters in their
field, continue to offer pro bono services for the causes that we plead.
Our work of a decade and a half has made us experience the relentless
attempts of the system to tire out the protestor, the dissenter, the
victim. Therefore today’s award, I dedicate to one man within the
Indian system, who stood (and still stands) mighty in the face of a
murderous and vindictive Gujarat administration. Mass murder, mass rape
and mass arson were allowed in Gujarat by a complicit and participatory
administration and police force. Many police officers stood out. But
only one man has remained a stoic and principled dissenter until today,
refusing to cave in even as weeks lapsed into months and months into
years. This man that I dedicate today’s honour to not a victim,
he did not loose a dear family member. He does not hail from the victim
community. His only quality-- that many but his co-travellers have seen
as a fault-- is that he refused to sit by and let the mass crimes
planned at the highest level go unchallenged. He documented the illegal
and unconstitutional orders spat out by Mr Modi in a meticulously
maintained personal diary. He filed well-documented affidavits before
the ongoing Nanavaty-Shah Commission. He suffered for these acts by
being denied due promotion to the post of Director General of Police,
Gujarat, the highest post in his field that as a policeman and thrice
Presidential Award winner for bravery, he would and should aspire to.
He faced attempts to browbeat him in and out of the courts. He and his
wife live socially and politically ostracized in a state that captains
of industry tell us is vibrant and shining due to (quote) 'a strong and
political leadership favouring rapid growth' ..Mr RB Sreekumar,
Additional Director General of Police, the state of Gujarat, I salute
you.
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