One broad generalisation which can be reasonably made about the 2019 General Election in India is that there is no wave of any kind countrywide unlike some of the previous parliamentary elections. Each state is witnessing a unique combination of forces and alliances that reflect the specific regional character of that state. We can safely stretch it further to argue that within each state, each seat while reflecting the specific regional political culture of the state is also witnessing its unique characteristics.

In Punjab, though the outcome of each seat will contribute to the numbers that will determine the nature of national government, some seats are of importance mainly for the regional politics of Punjab such as Ferozepur, Bathinda and Patiala. However, there is one seat in whose outcome, there is significantinternational interest. This seat is Khadoor Sahib due to Bibi Paramjit Kaur Khalra being one of the candidates there.

Bibi Khalra is the widow of Jaswant Singh Khalra who became internationally known for his work on tracing the identity and whereabouts of persons who had disappeared (translated appropriately in Punjabi as laapata) in the violent conflict between the Indian security forces and the armed Sikh opposition groups in the 1990s. His work in Punjab on abduction and elimination of anti-state activists, and their cremations being categorised as those of unclaimed persons was unique though he might have been inspired by similar human rights endeavours on enforced disappearances in other parts of the world.

In international human rights law, an enforced disappearance is a crime and is considered to have occurred when a person is secretly kidnapped by a government or non-government organisation, followed by a denial of such disappearance to place the victim outside the protection of the law. Many countries in the world which have witnessed human rights violations have gone through the phenomenon of enforced disappearances with some of the Latin American countries such as Guatemala, Argentina, Chile and Columbia which saw military dictatorships being the worst examples. The resistance against disappearances also developed most in Latin America. For example,in Argentina, where a very brutal military regime between 1976 and 1983 had secretly liquidated, in what came to be called Dirty War, a very large number of young opponents of the regime, a very powerful organisation called The Mothers of the Disappeared emerged in defiance of the military regime. This gave impetus to the emergence of another organisation called The Grandmothers of the Disappeared. Such organisations supported by other human rights organisations in Argentina and abroad contributed to the strengthening of the democratic forces and managed to get support even of US President Carter. This resistance eventually contributed critically to the downfall of the military regime and victory of a democrat Raul Alfonsin, a lawyer, to Argentinian presidency in 1983. Responding to the popular demand, Alfonsin instituted a National Commission for the Disappeared for a thorough probe into enforced disappearances.

Punjab’s Jaswant Singh Khalra did not have the success the Argentinian campaign for disappeared had. He was picked up from his home on September 6, 1995 and himself became a disappeared, a fate he shared with many other such activists in the world. The evidence unearthed by the CBI has emerged that he was tortured very brutally, killed on October 28, 1995 and his body was thrown in Harike canal.

Bibi Khalra has displayed an exemplary courage in carrying on the campaign her husband gave his life for. Her relentless legal battle to seek justice under the rubric of Khalra Mission Organisation formed shortly after his death in 1995, succeeded partially when six police officials were convicted and sentenced for seven years imprisonment in 2005 for her husband’s abduction and murder. For four of them-Satnam Singh, Surinder Pal Singh, Jasbir Singh (all former Sub Inspectors) and Prithipal Singh (former Head Constable)- the sentence was extended to life imprisonment in 2007 by Punjab and Haryana High Court which was subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court. One of the accused- Ajit Singh Sandhu SSP- had committed suicide by jumping before a train near Chandigarh on May 24, 1997. KPS Gill, the Punjab police chief, who was involved in interrogation of Jaswant Singh Khalra, died in 2017 before ever being put on trial..

I have never met Bibi Khalra but about a decade ago, the late Ram Narayan Kumar, one of the finest South Asian human rights campaigners, introduced her daughter to me at a human rights conference in Chandigarh. When I expressed my condolences to her at the loss of her father, she spoke in a mixture of pain and pride that though she missed him every day, she also remembered the great cause for which he gave his life. I could see that her parents had raised her to be a strong moral and ethical person.

The circumstances and the way Jaswant Singh Khalra died could have led Bibi Paramjit Kaur Khalra to depression and possibly self-harm but she seems to have drawn inspiration from his sacrifice for the higher cause of human rights. It is not easy for any widow in a deeply patriarchal society such as in Punjab to operate in the public field, but Bibi Khalra has defied those pressures in keeping up the campaign for human rights.

If she loses this election battle, it will signify that in Punjabi society, those who have money and organisational power even if they suffer from moral deficit can subdue those who are less resourceful even if the latter are higher on the moral ladder. However, if she wins, it will signify the strength of democratic and moral values in Punjabi society. The international human rights community and the organisations such as the International Coalition Against Enforced Disappearances would feel enormously strengthened- morally and institutionally- by her election victory. She will represent a new moral force in the Indian parliament. Paradoxically, it will improve the international human rights image of the Indian state by demonstrating that a human rights campaigner can also win a seat to India’s parliament even though her voice in defence of human rights may be an irritant for the establishment.At international arenas, India is viewed as a laggard in promoting human rights organisations and institutions. Though justifiably critical of the Indian establishment’s record on human rights; Bibi Khalra, if she wins, may contribute to rectifying the poor international image of India on human rights.

Professor Pritam Singh, Academic Visitor, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford, UK.

Courtesy: Counter Current

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After the admirable electoral pact between SP and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in UP for which the credit needs to be equally shared between Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati, the BSP leader; the anti-BJP Mahagathbandhan in Bihar is the best news to emerge regarding the 2019 general election prospects. UP and Bihar constitute the core of the north Indian Hindi speaking region known as the cow belt of India from where the BJP had in 2014 won 85% of the seats i.e. about 70% of all the seats the BJP had won all over India. BJP is unlikely to win majority in the 2019 general election if it is trounced in UP and Bihar.

Undoubtedly, it is the leadership provided by Tejaswi Yadav that has resulted in the emergence of anti-BJP alliance in Bihar even though he and his party had to make many sacrifices, and that indeed is the hallmark of good political leadership that the narrow party considerations are given less weight for a larger cause. The praise for him from the visiting parliamentarian that Tejaswi Yadav represents one of the strongest anti-BJP tendencies in Indian politics seems largely justified now even though initially I was a bit sceptical of the claim of the honourable visiting MP.

The sacrifices that the RJD has made refer to giving away in the poll agreement too many seats to the Congress Party and the smaller parties. Out of the total Bihar parliamentary pool of 40 seats, the equal 20-20 division between RJD and the non-RJD parties is patently unfair to the RJD. Congress with 9 seats out of the 20 seats quota for non-RJD parties,Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP) with 5, Mukesh Sahni’s Vikasheel Insan Party (VIP) and Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustan Awam Morcha (HAM) with 3 each have been able to bargain for far too many seats which are disproportionate to their electoral strength in Bihar. According to a friend who is a keen observer of Bihar’s political scene,many of these seats going to the non-RJD parties of the Mahagathbandhan maybe lost to the BJP. The generosity of RJD/ Tejaswi Yadav to build an anti-BJP alliance and the greed of Congress, RSLP, VIP and HAM to take advantage of that generosity is likely to prove costly to the Mahagathbandhan.

RJD’s further sacrifice of two seats from its 20-seat quota- one to Sharad Yadav and another to CPI(ML)- can be positively viewed. The announcement that Sharad Yadav, a former top leader of JD (U) and once convenor of NDA, will merge his Loktantrik Janata Dal (LJD) with RJD after the Lok Sabha elections testifies to the political clout of RJD. It appears that the seat allotted to the CPI(ML) is one that CPI(ML) is likely to be one.

One negative outcome of the Congress and other parties having unreasonably bargained for a big slice of 20 seats in the electoral pact is that the other two Left parties-CPI and CPM- did not get any seat and the most unkind cut was that Kanhaiya Kumar, the former JNU student leader, was not adjusted for supporting him as a CPI candidate from Begusarai seat which has a long history of strong Left, especially CPI, influence.
Given the national political profile of Kanhaiya Kumar, supporting his bid for the parliament should be seen even beyond adjusting CPI in the electoral pact. He and some of his fellow student leaders (whether in CPI or not) need to be viewed as representative of a new generation of young Left thinkers and activists whose political frame of reference goes beyond the traditional Left parties’ ideological template. When he acknowledged in his autobiographical memoir ‘From Bihar to Tihar’ that his move towards Marxism was influenced by me, I did not consider this merely as a matter of personal satisfaction for me. I saw in this a new genre of Left-wing thinking which is open to thoughts and paradigms beyond the traditional Left in India. I remember him coming to my lecture on eco-socialism organised by Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Delhi a few years ago. He knew that I was critical of mainstream IndianLeft which, apart from RSP in Bengal, suffers from Stalinist heritage in different degrees (e.g. CPM more than CPI) and that I had been very critical of the role of the Left parties (especially CPI and CPM) in Punjab in being allies, except for a few admirable individual members of these parties as exceptions, of state repression in Punjab during the police regime of Ribeiro and even more brutally that of KPS Gill. To openly acknowledge in a positive way the influence of someone who has been critical of one’s party is a sign of broader vision and openness to new paradigms such as eco-socialism.

It is a failure of imagination and foresight on the part of both Congress and RJD not to leave Begusarai to Kanhaiya. He would have been a powerful campaigner for all anti-BJP parties beyond his seat and even beyond Bihar. I hope that Kanhaiya still wins and if he loses, Congress and RJD will have to live with moral guilt if one can expect from Indian political formations any moral considerations.

The current anti-BJP Mahagathbandhan formation and composition is a welcome development,but it could have been better. Despite the flaws, it still promises the most powerful potential in defeating BJP in Bihar.

Professor Pritam Singh, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford, UK

Courtesy: Counter Current

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