Image Courtesy: pinterest.com

Do you know what happened in 1984? A Google search may help, but will it really? The first page of the results will show you only the most talked about incident – the assassination of Indira Gandhi and the anti-Sikh riots that followed. What it doesn’t show you are the photos of more than 10,000 people who died and more than 5 lakh afflicted in Bhopal in the country’s worst industrial disaster.

35 years on Bhopal seems to have been struck with two tragedies – the one that happened immediately and the other that unfolded in the years that followed.

What Happened Then

On the night of December 2, 1984, millions in Bhopal took their last breath when the chemical methyl isocyanate (MIC) spilled out from Union Carbide India Ltd’s (UCIL’s) pesticide factory turning the city into a gas chamber. Vomiting and dying, people ran out on the streets. As the cloud of gas hit the town, people woke from their sleep choking, gasping, and vomiting. Many were immediately affected, their skin burning and lungs failing.The US-based multinational company, Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) which owned the plant through its subsidiary UCIL, did nothing to help alleviate the human tragedy.

35 years later, the people who survived the tragedy and their innocent children are still asking and fighting for justice. And what has been the State’s response to their misery? Nothing but callous.

Even today, the victims and survivors are battling extreme insensitivity and being shortchanged by incoming and outgoing governments. While the ghastly incidents has not only taken a toll on their lives but also on their next of kin’s, the survivors till today are paying the price of what happened that night.

The Victims End Up Paying the Damages

Physical Trauma

Because Union Carbide used trade secrecy to withhold information with regards to the exact composition of the leaked gases, nobody knew about the toxin that leaked out of the factory on the ill-fated night of December 2, 1984. Nobody knew about the antidote either. While over 300 toxic chemicals are said to have been released during the leak, research has been carried out only to check the toxicity of pure MIC.

While a few weeks later, while some claimed that the worst was over – till date nobody knows the impacts of MIC or how to treat patients exposed to it. Furthermore, it is not just the victims present at the site who suffered. It is all those children born after the incident who bore exposure to the deadly gas in their mother’s wombs and people living there today exposed to the chemical wastes dumped in and around the UCIL factory that have contaminated drinking water.

Treatment of patients has only been symptomatic. Even though evidence of people suffering from cyanide poisoning came to the fore and the injections of sodium thiosulphate seemed to have been working, they were stopped, apparently under pressure from UCC and its lawyers.

Uninspired research from the government did not yield much. Independent studies pointed out to serious crises from birth defects to cancer to mental problems.

Over the past five years, the Canadian researcher Shree Mulay and volunteers working with Sambhavana, a nonprofit clinic set up by activists, have been collecting data on mortality, birth defects, fertility, cancer, and many other aspects of people’s health.With about 5,000 families in each group, the study includes 100,000 people in all. Mulay’s team is still analyzing the data, but preliminary results indicate that people exposed to the gas or the water or both have a higher incidence of cancer, tuberculosis, and paralysis than those exposed to neither. They also suggest that gas-exposed people have 10 times the rate of cancer, particularly liver, lung, abdominal, throat, and oral cancers, compared to the other groups.

Yet, the study is still complicated for it is difficult to identify what is due to the general poverty of the entire population and what is specifically due to the gas or contaminated water they’ve been exposed to.

Mental Trauma

The Bhopal Gas Tragedy was the first disaster in India to be studied systematically for mental health effects by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). Even though the vastness of the disastrous emotional and mental trauma was established within a fortnight of the incident, the involvement of psychiatrists / neurologists did not begin until 8 weeks after the incident as none of the five medical colleges in MP had a psychiatrist on the staff.

The dead may have not been so unlucky after all. Their end, though horrible, had been brief. The survivors though, will never get relief so quickly. Amid convulsions, screams, fainting spells and fear of the dark – men, women and children are left to their resources to fight the ghosts of those memories that keep coming back to haunt them.

Environmental Impact

A 1982 safety audit by US engineers had noted the filthy, neglected condition of the plant, identified 61 hazards, 30 critical, of which 11 were in the dangerous MIC/phosgene units. The audit warned of the danger of a major toxic release.

It’s not just MCI that UCIL was manufacturing. The factory used to manufacture three pesticides: carbaryl (trade name Sevin), aldicarb (trade name Temik) and a formulation of carbaryl and gamma hexachlorocyclohexane (g-HCH) sold under the trade name Sevidol. Till 15 years after the disaster, the factory dumped by-products, process wastes, solvents and polluted water at dump sites outside the plant. In addition to that, there is another 350 tonnes of waste kept at a leaking shed at the site.

In August 2009, a sample of water from the same handpump was analysed by a Greenpeace laboratory in the UK. Carbon tetrachloride was found at 4,880 times the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) limit.

All of these chemicals take hundreds of years to degrade and even the decontamination and cleaning of the dump site has run into legal wrangles over who should pay for its clearing – the State, Centre, incineration companies or non-profits.

The toxic waste and poisoned water have now become a legacy for the people of Bhopal.

The Culprits that Got Away

Union Carbide, the American chemical company that became infamous for the world’s worst industrial disaster, is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Dow Chemical Company. Warren Anderson, the then CEO of Union Carbide who was declared an absconder and a fugitive lived in anonymity and seclusion in Long Island, New York before his death on September 29, 2014.

Both Dow Chemicals and UCC washed their hands off the disaster. UCC said that it was not subject to jurisdiction of the Indian court as it wasn’t involved in the operation of the plant for it was operated by the Indian arm of the company.

 (Source – Outlook India)

The above document shows how it maintaining future FDI and Indo-US relations took precedence over holding culprits accountable for their actions.

Anderson kept a stoic silence on the issue for more than two decades, avoided social contact and hid from media and activists who have fought tooth and nail to bring him to justice. Warren Anderson did not appear for any of the judicial proceedings conducted by either the District Court, Bhopal or the Supreme Court of India.

Promises – Just Promises

With physical relief came the need of economic rehabilitation and today, three decades after the incident, the government has to still secure Rs 61.72 crore for 3,629 cases which are pending approval. The Centre has still not acted on their request.

In the meantime, the number of eligible survivors who should be compensated has increased – a significant chunk of which have moved the appellate court in Bhopal to hear their appeals. More than 200 new cases of permanent and partial disability have been granted approval for compensation but are still awaiting their payments.

Nearly 50,000 survivors have been compensated since the tragedy in 1984, but around 48,000 claimants are yet to receive their payments.
In 2018, an RTI revealed that The Bhopal Gas Tragedy Relief and Rehabilitation Minister VishwasSarang misused 60 per cent of the funds allocated by the Government of India for the economical rehabilitation and construction of 2,500 homes of the gas victims living in the vicinity of the Union Carbide Factory.

Out of Rs. 272.75 crore allocated by the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers in 2010, only Rs. 129.50 crore was used by the government till 2018. Rs. 85.87 crore was diverted from the remaining Rs. 143. 25 crore to fund different government schemes.

At the time of the incident, UCC settled in 1989 for USD 470 million in damages, with each patient getting 25,000 Indian Rupees (roughly USD 2,200 at the time). RachnaDhingra of International Campaign of Justice in Bhopal, has since been fighting for a higher compensation and to get the site cleaned up, but to no avail. This, even when Dow merged with DuPont in 2017 on a contract of USD 130 billion.

In June, at a review meeting the Centre thought of utilizing the corpus fund of around 891 crores of the Bhopal Memorial Hospital Trust (BMHT). There were also talks of the BMHT being merged with the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), but that too is pending necessary approvals. Till then, all the payments to claimants have been frozen.

The government, which alleviated some public outcry by paying an additional sum of tax-payers’ money to victims and their families in 2010, has now filed what’s known in India as a “curative petition” to the Supreme Court, urging it to reconsider its ruling and compel Union Carbide to pay more. The SC earlier dismissed the curative petition by the government calling for Dow to pay USD 1.2 billion. Activists and survivors are fighting for a figure of close to USD 8 billion keeping in mind the widespread health impacts on thousands in the city.

Activist RachnaDhingra recounted the fine of USD 21 billion paid by Union Carbide over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. She said that the issue of race played a very important role in this matter. The victims of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy were considered lesser human beings.

In an exclusive byte to Sabrang India, Ms. Dhingra said, “This is just a manifestation of how shoddy and arbitrary the entire compensation process has been for the gas victims. Survivors of the world’s worst industrial disaster have had to fight for their adequate compensation against the very same government whose duty is to protect their interests. Victims are treated as culprits and corporations responsible for the disaster (UCC and Dow Chemical) are given first class treatment in this country.”

Will Bhopal Ever Get Justice?

For pushing political agendas, for treating humans like pawns in a game, for usurping everything what the afflicted deserved and yet leaving them to suffer – will the people of Bhopal ever get justice? Only time will tell.
 
Related
Bhopal Running Away From Bhopal Gas Tragedy?
The Ghosts of Bhopal Gas Tragedy: Death Still Lingers, Who’s Accountable?
Remembering 1984 – The nightmare endures
 
 

The post Bhopal Gas Tragedy:Is the already forgotten tragedy of 1984 going to be forever erased from memory? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The Assassinations: A Novel of 1984 was unveiled by famous Indian journalist Hartosh Singh Bal at an event held at the city’s Habitat Centre.

The unveiling ceremony coincided with 33^rd anniversary of the anti-Sikh pogrom across India following the assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984.

Gandhi had ordered a military assault on the Golden Temple Complex, the holiest shrine of the Sikhs in Amritsar in June that year to flush out extremists who had fortified the place of worship. The military operation that left many pilgrims dead had enraged Sikhs all over the world.

Thousands of innocent Sikhs were slaughtered by the mobs instigated by the leaders of Gandhis’ self-proclaimed secular Congress party during the violence in the aftermath of her murder.  No senior leader involved in the bloodshed was ever convicted. Bal who is currently the Political Editor of Caravan magazine has extensively written on the subject.  

Bal and Kapur also held conversation on the issue that was followed by questions from the audience.

Among those present were renowned Punjabi author Ajeet Caur and her daughter and a prominent painter Arpana Caur. The mother and daughter have kept the issue of 1984 alive through expression.  Former Chief Election Commissioner Manohar Singh Gill was also in attendance. Ironically, Gill is associated with the Congress Party.

Though New Delhi alone witnessed more than 3,000 murders during 1984, no prominent Sikh leader was present.

Kapur revealed that he will donate all the proceeds from the sale of his novel to the victims’ families.

Despite being a Hindu, Kapur is passionate about the subject and has published another book on 1984 in the past. During his discussion with Bal, he acknowledged that being born and brought up in a secular environment of his family he was pained with the events of 1984. He insisted that the 1984 is more relevant today because of growing religious sectarianism under a right wing Hindu nationalist government.

The Assassinations is the story of two families, one Hindu and another Sikh. It revolves around the relationship between a Sikh man and a Hindu woman who fall in love during 1980s when social ties between the two communities are strained because of Sikh militancy and the brutality of the Indian state.  The love story ends in tragedy due to ugly developments of 1984 as the hero Prem Singh ends up becoming a militant after enduring violence targeting Sikh community.

The novel powerfully depicts the alienation of the Sikh minority and their mistreatment by the fanatical Hindus and the government, besides empathy of the Punjabi Hindus toward their Sikh compatriots. Through the character of Prem Singh’s would be father –in- law, Kapur portrays the dilemma of Punjabi Hindus who despite all their anxieties about the Sikh separatists feel sorry for the state sponsored violence against ordinary Sikhs.  The story also puts in perspective the efforts of the Sikhs who fled to counties like US for safety to keep the horrific memories alive in the absence of justice.

The post New novel on anti-Sikh massacre (1984) released appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The incident left me shocked but I wasn’t surprised. 

Image: Indian Express

A year earlier, New Delhi had witnessed large scale massacre against Sikhs following the assassination of the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards at her official residence. She had ordered a military attack on the Golden Temple Complex, the holiest shrine of the Sikhs in Amritsar in June 1984 to flush out religious extremists who had stockpiled weapons inside to carry on their armed struggle against the government.  The militants were seeking special rights for the Sikhs and Punjab, while the government accused them of conspiring to create a separate state of Khalistan with the help of Pakistan. Indeed, the army operation was followed by series of violent incidents against Hindus in Punjab. The military attack that could have been avoided had left many pilgrims dead and the buildings inside the shrine destroyed igniting angry reaction from the Sikhs across the world.

Since I lived in Amritsar with my parents back then I too witnessed the damage the military operation had brought to the Akal Takht – the highest temporal seat of the Sikhs inside the temple complex. The shattered building had shaken me completely and others in my family. 

Months later when Indira Gandhi was assassinated thousands of innocent Sikhs were murdered in New Delhi and other parts of India by the goons led by the members of the her so called secularist Congress party.
The ugly events of 1984 further galvanized the Sikh militant movement and more violence and bomb blasts followed. In June 1985, Air India Flight 182 was bombed mid air above the Irish sea killing all 329 people aboard. The incident was blamed on the Sikh militants based in Canada. The Sikhs who make merely two percent of India’s population came under microscope.

The bus incident wasn’t the only shocker.  While we were in Delhi, staying at a small apartment of our aunt, we got a knock on our door by a police contingent one evening. A police team had come to question all of us, to know where we are from and what the purpose of our visit was. To prove our credentials, we had to produce the marriage invitation card from my cousin’s family.  The officer who led the police party said that they had received complaints from neighbours who were alarmed at suspected people in the locality. There were some heated arguments between my relatives and the police officials but they finally left satisfied. Until now we had been hearing stories about police harassment of Sikhs outside Punjab, this was the first time we had faced it directly.

Sikh militancy continued and ended by the mid 1990s, but looking back during those days I can confidently say that Punjab had become the laboratory of Hindutva much before Gujarat.

Hindutva laboratory
Hindutva is a political term often used by the supporters of Hindu theocracy, particularly the now ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), who want to turn India into a Hindu state.

The Congress and other secularist activists often accuse BJP of turning Gujarat into a Hindutva laboratory in the year 2002 and before. After all, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is dedicated to the ideology of Hindutva was the Chief Minister of the state when anti Muslim pogrom was organized that year. The massacre followed the burning of a train carrying Hindu pilgrims leaving more than 50 people dead. The BJP government had blamed the Muslim fanatics for the train incident. Much before the massacre, the BJP supporters had tried to terrorize Christians in Gujarat and succeeded in polarizing the society on religious lines in the state to sustain power.  The activists who have been following these developments saw the footprints of Hindutva politics behind all these episodes and had warned that once BJP captures power in New Delhi they are going to implement the Hindutva model across the country.

It is not surprising to see that ever since Modi became the Prime Minister in 2014, violence against religious minorities, particularly Muslims and Christians has grown. This can be explained by the narrative of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) of which the BJP is a part. The RSS considers both Islam and Christianity as alien religions while the Sikhs as part of the Hindu fold for which a section of the Sikh community is also apprehensive of the assimilationist agenda of the BJP.

Not only the Hindutva vigilantes have sharpened their attacks on Muslims and Christians, the police and security forces under Modi have also become more aggressive in dealing with Islamic extremists which has made the lives of ordinary Muslims even more difficult. Much like Sikhs in 1980s-1990s, all Muslims have become potential terrorists in the eyes of the mainstream in India.

Congress verses BJP
While there is no doubt that the BJP is more dangerous, compared to the Congress, because of its well calculated social engineering program to transform India into an exclusionist Hindu nation, the Congress has lost moral right to criticize the BJP on the issue of communal politics for what it did in 1984 and later.  

The Congress’ experiment with the fanatical politics was purely for “pragmatic reasons”, whereas for BJP it is more for “programmatic reasons”. That said, the Congress must take blame for turning Punjab into Hindutva laboratory much before the BJP tried to turn Gujarat into a laboratory of hate politics or even before the concept of Hindutva laboratory entered the consciousness of the secularists. Several instances are sufficient to prove this point.

Even before the events of 1984, the Sikhs were frequently demonized by the Congress, the Hindu chauvinists and a section of the media.

Any genuine demand including reorganizing Punjab on linguistic basis for the growth of Punjabi language was seen as unpatriotic. The RSS leaders tried to dub such movement that was not even aimed at separating the Sikhs from India as the one supported by Pakistan. While the Congress remained adamant not to accept it, the Hindi press mocked the demand.

Before the Punjab was reorganized in 1966 – Hindu fanatics ensured that the Punjabi speaking Hindu families declare Hindi and not Punjabi as their mother tongue to defeat the demand for a Punjabi speaking state.
The Sikhs were frequently portrayed as part of the Hindu fold that only strengthened the fears of assimilation within the Sikh community.  Besides, the RSS propagandists openly distorted the Sikh history and tried to appropriate it to prove that the Sikhism was created to protect Hinduism from Islam.

Once Punjab was reorganized the river water share was distributed in complete violation of the riparian laws. A BJP leader Laxmi Kanta Chawla had sarcastically commented in an interview with me that there was noting wrong in sharing the river waters of Punjab with the neighbouring states as the Punjab water was not going to Pakistan. Chawla frequently honoured the police officials who were responsible for human rights abuse and the killings of the suspected Sikh militants in staged shootouts.

The Hindu extremists frequently raised provocative slogans that dubbed the Sikhs as anti nationals and Pakistani agents. In any event of violence against innocent Hindus in Punjab by unknown assailants, the innocent Sikhs were targeted outside Punjab by the mobs with the connivance of the police.

When the Golden Temple Complex was stormed, the Hindu chauvinists distributed sweets. The RSS openly justified the army attack and the anti Sikh pogrom following the murder of Indira Gandhi.

Not surprisingly, all this paid dividends to the Congress when it won the general election under Indira Gandhi’s son Rajiv Gandhi with a brute majority. The complicity of the Congress and the RSS in pushing towards a majoritarian democracy was clearly visible. The process laid a ground for the BJP to repeat the experiment in Gujarat in 2002 and enabled Modi to get elected with a strong majority in the election that followed the bloodshed.

Modi’s ascendance to the power is an outcome of the Hindutva laboratory which started being set up in Punjab by the Congress-RSS alliance and has partly contributed to the near decimation of the Congress and other secular parties.

Relevance of 1984
As the Sikhs are getting ready to commemorate the anniversary of the infamous military attack on their Vatican in the first week of June, there is a need to acknowledge how history is being repeated 33 years later when other minority groups have come under attack in India which is otherwise known as world’s largest democracy. Among the most vulnerable are Muslims who have become target of attack internationally due to growing Islamophobia which has made Modi’s task easier. 

In Kashmir, a Muslim dominated state where people are fighting for the right to self determination – the paramilitary forces continue to kill people at will. Staged shootouts, forced disappearances and custodial rapes have been common occurrence in the state. Under Modi – the intensity of such attacks has increased.

Tribals who only form eight percent of the total population are also constantly facing barbarity at the hands of the police and the security forces in the name of war against Maoist insurgency.

The mainstream that is consumed by what is being fed to them by the media and the Modi administration is hardly questioning this. But then it never raised questions when Sikhs and Punjab have been facing similar challenges. The discourse of nationalism which had blinded the dominant Hindu society back then remains as powerful and fortified even today.

This is not to justify violence done by the minority extremists. However, the question is how differently they were treated then and are being treated now whereas the Hindutva extremism has continued to enjoy the patronage of the state for all these years. When the state had to deal with handful of extremists holed up inside the Golden Temple Complex, the army was sent to attack a place of worship, but there was no one to save the Sikhs from the mobs in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s murder. While the killers of Indira Gandhi were punished promptly, those involved in the violence against Sikhs were elected and awarded with ministerial posts. The alleged killers of the Hindus in Punjab were killed in staged shootouts and the police officials who did all that got out of turn promotions and monetary awards. Obviously, the urban middle class that was too scared of terrorism accepted this as normal. The trend has not changed and today the Muslim men are being hounded in a similar fashion. For the record, the Muslim men who were held in connection with the torching of the train in 2002 were charged for terrorism, whereas the anti terror laws weren’t applied on those who killed innocent Muslims afterwards. Then scores of Muslim men were killed in staged police shootouts after being branded as terrorists in Gujarat. If nothing else, they are shamelessly dubbed as Pakistani agents to shut any criticism of state repression. 

The history of 1984 therefore has lessons for those who want to understand how a brutal majoritarian democracy works and help people in power to retain their control by keeping  minorities under boot. Nothing is more illustrative to examine the mindset behind today’s Modi government in India and the one that worked behind the Congress three decades earlier. 

Gurpreet Singh is an independent journalist based in Canada. He works for Spice Radio in Vancouver and a publisher of monthly magazine Radical Desi that covers alternative politics

The post 1984, A lesson in Majoritarian Politics Learnt Well by Proponents of Hindutva appeared first on SabrangIndia.

I pulled no punches while criticising the Sikh extremists at the launching ceremony of the Punjabi edition of my book on the Air India victims’ families, back in 2013. Air India Flight 182 was bombed mid-air in 1985, killing all 329 people aboard. The crime was blamed on Sikh separatists seeking revenge from the Indian government for attacking their holiest shrine in Amritsar in 1984, and engineering anti-Sikh pogroms following the assassination of then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards later that year.

Posted on social media, my speech had grabbed the attention of this self-styled patriotic Indian leader. He was excited to see how an Indo-Canadian journalist like myself, was “boldly” criticising “anti-India” separatists who have always been considered very powerful and influential in Canada.   

He kept phoning me from time to time to give updates about BJP activities in Vancouver, and I as a reporter continued reporting them. But something went terribly wrong after the BJP came to power with a brute majority in 2014 under Narendra Modi, a controversial political figure.

Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat state when an anti-Muslim massacre took place in 2002. The massacre followed the burning of a train carrying Hindu pilgrims. Over 50 of them died. The Modi government blamed Islamic extremists for the incident, after which the Muslim community was targeted across Gujarat by mobs led by the BJP activists. Human rights groups and the survivors maintain that Modi was complicit in the crime.

The scenario was no different from the one witnessed across India in 1984, when the Sikh community was targeted after the murder of Indira Gandhi. The only difference was that the anti-Muslim violence was orchestrated by an outright Hindu nationalist party, whereas Indira Gandhi’s Congress party claims to be secular.

Being a secularist, my criticism of all the religious extremist ideologies has been alike. I used to work with Surrey-based Radio India as a talk show host at that time. I had joined the organization in 2001 after emigrating from India where I used to work with The Tribune.
The Sikh separatists seeking Khalistan – an imaginary Sikh homeland to be carved out of Punjab, India – had been very active in Canada and I was frequently warned to stay silent against them. Nevertheless, I kept bringing up crimes committed by the Khalistanis in Punjab, such as killings of Hindus and political critics, including many leftists.

For the record I have been equally critical of the Indian government for its high handedness in dealing with the militants and repression of Sikhs in 1984. Also I had criticised Modi for allowing the anti-Muslim violence a year after my joining Radio India. But I was still branded as “anti-Sikh” and “an Indian agent” by the supporters of Khalistan.

The leader of a Hindu temple that honoured me for my book on Air India actually accused me of having an agenda against Modi. During a radio interview when I grilled him about his support for Modi, he just hung up the phone. He is a die-hard supporter of Modi, but highly critical of Sikh fundamentalists.  

The threats started when I began criticising those involved in the Air India bombing. Luckily at that time, my employer, Maninder Singh Gill, supported me whole heartedly in spite of pressure on him to get rid of me. He also used to complain that my commentary was causing financial loss to the organisation, as advertisers who subscribe to the Khalistani ideology were reluctant to sponsor our programs. Still he stood behind me like a rock. 

When Modi became the prime minister, the situation completely changed. Not only in India, but in other countries too, his critics began facing the heat. Hindu extremists became emboldened. They started harassing anyone who questioned Modi and his politics of hatred.

In India, media persons who were critical of Modi began to be pushed around. Some felt that an era of censorship had been ushered in under a right wing government. With the BJP assuming power after getting elected, it gained legitimacy around the world. Modi, who had been denied visa by various countries for repression of Muslims in Gujarat, was free to go anywhere.

On top of that, the BJP and its supporters also gained the upper hand within the Indo-Canadian community and increased its influence over Indian consulates. In those circumstances, several groups decided to organise protest rallies against Modi during his first official visit to US.

One of them was Sikhs For Justice (SFJ), a human rights advocacy group that supports Sikh sovereignty. As a host, I decided to highlight the contentious tour of Modi and gave some airtime to SFJ. Although I strongly disagree with their political agenda of Sikh sovereignty, as a journalist I felt it necessary to talk to their leader about the upcoming visit of Modi and the planned protest in September 2014.

This enraged my employer, who did not want any anti-Modi voice to be given air time. He was particularly annoyed over my interview with someone who supports a Sikh homeland. The story did not end there, as he also wanted me to start endorsing Modi’s visit on behalf of the radio station. I was suggested a change in nature of my duties if I could not handle this. This led to an argument and I rather decided to quit.

This small step made me an alien among the very people who earlier appreciated my stance against Khalistan. The same BJP leader who earlier used to call me a lion and often stated “you are always in our hearts” began avoiding me, to the extent that he did not invite me to cover an event organised for a visiting BJP leader, the chief minister of Haryana state, Manohar Lal Khattar.  

When another senior politician from Punjab Prem Singh Chandumajra came, I could see a pattern behind slighting me. Chandumajra’s party, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) is an alliance partner of the BJP. Its supporters have known me for years. Nobody invited me to his media conference, despite the fact that both the BJP and SAD supporters know that I still  write for India-based publications, including Hindustan Times, for which the visits of Khattar and Chandumajra were important. 

Notably, the leader of a Hindu temple that honoured me for my book on Air India actually accused me of having an agenda against Modi. During a radio interview when I grilled him about his support for Modi, he just hung up the phone. He is a die-hard supporter of Modi, but highly critical of Sikh fundamentalists.  

The Indian agents in Vancouver also started to eye me with suspicion. I often hear from sources close to them that they are upset over my comments, which are obviously not favourable to the ruling party, because of its right wing policies against religious minorities and growing attacks on Muslims and Christians under Modi.

Those who violate the principles of secularism and democracy enshrined in the national text are the biggest anti-nationals. If questioning Sikh separatists alone makes you a patriot, and challenging Hindu separatists makes you seditious, then the apologists of India should openly admit that the current Indian state is really a Hindu nation in the making, and not the secularist and pluralist India I loved and I was born in

Some sources tell me that they now refer to me as “friend-turned-enemy” and I never get any personal invitation to attend any of their official events, although they had recommended my name for coverage of the annual Indian Diaspora event held in India in 2010. In the years of my frequent criticism of Khalistani extremists, before Modi came to power, I used to get calls from them appreciating my journalism. Back then I was seen as a friend of India.    

When I joined Spice Radio, some of the Indian officials expressed their displeasure with my current employer, Shushma Datt, who did not buckle under any undue pressure and gave me freedom to work fairly and fearlessly. After all, she is a seasoned broadcaster who understands how to run a media outlet with integrity.

Whenever I had Sikhs For Justice activists on air to speak their mind against Modi, or interviewed those who protested against Modi’s visit, she never interfered. It’s a shame that in spite of her open-mindedness, even some so-called progressives in our community questioned me: being a Hindu, will she allow me to criticise Modi? Just because she is a Hindu woman, one cannot presume her to be a BJP supporter. How many times have such questions been raised about the ethnicity of the male Sikh owners of South Asian radio stations? 

So much so, the moderates and secularists within the local Sikh community, who have been opposed to Sikh fundamentalism and often sided with India, also started neglecting me. This was despite the fact that I had defended them in an event of ostracising by the orthodox Sikh clergy at the behest of fundamentalist forces on religious matters.

Some even went out of their way to meet Modi in the US, and were among those who accorded him a heroic welcome during his visit to Vancouver in 2015. Others, who call themselves Marxists, affiliated with the mainstream communist parties in India that are opposed to Modi, have remained indifferent towards any activity or demonstration in Vancouver against Modi’s government. Notably, they have been supporting moderates in maintaining control over Sikh temples, to keep Sikh separatists at bay. They too continue to enjoy cordial relationships with Indian agents.

It seems that the commitment of the grand moderate coalition towards secularism is sham and selective. It conveniently overlooks the fundamentalism of Modi’s party, while only targeting Sikh extremists, either due to their blind patriotism or with an agenda to please their political masters in New Delhi.
As the Modi government completes almost two years in office, the threat of Hindu extremism has grown enormously. Anyone who challenges their ideology and anti-minorities’ stance is branded as anti-national. Interestingly, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, the ultra Hindu nationalist body of which BJP is a part, never participated in the freedom struggle when India was under British occupation.

Rather its supporters had helped the British rulers in continuing with their policy of divide and rule, by asking for a separation of Hindus and Muslims into two distinct nations. They stand incriminated in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, the towering leader of the passive resistance movement, in 1948, for standing up against both violence against Muslims and the untouchability that was permitted in orthodox Hindu society.

Gandhi has always been known as the father of the Indian nation. Since Modi came to power, demands have grown for the installation of statues of Naturam Godse, a staunch Hindu separatist and the assassin of Gandhi. Anyone who questions the BJP and Hindu extremists is quickly branded as anti-national.

It seems that “anti-national” has become a synonym with anything that is anti-BJP. This year witnessed a spate of incidents in which students, scholars, journalists, activists and even elected officials who are critical of the growing threat of religious intolerance and Hindu nationalism were either intimidated, assaulted or slapped with sedition charges.

Student leaders at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University were thrown into jail after being charged with sedition for questioning the government. When I had to quit Radio India and suffer the silent social boycott, I sometimes found myself very lonely. But today, when I look at the resistance being given to the Modi government by people with a burning conscience, I feel vindicated. I rather feel proud of standing up against Modi mania. If one is branded as anti-national for standing up for reason, pluralism and humanity, then I am definitely very proud to be an anti-national.

But here is my question to those who claim to be nationalists: how do they describe a nation? Is it just a territory, a piece of land, or a composition of political borders and land mass represented by a symbolic flag or a constitution? Or is a nation is represented by people? By human beings, who have dreams for a better future and who want to live with dignity?

If anyone is anti-national, it’s definitely not those who fight for the rights of the people, but those who lick the shoes of those in power and work against people, and divide them for their political survival. How can a person like me, who actually respects the values enshrined in the Indian constitution, be seen as anti-India?

Those who violate the principles of secularism and democracy enshrined in the national text are the biggest anti-nationals. If questioning Sikh separatists alone makes you a patriot, and challenging Hindu separatists makes you seditious, then the apologists of India should openly admit that the current Indian state is really a Hindu nation in the making, and not the secularist and pluralist India I loved and I was born in.

(The writer is a senior journalist with radio in Canada)
 

The post Proud to be ‘anti-national’: Gurpreet Singh appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Phoolka, incidentally, was publicly threatened in the course of a live programme on national television on September 7, 2004 by Union Minister Jagdish Tytler, a man who continues to face the charge of leading and inciting a mob during the anti-Sikh carnage in Delhi. This speaks volumes for the impunity that our system gives to those charged with serious mass crimes. On the basis of the evidence placed before it, the ongoing Nanavati Commission has issued notice to Tytler, on the prima facie ground that there was a case against him. The Commission relied on the eyewitness report of Surinder Singh, a head granthi (priest) of a Sikh gurdwara, who had said in his affidavit that during the November 1984 carnage he saw Tytler incite and lead a mob of rioters to burn the gurdwara and kill Sikhs.

Of the 2,000 prosecutions launched in courts arising out of the massacre of Sikhs, only nine convictions have resulted. None involved prominent politicians or members of the police force who hold command responsibility and need to be directly held responsible and culpable when mass crimes against sections of the population take place.

Eighteen years after Delhi 1984, the Gujarat genocide of 2002 shocked the conscience of the people, including jurists, profoundly. A historic verdict delivered on April 12, 2004 not only attempted corrective justice but in scathing, no-nonsense terms, squarely detailed the hell let loose on the soil of Gujarat by the political leadership. Just as a corrective process was underway and the re-trial had begun in Mumbai in accordance with the historic verdict, (see Special Report in this issue), a serious attempt to challenge these remedial attempts is afoot. Since the day that Zahira Sheikh held her press conference in Vadodara on November 3, 2004, at which she rubbished the historic steps underway to renew faith in the judicial process and hurled baseless allegations at us while declaring herself as a hostile witness, we have maintained that she is a pawn for those who would like to see justice subverted in Gujarat.

In a system and society that grapples with the reality of interminably long drawn out criminal trials, a very low conviction rate (a mere six per cent in criminal cases) and a huge backlog of cases, the phenomenon of witnesses being made to turn hostile is unfortunately routine. Radical reform and corrective measures that include both police and judicial reform, witness protection schemes and a new law to prevent and punish genocidal killings are the crying need of the hour.

Between Delhi 1984 and Gujarat 2002, the mapping of violent internal conflict includes the Meerut-Malliana (UP) massacre in 1987, where Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) jawans lined up and shot dead in cold blood 53 Muslim youth and the Bhagalpur massacre of 1989 during which an overnight slaughter of the minority (nearly 1,000 were killed) was organised. In one gruesome incident, bodies were buried and vegetables planted over them in a unique cover-up operation. There have been no convictions worth the name for these crimes. In the post-Babri demolition violence in Bombay 1992-1993, despite the publication of the Srikrishna Commission report in February 1998, no significant prosecutions have followed.

The message is therefore clear. For the perpetrators of a pogrom or genocidal killing, impunity from prosecution and punishment appears to be guaranteed in advance. Armed with this impunity, the mass murderers have mastered techniques of subversion of investigation. And the destruction of evidence is now ‘in-built’ into the very modes of killing adopted. This was clearly visible in Gujarat where a chemical powder was extensively used while burning people so that no trace of the victims remained and which made it all the more difficult to ‘count the dead’.

Demonisation of sections of the population through hate speech and hate writing are a vital ingredient of the genocidal plan. Delhi 1984 and Gujarat 2002 displayed this tendency in full as did the pogroms in between. Economic crippling and cultural humiliation wrap up the picture. If 270 dargahs and masjids were destroyed in the first 72 hours in Gujarat (see Genocide; Gujarat 2002), 450 gurdwaras (nearly 75%) were destroyed or seriously damaged in 1984.

Each or all of these elements have been visible on Indian soil for well nigh a quarter of a century. Nineteen-eighty-four constitutes a watershed in the history of communal violence in post-Independence India. While earlier there were riots, what we have been witnessing with frightening frequency since 1984 are one-sided pogroms and genocidal assaults with the active connivance of, if not brazen sponsorship by, the State. Even as justice eludes the victim-survivors of 1984 (Delhi) and Mumbai (1992-93), the post-2002 attempts to subvert investigation and justice for the victim-survivors of the Gujarat genocide are a new challenge to Indian democracy. Will it respond?
— Editors

Archived from Communalism Combat, November-December 2004. Year 11    No.103, Editorial

The post 1984, 1992-93, 2002… appeared first on SabrangIndia.