The Challenge: Current Human Rights discourse is divisive & aimed at breaking up India: India is perhaps the only country in the world where leading groups claiming to be defenders of human rights are openly aligned with organizations wedded to the cult of violence whose stated agenda is to subvert the nation and tear asunder Indian society. This is because human rights work in India today is almost all funded by Western donor agencies through NGOs that are willing to view Indian reality through western paradigms and push the agendas of donor agencies promoted by western governments & evangelical groups. In recent years, select human rights groups have also tied up with Islamist organizations & agencies in Arab countries that are using Indian NGOs as front organizations for Jehadi & secessionist politics. It is no coincidence that all these groups joined together in defense of those whose openly proclaimed agenda is, “Bharat tere tukde Honge, Insha Allah, Insha Allah…” with full support of mainstream media.
The real agenda of their handlers is to set one group against another till the country is riddled with severe internal strife and division. Its only in India that Maoists, Islamists, communists, and rabid evangelical groups—who are elsewhere at war with each other- have come to jointly claim monopoly of human rights discourse because they all see “Hinduism” as their common enemy. They could assume such predominance only & get away with demonization of Hindu society because the political elites as well as civil society organizations of India have remained oblivious of these sinister designs.
At the benign end of the spectrum are foreign funded NGO’s (FFNGOs) that have been eminently successful in pushing for poorly drafted draconian laws, ill suited to ground reality as the most favored way of “reforming” Indian society.
One of main thrusts of such interventions has been to create the stereotype of Indian society as being quintessentially backward, retrogressive and Indian society synonymous with endless strife, perennial conflicts, human rights abuses, social evils and tyranny. Their aim is to convince the educated elites that the redemption of India lies in adopting values of and following the path chalked out by Western countries. This new avatar of “civilizing mission” is now being carried out by Indian foot soldiers who have uncritically adopted the Western discourse not just on human rights, women’s rights, minority rights, etc., but also the Western academic prism for studying and analyzing the Indian society and culture, both past and contemporary. The resultant discourse they have adopted puts them in permanently adversarial position vis-à-vis Indian society, while adopting the imperious posture of self appointed reformers without any emotional connect with people they wish to “reform”.
To garner moral and political legitimacy to these designs, agencies like Ford Foundation have also roped in leading writers, artistes, film makers, etc., by providing handsome grants and fellowships to the left-leaning among their ilk for their pet projects and forums. This enables to bestow a moral halo to even the most divisive and partisan agendas. Consequently, too many young people are growing alienated from and disdainful towards their own communities and society, and see redemption only in mindlessly aping Western modernity in order to be counted among the “civilized”. What is worse, by wrongly projecting India as a country where religious minorities, notably Muslims and Christians are routinely and systematically persecuted they have provided justification and legitimacy to international jehadi groups who have come to target India as their prime foe.
And yet, Foreign funded NGOs, think tanks and academic centres have come to acquire unprecedented influence and clout over policy and lawmaking in India as well as defining political agendas and terms of public discourse in almost every area of our social and political life. By contrast, those who wish to stay away from foreign funded activism lack the means to outreach even nationally, leave alone globally. Nor do they enjoy any other comparable sources of support. Therefore, indigenous voices are getting marginalized or drowned out by the high-decibel activities of FFNGOs and their counterparts in the academia and art world. Their stranglehold over government policy and legislation on key issues — ranging from environment, human rights, women’s rights, tribal rights, religious minority rights, farm policy, land laws, family laws, economic or industrial policy, labour laws, power projects to even matters like combating cross-border or home grown terrorism — has been aided and abetted by bureaucrats, many of whom are active conduits for international donor agencies.
Towards Samadhan: building bridges, drawing on our strengths
No self-respecting society can allow its politics, economy and social policy to become hostage to foreign agencies using local foot soldiers to promote their divisive agendas.
The political space for strengthening the society’s collective resolve to protect rights of vulnerable groups and strengthen their citizenship rights must be reclaimed from foreign-funded activists and politically embedded partisan intellectuals. But the sanctity of this domain can be restored only by those committed to non-partisan approach, honest appraisal of social reality and desire to ensure justice to all, irrespective of faith, caste, region, gender or political affiliation.
We can take our society in the direction of redressing legitimate grievances, bridging divides and building on our millennia-old traditions of mutual accommodation and consensus instead of widening divides and promoting further strife only if we don’t become hostage to the social engineering by outside forces using derivative paradigms.
In order to set things right and counter the mindless derivative discourse imposed on us by the West, we have to go beyond reactive, defensive responses to establishing a new discourse which is not just locally rooted but also truly universal. The Western discourse is not just parochial but also colonialist. It remains highly statist and authoritarian in approach. It ignores social dimensions and focuses solely on the state machinery as the sole repository of human rights and protector of citizens’ freedoms, as well as the “fixer” of all problems.
India could well become a leader for Asia, Africa and Latin America (which suffer from similar assaults of Western intervention) by demonstrating through concrete example how a plural rights-based approach can be evolved by being rooted in the ground reality of one’s own society and culture, and without blindly aping derivative paradigms.
We need to give importance to building social mechanisms for protection of human rights and democratic freedoms in a manner that protection of individual or group rights becomes the “duty” of all others. This dharmic code has been an integral part of the millennia-old Indic civilization. This is what enabled the Indic universe to evolve highly sophisticated, mutually respectful norms of co-living which enabled diverse castes, communities and faith groups to exist and thrive in close proximity while freely practicing their own unique cultures without trampling on that of others. India is a rare example where different faith groups join together in celebrating each other’s festivals, worship at common shrines and share in each other’s familial joys and sorrows. This tradition is under serious threat from the crude version of individual freedom and rights popularized by adopting the prism of Western liberalism.
The narcissistic liberalism of the leftists/secularists defines “rights” without any sense of duties or social responsibility even when the exercise of those rights causes deep offence to the deeply cherished beliefs of others. We need to restore the balance between the rights of individuals and the cultural sensibilities of communities without compromising on certain non-negotiable such as commitment to non-violence, rule of law and respect for citizenship rights of each person.
MANUSHI—Long history of self-supporting, culturally rooted research & activism
There are hardly any NGOs, human rights groups or social science research centres who have a history of challenging, through honest ground-level research and investigations, the partisan agendas and propaganda tracts emanating from FFNGOs. MANUSHI is among the rare exceptions that have managed to create an alternative model of well-informed social research based activism on human rights issues.
We could do so because we steadfastly refused to accept financial or political support from Western donor agencies as well government grants. MANUSHI has addressed issues of inequity and injustice suffered by vulnerable communities with far greater determination and commitment in the spirit of seeking meaningful solutions, while working with the concerned communities rather than waging war against them through the state machinery.
Starting with a modest sum of Rs 800 in 1978 from our own pockets, Manushi grew to publish an internationally acclaimed journal for 27 years and also bring about major policy and law reform measures. (A note providing a brief glimpse of the activities and achievements of MANUSHI is Annexure 1)
Manushi survived solely on the basis of modest donations from individual supporters as well as sales of MANUSHI’s publications and documentary films. Despite limited resources, working mainly with unpaid labor of love, MANUSHI’s endeavors have had enduring impact and posed a consistent intellectual and political challenge to the imperious agendas of foreign-funded activists and academia.
The growing domination of well-heeled, internationally networked FFNGOs and academics has made the task much tougher now. Therefore, MANUSHI needs to scale up its activities and outreach beyond a shoestring budget and a volunteer staff to setup a long-term sustainable institutional structure to pursue these aims.
Proposed Centre for Human Rights, Law, Governance & Society
With the above aims in view, we propose to set up a new Centre for Law, Governance and Society that will undertake the following activities:
- Educate and train a countrywide network of human rights activists, and orient young lawyers towards PIL work in a manner that:
- Is culturally sensitive and socially rooted in the Indian milieu; and trains them in the ethical moorings of human rights activism, public interest litigation and journalism;
- Keeps in mind the diversity, complexity and intricate social fabric of our society as well as have a good grasp over the intellectual and social history of India;
- Helps promote the use of our own lenses to view the problems and challenges we face in India today, and promote sensitivity to the aspirations of our diverse people instead of uncritically adopting ill-digested alien agendas;
- Aims to bridge the existing social divides and work towards solutions to our current-day problems and conflicts instead of sharpening conflicts or inventing new ones;
- Cultivates the ability to remain non-partisan so that human rights discourse retains its integrity instead of serving partisan politics;
- Includes training in proper ground level research while dealing with social, economic or political conflicts.
- Commission investigative research that:
- Sheds new light on neglected or grossly misrepresented issues, especially those concerning SCs, tribals, women and religious minorities
- Counters systematic spread of misinformation by the mainstream media on issues that play a divisive role in society;
- Promotes informed activism among concerned citizens instead of interventions based on mere emotive responses as has happened with many draconian laws enacted at the behest of emotionally charged campaigns without serious consideration of issues at hand;
- Provides policy inputs to the government as and when required;
- Generates quality writing that can become part of teaching curriculum in colleges and universities.
This training will be carried out by a combine of Centre’s own faculty as well as the best available experts invited for short-term courses. This will not be a routine exercise in spoon-feeding existing material on human rights discourse produced by the UN or its allied NGOs, but by providing fresh perspectives with new educational materials generated for the purpose. An integral part of this training would be to get students to take up case studies and research projects to hone their skills and assess their understanding of the new paradigm.
It will be done through specific case studies to evaluate nature of discourse it has created and to assess its political orientation and degree of fairness in dealing with important challenges, especially when dealing with inter community conflicts.
The inaugural activity of our Centre would be to commission well researched studies reviewing human rights activism from 1975 to 2015:
The CHRLGS will invite as well as commission special investigative research based papers on the response of human rights/women’s rights activists in India to important landmark events and historic issues from 1975 onwards, the year in which Indira Gandhi imposed the Emergency.
To give just a couple of instances: While countless reports, papers, academic tracts and books have been written by human rights activists and their allies in the academia and media on the alleged wrongs committed against Kashmiri Muslims pushing for the merger of J& K with Pakistan, not a single human rights group expressed even token outrage at the near total ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley. No NGO wrote of their plight when they were targeted for murders by ISI backed terror brigades, of unilateral open declaration of war against this community from mosques, the terror under which they had to flee their homes and live like refugees in their own country, their properties being taken away through force and fraud, their homes looted or burnt down and their return to the Valley made impossible.
Similarly, no human rights group ever covered the Stalinist methods used by the CPM in acquiring total monopoly over Bengali society through brute force or their election after election through brazen rigging, unleashing murder and mayhem against who ever put the slightest resistance to their party’s domination. By contrast, relatively smaller acts of tyranny in states ruled by non-left parties have been magnified beyond recognition and projected in a devilish light. Likewise, conversions to Christianity or Islam are defended as “religious freedom” but Hindu groups undertaking reconversions are attacked with ferocity.
This partisan approach is aggravating divides whereas the agenda of human rights organizations should be to bridge existing divides instead of widening or manufacturing them. It is important that the human rights domain retain its sanctity by being consistently fair and evenhanded.
Some illustrative examples of the topics on which we will commission a series of case studies reviewing the track record of human rights activism in the post Emergency era are given below. They will provide an effective start and a substantial corpus to creating a new and more balanced curriculum for the study of human rights in India.
Riots & Pogroms & Ethnic Wars
- Nellie Massacre 1983 & Assam Riots of 2012, Vs Gujarat Riots of 2002
- Comprehensive compilation and review of major communal riots under various regimes in post independence India.
Insurgency in Kashmir
- Responses to ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits Vs Demand for secession
- Coverage of Kashmiri Pandit Camps Vs Gujarat Relief Camps
Police Killings & Death Sentence
- Sohrabuddin encounter killing Vs nearly 600 encounter deaths in rest of India during the same period, including 100 in Bihar and scores in Delhi including the brazen murder of 2 innocent Sikhs were by Delhi police in Connaught Place, in broad day light on false suspicion.
- Kasab death sentence Vs Maya Kodnani death sentence, later commuted to life sentence
Targeted Communal Murders
- Graham Steines murder Vs murder of Swami Lakshamanand by Christian missionaries
- Honor killing of Riznavur in Kolkatta by Hindu family versus honour killing of Rajnish of Jammu for marrying a Kashmiri Muslim girl;
- Dadri lynching of Akhlaq Saifi by Hindu mob on charge beef eating versus murder of Prashant Poojary in Mangalore by Muslim goons over his opposition to cow slaughter;
Epidemic of Intolerance
- Content analysis of protests against “increasing intolerance in India”. This will include the content of protests, justifications offered for it as well as comparison of the amount of space given in leading newspapers and TV channels to anti government protestors in comparison to writing or speakers on TV in defence of government.
- Role of leading award returnees during Emergency/Sikh Riots/Mumbai Riots, Kashmiri Pandit ethnic cleansing
Population Dynamics
- Ghar Wapsi Vs Conversions
- Demographic change in border districts and fate of Hindus; *Response to illegal Bangladeshi migrants in India, especially in the border-states and the changing demographic profile in those states.
- Plight of Hindus in a) Pakistan b) Bangladesh c) Denial of citizenship Rights to Hindus pushed out from POK into J&K
Left vs Right “Violence”
- Coverage of human rights violations and political murders under CPM rule in West Bengal and Kerala
- Anti-liquor agitations run by leftists Vs anti pub, anti dance bars movement by Hindu organizations
- Vigilante actions and violence by Maoists versus vigilante actions or violent acts by Hindu groups;
Bias against Indic/ Hindu culture
- Hindutva bashing Vs treatment of Muslim extremism in human rights discourse.
- Brahmin bashing and demonization Versus law covering derogatory speech against SCs
- Controversy over and leftist resistance to creation of Sanskrit department in in JNU
- Controversy over introduction of Sanskrit and Yoga as violation of minority rights.
- Changing stance of leftists & feminists on Uniform Civil Code from Shah Bano days to after BJP stepped in to demand UCC. b) *Draconian laws at behest of feminists
- Myth and Reality of attacks on Christian churches/community
- Comparative study of hate literature by Hindu, Muslim and Christian groups, especially literature produced for proselytization;
Reversing the Gaze
- Study of select human rights, minority rights organizations—their history, their agendas, track record, their methods of mobilization;
- Review of Amnesty International’s track record in India;
- Review of bans in India—how and why certain books, films, plays etc got to be banned and forces behind demanding those bans;
- Human/Minority Rights Watch for the Indian sub-continent:
Despite being a vibrant democracy with firm constitutional safeguards in place for minority rights, India is consistently demonized as a place where religious minorities are being decimated and crushed. This despite the fact that:
- Far from decimation, the proportion of Muslims and Christians in the country’s population has steadily increased over decades and not shrunk;
- Muslims and Christians attain to the highest positions in various professions, including with the government, without discrimination;
- Even microscopic minority groups like Parsis and Bahá’is who arrived as persecuted refugees from Iran, have thrived and prospered in India;
- India is the only country in South Asia where traditional norms of co-living are by and large still intact despite consistent attempts by vested interests to vitiate the atmosphere;
- There is continuous flow of illegal Muslim migrants into India from Bangladesh, while there is no reverse flow of either Hindus or Muslims from India into Bangladesh. This wouldn’t happen if Muslims felt unsafe in India.
By contrast, religious minorities in most of our neighboring countries are seriously imperiled. For instance, before the Partition of India, Hindus constituted 35% of the population of the undivided India that later became Pakistan. Even after the break-up, they constituted 22% of the population. Today Hindus are a mere 1.8% of population in Pakistan and are forced to live like fourth class citizens on account of brazen tyranny, terror and discrimination practiced against them. Same holds true for Bangladesh. And yet the systematic genocide of religious minorities in these South Asian countries has not received even a fraction of the attention that the Gujarat riots of 2002 did, which saw the killing of 1100 persons, including over 900 Muslims and 258 Hindus.
Similarly, the near total ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley has not received even 1/100th of the coverage that the lynching of one solitary Muslim in Uttar Pradesh received some time ago. This partisan and devious discourse has unfortunately been lent support by India’s own human rights community, and never effectively challenged by successive governments.
As a leading South Asian power, India needs to create a more grounded and non-partisan group for South Asian Human Rights Watch in direct collaboration with credible persons from each one of these countries. Thus far such collaborations have been engineered by Western donor agencies with their own agendas. If an India-initiated Watch Group can evoke a South Asian paradigm for monitoring such issues, it may become a role model for other non-Western societies.