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Nani A Palkhivala Civil Liberties Award, 2006
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On
January 15, 2007 Teesta Setalvad was honoured with the Nani A Palkhivala
Civil Liberties Award, 2006. Her acceptance speech
on
being conferred the award has been widely published in the print media
and has also been posted on several websites. 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. (Quote) “Globalisation” (unquote) 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 (quote) “the post Godhra carnage was an
organized crime perpetuated by the state’s chief minister and his
government” (unquote) and held Gujarat’s CM Modi to be (quote) “the
chief Author and Architect of all that happened in Gujarat after the
arson of February 27, 2002.” (unquote). 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 (quote)
“normalization” and strength” (unquote) 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 is 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” (unquote)…..Mr RB Sreekumar,
Additional Director General of Police, the state of Gujarat, I
salute you.
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