Since its inception, CC has focused on the failure
of the Indian democratic establishment to deal with hate speech despite
sections of the law that empower the state and its police to act when
speech or writing incites violence. This is an appalling blemish on the
record of Indian democracy. It is the failure not just of the executive
and its police who do not act to prevent or prosecute offenders but also
of Indian courts who have turned a blind eye to these crimes.
The breakdown of the rule of law and the impunity enjoyed
by powerful offenders are issues that Indian democracy will be forced to
confront sooner or later. Orissa and Gujarat, over and over again, are
glaring examples of this. Last month’s cover story on Orissa was a searing
reminder of both the breakdown of the rule of law and the impunity enjoyed
by criminals acting in the name of Hinduism coupled with a deafening
silence on events from the Indian establishment. No suo motu notice
from the apex court or National Human Rights Commission has asked any
questions of the Orissa government. Nor have any of our parliamentarians,
from any political party, cared to visit the state and record the plight
of Christians living in relief camps there.
Gujarat’s ancient capital of Patan was the scene of a gory
scandal that erupted after a student, a Dalit girl, had the courage to
speak out after being gang-raped by six professors of her college on 14
separate occasions over several months. Thanks to her courage and the
support she received from a woman professor, Bharati Patel, what emerged
was not just a crime limited to a single college but a serial racket of
gender crimes at girls’ hostels in Patan and perhaps other districts in
the state. A particularly shocking aspect of the Patan scandal has been
the political connections that the accused enjoy. Patan, in North Gujarat,
is the district from which former state education minister, Anandi Patel,
hails. One of the accused, Atul Patel, who threatened the victim with
death after raping her, led Anandi Patel’s election campaign in 2002.
Another accused, Manish Parmar, who moves around the college campus armed
with a knife, is a relative of current state education minister, Ramanlal
Vora. Massive protests on the issue all over Gujarat, including a
demonstration of 25,000 persons in Patan city, and demonstrations at
various universities, including the Maharaja Sayajirao University in
Vadodara, provide a ray of hope.
Kashmiri Pandits, forced to flee home and hearth in
1989-1990, remain a dispossessed minority in India. The circumstances
behind their mass exodus remain shrouded in political doublespeak and
CC carries an article voicing their demands for a high level inquiry
into the circumstances behind their expulsion and their current plight
along with the demand for central and state efforts to rehabilitate this
minority in the valley.
Finally, our cover story of the month – the Gulberg
Society Museum of Resistance – an idea that was born out of the darkness
and despair in Gujarat and India after 2002, the attempts to obliterate
all memory of the carnage coupled with the callous tardiness of the apex
court in delivering justice to victims of mass crimes. In this space,
where 25 families once lived in a housing society named and nurtured by an
extraordinary individual, Ahsan Jaffri, we shall together memorialise not
just the narratives (personal, social, political and cultural) of 2002 but
of communal violence across the country. Communalism remains in the main a
taboo for Indians and we need a space to reflect upon the phenomenon, even
the courage to stare it in the face. We know and hope that readers of
CC will be fellow travellers in the struggle to create this memorial.