People's Democracy

     Right-Wing Politics And Terrorism 
Wars And Encounters As Politics

Nalini Taneja

VIOLENCE is integral to right wing politics, and wars and encounters are essential components of its strategy. This is as much true of the Hindutva forces as it is of the US establishment led by Bush.

Therefore, when the Hindutva forces claim to fight terrorism, we not only have to take it with a pinch of salt, all the time remembering that there is a lot in common between the two and that they feed each other, but also keep in mind that this so-called fight holds a special place in Hindutva’s diabolical scheme of Hindu Rashtra, much in the same way as the assault on Iraq has a place in the US establishment’s imperialist schemes. In both cases the underlying assumption is of a ‘clash of civilisations,’ with themselves representing civilisation and the ‘other’ representing barbarism. 

This assumption itself can be, and has been, effectively challenged on numerous grounds, ideological as well as factual. But it continues to hold ground and contributes to a degree of popular consent for what are essentially undemocratic acts on the part of right wing political forces. It is important to see the linkages between the US attack on and occupation of Iraq and the war mongering against Pakistan by the Sangh Parivar, and the easy slide that these permit into hate politics against Muslims the world over. 

UNJUST WARS AND ENCOUNTERS

Unjust wars and encounters not only represent undemocratic solutions to a problem, eroding in the process the concept of just wars and legitimate rebellions against injustice; they also become instruments for furthering a right wing political campaign filled with lies and hatred for those characterized as ‘enemy.’ They in fact contribute towards drawing and propagating stereotyped images of whole communities of those targeted, and separating their fate from exercise of any judgement on the basis of normal norms of justice by citizens at large. And from any normal feelings of human beings towards sufferings of others.

The tortures by the US soldiers of Iraqi citizens, and the continuing persecution of Muslims in Gujarat on pretexts of harbouring designs to kill Modi, have not caused the large scale revulsions they should in democratic societies. Few people recognise the agony and despair of the Kashmiri people caught between militancy and the sweeping actions of those representing the state. Such lack of empathy for human rights can only be detrimental to the interests of the democratic movement. 

The latest killing of four Muslim youths near Ahmedabad raises larger questions that need our concern and have wider implications. On June 15, the Ahmedabad police claimed to have killed four terrorists in an Indica car, at a desolate location near Kotarpur on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, on their way to the city, after a thrilling chase in a pre-dawn encounter. The bodies were neatly arranged on the road for display. Immediately, without any inquiry, it was claimed by the Gujarat police that they were terrorists from the Pakistan based Lashkar-e-Taiba, two of them being from Pakistan, and the other two including a nineteen year girl Ishrat Jahan being Indians, and that they were plotting to kill Narendra Modi. 

LARGER QUESTION

The larger question is how do the right wing Hindutva forces --- or the state forces in BJP ruled states --- manage all the time to become investigators, prosecutors and judges, in some cases even meting out their own private ‘justice’ through Bajrang Dal and other such organisations? It tells something about our polity that the new government must urgently address itself to, if it wants to free this country from the dadagiri of the Hindutva goons. 

How, why and under what authority did the police kill them? The media debate has been confined to the question of whether they had any terrorist links. The point is, even assuming that they did have such links, we still need to be told what they had done to justify their cold blooded murder? Are terrorist links, without any act of commission or omission, sufficient to kill any person? Was there any prior investigation? If so, what was it, and who lodged the FIR and when? What does it say? If it was not an investigation, what was it? 

If they were about to commit a cognisable offence, could the police not have prevented the commission of this offence, without killing them? Under what law can the police kill any person? There is no provision either in the constitution or in the Criminal Procedure Code giving any right to the police to kill. The only provision giving any person the right to kill is under section 100 of the Indian Penal Code. That is as a matter of private defence. 

And who decides that killing was justified? Too easily the police resort to killings in the case of those they brand as Muslim terrorists, and in all cases without exception they shoot to kill rather than injure. Obviously dead bodies tell no tales and cannot speak for themselves, so the self-proclaimed investigators also easily assume the role of persecutors and judges. It is happening all the time and with increasing frequency since 9/11 and since the BJP formed its government.

These are questions being asked and observations made by concerned citizens. These are questions that political parties need to address urgently as well. 

HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES

These are human rights issues that pertain to criminalisation of politics, questions of law and order, fundamental rights of citizens, and the building of a secular polity in which right is not might. It is a travesty of justice that while thousands of those known to be perpetrators of the Gujarat genocide roam free, others, simply because they belong to another religion, are routinely made targets of a communalised state machinery on grounds of mere suspicion, by no other than this RSS infiltrated machinery. Modi himself, the architect of the genocide, continues to enjoy the office of chief minister despite countless investigative reports by concerned citizens’ groups, while poor Muslims are continuously being charged with conspiracies against the state by Modi’s henchmen. 

We must remember that those young misguided youths who are being guided into militancy through sheer desperation are ultimately paying the price for it. They are living desperate, unhappy, and hounded lives, and getting killed for their misdeeds, not sitting pretty in offices with state security protection, and political clout that ensures them immunity for crimes committed. As a matter of fact, numerous people even feel that more important than the dismissal of any governor is the dismissal of Modi for his complicity in the Gujarat genocide and his flaunted justifications to this day for what the Hindutva forces did in Gujarat. 

Obviously, the Congress, which hardly showed teeth during the killings despite the brutal murder of one of their own former MPs, is hardly likely to bell the cat even now that it is in power at the centre. Its refusal to recognise the nature of the popular mandate, reflected in the election results and programmatised to some degree in the Common Minimum Programme, and to act on it swiftly, would be suicidal not merely for the Congress, but for the third front alternative as well. The failure of the Congress can only benefit the Sangh Parivar at this crucial political juncture, whereas swift decisive measures against anti-democratic forces will give teeth to a secular democratic state.

The intervention of the Supreme Court in the Best Bakery Case (relating to one of the most gruesome killings during the Gujarat genocide) in censoring and curtailing the Gujarat state government in its active role of denying justice to the victims by protecting the perpetrators of the crime, represents a struggle within the Indian state between sectarian and secular democratic forces. This struggle is bound to take place within the judiciary, the police force, the administration, and the army, which form the direct instruments of the state, and also within media, educational institutions, cultural bodies, at all levels from the centre to the village based bodies. 

EXTRACONSTITUTIONAL METHODS OF PARIVAR

The Sangh Parivar, which has utilised every occasion of political ascendancy to fill these bodies with its own people, and to change the political complexion of major institutions of the state, is not going to hand over its power in a platter just because it has lost elections and the right to form the government. Its cadre remains entrenched in the institutions of governance and of ideological significance. The fact that it does not form the government or hold a majority in the parliament makes it all the more desperate to resort to extra-constitutional methods of furtherance of its political agenda. A politics of war mongering, hate and encounters is most suited to rendering helpless those it portrays as enemies and also of ensuring that those positioned in the state instruments of power retain their biases and remain active collaborators in their politics, whether the Sangh linked party forms the government or not. 

The new government must, therefore, put an end to all extra-constitutional assertions by the instruments of the state, and the Gujarat state machinery headed by Modi must be put on the defensive. As it happens, it shows through its actions that it can continue as before, no matter if the government at the centre has changed. It must be decisively disabused of this complacency. The new government in place at the centre must make a positive difference for the people of Gujarat