The Chhattisgarh (CG) government has been claiming that the Salwa Judum (SJ) is a spontaneous movement by citizens against the naxalites.
If so, it now has been hoisted by its own petard. The Chief Justice of India (CJI) has criticized the CG government as "abetting a crime" by arming the SJ movement. A Bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justice Aftab Alam said: “It is a question of law and order. You cannot give arms to somebody (a civilian) and allow him to kill. You will be an abettor of the offence under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code [i.e., will be abetting murder].”
Since the CG government has in fact been arming civilian volunteers in Salwa Judum, it follows from the CJI's assertion that the SJ is a criminal enterprise. Yet from the assumption of most rightwing ranters online (as well as the BJP government in Chhattisgarh of course) that anyone criticizing the Salwa Judum must be a naxal supporter, does it not follow that the CJI too must be a naxalite supporter? Well, yes, but then reductio ad absurdum arguments may be too subtle for the "minds" (one uses such a word with hesitation) of the present government in Raipur. In fact, according to certain provisions of the Chhattisgarh Special Security Act, even the CJI could be construed as being criminally culpable, merely for opining that the state may be abetting a crime. Such are some of the logical absurdities that arise when internal security legislation is rushed through without adequate scrutiny by people's representatives. Having repealed POTA, it was allowed to re-enter in states through local legislation.
The nature of the charges against Dr. Binayak Sen suggests very strongly that it was the assumption that he must have been a card-carrying member that led the CG government to imprison him, and the Supreme Court to refuse him bail. Of course, Dr. Sen's charges don't explicitly claim that he was critical of the SJ, but essentially accuse him of conspiracy to wage war against the state, and of being a member of an illegal organization. The evidence turned up by the police so far has been publicly shown to be full of holes, and the mendacity of the charges is manifest to all but the state prosecutor of Chhattisgarh. (See articles from Tehelka and Outlook listed on the left.) Yet Dr. Sen has still been refused bail by a string of courts, including the Supreme Court, despite the defence of lawyers of the stature of Prashant bhushan and Soli Sorabjee. On the other hand, some of those arrested in January this year in Raipur on charges of hoarding arms for a maoist raid have been quietly released, according to personal communications that I am currently verifying from a third source.
The SC has now ordered the National Human Rights Commission to probe allegations of violations of human rights by the SJ. In an affidavit to the SC, the CG solicitor general Subramanium said that "the Naxal menace has reached alarming proportion in the state and [the CG government] cannot stifle any people’s initiative in the form of Salwa Judum movement to combat the ultras’ illegal activities." So, does this mean that if some private citizens decide to take the law into their own hands to kill some people engaged in illegal activities, the state can plead helplessness - and moreover, can feel obliged to aid them in their vigilantism? Is this is what the state of Chhattisgarh understands by law and order? If so, I am surprised that the CJI has not taken the opportunity to censure it for such callous disregard for due process.
Ah, yes, due process, respect for the law...where else do we see these being trampled out of recognition? In the Great War on Terror, of course. Wherever the Great Terror Warriors are doing their bit to defend liberal values and civilization, we find that there is a readiness to seek recourse in corruption, lies, trashing of constitutional protections, the bending of laws, violence against the weak and defenceless, unaccountable misuse of power...in fact every single political abuse that liberal democracy was designed to check has been marshalled in the putative defence of liberal democracy. The justification for this peculiar case of ideological self-destruction is almost always the defence of national interest against unprecedented enemies. In almost every case, these enemies are represented - in remarkable feats of historical amnesia - as sui generis, and arising from nowhere or out of some inherent evil residing in them. The idea that these enemies might simply be the chickens coming home to roost, that they might be the result of the actions of the Great Terror Warrriors themselves...this idea is rejected with scorn, and with accusations of apostasy and treason. In almost every case, "national interest" is invoked like some sacred mantra, as if the interests of the dalits and forest-dwellers and internally displaced refugees of the country are identical with the interests of the NIFTY SENSEXual investor class in India.
In a recent brief public comment, my son Dwaipayan made a similar point:
"It is clear that Dr Sen’s case, in a certain sense, is not unique. Embedded and enmeshed as it is however at the experiential intersection of what to us are the discourses of Naxalism, counter-insurgency, developmentalism and its discontents, and the everyday violence of Indian governmentality – it is difficult to isolate any one reason or analytical category that explains his arrest and continued detention. But what does it mean that in recent years, we are witnessing in different parts of the country an increase in such arrests – a gradual hollowing out, as it were, of civil society? Moreover, and this is the point, or question, I wish to press – what does it mean that such actions are confidently executed using the language and means of constitutionalism – what one might refer to as rights-discourse? Baldly stated, how does one explain an impasse such that the same principles motivating the actions and behaviour of those like Dr Sen are also being used by the state to, in his words, “wage war on its own people” in the name of Indian democracy? – when rights are violated in the name of rights? [both my emphases - GP] Ever since his arrest, my deepest fear has been that the fabrication of charges, the absence of accountability or the independence of the judiciary, the extra-judicial processes at work behind the scenes all serve to underscore the gross reality that within the ambit of the Indian legal system, Dr Sen is potentially guilty as sin even before due process has run its course..."
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