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India’s Sikhs: Waiting for Justice–by Barbara Crossette
August 3, 2004 | Comments Off on India’s Sikhs: Waiting for Justice–by Barbara Crossette
Retired New York Times reporter Barbara Crossette has published an article in this summer’s issue of the World Policy Journal titled India’s Sikhs: Waiting for Justice. In this article, Crossette explores the problems leading to impunity for perpetrators of human rights violations against Sikhs, from the November 1984 pogroms to the decade of disappearances in Punjab. Crossette weaves in comparative narratives of Gujarat to allow readers to understand the failures of the Indian constitution for minorities throughout the country. Questioning the endemic impunity in India, Crossette writes:
This November will mark 20 years since those days of terror and death [November 1984 pogroms]. Several reports by Indian human rights groups on the killings and more than half a dozen official government commissions have come, and mostly gone. Yet no Indian politician accused of complicity in fomenting the attacks has been tried. No one in authority responsible for the astonishing negligence in law enforcement has resigned. Indeed, the federal minister then in charge of home affairs, P. V. Narasimha Rao, went on to become prime minister seven years later (after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, Indira’s son and another victim of her disastrous statecraft, this time with respect to Sri Lanka). In 1992, it was Prime Minister Narasimha Rao who stood aside once again when a Hindu mob tore down a sixteenth century mosque in the northern town of Ayodhya. That outburst, in turn, foreshadowed the slaughter of about 2,000 Muslims in 2002 in the state of Gujarat—ironically, the birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi.
In what other mature democracy, Indian human rights activists and newspaper editorialists ask, would such wholesale, high casualty attacks on any minority group go unpunished, and for two decades? Why are Indian law enforcement officials and public figures never held accountable?
Crossette interviews retired Justice Verma of India’s Supreme Court and political commentator Kuldip Nayyar about their experiences with the issues of Punjab, from the Punjab illegal cremations matter proceeding before the National Human Rights Commission to the decade of unrest in Punjab.
To order copies of the article, please check out the World Policy Journal online which will soon upload the Summer Issue with Crossette’s article.
In related news, the Nanavati Commission released papers for three senior government officials against whom it issued Section 8B notices: newly-elected Congress MP and former Delhi police commissioner Nikhil Kumar, then Delhi Lt-Governor P.G. Gavai and police commissioner S.C. Tandon. Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao, against whom it also issued a Section 8B notice, failed to show up to collect his papers:
Secretary of the Commission J.P. Narain gave the documents to Kumar, Gavai and Tandon. They have been asked to file their replies by August 20. The Commission had issued notices to them to produce evidence in their defence as it felt their reputation was likely to be ‘‘prejudicially affected’’ by the inquiry report.
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