India’s subdivision of criminality (how one massacre deserves another)

Ours is the age of the intellectual organisation of political hatreds: Julien Benda, The Treason of the Intellectuals; 1928

Once crime was as solitary as a cry of protest; now it is as universal as science. Yesterday it was put on trial; today it determines the law: Albert Camus, The Rebel, 1956

A BJP minister’s response to Rahul Gandhi’s speech in parliament on August 9 was to remind us of the crimes committed under Congress rule. This is the ping-pong game favoured by our establishment. It is as if all of us common citizens are insane and incapable of seeing what is before us. If anyone wishes to understand the long term criminalisation of the Indian state, they will have to discard partisan speech.

We are in a nihilist situation. When the State empowers mob violence and vigilantism, it will be overtaken by mob violence. Controlled mobs always run out of control

There is also an ongoing argument about Rahul Gandhi’s point about calling in the Indian Army. BJP spokespersons ask rhetorically if the Army is to be asked to fire on Indian citizens. This is amazing: isn’t the government constitutionally entitled – nay obliged – to summon the Army in case of a breakdown of law and order; and hasn’t the Manipur government proven incapable of defending life and liberty? In fact, the Supreme Court has held that the the law-enforcement agency was not only “inept” in controlling the violence, but also, “in certain situations, colluded with the perpetrators…. perpetrators of violence must be held accountable irrespective of the source of violence”.

It is quite true that the deployment of the Army in various parts of the North Eastern states has been a contentious point for decades, and with good reason, not least the use of the AFSPA. But this is a case of armed conflict, a civil war-like situation amongst two segments of the population of a single state. If the state police itself divided along ethnic lines, it is clearly a matter of constitutional breakdown. Hasn’t the Indian Army been called in many times to quell communal violence, and was it not summoned in 1984? As a social volunteer, I personally recall ordinary people begging for the Army to be called deployed in Delhi in November 1984, because the police could not defend its own Sikh officers, let alone common citizens. Has not the Army been stationed in Jammu and Kashmir for decades?

Why were the BJP ally and MP from Manipur Lorho S. Pfoze; and Union Minister, BJP MP from Manipur Rajkumar Ranjan Singh, not allowed to speak in Parliament? Do not these facts show that the ‘double-engine’ government has collapsed? Are they not sufficient ground to ask the Indian Army to establish peace and tranquility? Are the BJP leaders capable of conversation? Must every utterance be whataboutery laced with sneering?

Here are more commentaries on Manipur and India’s North East

Will half-truths in the Parliament bring peace to Manipur?

Understanding India’s Manipur Conflict and Its Geopolitical Implications

Fractured memories of Manipur: myths, history and personal encounters

Jiten Yumnam: Nuances of mining plan in Manipur

Lives interrupted: The cost of violence in Manipur | BBC News India

Manipur Report & Modi: सुप्रीम कोर्ट में खुलेगी मणिपुर फाइल ? / Rape FIR gathered dust for 62 days

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These are the opening lines of an article I wrote eleven years ago; to commemorate a communist murdered by other communists:

A Hard Rain Falling

A baleful feature of contemporary Indian politics is the subjugation of the mind to partisanship in the narrowest sense. All commentary appears as the standpoint of this or that party, and hence not worthy of consideration by anyone other than the faithful. Serious dialogue fades away, and all we do is hurl ‘positions’ at one another. Communalism is identified with one party, caste-ism with another, corruption with a third. Conversation is reduced to sloganeering. We forget that the polity as a whole exhibits all these complex phenomena, regardless of which party commands power. And we also ignore the more far-reaching inquiry, into the acceptability of controlled mobs, private armies, vigilante groups and political assassination.. Here is the article

And this essay was written to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the massacre of Sikhs in the national capital in 1984: The Broken Middle

Here is some material for those who wish to study Indian communalism in greater detail:

1/ Some articles on Indian communalism and justice

The law of killing: A brief history of Indian fascism

1948: Supreme Court, RSS and Gandhi

The Philosophy of Number

The Lady Vanishes

2/ Some posts / public lectures on Mahatma Gandhi

THE DELHI DECLARATION OF JANUARY 18, 1948

The Compass

Gandhi’s Assassin. By Dhirendra K Jha

The compass we lost (links to two AV lectures)