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Three Essays
[In this report we have tried to present a comprehensive
picture of the way in which the participatory process for the Course was
built up - how from the stage of planning, publicity, and selection, to
preparation of reading material, distance learning, field work and the
actual institution of the Course, the peace education process went on.
But all these will be incomplete if we do not reproduce here some of the
writings of the participants on the themes of the Course - how they conceptualised
the issues in discussions and analyses and engaged with them.]
State History, Collective Memory and Human Rights in
India by Ajay Gandhi
Introduction
The focus of this paper is on how dominant understandings of political
conflicts in India, as shaped by the state, have come to privilege a particular
history and collective memory in ways that consolidate the authority of
hegemonic actors, undermine the grievances and trauma of marginaized victims,
and legitimate a conducive ideological environment for continuing human
rights abuses and power asymmetries. My thesis is underlined by focusing
on two interrelated cases of Indian 'development', where history and memory
have become vehicles for furthering elite policies. First, I take illustrative
examples from the state-adivasi conflict over the Narmada dams, and second,
I focus on the Bhopal disaster and the subsequent battles for redressal
between victims and the state.
Theoretical outline
My point of departure in highlighting the importance of state-produced
history and memory in contemporary human rights abuses is from an anthropological
understanding of history as an intertwined element of social practice.
Rather than conceptualizing history as a given, absolute reification,
I believe that it must be seen in its recapitulation in political and
social institutions, as a site of conflict between actors, as well as
an individually produced construct. In the same way that the state, rather
than being a solid entity, is actually an amalgam of individual practices
and social institutions, history and memory must be seen as agential human
activity. By employing this formulation, I believe that we come to both
understand more clearly the state influenced construction of collective
history and memory, and the spaces for resistance and alternative construction.
The creation of a particular history favouring state constituencies
is not surprising or original to South Asia, nor a sudden product of contemporary
politics. Moreover, the dissemination of such a memory to broader constituencies
is not done merely to create a favourable view of the past, as divorced
from current circumstances; rather, the reproduction of a dominant history
and memory reveals the urgency of the state in creating a docile population
subject to dominant economic structures and political formulations out
of those communities that might resist or oppose the state for one reason
or another. As such, history is both subject to ongoing reproduction,
and is an element in the creation of dominant formulations that legitimate
contemporary state concerns.
Postcolonial states such as India are increasingly compelled
to memorialize history in these ways because of the particular dynamics
of their position within broader political and economic processes. As
the Indian state increasingly abdicates economic control over its post-independence
legitimacy based on the ability to impart 'development', its political
legitimacy comes increasingly to depend on the production of state power
and history in particularly powerful ways. In particular, for states that
face globalization, there is an increasing dependence on employing notions
of desired 'indigenousness' and unwanted 'foreignness' to legitimate coherence
and the appearance of stability.
Contradiction, ambiguity, and rupture in a unified ideological
field are competitive strands of historical narrative and reveal more
plurality and competition for power than the state desires, are thus become
systematically subsumed within attempts at a coherent ideology of the
state and its central constituencies. Such memorialization is produced
not dramatically and suddenly, but slowly and prosaically. Official discourse
becomes the weight of accumulated pamphlets, seminars, rituals, books,
and speeches that arrive at an agree-upon consensus for preserving dominant
understandings.
Empirical illustrations
I illustrate these analytic points by focusing on development, an often
overlooked discourse and state apparatus that, conjoined to a system of
power and force privileged by hegemonic actors, has resulted in continuous
displacement and suffering for those in whose name such actions are implemented:
rural adivasis, farmers, dalits, and the urban poor who have had their
lands and livelihoods fragmented.
My first illustrative example is drawn from the protracted
Narmada conflict in western India, where for the past two decades three
riparian states have been attempting to implement a hydroelectric dam
project in western India. Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat; a
social movement, the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA; Save the Narmada
Movement); and affected adivasi (tribal) communities in the Narmada Valley
have been conflicting over the development of 30 large, 135 medium, and
3000 minor multipurpose dams on the Narmada river and its tributaries.
Among the problems resulting from the project are: massive displacement
of adivasi and farming communities in the three states, numbering around
400, 000 people in total, including the project's reservoir area and related
infrastructure; and serious environmental costs mainly resulting from
reservoir flooding, including over 37,590 hectares of submerged land and
the loss of large tracts of forests.
Here, I give two examples of state discourse that has repeatedly
privileged not the particular cosmology or ideology of those whose link
to land is severed, but its own modernist, unilinear teleology of development.
Such a discourse is exemplified by the comments of the Narmada Valley
Development Agency (NVDA)'s former chairman Y.C. Alagh about the project's
displaced adivasi communities:
No trauma could be more painful for a family than to get
uprooted from a place where it has lived for generations… Yet the
uprooting has to be done. Because the land occupied by the family is required
for a development project which holds promise of progress and prosperity
for the country and people in general. The family getting displaced thus
makes a sacrifice… so that others may live in happiness and be economically
better off.
Importantly, the state reproduces this ideology even in
an age when it is not the prime mover or beneficiary of development schemes,
having increasingly farmed out responsibility and benefits to international
lenders, donors and corporations. Thus, the state must increasingly conjoin
pre-existing technocratic, modernist notions of development with hegemonic
cultural norms privileging Hindu rights and privileges. The Narmada case
has repeatedly witnessed pro-government forces using as a central plank
of their argument not the technical, social or political benefits to be
brought from such development, but rather claims that refer solely to
the sacred 'Mata Narmada' and the dams as the pride of Hindu Gujarat.
A passage from one of the more radical pro-dam Gujarati NGO's reveals
this chauvinist discourse:
Those opposing the dam are anti-national, anti-Gujarat,
agents of CIA, Naxalites, KGB, Pakistan etc. They are misleading the tribals,
peasants, and people of Gujarat. They and their supporters in Gujarat
should be banished from the state, be taught a lesson by the people, be
boycotted… In countries like China, USSR, these people would have
been shot and killed by the government, but we Gujarati people are tolerant.
Not an inch of SSP height will be reduced… This is the issue of Gujarat's
asmita (self-esteem) and survival… Gujarat will be destroyed in the
next century if SSP is not built… [The anti-dam protestors] receive
foreign money. Stooges of foreign powers… Tribals lead a wretched
life in their original villages. Their displacement itself is their development
(visthapan hi vikas hain).
This dominant ideology, made conventional, indisputable
history through the repeating of such discourse by state actors and allied
actors in the media and NGOs, continues to mask the ongoing deprivation
of victim constituencies who are adversely affected by such projects.
Such violations include forcible removal of affected communities, bureaucratic
harassment and coercion, and the repeated violation of property and human
rights by state functionaries. State historical discourse has thus become
among the very subjects of struggle between competing constituencies,
and when overwhelmingly produced by the state, a vehicle of justifying
political violence (harassment, corruption, inaction) and economic violence
(displacement to urban slums and shantytowns for wage labour being a common
end-point of tribal displacement).
The case of the Bhopal disaster, a particularly illustrative
example of state-sponsored maldevelopment, provides a second, more obvious
example of how state history legitimates the lack of just redressal of
victims' claims. The first disaster is well known. 17 years ago, on the
night of December 2-3 1984, a fertilizer plant operated by US-based Union
Carbide corporation released methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas that blanketed
adjoining neighborhoods, immediately killing thousands and maiming tens
of thousands more. The second disaster is less well known, although no
less insidious: tens of thousands of gas victims and their offspring continue
to suffer the lingering effects of the original tragedy due to inadequate
or nonexistent medical treatment and financial compensation. This is compounded
by new health problems resulting from the abandoned and untreated Union
Carbide plant site. The soil and drinking water used by surrounding communities
is heavily contaminated with heavy metals and carcinogenic chemicals such
as benzene, mercury and chloroform, confirmed in reports by the Madhya
Pradesh government and Greenpeace. The death toll from the 1984 disaster
has crossed 20,000 and upwards of 120,000 others continue to suffer the
lingering effects of the gas leak and remaining contamination. Victims
and their children suffer from skin and eye problems, stomach aches, anemia,
respiratory problems, and vomiting from the combined effects of the gas
leak and the lingering groundwater contamination. Many of the original
victims continue to suffer the intangible effects of the disaster: mental
anguish from the death and injury caused by the original disaster, but
also from the daily struggle to live with dignity and peace.
The government has inflicted its injury on survivors by
refusing to conduct meaningful long-term research on the effects of the
gas, and dragging its feet in providing compensation and medical redress.
By delaying research and treatment, the government displaces causality
and culpability for harm caused, because some ailments are said to have
uncertain or disputable origins. In the state's absurd logic, not knowing
justifies not doing anything in a vicious and irresponsible loop. The
government's use of history and construction of the case within a technocratic
framework that delegitimizes the pain and suffering of victims has resulted
in ongoing medical and legal inertia that furthers their suffering. For
example, the state, by incorporating the disaster within the bureaucracy,
has made routine the anomalous nature of the original disaster and the
unique conditions that victims must suffer. Thus, by giving control of
victim's responses to elite technocrats and experts, the government delegitimizes
the understanding and memory of the disaster as experienced by victims
and instead replaces it with its own conventional history that lingers
in the indifference of officials to victims.
Conclusoin
This paper has sought to show how state-sponsored constructions of history
and collective memory in salient political-development conflicts in India
have contributed towards the eclipsing of victims' and displaced persons'
own suffering and violence. Rather than being a benign and objective,
history and memory and constantly negotiated and reproduced, often by
powerful state actors, to recreate contemporary abuses and violations
of those without power. While the power of the state in this respect is
often overwhelming, there is hope in the power of victims and activists
who resist and offer competing notions, often more sensitive to those
affected by state injustice, and which offer a salve for people to express
trauma and injustice. In both the Narmada and Bhopal cases, advocacy groups
have given voice to an enduring legacy of victims and displaced persons
still suffering against an institutional order that in many cases has
aggressively sought to erase their suffering and the memory of their existence
from the courts, hospitals, and anywhere else justice and relief can be
sought. The activists and victims who continue to seek medical redress
and financial compensation from the state in these cases are thus engaged
in a struggle against forgetting, against the selective memory of those
in power.
Erosion in the Ethics of Rights, Justice and Responsibility
in Kashmir by Rifat Nazir Kawos
The fundamental assertion of human existence is the legitimate
objectives of rights and justice. Whether realized or not, rights are
inherent to the individual identity in the shape of justice and responsibility.
Broadly ethics of rights, justice and responsibility are nothing but the
values of an acknowledged human conduct. They promulgate a wide spectrum
of genuine individual powers. But are these ethical values properly channelled
in human discourses to present a laudable human conduct? My personal experience
says "No". I may be allowed to say that these ethical nations
are merely reduced to theoretical positions and have completely lost the
magic of utility in my region. Rights, justice and responsibility follow
one after the other, and cannot be read in isolation, but unfortunately
these notions have cut a sorry figure in Kashmir.
What I have felt in the last 5-6 years is that a common
Kashmiri is lost in securing his own good without even giving a minute's
thought to what is going around. A total degradation of ethics in terms
of attitude is gaining momentum as a result of the on-going turmoil and
that has left individual more and more dehumanized. It is suicidal that
although human dignity has been abused and human-suffering has reached
the highest peak in form of killing, disappearances, rapes and mental
trauma, the people as a whole are showing an indifferent attitude. Where
does lie then responsibility? Whether it is the security forces, or the
combatants, accusations are mutual and general. Who knows, perhaps a common
Kashmiri takes this indifference as means of survival. The situation is
one of human tragedy where according to a report of a private TV channel,
mental cases in the valley have risen from 6,000 in 1990 when the turmoil
had started to 36,000 approximately in 2001, which is a 200 per cent rise.
But people feel apathy. The victims are left to their fate and the individual
self-concerns have shifted to material concerns. Surprising it may seem,
these are the people who at one point of time and of course before the
turmoil were popular for their compassion, but the devastating blows of
the conflict have completely erased the ethics of the righteousness, justice
and responsibility from their personalities and day to day atrocities
have had such an impact that people have stopped thinking, not to talk
of mustering ethical courage. One of my friends, day before, was talking
to me about the situation in Kashmir and he asked in astonishment, amidst
the cases of day to day disappearances, how can the Kashmiris forget everything
and study in colleges and universities? For him, it may seem very unethical
but for common Kashmiris, this is a matter of daily routine and a common
person may not even think of it in terms of ethics. It is not only common
Kashmiri, who is losing his ethics, even at the official level the need
of being more just and responsible has completely lost meaning.
In January this year, in connection with the project of
the British Council, I came across an under trial lodged in the central
jail who was arrested under the Possession of the Arms Act. He was in
very bad condition suffering from multiple ailments, and if not treated
in well in time, he would perhaps die. When I enquired about it from the
DSP concerned, abrupt came the answer "We would not let anybody die
here". At that time, I thought that this could be the heinous remark
of its kind made against humanity. For the purpose of detecting mines,
young boys of age group of 20-30 are being used by the security forces
in some of the border areas as a protective shield, also thrown to the
front to detect mines with sticks in their hands followed by the patrolling
army vehicles. But, seldom there is any response from the people. In case
of judiciary, the High Court normally calls it off on the days when a
Habeas Corpus petition is scheduled for hearing which usually is a Tuesday.
Maybe they do so under state pressure or they may have no interest in
determining the issue of human liberty. In the words of one of the members
of the State Human Rights Commission, the Commission knows that 90 per
cent of the complaint cases for disappearances are cases of extra judicial
killings. Kunan-Poshpura gang rape case created waves in the valley and
brought out the vulnerability of rural women living in the border areas.
But unfortunately a leader of a women militant organization while projecting
the cause of Kashmiris struggle for self-determination justified the tragedy.
Ironically, a woman justifying the gang rape and claiming to be the leader
of self-determination implies that she guarantees self-determination in
exchange for the honour of women-folk.
If we look at the whole scenario with objectivity, the only
conclusion that can be drawn is that either the level of frustration level
has gone up among common people who now show indifference, or it has something
to so with their original behaviour. Surprisingly, a Kashmiri at one point
of time, before the turmoil, would hardly hold a knife in his hand and
when he would hold the gun, it was opposite to his original nature, and
gun would not remain in hand for a long period. Even in September 1996,
when the first assembly elections in the valley was held after the protest
year of 1989, people had some hopes about the political system and governance.
Although the election did not bring the expected results, people started
remoulding their lives and came forward to seek job opportunities and
started accepting that violence could not fetch them anything.
Another aspect of the indifference in the valley is the
response to the calls for hartal. It may sound very unusual but the people
of the valley generally observe hartal without knowing the reason and
students get another off-day. After the entry of the foreign mercenaries
in the
valley, the Kashmiris militants receded from the scene and this has made
the Kashmiri participation ineffective making the scene more of an alien-affair.
People are fed up and tensions are rising. People are dying and only petty
political interests are dominating. An indication of the acute erosion
of ethics is that men with vested interests have made money out of the
bodies of the dead. This has given rise to a class of people who raise
great slogans in the name of self determination, but unfortunately they
do not mean it. There has been an alarming increase in the number of orphans
in the valley and although Kashmir is a comparatively prosperous region,
no-body comes forward to their rescue. But when it means spending lavishly
on the marriage ceremonies or other ceremonial occasions, money starts
flowing in recklessly.
There are a few NGOs like the Save The Children and SHEHJAAR,
but I would say that they are able to cater to the demands of just few
- a drop in the sea. Ironically the number of B.ED colleges in the valley
has incredibly increased over the last few years just
because these are money-minting machines. But none heals the wounds of
the victims. I was collecting money my class match for the cause of orphans
and I could collect just a total of Rs. 230 from 100 students. But when
it came to collecting money for the picnic, the total amount collected
was RS. 16,000. When this is the state of affairs of our own people, then
how do we expect the international agencies to build the lives our people?
Do we really deserve the sympathy? Well I do not think that.
If I am not coming forward to rescue my own people, then I hardly own
the right to discuss and debate over this suffering. How far can a man
go in deceiving himself? At one point in time his conscience shakes his
existence and he realizes that what he has been doing is a breach of promise
of his creation. But the story does not end here. The victims of this
breach are left to carry to load of their misfortune without realizing
that their perpetrators are facing their fate. Without jumping to the
conclusions, one has to realize that whenever be the magnitude of violations,
without personally feeling the heat, one must not debate on the temperature.
Responsibility is the essence of human existence but it should not be
read only in context of being responsible for one's own self. What is
important is that how responsible one is towards his fellow beings. Otherwise
Hobbe's state of nature will come out of the political theory to hover
over the claimants of the modern civilization, unless personalities develop
to counter the brutalities and hostilities, and hold the platform of life.
The philosophy of life is the philosophy of action, also the philosophy
of compassion. At times, I wonder if I were not a witness to the sufferings
of my people, I would have the same feelings. Maybe because I have a reason
to have such feelings, but that is a different background story. Therefore
apart from raising concern over the Kashmir issue on the international
front, it is better that more efforts be made to set right the ethical
proportions because in the long run a righteous, just and responsible
individual determines the fate of the nation.
Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children in
Nepal by Salina Joshi
Sita's story
Sita lived with her parents and two brothers in Sidhupalchowk district
in Nepal. Her father is an alcoholic and seldom works. The sole income
in the family is her mother's wage. Sita and her brothers did not go to
school because they could not afford it. However, she was interested in
studying and dreamt of a good future. She was lured by a man in the neighbourhood
who promised her that she would get education and achieve good future
if she came with him to India. Sita, left home with the man, only to discover
that she had been sold off for few thousands of rupees - less than the
cost of television. She cried and begged the brothel owner to let her
go but the brothel owner kept her silent with the two bodyguards who guarded
her with knives, and burnt her with cigarette. Finally, Sita gave up the
thought of ever getting released. She dried her tears. Her throat choked
up as she prepared herself for the work, which was to sleep with men for
a price.
What happened to Sita is a crime and that crime is trafficking
According to the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Violence against
Women, Radhika Coomaraswamy, trafficking in persons means the recruitment,
transportation, purchase, sale, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons
by threat or use of violence, abduction, force, fraud, deception or coercion
(including the abuse of authority), or debt bondage, for the purpose of
placing or holding such person, whether for pay or not, in forced labour
or slavery-like practices, in a community other than the one in which
such person lived at the time of the original act described.
Trafficking is an abuse of human rights, as trafficking
involves brokering of human beings for profit. Trafficking in persons,
especially women and children for commercial sexual exploitation is a
tragic and long prevailing problem for Nepal. Every year, a large number
of Nepalese girls, vulnerable due to poverty, illiteracy, unemployment,
hardship, are lured to the sex markets and domestic servitude especially
in India and other parts of the world. Currently it is estimated that
5,000 to 7,000 girls are trafficked every year and it is reported that
they are sold from Rs. 25,000 to 50,000.
The Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal and the other international
Human rights instruments that Nepal has signed such as Convention on the
Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the
Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC guarantees fundamental human
rights such as the right to self determination, and protection against
exploitation. However, trafficking prevail abusing rights of the women
and children and assaulting human dignity.
A violation of human rights begins when a woman is first
trafficked. She is coerced, threatened and misinformed and is transported
against her will or with her will, and taken illegally across international
borders. Then she is sold, forced into sex work, labour or domestic work.
Women live in miserable conditions in brothels. They are not given enough
food or proper health care and they are vulnerable to sexually transmitted
diseases as they service as many as ten customers in a day without using
any protective measures against deadly diseases. Also the women are forced
to remain in the brothel and are allowed very limited movement and their
world is confined to a room.
According to a discussion with the affected persons, their
experience with the law enforcement mechanism was cruel. The police were
aloof and insensitive to the women, they used abusive language and did
not give proper information on the legal procedures as a result women
dropped their cases and chose to take no further actions. This is one
of the reasons that not more than150 cases are reported at the police
though it is estimated that 5,000 to 7,000 women and children are trafficked
each year. Trafficking is a state case and government attorney argues
from the victim's side however in many cases the government attorney failed
to appear in the court and the right to appeal is denied to the victim.
The court is another compartment in the law enforcement that appeared
insensitive according to court observations for the study on trafficking
in persons. The Judges did not consider the international instruments
like the CEDAW in the court while giving decisions nor did the public
attorneys used it in their arguments.
The existing law is inadequate in protecting human rights
of the affected persons. There is no provision in the law for in camera
hearing. Women have been threatened by the traffickers, and emotionally
blackmailed by the family members to drop the case due to the fear of
stigma, as a result the women given in to the pressure changing their
statement. Also there is no victim/witness protection policy, which is
another important provision that the law lacks in order to protect the
rights of the affected persons. Trafficking is an extraterritorial event.
The extraterritorial application of the law has not been implemented because
the Nepal/India extradition treaty includes 16 different types of offences
as crimes but trafficking in not mentioned. Trafficking has not got the
kind of focused attention that it requires. The Ninth Plan of HMG/Nepal
does not specifically refer to trafficking. The labour policy is only
designed to eliminate child labour but does not address the trafficking
of children. The health policy does not give any priority for women's
health despite all of the evidence of the severe health effects of sexual
exploitation and trafficking.
Some women enter homes, which is not often voluntary. Some
go to transit homes until a family or a NGO comes for them. These homes
have very less to offer there isn't enough to eat, and no proper health
care and security. Other women go directly to rehabilitation homes. These
rehabilitation homes give vocational training to the women, which is not
very useful. In many cases, women return home with HIV/AIDs and other
diseases sometimes seriously ill. Even if they are not infected with HIV/AIDS
they are presumed to be so and are neglected by their own family members
and the rest of the society. In desperation many are forced to return
to prostitution.
Why is Women-trafficking such a severe problem in Nepal?
Nepal is one of the least developing countries in the worlds. It lacks
sufficient economic capital, infrastructure, and developed human resources.
The society is also patriarchal and women are basically second class citizens.
Girls receive little education or often no education as they stay home
while their brothers go to school. A woman cannot confer citizenship to
her child or to her husband. Married women can't inherit property and
many girls are forced to marry as early as ten or twelve years. There
are more than 118 discriminatory legal provisions in various 54 laws including
the Constitution that is discriminatory against women. So girls or their
families are easily enticed by traffickers who promise freedom from the
deteriorating kind of situation and financial rewards.
In times of war and civil unrest these problems have become
worse, scarce resources are used to restore peace. Men are killed who
could otherwise have supported their family, many men and women are forced
to join the war. This violence and war make women and children more vulnerable
to this horrible crime as lives are becoming more difficult and future
looks bleak.
Initiatives
There have been initiatives to eliminate this crime from both the government
and the civil society, however, lack of effective law, enforcement mechanism
and other effective programs and activities to address the root causes
of trafficking have been a challenge.
Nonetheless, a specific plan is developed by the government,
which contains a number of initiatives to combat trafficking. Also, the
government has proposed a bill to amend the exiting law against trafficking,
and has tried to bring a comprehensive tool including the following provisions:
- Victims and witness protection mechanism
- Provision for in camera haring
- Compensation to the victims
SAARC Convention on Preventing and Combating Trafficking
in Women and Children for Prostitution was adopted on the Eleventh SAARC
Summit in Kathmandu. This regional tool is adopted with an objective to
establish regional cooperation to combat trafficking as trafficking is
a transnational crime and a country alone cannot successfully fight against
this problem. In addition to this root causes of trafficking needs to
be addressed such as illiteracy, poverty and the gender discrimination.
It is therefore, incumbent upon the state and civil society to combat
trafficking by addressing these root causes. The result will not only
be less fertile ground for trafficking but a better society that respects
human rights of every citizen.
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