India's 'No' to 9/11 Legacy
By J. Sri Raman
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Saturday 29 May 2004
Chennai, India - India is all set to free itself
from its own legacy of 9/11.
The process, however, is likely to provoke a
political counter-offensive from forces here that
actually saw a golden opportunity in the ghastly Twin
Towers tragedy.
The new ruling coalition in New Delhi and its
outside allies have announced their resolve to repeal
an avowed anti-terrorist law enacted by the outgoing
regime, headed by the rightwing Bharatiya Janata
Party. Scrapping of the infamous Prevention of
Terrorism Act (POTA), 2002, figures prominently in the
Common Minimum Program (CMP) adopted by the currently
power-sharing United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and
its left allies on Thursday. This was perhaps the only
item of the CMP to be adopted without any debate.
The POTA was the official New Delhi response to
9/11 and a Washington diktat in its wake. Piloting the
draconian law in a joint session of both Houses of
Parliament on March 26, 2002, then Deputy Prime
Minister L.K. Advani talked of it as a post-9/11
imperative. The POTA, he said, would "meet a call made
by United Nations Security Council Resolution No.
1373, passed on September 28. This resolution said:
'All states shall ensure that any person who
participates in the financing, planning, preparation
or perpetration of terrorist acts is brought to
justice'." (The POTA followed the Prevention of
Terrorism Ordinance or POTO promulgated in October
2001.)
Needless to add, the resolution was a faithful
reflection of the official US wish and will. The
'justice' it mentioned, though, was a blatant denial
of the basic norms of civilized jurisprudence. It was
followed by the passage of laws in several countries
that targeted civil liberties and democratic rights in
the name of tackling terrorism. Then Law Minister Arun
Jaitley thundered that India, too, "shall have an anti
terrorism law" and left no doubt that it would be a
lawless law.
The POTA was such a law because of its obnoxious
provisions. Like the one that put the onus on the
accused to prove his or her innocence. Or the one that
treated confessions made to the police (obtained, in
public perception, often under torture) as acceptable
evidence. But not only because of such provisions. It
was all the more lawless in being directed
particularly against a minority. And it was even more
so in the manner of its implementation.
The anti-minority intent behind the law was made
amply clear by the anti-"Islamic-terror"
interpretation the BJP rulers put on 9/11 and their
insistent claim that the tragedy had made an India-US
alliance inevitable. Tying up the POTA with the
"terrorism" of his government's special concern,
Advani said: "...state-sponsored cross-border
terrorism is a kind of war and not just a law and
order problem...this is the first factor for the
government to think of an extraordinary law like
POTA".
He was alluding to the Kashmir problem, projected
as purely an insurgency imported from Pakistan and no
more. The POTA, however, was also a declaration of war
on India's largest minority. The Muslims may not have
been formally declared a fifth column, but they were
the 'usual suspects' to the law-enforcers.
The 30 terrorist organizations listed in the POTA
included 11 Muslim and four Sikh bodies, but none of
the outfits of anti-minority terrorism like the Vishwa
Hindu Parishad (VHP), spearhead of the Gujarat carnage
of 2002 that claimed nearly 3,000 Muslim lives. Even
more significantly, the POTA has not been invoked
against members of the non-minority organizations that
do figure in the list.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the
armed force of Tamil separatism in Sri Lanka, for
example, is one of these organizations. When a
politician of the southern State of Tamilnadu was
arrested under the POTA for supporting the LTTE in
public, however, the BJP rulers sprang to his defense.
Not out of new-found concern for civil liberties, but
because his party was part of the New Delhi coalition
then.
They did not press for wielding the POTA against
the People's War Group (PWG) in another southern
State, Andhra Pradesh, another listed outfit - even
after its attempt on the life of the State's chief
minister, an ally of theirs. Yet another extremist
outfit of the same category, the United Liberation
Front of Assam (ULFA), got away with a round of
organized violence against "outsiders" meaning Indians
from other States living in its north-eastern State.
The insistence of the BJP rulers through all this
was on the use of the POTA for its "true and intended
purpose." Which, clearly, was minority-bashing.
The people have voted against the POTA, and the
new rulers have promised its repeal. This, however, is
no guarantee that India's statute book will not be
sullied by another draconian law of "antiterrorist"
description. This is so not only because the Congress
Party cannot be counted upon as an uncompromising
defender of civil liberties. It was during its
previous term in power that the Terrorist and
Disruptive Activities (prevention Act, 1987, emulated
and excelled by the POTA with its crueler intent, was
enacted.
Scarier, however, are the prospects of a
re-intensified campaign against "Islamic terror" by
the BJP and its extra-parliamentary, extended family
including the VHP.
The prospects are particularly disturbing after
the incidents of the past few days in the
Muslim-majority State of Jammu and Kashmir. The
appointment of Manmohan Singh as the Prime Minister
was greeted the next day by a bomb blast in the State,
claiming several lives. This was followed by another
bomb attack on a convoy of the India's Border Security
Force in the troubled region, killing at least 25,
including members of some soldiers' families.
Kashmir remains the soft underbelly of Indian
liberalism, not excluding important sections of the
left.
--------------------------------------------
A freelance journalist and a peace activist of
India, J. Sri Raman is the author of Flashpoint
(Common Courage Press, USA). He is a regular
contributer to t r u t h o u t
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