Another Republic Day

The other day I was reading The Unending Emergency at www.revolutionarydemocracy.org by Mukundan C Menon, a Human rights activist from Kerala who passed away recently.

"In the strict sense state violations of human rights in independent India’s first 55 years far surpassed those unleashed by the British rulers during two centuries of their colonial rule. If one finds this hard to believe, consider the following: The foremost State violation in British India was the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre of 1919 where the British forces, led by General Dyer, used .202 rifles. British army tanks never turned against our freedom fighters. However, it was independent India’s army tanks that fired the first cannons on our civilians – at the Golden Temple in Amritsar when Indira Gandhi was in power – in June 1984. The British air force never bombed the freedom fighters, but such bombings were carried out against the agitating Nagas who were led by Z.A.Phizo in the early 1960s when Nehru was at the helm of affairs.

There is a similar analogy when India ‘celebrated’ the 30th anniversary of the 1975-77 emergency recently. The three decades of the post-emergency period witnessed more human rights violations than those in the emergency period. Interestingly, all the forms of the major atrocities during the emergency period are still prevailing in different parts of India. Worse still, these are haunting us without a formal declaration of emergency. Apparently it is the unwillingness of our democratic milieu to take proper corrective steps that forces us to survive in an atmosphere of undeclared emergency."

Connect this with what Arundhati Roy said in a speech on "Some uncomfortable thoughts about money, war, empire, racism, and democracy".

"Speaking for myself, I'm no flag-waver, no patriot, and am fully aware that venality, brutality, and hypocrisy are imprinted on the leaden soul of every state."