Introduction
I
begin this address by a simple reflection on the key words in the
title of this symposium - truth, justice, reconciliation. They mean a
great deal to me intellectually and emotionally, and they are always
accompanied by a question mark - is there any such thing as truth,
will there ever be a just society, may we dare hope for
reconciliation? Like all great concepts they are too full of meaning
to admit of any certitude. The title goes further - it speaks of
experiments with truth, transitional justice, and processes of
reconciliation. These phrases in turn, contain much food for thought,
especially for Indians. It was an Indian, one of the greatest figures
of the past century, who coined that germ of a Brahmasutra,
"experiments with truth", as his unique contribution to ethical
philosophy. In its own way, this concept challenges the
epistemological authoritarianism of market-liberalism, Leninism, and
the monoliths of identity, while (in conjunction with the concept of
ahimsa), suggesting an alternative to the nihilist ethics of
post-modernity. The concept of transitional justice is also one to
which Indian experience speaks in a special way. Our transitions are
different from the stark changes in South Africa and Germany
yet they remain as painful. We are in perpetual states of
temperamental, cultural, geo political and economic transition.
Our social space is suspended between tradition and modernity, we
exist as a people comprised of communities and also as a democratic
nation state of individual citizens, our economy lies poised
between regulation and the lack of it, our cultural and religious
psyche does not know what to preserve and what to forget. Our notions
of justice veer between a hierarchical sensibility that calibrates
punishment according to the status of wrongdoers, and a jurisprudence
that theoretically considers all citizens equal before the law. We
know we are in transition. The only problem is that we don't know
where the transition is headed.
Again,
the practice of reconciliation is something we desperately need to
learn. Vast areas in the sub-continent have remained under martial
law for decades. The number of orphans in the Kashmir valley run into
the tens of thousands. Violence and terror have acquired a seamless
trajectory. Communal and ethnic hatreds lurk beneath the surface of
everyday life. The glorification of "masculine" virtue is a
national pastime. And yet we Indians prefer to cling to our favourite
symbolised grievances than to take the smallest steps towards
comprehension and resolution.
The
Threads of an Argument
The
logic of my arguments will take the following trajectory, and base
itself on the recognition that:
-
truth,
justice and reconciliation are sorely needed;
-
that
because they mean so many things to so many people, we must adopt
certain rules of restraint and non-violence while we live and
discover what they are,
-
that
a society whose proclaimed leaders do not adhere to such rules, or
have an equivocal stance towards political violence, is headed for
self-destruction,
-
that
democracy and human equality are relatively youthful concepts in the
Asian polity - and even globally; that the extension of these
principles to the world economy is still not acceptable to those who
occupy its commanding heights,
-
that
destitution and oppression are still the common experience of
millions of people and while this lasts, the preservation of
democracy is crucial to the fulfilment of modest aspirations
-
that
reconciliation is only possible between equals, and cannot even be
attempted when various conflicting parties humiliate and stifle one
another
-
that
a properly functional judicial system is crucial to social stability;
and,
- that
judges, like the rest of us are mere mortals, and that therefore the
sense of justice and fair play has to be sustained by a social ethos
and enlightened public opinion.
"Violence"
Systems
of gross inequity are held together by and depend upon violence. This
could be applied both internally and externally. The fact that ours
is such a brutal age with such a large volume of human energy and
resources devoted to armaments, police and paramilitaries, is an
indicator of its iniquitous character. The substitution of police
methods instead of an institutional, social ethic for resolving
social conflict demonstrates the poverty of liberal theory. For
example, the invention of a uniform, commercial common sense of the
market is a manifestation of epistemic violence, one of those
‘universals' that post-modernism prefers to ignore. The word
‘violence' itself has become tinged with euphemism in its usage.1
(I am indebted to Prodessor Namwar Singh for this insight). It
obscures the reality of knives cutting through human flesh, warm
blood on the pavement, of children screaming, of pain and fear and
agony. Yes, violence is unfortunate we say, but what of all those
horrific things that happen in the name of honour, glory and revenge?
The language of vengeance and glory reminds me of the double peg of
rum that is imbibed by soldiers prior to the act of legalised murder
- it deadens the nerves to prepare us for a journey into hell. The
ruling elites of South Asia have long been accustomed to the use of
incendiary language in the pursuit of power.
What
are the psychic roots of the normalisation of brutality? One of them,
certainly, is the appeal of victimhood. One of the effects of
identity politics is the conversion of all Jews, Muslims, Hindus etc
into the permanent theoretical victims of their preferred enemies.
Victims become interchangeable with culprits - as Hans Magnus
Enzenzberger points out in his book Civil Wars,
the notion of the "innocent victim" is rendered meaningless in a
situation such as that which overtook the erstwhile Yugoslavia. Women
widowed by one atrocity picket the roads to prevent medical supplies
reaching survivors of another atrocity. Young men take up arms to do
unto others what others did unto them. And how do we define child
soldiers, who are filling the ranks of paramilitaries from Sri Lanka
to Liberia? Are they victims or criminals? We have to accept the
uncomfortable truth that the ubiquitous language of brutality has
pushed victims and perpetrators together into a seamless whole. Not
only are things of terror conceived in moments of beauty, but terror
is the site to which its victims return as terrorists, having
rendered, in their fervid imagination, vengeance itself into an
aesthetic. We are confronted with incipient fascism - the doctrine of
revenge elevated to ideological status.Do we not know its
consequences? In daily life we occupy a space on the edge of
barbarism, despite the patina of civility and regulated forms. Every
now and then we obtain a glimpse of the abyss - the schools of modern
America, the killing fields of Yugoslavia, the wasteland on the West
Bank, the prisons of Brazil, the streets of Soweto, the mind of the
Taliban.. And here in South Asia we keep victimhood as a talisman of
identity, thus ensuring that we shall never be far from that edge.
Civil
society is now riven with the debate over state violations of human
rights versus similar violations by the ‘militants' who
supposedly represent oppressed people, minorites, etc. Parochial
movements also appear in a wide spectrum with their own moderate and
extremist fringes who use each other with pragmatic cynicism. We
invest much political energy in constructing cultural-ethnic identity
as the quintessential historical Subject. We may even justify extreme
forms of violence in the name of the oppressed. We transfer and
preserve our most brutal impulses onto the boundary-zone provided by
identity. (That is why we are so addicted to boundaries). Yet when we
are faced with the consequences of our actions - which evoke further
brutality - we claim protection under the banner of universal human
rights. We employ exclusive language in the search for power, and
appeal to an inclusive category when we need breathing space. This
ethical opportunism is present in the language of statehood as well
as of resistance.- remember that today's states are run mostly by
yesterday's rebels. The tactical and unreflective approach to
violence in the language of resistance is symptomatic of the
ideological reach of pragmatism. Indeed the similarity of approach to
this question across the political spectrum demonstrates the hegemony
of oppression without which patriarchy and exploitation would be
impossible. Violence tends to blur political distinctions - note the
contemporary ideological fuzziness and blurring of distinctions
between Right and Left. It also leads inevitably towards
de-policisation, owing to the advent of armed bodies specialising in
killing and the brutal momentum of retribution.
Society's
Need for Critical Theory
A
dismissive attitude towards theoretical reasoning, its representation
as the esoteric activity of elitist individuals, and its
juxtaposition to so-called activism, is popular with many social and
political activists, including those in the burgeoning "NGO
sector". Such an attitude generates cynicism, frustration and
fragmentation. Whether we like it or not, humans are fated to make
sense of our environment. Faced with severe social crises, we have no
option but to examine systems and causes. It is not enough to seek
explanations that reduce everything to "human nature". We have to
engage with the issue of structure.
Let
us begin with the logic of democracy, whose idea and practice is
linked to the concept of identity. The "rule of the people"
presupposes that we know who "the people" are, even before we
speak of their right to "self-determination". Democracy
presupposes definitions of the ‘self', and the ideologically
defined boundaries of "the people". This issue is related to the
birth of the nation-state and to the notion of sovereignty. Identity
is an ideological construction and therefore, a matter of political
power and class interest. For example, the slogan that the Kashmiris
have a right to "self-determination" implies that the identity
of Kashmiris is self-evident. The moment the issue of the identity of
Ladakhis or Dogras is brought into the argument, the latent
authoritarianism of unilateral definitions becomes evident. We also
need to distinguish between various streams of identity -
religion-based, ethnic and linguistic, etc.
The
exploitation of labour has always been linked to identity. This is
true with regard to the African slaves on American cotton
plantations, Tamil tea-garden workers in Sri Lanka, Irish builders of
British railroads, and the thousands of Indian indentured labourers,
mostly of the so-called "low castes" who were sent all over the
British Empire to work on plantations. Identity has played a crucial
role in extra-economic oppression, serving to intensify the
exploitative process. However, political mobilisation around
categories whose usage fluctuates between legal, ideological and
rhetorical definitions, creates confusion. The problem is whether
they are used in an inclusive or exclusive manner. Thus, identity
combined with the experience of labour, or in opposition to
systematic humiliation can help build bridges between all oppressed
people, but an exclusive usage can create division and bitterness
instead. Identity is also subject to the logic of internal
fragmentation, as more identities are generated within the confines
of the community being constructed. We may also note that those who
speak the language of "minority rights" often ignore the rights
of minorities within
the minorities, or individual rights. In its exclusivist form, by
attaching virtue and vice to entire communities, identity politics
enables India's elite to erode the rights and status of the
individual citizen and thereby subvert Indian democracy. For example,
when communal violence is condoned by the legal system, this implies
that all of us do not enjoy equal protection under the law.
Take
the issue of citizenship. Is this an abstraction that needs to be
done away with, and replaced by a collection of identities? The
institution of citizenship is constantly undermined by the "ragged
edges of reality", but cannot, for that reason, be consigned to the
dustbin. Particularly when it is under attack by social forces that
find democracy inconvenient. Economic and social injustice
incessantly undermines the legal, political form of equality.
Citizenship cannot remain unscathed by social stigma and economic
servitude. Nevertheless, legal equality should not be seen as an
abstract category imposed upon ‘traditional' communities, but as
a toehold that the poor can use to actualise social democracy.
Democratic constitutional rights are one of the platforms from which
the working poor may defend themselves, and improve their living and
working conditions. Coalitions of exclusive identity cannot
accomplish this goal, for they are oriented towards symbolic rather
than substantive attainments. Insofar as they accentuate
authoritarian tendencies in the polity, they might even undermine the
rights of free speech, association and peaceful agitation. The
economy cannot function for a day without a working class, but
judging from the language of today's politics, labour as a category
has ceased to exist, save as a "factor of production". This is an
indicator of the profoundly conservative ethos that has been
generated during the last decade of the previous century. I have no
doubt that it will change.
Critical
social theory must engage with this question, as also with the
possibility of a democratic division of labour at global and local
levels, an economy that is not left to the supposedly benevolent
hidden hand of "market forces. What of the phenomena of informality
and lack of regulation that are characteristic of the Indian economy?
The dominant discourses of Indian economic nationalism have always
boasted about the cheapness of Indian labour. Why is this a matter of
pride? The control of mindless consumerism is one thing, but the
cheapness of labour in India is achieved under the threat of
destitution. Would not a more humane standard of life and work for
the nearly four hundred million casual and agrarian workers and their
families create a massive surge in demand patterns, and a boom for
the capitalist economy? Why does this not happen, why does the
regulation of labouring conditions come so low on the list of
priorities for Indian planners? I suggest that they are satisfied by
the self-regulatory mechanisms that are already in place, and that go
by the name of tradition, convention and caste. From the standpoint
of those who work, these phenomena are nothing but a structure of
physical intimidation, lubricated by the customary prejudices of
caste society. Prejudices against the poor are now taken for granted
- thus, slums and pollution must be dealt with not by improving
remuneration, working conditions and housing, but by throwing the
poor out of the city precincts. Social Darwinism has taken the place
of social theory.
Symptoms
of degeneration are there for all to see. The lack of accountability
has become all-pervasive, and is manifested as a decline of
professionalism in many middle-class occupations. Elements of the
medical fraternity appear to have completely forgotten the
Hippocratic oath. Lengthy are the lists of policemen indicted by
commissions of inquiry into communal riots who have ended up being
rewarded with promotions. It is no secret that the majority of
applicants to the civil services these days select Customs or Revenue
(Income Tax) as their first choice out of a possible 24 professions.
With due respect to those of my ex-colleagues who have devoted
themselves to the maintenance of academic standards, I must say that
rampant absenteeism in the teaching profession has contributed
greatly to the abysmal state of university education. Massive
scandals periodically shake the world of banking and the
stock-markets. The political class has plumbed the depths of cynicism
and criminality. But the commonly understood meaning of corruption
still reduces its causes to flaws in individual character and its
scope to monetary matters alone.
There
is much to be said on this matter. To start with, corruption means
the "perversion from fidelity". Its meaning must also extend to
the perversion of political and judicial institutions. Filling the
atmosphere with communal hatred, inciting violence for political
ends, suborning the loyalty of the police and military, pouring
contempt upon the rule of law, treating some citizens as less worthy
of remaining alive than others, remaining in public office while
criminal proceedings are pending against you, all these phenomena are
also symptoms of corruption. They are part of a systemic malaise, the
locus of which is the subversion of democracy for the fulfilment of
privileged interests. The common-sense definition of corruption
detracts from broader issues. The most important among these is the
need to consider the lack of regulation as a systemic, not an
individual problem.2
There
is another burning issue that could do with critical reflection. For
many years, the Indian secular tradition tended to treat communalism
as a collection of discrete religiously- oriented ideologies, some
less dangerous than others. This was a massive analytical failure,
one that strengthened the incipient fascist tendencies on the rampage
today. Historically, fascism based itself on fabricated and exclusive
ethnic identity. However, the multifarious nature of ethnic
differentiation in India gave Indian fascism its segmented character,
which is its greatest strength. Communalism (which I understand as
the Indian version of fascism) was always one phenomenon
with different manifestations rather than an arithmetical total of
Hindu, Muslim, Sikh etc., communalisms.
Its self-sustaining tendency derived precisely from this apparent
discrete structure, with each reproducing the other. We need to
abstract from its compartment-like appearance, and concentrate on its
generic uniformity. Indian fascism's ideological method defines
democracy in arithmetical rather than institutional terms, despises
democratic values; and accords superiority to hateful ethnic
mobilisation over the requirements of civic order and criminal
justice. It uses so-called traditional values to express a fear of
women and hostility to gender equality; it also glorifies violence as
a ‘masculine' virtue. Once we have comprehended the fundamental
unity of all communalisms, we may understand that the Partition of
India in 1947 was the achievement of Indian, rather than Hindu or
Muslim communalism. Vinayak Damaodar Savarkar was as much a believer
in the Two Nation theory as Mohammad Ali Jinnah.
Finally,
we urgently need an understanding of political conservatism. The
conservative world view is not blindly opposed to things foreign -
despite its sanctification of domesticity to the level of virtue - it
is inconsistent in this regard. Technology is acceptable, as long as
it may be bent to the needs of state violence. Thus pragmatism shows
itself to be a natural adjunct of conservatism. Nor is it opposed to
violence - even of the extra-judicial variety. It is important to
stress that the today's Indian and South Asian elite is
quite amenable to the pragmatic deployment of political violence,
just as long this violence is not directed at their economic
privileges. Narratives of hurt religious sentiment, racial
victimisation and thwarted imperialist destiny are the means by which
the high and the mighty seek legitimation for extra-judicial
violence.
The
Perils of Absolute Truth
A
major problem is the appeal of the notion of Absolute Truth. That
this or that "revealed truth" is the last word in perfection is a
state of mind incompatible with intellectual growth and the democracy
of the intellect, which to my mind are major markers of social
progress. They also conduce to authoritarianism and violence,
emanating from both the state and its opponents. Among the many
reasons for the eclipse of Soviet socialism was its paranoid stance
towards ideas, its tendency to control and suppress the rich Russian
intellectual heritage. Communist systems became too akin to the
structures of medeival catholicism. Mixed with traditions of Tsarist
absolutism and caesaro-papism (the confluence of state power with
religious authority), it became its own worst enemy. Hegel's
"cunning of reason" stood the first Marxist state on its head.
The sin of hubris - in this case of the Left - brought nemesis upon
it as it will upon all those who claim that infallible knowledge
gives them the right to commit irrevocable deeds. This includes the
neo-conservative currents that seek to hegemonise race, religion,
sentiment and identity in order to perform a demolition job on
democracy. No, it is better to accept the tentative nature of truth,
and strengthen our search with restraint of body and spirit.
The
latest avatar of epistemological absolutism is the elevated status of
sentiment in Indian popular and political discourse. (Hamari
bhavnaon ko thes pahunchi hai -
Hindi for ‘our feelings have been hurt' is our most popular
phrase). The practitioners of wounded sentiment have attained
political power in recent years, and the country is agog with their
success. Sundry politicians have busied themselves in the excavation
of things and matters to attach to their outrage. The most
significant consequence of this trend is the justification that
self-appointed guardians of morality have obtained for violence and
defiance of law, for cultural policing, book-burning, and the
intimidation of artists and creative activity in general. Film
screenings have been disrupted, writers and painters threatened and
beaten up, academic work and speculation subjected to the promise of
dire consequences. These tendencies have their resonance in the realm
of the mind. By valorising particularity, fragmentation and
multiplicity in an imbalanced manner and at the cost of the quest for
wholeness, the so-called post modern sensibility has contributed to
the erosion of moral values and the rise of ethical nihilism.
Truth
is the whole, said Hegel - this for me is another reminder of the
need for balance. But the balance that is akin to truth is not the
mere weighment of equal amounts, an artificial and abstract middle
ground of vacuous neutrality. It is based rather on an
acknowledgement of the multifarious nature of historical experience,
the recognition of complexity and a capacity to exercise judgement.
But to judge one has to possess a standard of judgement, one that
holds good in practical terms, even after the acceptance of
difference. That practical standard can only be non-violence. This
truth engenders growth in human wisdom, and the transcendence rather
than negation of the past. It is that which stares us in the face,
but we are too cowardly to recognise, for fear of losing face, losing
innocence. Is it so difficult for left-wing intellectuals to
acknowledge that horrible crimes were committed in the name of
workers liberation? For nationalists to see the evil that their
nation is capable of? Revanchist forms of history-writing are
asserting themselves the world over, from Germany to Japan, Russia to
Britain. Justifications are produced for colonialism, imperial
conquest and even racism. Having overcome the paranoia of the Cold
War the western world is inventing novel reasons for keeping the
military-industrial complex in business. Today in India we have a
government bent upon replacing historical thought altogether, save
for a litany of complaints about invaders invariably represented as
Muslim. We are dangerously close to elevating communal prejudice to
the level of state ideology. In Pakistan, on the other hand, history
lessons begin with the arrival of Islam; the ideological foundation
of the state is focussed on an animus towards India and Hindus, and
the impossibility of co-existence. If the very structures of power
are so dependent upon animosity, how may we hope for reconciliation?
Justice
and the Judiciary
It
is difficult to speak of the system of justice without a sense of
despair. Indian justice does not have much to do with the truth these
days. A notorious case of caste prejudice causing a miscarriage of
justice is that of Bhanwari Bai, a village-level social worker or
sathin in Rajasthan,
who was employed under the Women's Development Programme for
implementing official policy on empowerment. This included the
prevention of child marriage and female infanticide, the protection
of rape victims, and issues in health and education. On September 22,
1992, Bhanwari was gang-raped in the presence of her husband (who was
severely beaten) by five upper-caste men incensed by her campaign
against child marriage. The dilatory tactics of the police in
response to her complaints were a personal ordeal, but the 1997
judgement of the Trial Court acquitting the rapists caused dismay
among women's organisations. The judge averred that no Indian rustic
would stand by while his wife was being raped, so the complainant
must have lied. He added that being "upper-caste" the alleged
offenders could not have touched, much less raped a "low-caste"
woman. Cases of molestation of "low-caste" women by "upper-caste"
men in India are legion - yet this fact made no difference to the
learned judge.
In
November 1984, there took place one of the most shameful events in
independent India's history. Thousands of law-abiding citizens who
happened to be Sikhs were murdered most brutally by mobs supposedly
acting out of spontaneous outrage at the assassination of Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. Several leading
Congress politicians were among those named by witnesses (mainly Sikh
women). It took years for First Information Reports to be filed, and
years more for cases to be brought to trial. The procedure became
subject to intrigue and manipulation, with several accused being let
off on procedural grounds such as late filing of complaints. This
despite the fact that the judges were empowered to condone these
delays in light of the trauma which these women had undergone. Twelve
commissions of inquiry into various aspects of this pogrom
(euphemistically named ‘November riots') have had their say - the
latest is still at work. The first of these, the Ranganath Mishra
Commission, severely indicted the police for deliberately omitting
the names of influential persons while filing complaints, dropping
serious allegations, and pursuing investigations in a perfunctory
manner. Needless to say, all the senior politicians involved in these
events have been acquitted. There have been a handful of convictions
of less privileged individuals among the accused. Since there is no
witness protection programme in India, the families of
under-privileged victims of violence have no means of resisting
intimidation. Some of these politicians have been re-admitted into
the Congress Party and will doubtless be campaigning in the next
elections in the name of secularism and national unity. Till date the
Indian Parliament has not had the courage of conscience to pass a
resolution condemning the mass murder of Indian citizens and
condoling the surviving families. Our criminal justice system has
enabled the guilty of 1984 to get away with mass murder.
On
September 28, 1991, Shankar Guha Niyogi, beloved leader of the most
influential autonomous workers' union in the country was murdered
in his sleep. His was a non-violent movement popular with large
numbers of contract labourers and miners, and irksome to the
capitalists and liquor contractors of the area around the Bhilai
Steel Plant. A dramatic trial resulted in the Trial Court convicting
three prominent industrialists and their accomplices for murder. -
the first case of capitalists being jailed for killing a union
activist. The Jabalpur High Court has since struck down the
conviction. The case is in appeal before the Supreme Court.
In
December 1992 the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya was destroyed in an act of
mob frenzy, in culmination of a campaign for its ‘removal' by the
leaders of the main party in the current ruling dispensation, the
BJP. Hundreds of citizens perished in the (certainly foreseeable)
riots that followed all over the country, including Bombay. Leaders
of the various organisations that participated in the event have
since claimed and disclaimed responsibility depending on where and to
whom they have spoken. The claims of logic and public morality have
been subjected to verbal callisthenics bordering on artistry. The
mosque was not really a mosque (we thought the whole point of the
campaign was that Emperor Babar had erected a mosque upon the ruins
of a demolished temple); it was a "disputed structure"; it had
really become a temple in 1949 when idols miraculously appeared
inside it (in which case the accused actually demolished a temple);
it was not demolished at all, but blown up by a bomb, etc. The
criminal case against the forty-nine leaders of the BJP and its
familial organisations has not yet been brought to trial, the framing
of charges has been delayed for years, and the latest development is
the suspension of charges against some of the (most distinguished)
accused by the Lucknow High Court on account of a technicality. These
persons include the Union Home Minister and the Union Human Resources
Development Minister. The technicality is unlikely to be rectified as
the state government is controlled by the BJP. Meanwhile the Hindu
priest looking after the idols in the "disputed structure" was
allegedly murdered, and nothing much is remembered of him except that
he had opposed the entire campaign. On April 30, 2000, Subhash
Bhushan Sadh, an official from Uttar Pradesh, the state where the
demolition took place, boarded a train carrying documents vital to
the Ayodhya case. He was to deliver these to the Liberhan Commission
inquiring into the events surrounding the demolition. As the train
neared Delhi, the man was allegedly pushed out of the train, and told
the police so in a dying declaration. He also revealed that his
luggage contained important files. But the documents had mysteriously
disappeared. I doubt that the truth of this episode will ever be
known. I hope I am wrong, but I also doubt that the accused will ever
face trial, let alone be punished.
In
January 1996 a young female law student Priyadarshini Mattoo was
raped and murdered in her flat. The accused was a fellow student who
had been stalking her for months. He also happened to be the son of
an inspector-general of police. Written complaints had been filed
against him, and Mattoo had been given police protection. The accused
had been seen at the venue of the crime shortly before her murder.
Despite the overwhelming evidence, (stalking, making threats over the
phone, shouting at her in public), he was acquitted on December 3,
1999, because of a series of "lapses" by the prosecution.
The judge noted the prosecution's attempts to weaken its own case.
He faulted the Central Bureau of Investigation for not following
procedure, for hiding evidence such as a fingerprint report, for
fabricating evidence in favour of the accused. He speculated that
"the CBI during trial knowingly acted in this manner to favour the
accused." He recorded the attempt by the Delhi police "to
assist the accused during investigation and also during trial. ..
[Their doings] suggest that the rule of law is not meant for those
who enforce the law nor for their near relatives." The judge
came to the astounding conclusion that, "Though I know [the
accused] is the man who committed the crime, I acquit him, giving him
the benefit of the doubt." What a record for the police! A young
woman goes to them for help, is raped and killed while under their
protection, the main accused is the son of a senior policeman, and is
acquitted. Another case of a young man killing a young woman in a fit
of rage is in progress while I write - the Jessica Lal case. Those
interested may observe the course of Indian justice - the young man
and his associates have powerful connections, prosecution witnesses
are turning hostile, and we may rest assured that some mystery will
envelop the stark evidence. Who then killed Priyadarshini Mattoo? Did
Jessica Lal drop dead of her own accord? Who knows? Who cares?
There
are thousands of cases of miscarriages of justice in India. One may
praise the honesty of the judge in the Mattoo case but lay citizens
might well ask him - if he was convinced of the guilt of the accused
why did he acquit him? Without doubt there are magistrates and judges
who perform their functions with commitment. However, in all good
conscience I must ask my fellow citizens - are not judges part of
society and susceptible to human failings? Are they not accountable
before the Constitution and provisions of law? May not the citizenry
criticise the decisions of the courts when these are found wanting in
truth? I believe the courts are an institution larger than and not
reducible to the persons occupying them. Is it not possible, then,
hypothetically, that a judge too is capable of contempt of court? And
is it not true that dereliction of duty in law-enforcement agencies
will contribute to anger, frustration and conflict in society? Is it
really possible for the criminal justice system to effectively pursue
a case wherein the Union Home Minister himself is a prime accused?
The structural defects are glaring - the low status and lack of
autonomy of the offices of public prosecution, the absence of witness
protection, and the susceptibility of police investigations to
political interference are high on the list. India is undergoing
massive transformations in economic orientation - these changes are
already causing many disputes in matters of labour rights, protected
tribal lands, shady deals and contracts. The poorer classes of
Indians will have absolutely no recourse left if the courts fail
them. If the system of justice does not improve drastically we shall
move further from any chances at social stability and reconciliation.
The
Conditions of Reconciliation
In
a brilliant novel entitled The Reader
published in Germany six years ago, Bernhard Schlink tells a story of
a teenage boy who has a secret love affair with a woman in her
thirties, who disappears mysteriously, only to reappear in a court
case for being a guard in an SS slave labour camp. She is tried for
the murder of Jewish prisoners, and sentenced on the basis of a
report for which she avowed the authorship. Only the protagonist knew
she could not have written what she claimed, because only he knows
the secret of her illiteracy. But he keeps silent. He sends her
audio-taped books for the long years she is in prison, and over the
years she learns to read. She makes a small bequest to a Jewish
foundation in atonement for her role as a cog in the wheel of the
Nazi system. In the end she commits suicide, the day before he was
to bring her out into the normal world. The Reader
leaves us wondering about the meaning of guilt, remorse, punishment
and redemption.
Many
of our favourite symbols and fables are attached to a grievance,
either artificially or intrinsically. It would seem that the very act
of self definition conjures up injured innocence and righteous
grief. How may we deal with this situation? The Papacy may indeed see
fit to apologise to the ghost of Galileo five centuries after his
incarceration, and to the Greek Orthodox Church eight centuries after
the sack of Byzantium. But how far can we go along this road? Who
will apologise to whom for the Inquisition, colonialism, fascism and
war? Ought we, on the other hand, to sit quiet when the current
generation of Japanese children are taught that the Japanese
occupation of East Asia in the 1930's was an act of altruism? That
only Hindus suffered the loss and violence of Partition? That only
Muslims did? What is the proper balance between remembering and
forgetting?
Let
me try and answer this. Reconciliation is neither the perpetual
nurturing of grievance nor the cultivation of amnesia. It requires
transcendence, which implies preservation as well as negation (as in
rising above, leaving behind). It does not require us to be neurotic
- rather it is the cure for collective neuroses and emotional
indigestion. Nor does it deny that humans are nostalgic beings
attached to their history. Reconciliation is a decision, based upon
an acknowledgement.of the truth as far as we may know it. (The
‘final' truth of anything will always remain elusive, but may we
not commit ourselves to searching for, experimenting with the
truth?). It is also the repudiation of collective guilt - the
descendants of racists are not responsible for racism. However,
reconciliation cannot be based upon a denial or manipulation of the
facts. May we claim, for example, that there was no such thing as the
Holocaust, that the fire-bombing of Dresden and the atom-bombing of
Hiroshima were simple military necessities? The last issue of Time
magazine in 1999 summed up the history of the 20th
century as a victory of "free minds and free markets over fascism
and communism". Along with Clinton's essay in the same issue, it
represented the Allied victory in World War II as an American one,
completely ignoring the role of the Red Army and the life sacrifice
of twenty million Soviet citizens, compared to less than 300,000
Americans. Is this kind of megalomania conducive to a reconciliation
between peoples?.
May
we say that Stalinist purges and terror were a pure invention of the
imperialists, that the Red Army committed no atrocities in Central
Europe in 1944, that the US committed no war crimes during the
Vietnam war, that the Pakistan Army never massacred civilians in
Bangladesh, that the Indian Army has committed no atrocities in the
North East and Kashmir, that China has an unblemished human rights
record in Tibet (not to mention Tien An Men), that the RSS and its
‘family' had no intention of destroying the Babri Mosque, that no
temples were ever destroyed by medieval Muslim rulers? May we insist
that the UNO in 1948 gave Israel the right to forever expand its
borders, create settlements and impede the emergence of a Palestinian
state, that Hitler had the right idea about how to deal with "the
semitic races"? (This is the opinion of the ideological forefathers
of India's ruling party. Israeli citizens may not be aware that
among their closest admirers in India are those who believe in
Adolf's ideals and methods). May we claim all these things and
still expect sweetness and light all round? Individuals are free to
adopt such views but danger looms when they are incorporated into
common sense. Historical knowledge has to be pursued with respect,
balance and freedom from the fear of cultural and intellectual
policing of whichever variety. This can only be done by treating both
its fortunate and evil moments as part of a common heritage, by
transcending the attachment to particularity that makes us deny the
hateful things done by some of our ideological or ethnic ancestors
There
can never be any peace and reconciliation without the adoption of non
-violence on the part of the resisters and the acceptance (without
resort to state terror), of the loss of privilege on the part of the
powerful. Reconciliation is only possible between equals - equals in
spirit if not substance. The very act of reconciliation elevates the
dignity of the parties concerned, and establishes their basic
humanity. But has the spirit of democracy truly pervaded the
political ethos of the world? Until a few years ago the Prime
Minister of Great Britain could scarcely conceal her sympathy for
apartheid. Throughout the decades of the cold war the western world
treated racism as some kind of counterpoint to communism (our
scoundrels vs theirs). The reigning US Supreme Court recently decided
that the right to vote and be counted was less important than the
fulfilment of formal procedures. Hierarchy and caste prejudice still
overshadow the implementation of justice in India. Until this
fundamental illiberality is discarded by those who command power and
substance in the modern world, there can be no reconciliation. Is
it not true that the very question of a Truth and Reconciliation
Commission only arose after the acceptance of adult suffrage by the
rulers of South Africa? It is
only when we recognise the dignity of our interlocutors that we may
begin the psychic task of healing. Such recognition must be founded
upon truth, for truth liberates. The great among us are those whom
every effort to humiliate leaves unscarred. Their dignity is
unimpeachable - they are always equal in spirit, even when they are
held in chains. Who can forget Nelson Mandela, who left behind 27
years of incarceration without a trace of bitterness in his soul?
Truth
and Solitude
Human
beings are fated to face some life crises solely as individuals. This
is a commonplace. However there are some whose solitude in extremis
will reverberate through the centuries. Jesus Christ, we are told,
was one such. His life work is historically unverifiable, but it is a
moving and passionate story. And the truth of it still eludes us
("What is truth?" asked jesting Pilate, and would not wait for an
answer). Gandhi was another solitary seeker after truth. The man
known as the Mahatma had a premonition of his assassination, and made
a lonely decision to face it without state protection, in order to
deliver his final message.What must have passed through his mind when
he saw a young man shoot him at point blank range? Generations will
remember the loneliness of these singular individuals, as if to
compensate them for the oversight of not sharing their agony when
they needed solace as mere mortals. This posthumous respect is a
leavening agent for the conscience of the living - to surround the
sacrifice of a great soul with a crowd of memories becalms us
somehow. Our collective remembrance enters the realm of public
conscience, of the civic ethos and acts as a lever of restraint. And
reconciliation. These were extraordinary human beings, whose lives
were antidotes to the rampaging disease of injustice on a monumental
scale.
Let
us remember too, the millions of ordinary heroes and heroines in the
past century. I think of the soldiers of opposing armies who saved
each other amidst the trenches of the Great War of 1914-18, a
phenomenon then named fraternization. (With what gentle yet striking
irony did nature mark the bloodshed by placing red poppies in the mud
of battlefields!). History also reminds me of Russian women in the
late 1940's who rebuilt a devastated country and wept at the rare
sight of young men; the victims and survivors of the Holocaust; the
thousands of men and women in India during Partition who retained
their humanity when everyone around them was conscious only of
community.
What
of those whose solitude is not leavened, but exacerbated by time,
whose pain is of no consequence because they were neither prophets
nor leaders, because they never left footprints on the sands of
history? When all is said and done and I look back upon the violent
century just gone by, I am burdened with the memory of a man whom
posterity has rewarded with erasure, but whose sacrifice (when we
bother to remember him), challenges us with profound and disturbing
reflections. I do not know what practical lesson to draw from it. All
I can do is pay homage to the unknown artisan named Johann Georg
Elser whose monumental courage and love of humanity was and is enough
to redeem the conscience of the German people, the honour of the
German working class, and to contribute to the reconciliation of the
German present with the German past.
I
shall tell his story extempore (refer to the appendix)
In
truth, Indians need justice and reconciliation to cross our bridges.
How long shall we remain suspended in transition? When will Hindus
and Muslims tire of stereotypical images of one another and perceive
the ambivalent character of all human beings and cultures? When will
our ritually ‘pure' elite recognise caste prejudice as a barrier
to social growth and human development? When will we stop murdering
little girls in the womb and in infancy because the stupid
masculinity of our great culture obscures the oneness of the human
race? Let us strive for the finer balance, the balance between the
need for acknowledgement and the need to transcend what has been
acknowledged, between the requirements of social order and the
necessity of human dignity, between the continuity of institutions
and the urgency of transformation, between the anger of resistance
and the compassion without which resistance only generates further
oppression. It is that balance alone that may strengthen a feasible
version of transitional justice. Justice is too important to be left
to the judges. It is nothing less than a matter of human survival.
Dilip
Simeon
Appendix
: In Memory of the True Antagonist
On
July 20, 1994, a syndicated article from Hamburg, entitled `Hitler
escaped assassination by a few inches' was reproduced in India. It
was written in memory of Colonel von Stauffenburg, the man who
carried out the ill-fated bomb attack on Hitler at his Eastern
headquarters in 1944. The aristocratic officer was indeed a brave
man, whose actions demonstrated the intense dismay that Hitlerism had
caused within the German Army. But the statement that his attempt
"was the closest anyone in Nazi Germany ever came to
assassinating the fanatical dictator" is not true. Stauffenburg
is justly remembered, but another German has been erased from the
literature of resistance, although his plan came within minutes of
saving the world from the horror of the second world war. It was a
plan of greater significance than that of the conservative
opposition, which became activated only when faced with military
annihilation.
That
other German was Johann Georg Elser (1903-1945), an artisan who had
trained in carpentry and metalwork, became a cabinet-maker in 1922,
and worked in clock factories through the twenties. In 1928 he had
joined a Communist-led trade union as well as a front organisation
called the RFK. He had been uninterested in ideological matters,
attending few meetings and spending more of his time flirting and
playing music with a patriotic dance band. After Hitler's ascent to
the Chancellorship in 1933, Elser's political contacts ceased
altogether. In 1936 he took up employment in an armaments factory. In
autumn 1938, some months after the annexation of Austria and just
before the Munich conference, this unknown man made the remarkable
decision to assassinate Hitler. His resolve stiffened after the
vivisection of Czechoslovakia : he knew that the Nazis were driving
Europe towards war.
Working
alone, Elser began stealing explosives from his factory. Learning
that Hitler was due to address the Nazi Old Guard on November 8 in a
Munich beer hall and restaurant called the Burgerbraukeller, he
attended the occasion and observed the Fuhrer's movements. He then
decided to plant a time-bomb in a pillar near the speaker's rostrum.
In March 1939, shortly after the Nazis annexed what remained of
Czechoslovakia, Elser resigned his job and returned to Munich with
his life savings of 400 marks. He acquainted himself with the
beerhall, and took up residence at his parental home in Konigsbronn.
Confiding only in his father, he worked briefly in a stone quarry,
augmenting both his knowledge and stock of explosives. From May 1939
onwards, he designed his device, and in August he rented cheap
accomodation in Munich.
On
August 5, 1939, Johann Georg began implementing his plan. Each night
he would eat dinner in the beerhall, hide himself in a storeroom
until it closed, and then emerge to work for some hours on the stone
pillar inside which he intended to plant his bomb. He worked like
this for over thirty days, constructing a hollow space of 80 square
centimetres with a small hinged door, neatly fitted to avoid
detection. The space was lined with tin to prevent accidental damage
caused by a nail being driven into it, and with cork, to muffle the
sound of the clocks. Two clocks were planted to make doubly sure the
device did not fail. He carried all the rubble out in his hands every
night, and because he was working on his knees, they soon became
septic. On Monday, November 6 1939, he set the mechanism to explode
at 9.20 pm on Wednesday the 8th. Down to his last ten marks, he took
30 marks from his sister in Stuttgart, inspected the device on
Tuesday, and then proceeded to Constance, on the Swiss border.
Hitler
appeared on Wednesday, but cut short his speech to less than an hour,
ending it before 9.10 pm, and leaving immediately thereafter. The
bomb exploded at 9.20, killing a waitress and six members of the Nazi
party. About sixty persons were injured. A gap of less than ten
minutes had intervened to save Hitler and to seal the world's fate.
Elser was examined by customs officials at the Swiss frontier, and
was found carrying a picture postcard of the Burgerbraukeller, notes
on munitions factories, and his old RFK membership card. This was his
one mistake, motivated perhaps, by sentiment. It was to cost him his
life. He was detained on suspicion of being a spy and sent to Munich.
Meanwhile the Gestapo had launched a manhunt for the unknown bomber.
On November 13, after learning that the device had been planted at
floor level, the head of the investigation asked to see Elser's
knees. He confessed after fourteen hours of interrogation.
Hitler
himself, and Himmler, the head of the Gestapo, refused to believe the
confession. On the 9th, two British secret agents had been arrested
near the Dutch border, and the Nazis were keen to use the bomb
episode for anti-British war propaganda. Moreover, it was politically
damaging for them to admit that a German worker had planned and
executed such a coup. Elser was subjected to another prolonged
interrogation in Berlin, by which time his family had been rounded
up. Despite brutal torture, he refused to doctor the truth, which was
that he had acted alone; or to implicate anyone else. He was kept
alive for the duration of the war as Hitler's `special prisoner', in
order to give credence to a `British plot' to be fabricated in a
trial the Nazis planned to hold after their victory. When defeat
stared them in the face, he was shot by guards on April 9, 1945.
In
Elser's presence, reported the Gestapo, "one completely forgot
that one was in the presence of a satanic monster". Coming from
such a source, that comment is testimony to the ordinariness of this
man. In his book The Fuhrer and the People,
the Czech literateur J P Stern has written that to find Hitler's true
antagonist, "we must look for a Nobody like himself, one who,
sharing his social experience, yet lived and died on the other side
of the moral fence." (We must thank this professor for giving
Elser his due place in the historical record).Elser had the
stubbornness to refuse to salute the swastika, to leave rooms when
Hitler's speeches were being broadcast, yet his motivations remained
unintellectual. Doing something meant to do something with his hands.
Johann
Georg broke down under torture, saying that if his plan had not
succeeded, it was because it was not meant to succeed. May we blame a
man in his desperate position for trying to survive? We also learn
from the archive that he had begun attending church during the months
prior to November 1939, making no distinction between Catholic and
Protestant churches. He had prayed more, in order to feel more
composed, and had convinced himself that he would go to heaven "if
I have had the chance to prove by my further life that I intended
good. By my deed I wanted to prevent even worse bloodshed".
Stauffenburg had his comrades. Elser had no one. This inconspicuous
man chose to act for decency, justice and humanity, and into his deed
he put the soul of the meticulous German artisan. As Stern says, the
fact that he trusted nobody is a discredit not to him but to the
world he lived in. That few know of his existence till this day is a
comment on our own times. Let us salute the memory of Johann Georg
Elser, the little man with the great heart.
1
I am indebted to Prodessor Namwar Singh for this insight
2
This ideological beguilement in matters of intense public concern is
not confined to India. It has been suggested that "the taking of
bribes by government officials in these (East European) countries
can be viewed with equanimity to the extent that it at least
indicates an understanding of how market forces operate in a liberal
economic environment": Transparency International
Newsletter, September 1996,
cited by Harry Shutt, The Trouble with Capitalism - An
Enquiry into the Causes of Global Economic Failure,
Zed Books, London and New York, 1998, p. 168.
