- CATACLYSMIC TEXT -
Part 1
By: Dr. Naorem Sanajaoba *
ABSTRACT:
India in the post-UN epoch has achieved substantially in the process of human rights standard-setting and benchmarking, in as much as it set a couple of national human rights institutions and the apex judiciary has proven itself to be human rights friendly.
It is inevitable that in this age of transparent governance, the cataclysmic failures are also fairly addressed to by the author, particularly in the province of group and collective rights including peasant rights, women rights, right to development, and also the jus cogens- the right of the people to self –determination in after acquired Non-Self-Governing –Territories[ AA NSGT} like the North- Eastern States [NES].
The half-a century old state repression could not bring durable peace and hence, democratic mechanisms like Plebiscites could be suggested in resolving unaddressed national questions in the NES. The discourse could be transformed from a monologue to a rational democratic dialogue.
CATACLYSMIC TEXT
Globalization has brought the sovereign states economically closer to each other, while the political devolution of imperial states into building block nation states remains as the ongoing process and the MNCs attempt to capture as much space as they could from the sovereign jurisdictions.
Human rights standard setting and benchmarking had preceded the globalization era and the cold war confrontations. The world has achieved tangible human rights perceptions and consciousness thereby censuring rogue states and failed states, while sparing the soft states for their eventual self-corrections. India which is neither a rogue state like the USA, nor one among the crowd of failed third world states passes through a rigorous test in advancing the post-modernist structuralism on the one hand , and also in holding into seize incompatible pluralistic historical legacies, particularly in the AANSGT.
Consequentially, collective national rights and human rights of the citizens in AANSGT like the states of Manipur, Nagaland, Tripura and the other North Eastern states at the far east of the mainland India have been subjected to military repression for more than half a century after the British imperialists abandoned the occupied territories.
State violence and reciprocal non-state violence provide the cataclysmic text and the cycle of violence that pre-empt peaceful resolutions of deep national contradictions through either UN or international community- sponsored dialogues on the one hand or, by way of holding plebiscites of the people in the region for suitable choice of their own international political and economic status, as it has been invariably conduced across the continents.
The plural state that India has been, had passed through the partition phobia of the 1947 vintage at the loss of a million lives in the most barbaric Hindu-Muslim bi-ethnic mobilization, has to undergo the nation building test with a loss of thousands of Sikh lives in 1984 in just three days and another thousand Muslim lives in 2002 Gujarat strife. Kashmiris claim that they lost several thousands of Kashmiri lives due to Indian military repression against the freedom fighters otherwise labeled as terrorists by the Indian administration.
Similarly, the north- eastern states that came to the Indian fold not so long ago in the mid-20th century make more or less similar pathetic claims as a result of state repression. East Pakistan the present Bangladesh had witnessed in 1971 another loss of a couple of million lives during the liberation war; Indian army played the decisive battle in the partition of Pakistan.
Indian sub-continent obviously presents a clear testimony of sustained group violence or, armed conflicts between the state and the NSAs [Non State Actors] or the national liberation movements on a grand scale. Peasants’ rights are not fully addressed to as Indian peasants commit suicides time and again. The glorified iniquitous globalization also marches upon the corpses of the Indian peasants and the debate goes on.
Besides the restive Kashmir state and seven NES, communist revolutionaries [ Communist Party Maoists – naxalites], unlike the official communist revisionist parties which prop up the Congress government from falling down because of want of numbers, contest the state administration in as many as thirteen additional states- as reported by the home ministry – while trying to liberate the Indian poor from capitalist exploitation and imperialist globalization. The encounters occupy the social space with the state torture machine geared up to meet the economic revolutionaries.
The Indian state simply finds its state repression counterproductive and faces clash of economies rather than what the American perceives of clash of civilizations in the non-Christian world. Unlike the USA which as the self=proclaimed human rights world leader, evades the binding obligations of the ICESCR [International Covenant on Economic , and Social Cultural Rights], 1966, India which is a party to the ICESCR has binding international obligations towards the economic rights of the poor and the underprivileged . The professedly natural alliance that binds both India and the USA can hardly explain the their parallel and , divergent commitment towards economic obligations to the people.
Ethnic pluralism, multiple historical legacies and late territorial acquisitions characterise Indian human biomass and multinational entity.Indian state does not take cognizance of existence of indigenous population groups as such in the context of the international peoples’ declarations and profound contemporary concern of the indigenous issues. By default, the scheduled castes and tribes could be conceived as indigenous surrogates. The ethnic fissures and embedded racism create ethnic subductions and tremors that could lead to local or widespread cataclysm among the population groups.
Gender equality is undoubtedly a luxurious slogan of the power elites and the miniscule intellectuals, notwithstanding the failure of both the civil society and the state to wipe out gender inequality and religiously glorified male chauvinism. India comprises two nations- India of the vast poor people and India of the few rich people. The gender divide or subjugation, subjugation of the national minorities render the official nationhood shaky.
The Indian Muslims who constitute nearly ten percent of entire population fail to get barely two percent of membership of the national defense forces, possibly due to a deep- rooted mistrust of national minorities for one invented reason or another. The racial divide deeply runs in between the mainland India and the 40 million strong people of the NES. Inspite of the utopian official propaganda, apartheid divides the NES people from the mainland dominant people. Mainland India routinely ridicules the NES people of the AANSGT as Chinkis[ Chinese particularly after the defeat of India in Indo-Chinese war in 1962]The racial divide is very very natural.
The sporadic and intermittent populations or ethnic cataclysms that occur in mainland India is overshadowed by the half a century- old engagement between the state forces and the national liberation guerrillas of the NSAs. The parties involved in the state repression as well as the counter violence let loose by the NSAs have not reached out at or even outsourced a fair, just and durable political solution and the political crisis remain as festering wounds.
=====================================
Human Rights issues in South Asia
- Dialectics of Cataclysmic Collective Rights -
- POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY -
Part 2
By: Dr. Naorem Sanajaoba *
POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY
The endemic social cataclysms could be officially attributed to cosmetic and rationalized reasons of state that could hardly be contested by a rational discourse of one kind or another and the state-ist argument holds the fort as long as the state defines its own existentialist, metaphorical truth or untruth whatever.
Indian state since its inception in 1947 and access to republican status in 1950 by virtue of landlord-feudal-casteist-racialist dominated constitution-making process, has been legitimizing asymmetrical hegemonic rule of the hegemonic mainland population group over the peripheral and after-acquired territorial population groups, particularly in the seven NES of the Indian state.
The embedded hegemony dictates the hegemonic interest under the cloak of legitimacy and unequal constitutionalism that inherently suffers from the basic premises of unequal nationalities viz., the ruling nationality and the subject races in the peripheral states. The official constitutionalism, based on egalitarian values like socialism, secularism, among others are negated by the hegemonic constitutionalism in practice.
The hierarchical Indian civil society poses a monstrous evil and terror to Indian womanhood, Indian peasantry, national minorities and the subject race of the later occupied AANSGT in the NE region . The cataclysm happens to be the favourite child of the inherently unequal Indian civil society, which even the dignified human rights NGOs dare not fight out; the NGOs fight out the symptoms of he hidden terror within the unequal Indian civil society.
No other demonstration would be as loud and clear than the post-1991 Indian capitalism, officially adopted by the union government in direct and blatant negation of the state policy of socialism, as enshrined in the preamble of the constitution. Secularism is in the preamble while not more than two percent of Indian Muslims could be recruited into defense forces.
The North-easterners and the NES had been denied equal state representation in the Council of states and the union cabinet, although quislings could be occasionally recruited in key positions on the basis of their proportionate loyalty to neo-colonialism and hegemonic rule.
The original sin that denied the principle of equality of nationalities and nations in the constitution-making process has been accepted as Indian statist virtue that transcends any opposition whatever from any rational discourse, and even the Indian leftist fail to contest the national inequalities because of their hidden racial philosophy and hackneyed hegemonic pre-eminence.
The imperialism that Indian state nurtured with sufficient labour and ingenuity had been virtually instrumental in resurrection of the festering wounds and inevitable historical uprisings addressed to the hegemonic Indian state as well as the mainland hegemonic people who retain the Indian state as their permanent hostage.
Even the national human rights commission and national institutions failed to rise above the deeply entrenched hegemonic philosophy and institutions. The battle line has not therefore, been drawn exclusively between the Indian state and the contesting NSAs or liberation groups, but more explicitly between the hegemonic, neo-colonial, imperial philosophy impregnably shrouded by a far- fetched patriotic cloak and the democratic philosophy of equalities of nations and nationalities that would hit hard upon all the conceptualized hegemonic philosophy.
It would be appropriate to cite the Indian supreme court judgment in 1997 on the humanity’s most black law- the Armed Forces Special Powers Act,1958, which permits any low level army officer to shoot to death any suspected citizen in the NES for more than half a century. Normally, at the drop of a hat when any mainland Indian citizen faces human rights discomfort, the supreme court admits and hears the case in a day or two under the public interest litigation.
The supreme court did not take up a 1982 PIL case challenging the black law for long 15 years till in the year 1997, the UN Human Rights Committee grilled the Indian representative at the UN and he assured of triggering off the supreme court mechanism. The supreme court, with its racialist logic invented all racial justification to uphold the black law. They call it judicial logic and the NES jurists call the 1997 judgment apartheid verdict.
The recommendation of Justice Jeevan Reddy,2005 for the repeal of the black AFSPA,1958 and also the observation of the United Nations CERD made in 2007 March for the repeal of the same statute, the critical conclusions of the UN Human Rights Committee in 1991 onwards about the same black statute, compounded by the global juristic tirade against such extrajudicial execution law isolate the supreme court’s explicitly racialist and genocidal verdict as pariah The Administrative Reforms Commission of the government of India has in August,2007 recommended the repeal of the AFSPA,1958 .
The supreme court has glorified and justified extrajudicial execution of the people of the AANSGT with its own shrouded reasons. The United Nations Human Rights Committee in its report 1997 has urged upon the supreme court to comply with the ICCPR obligations, however by its November 27 ,1997 verdict it has simply overlooked the aforesaid ICCPR obligations.
The cataclysmic apex court juridical logic reinforces the otherwise racialist Indian mainstream philosophy. Some body had rightly said that capitalist USA should never appoint a Marxian judge in the supreme court and in similar vein, Cuba should never appoint a capitalist judge in her bench. mutatis mutandi, Indian hegemons would never make an exception to the isotopic hegemonic law.
He is at first a first blood hegemon a la Nazi judge and then, a judge with bequeathed colonial common law traditions. Before the world fought the noble Nazis, it had to fight out the Nazi gospel and preaching. Under these given conditions, universally endorsed human rights standards have to be the first casualty and the rest is masterpiece of rhetoric and political metaphors- the metaphors that sabotage and hijack justice from within thereby leaving the civil society to respond naturally, presumably under the social contractarian theory that justifies the ultimate revolt.
The national institutions do the inbreeding of the cataclysms and the cycle continues in the best tradition of the hen or, chicken: which comes out first _ the state repression or the NSA counter-violence- which comes first. The CATACLYSM exists in one form or another- constitutional, juridical, institutional and whatever.
The phenomena sustains because of the poverty of Indian political, legal, constitutional and national, hegemonic philosophy. Behind very mistaken theory lies he the great Indian empire instinct.
=========================================
Human Rights issues in South Asia
- Dialectics of Cataclysmic Collective Rights -
- UNIVERSAL BENCHMARK _ THE CASUALTY -
Part 3
By: Dr. Naorem Sanajaoba *
UNIVERSAL BENCHMARK _ THE CASUALTY
The de-hegemonic evangelism which would launch frontal assault on the philosophy of cataclysm and hegemony would be prejudicial one way or other, unless one records and re-affirms the widely approved benchmark of human rights standard setting and principles of good governance in equal measure either in the context of liberal democracy or, left- of- the- centre system .
No other fundamental human rights could ever be exercised until and unless the people in the AANSGT or, dependent territories or, colonial areas are first allowed to exercise their inalienable right to self-determination . In the nation- building process of Indian republic of 1950, peripheral areas in the Indo-Myanmar region have been acquired by the administration without holding popular plebiscites and taking the people into confidence by way of officially assessing their consent to be taken over and governed.
Princely states of early Hindusthan or Moghul empire found the least difficulty in joining the dominion or later day republic. The federating process happened to be smooth and nostalgic; however, resistance occurred in the case of AANSGT in the NES [north –eastern region of India]. The questions remain hitherto unresolved albeit suppressed under tedious statecraft.
The historical imperative of properly addressing the national questions have to confront the Indian nation- building process in acquired territories. Firstly, the government of India with its excellent reasons contest the national liberation movements in the NES as separatist forces that undermine the territorial integrity of the country . Secondly, the national liberation authorities in the region contest the above stance as a colonial pretence of the imperialist India and resist the Indian defense forces by way of guerrilla resistance.
The West as usual, had never seen human causes beyond their western interests only and had never tried to play a peace broker in places where both Marxist rule and hydrocarbons are found missing. They love the Arab oil as long as the subterranean stocks are not exhausted. This is again a demonstration of poverty of Western philosophy. The international community simply ignores the conflicts and eludes responsibility.
The Gandhian state of India while proclaiming itself as the natural democratic ally of the USA, particularly after the 1991 liberalisation period and by conducting naval warfare, military exercises in Bay of Bengal in September 2007 has projected itself as a junior partner of a defacto and imagined Asian- NATO so as to invite Asian militarization in one form or another and inaugurate China-USA cold war in the mid-21st century. Tiny Himalayan states and micro states like Bangladesh may undergo the cold war unrest in the region thereby putting at stake, the developmental agenda.
Militarisation of the civil society coupled with the imminent cold war environment in Asia- pacific are likely to push out the human rights agenda and human security commitments as the back burner. The myopic third world academics , opinion makers and political decision- makers have to address to these vital human causes inspite of operating as the conventional neo-colonial human sources and instrumentalities.
As the sine qua non of the individuals and people willing to exercise their fundamental individual human rights has been a victim of poverty of philosophy, the fundamental human freedoms queue at the end of the traffic jam. The much talked about conflict-resolution of the epoch has given stress to democratic and people friendly mechanisms whatever. One of the most efficient and peace conducive instrumentalities, among others, is the resort to plebiscite on the political status of people or, the status plebiscites.
The international law and international relations had been consistently favourable to the resort to the peaceful, democratic method ,in the course of conflict-resolutions. Henry Kissinger armed with his unprecedented Vietnam statecraft, in his Diplomacy had categorically stated that guerrillas could not be given a decisive defeat even by the USA. If conflict-resolution is taken seriously by the parties in conflict, plebiscite could be instrumental.
The contemporary state practices in regard to resorting to plebiscite as a credible, democratic mechanism of peaceful conflict- resolution of chronic national issues of vital importance give evidence to the strong possibility of reaching out to durable and fair solutions across the five continents.
In the past, during the epoch of the League of Nations too, as many as fifty two plebiscites had been conducted. Judicial settlement of disputes and armed conflicts might have been chosen ways of advancing international relations, yet the plebiscite had never been made a second choice by several rational actors in international relations. The applied science of international law and relations demonstrate the success story of plebiscites. Proven cases testify the mechanism as reliable and democratic.
The British system which the modern Indian system has very closely followed for historical reasons, among others, could work out Good Friday Agreement in April,1998 in order to resolve nearly a century-old British-Northern Ireland armed conflicts with the USA as a guarantor, and has also allowed its province Scotland to resort to plebiscites in 1956, in March 1979, in 1997 and to hold one more possibly in the year 2010, which may terminate three century- old merger.
Indian decision makers could look towards Scottish example inspite of drawing inspiration from the statecraft of Idia Amin or President Milosveic et. al. Poverty of philosophy or enhanced imperial thought may block the creativity of the rulers and their conscience.
The USA, which India looks up as the natural democratic ally, also did not hold up the conducting of a series of Plebiscites in its commonwealth Puerto Rico in 1967,1991, 1993 and in 1998. A fifth Puerto Rico status plebiscite has not been rules out. The people freely express their wishes about their political and economic status and no democratic government of significance would stall the people to exercise their inalienable right to express wishes freely.
Puerto Rico case would emulate Indian leadership who had far too long had the hand in armed hostilities. Canada too followed suit in allowing Frankophone Quebec to conduct plebiscites in 1980 and for the second time in 1995. Even the Canadian supreme court in 1998 juristically endorsed plebiscite in Quebec, and the Indian supreme court could take similar positions inspite of taking the assumed stance of political hardliner.
The third referendum as regards the status of Scotland would be conducted in 2010 in the United Kingdom and the parties have geared up their poll preparations without any inhibition from the British government. The government of India could also seek supreme court’s advisory opinion on the subject in order to terminate the hostilities in the NES, among others.
Successful plebiscites had been performed in Montenegrin in Europe in 2006 and also in East Timor[Timor Liste] in Asia in 1999.
In Africa, even after the lapse of the MINURSO mandate of the UN, the Western Saharan plebiscite has been merely deferred . In India, plebiscite had never been an ordinary folk tale. The government of India had performed plebiscite in Junagardh on 20 Febreuary,1948 in order to ascertain the peoples’ choice of either acceding to Indian dominion or to Pakistan.
The select plebiscites substantially demonstrate the successful and peaceful resolution of deep conflicts which rational actors resort to with honest convictions. However, war mongers would not pay heed to peaceful methods of conflict resolutions, of which the plebiscite is the most democratic device so far.
================================
Human Rights issues in South Asia
- Dialectics of Cataclysmic Collective Rights -
- RATIONAL DISCOURSE -
Part 4
By: Dr. Naorem Sanajaoba *
RATIONAL DISCOURSE
International Human Rights and Humanitarian Laws have been codified and complied by a large number of states in the comity of nations, notwithstanding certain reservations, declarations and selective non-compliance of international obligations by a couple of states or in extreme cases by the rogue states, which selectively comply with general international law at their convenience.
The international community has set the benchmarks, deviation from which is considered exceptional and immoral. A rational discourse, however, has made the world worthy of dignified living and security of communities and individuals.
Indian state has its own legitimate responsibility and enormous contributions to the common human causes, However,it could correct the clearly defined faultlines and address to issues of enormous human rights significance like those cited above.
The dialectics of conflict resolution advances by breaking up the conventional, imperial mind sets of the decision makers and explores new ways of breaking up the impasse.
In the process, the international actors have to honour their treaty obligations- particularly of the 1966 covenants. India unlike other southern states had been a NAM leader and incidentally, India had strongly espoused the global de-colonisation since 1960s by way of seconding the Soviet proposal of UN GA resolution 1514 of 1960.
India’s global de-colonisation agenda would be fruitful if it also implements its own resolution in regard to the AANSGT of the country ,by resorting to peaceful and democratic methods like plebiscite and leaving aside its half a century-old brutal state repression in the NES.
India is also under binding treaty obligations to report to the UN Human Rights Committee, its concern over other under-addressed collective human rights ,at the time of its submission of the fourth report ,which was long overdue in 2001 .
======================================
Part 1
By: Dr. Naorem Sanajaoba *
ABSTRACT:
India in the post-UN epoch has achieved substantially in the process of human rights standard-setting and benchmarking, in as much as it set a couple of national human rights institutions and the apex judiciary has proven itself to be human rights friendly.
It is inevitable that in this age of transparent governance, the cataclysmic failures are also fairly addressed to by the author, particularly in the province of group and collective rights including peasant rights, women rights, right to development, and also the jus cogens- the right of the people to self –determination in after acquired Non-Self-Governing –Territories[ AA NSGT} like the North- Eastern States [NES].
The half-a century old state repression could not bring durable peace and hence, democratic mechanisms like Plebiscites could be suggested in resolving unaddressed national questions in the NES. The discourse could be transformed from a monologue to a rational democratic dialogue.
CATACLYSMIC TEXT
Globalization has brought the sovereign states economically closer to each other, while the political devolution of imperial states into building block nation states remains as the ongoing process and the MNCs attempt to capture as much space as they could from the sovereign jurisdictions.
Human rights standard setting and benchmarking had preceded the globalization era and the cold war confrontations. The world has achieved tangible human rights perceptions and consciousness thereby censuring rogue states and failed states, while sparing the soft states for their eventual self-corrections. India which is neither a rogue state like the USA, nor one among the crowd of failed third world states passes through a rigorous test in advancing the post-modernist structuralism on the one hand , and also in holding into seize incompatible pluralistic historical legacies, particularly in the AANSGT.
Consequentially, collective national rights and human rights of the citizens in AANSGT like the states of Manipur, Nagaland, Tripura and the other North Eastern states at the far east of the mainland India have been subjected to military repression for more than half a century after the British imperialists abandoned the occupied territories.
State violence and reciprocal non-state violence provide the cataclysmic text and the cycle of violence that pre-empt peaceful resolutions of deep national contradictions through either UN or international community- sponsored dialogues on the one hand or, by way of holding plebiscites of the people in the region for suitable choice of their own international political and economic status, as it has been invariably conduced across the continents.
The plural state that India has been, had passed through the partition phobia of the 1947 vintage at the loss of a million lives in the most barbaric Hindu-Muslim bi-ethnic mobilization, has to undergo the nation building test with a loss of thousands of Sikh lives in 1984 in just three days and another thousand Muslim lives in 2002 Gujarat strife. Kashmiris claim that they lost several thousands of Kashmiri lives due to Indian military repression against the freedom fighters otherwise labeled as terrorists by the Indian administration.
Similarly, the north- eastern states that came to the Indian fold not so long ago in the mid-20th century make more or less similar pathetic claims as a result of state repression. East Pakistan the present Bangladesh had witnessed in 1971 another loss of a couple of million lives during the liberation war; Indian army played the decisive battle in the partition of Pakistan.
Indian sub-continent obviously presents a clear testimony of sustained group violence or, armed conflicts between the state and the NSAs [Non State Actors] or the national liberation movements on a grand scale. Peasants’ rights are not fully addressed to as Indian peasants commit suicides time and again. The glorified iniquitous globalization also marches upon the corpses of the Indian peasants and the debate goes on.
Besides the restive Kashmir state and seven NES, communist revolutionaries [ Communist Party Maoists – naxalites], unlike the official communist revisionist parties which prop up the Congress government from falling down because of want of numbers, contest the state administration in as many as thirteen additional states- as reported by the home ministry – while trying to liberate the Indian poor from capitalist exploitation and imperialist globalization. The encounters occupy the social space with the state torture machine geared up to meet the economic revolutionaries.
The Indian state simply finds its state repression counterproductive and faces clash of economies rather than what the American perceives of clash of civilizations in the non-Christian world. Unlike the USA which as the self=proclaimed human rights world leader, evades the binding obligations of the ICESCR [International Covenant on Economic , and Social Cultural Rights], 1966, India which is a party to the ICESCR has binding international obligations towards the economic rights of the poor and the underprivileged . The professedly natural alliance that binds both India and the USA can hardly explain the their parallel and , divergent commitment towards economic obligations to the people.
Ethnic pluralism, multiple historical legacies and late territorial acquisitions characterise Indian human biomass and multinational entity.Indian state does not take cognizance of existence of indigenous population groups as such in the context of the international peoples’ declarations and profound contemporary concern of the indigenous issues. By default, the scheduled castes and tribes could be conceived as indigenous surrogates. The ethnic fissures and embedded racism create ethnic subductions and tremors that could lead to local or widespread cataclysm among the population groups.
Gender equality is undoubtedly a luxurious slogan of the power elites and the miniscule intellectuals, notwithstanding the failure of both the civil society and the state to wipe out gender inequality and religiously glorified male chauvinism. India comprises two nations- India of the vast poor people and India of the few rich people. The gender divide or subjugation, subjugation of the national minorities render the official nationhood shaky.
The Indian Muslims who constitute nearly ten percent of entire population fail to get barely two percent of membership of the national defense forces, possibly due to a deep- rooted mistrust of national minorities for one invented reason or another. The racial divide deeply runs in between the mainland India and the 40 million strong people of the NES. Inspite of the utopian official propaganda, apartheid divides the NES people from the mainland dominant people. Mainland India routinely ridicules the NES people of the AANSGT as Chinkis[ Chinese particularly after the defeat of India in Indo-Chinese war in 1962]The racial divide is very very natural.
The sporadic and intermittent populations or ethnic cataclysms that occur in mainland India is overshadowed by the half a century- old engagement between the state forces and the national liberation guerrillas of the NSAs. The parties involved in the state repression as well as the counter violence let loose by the NSAs have not reached out at or even outsourced a fair, just and durable political solution and the political crisis remain as festering wounds.
=====================================
Human Rights issues in South Asia
- Dialectics of Cataclysmic Collective Rights -
- POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY -
Part 2
By: Dr. Naorem Sanajaoba *
POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY
The endemic social cataclysms could be officially attributed to cosmetic and rationalized reasons of state that could hardly be contested by a rational discourse of one kind or another and the state-ist argument holds the fort as long as the state defines its own existentialist, metaphorical truth or untruth whatever.
Indian state since its inception in 1947 and access to republican status in 1950 by virtue of landlord-feudal-casteist-racialist dominated constitution-making process, has been legitimizing asymmetrical hegemonic rule of the hegemonic mainland population group over the peripheral and after-acquired territorial population groups, particularly in the seven NES of the Indian state.
The embedded hegemony dictates the hegemonic interest under the cloak of legitimacy and unequal constitutionalism that inherently suffers from the basic premises of unequal nationalities viz., the ruling nationality and the subject races in the peripheral states. The official constitutionalism, based on egalitarian values like socialism, secularism, among others are negated by the hegemonic constitutionalism in practice.
The hierarchical Indian civil society poses a monstrous evil and terror to Indian womanhood, Indian peasantry, national minorities and the subject race of the later occupied AANSGT in the NE region . The cataclysm happens to be the favourite child of the inherently unequal Indian civil society, which even the dignified human rights NGOs dare not fight out; the NGOs fight out the symptoms of he hidden terror within the unequal Indian civil society.
No other demonstration would be as loud and clear than the post-1991 Indian capitalism, officially adopted by the union government in direct and blatant negation of the state policy of socialism, as enshrined in the preamble of the constitution. Secularism is in the preamble while not more than two percent of Indian Muslims could be recruited into defense forces.
The North-easterners and the NES had been denied equal state representation in the Council of states and the union cabinet, although quislings could be occasionally recruited in key positions on the basis of their proportionate loyalty to neo-colonialism and hegemonic rule.
The original sin that denied the principle of equality of nationalities and nations in the constitution-making process has been accepted as Indian statist virtue that transcends any opposition whatever from any rational discourse, and even the Indian leftist fail to contest the national inequalities because of their hidden racial philosophy and hackneyed hegemonic pre-eminence.
The imperialism that Indian state nurtured with sufficient labour and ingenuity had been virtually instrumental in resurrection of the festering wounds and inevitable historical uprisings addressed to the hegemonic Indian state as well as the mainland hegemonic people who retain the Indian state as their permanent hostage.
Even the national human rights commission and national institutions failed to rise above the deeply entrenched hegemonic philosophy and institutions. The battle line has not therefore, been drawn exclusively between the Indian state and the contesting NSAs or liberation groups, but more explicitly between the hegemonic, neo-colonial, imperial philosophy impregnably shrouded by a far- fetched patriotic cloak and the democratic philosophy of equalities of nations and nationalities that would hit hard upon all the conceptualized hegemonic philosophy.
It would be appropriate to cite the Indian supreme court judgment in 1997 on the humanity’s most black law- the Armed Forces Special Powers Act,1958, which permits any low level army officer to shoot to death any suspected citizen in the NES for more than half a century. Normally, at the drop of a hat when any mainland Indian citizen faces human rights discomfort, the supreme court admits and hears the case in a day or two under the public interest litigation.
The supreme court did not take up a 1982 PIL case challenging the black law for long 15 years till in the year 1997, the UN Human Rights Committee grilled the Indian representative at the UN and he assured of triggering off the supreme court mechanism. The supreme court, with its racialist logic invented all racial justification to uphold the black law. They call it judicial logic and the NES jurists call the 1997 judgment apartheid verdict.
The recommendation of Justice Jeevan Reddy,2005 for the repeal of the black AFSPA,1958 and also the observation of the United Nations CERD made in 2007 March for the repeal of the same statute, the critical conclusions of the UN Human Rights Committee in 1991 onwards about the same black statute, compounded by the global juristic tirade against such extrajudicial execution law isolate the supreme court’s explicitly racialist and genocidal verdict as pariah The Administrative Reforms Commission of the government of India has in August,2007 recommended the repeal of the AFSPA,1958 .
The supreme court has glorified and justified extrajudicial execution of the people of the AANSGT with its own shrouded reasons. The United Nations Human Rights Committee in its report 1997 has urged upon the supreme court to comply with the ICCPR obligations, however by its November 27 ,1997 verdict it has simply overlooked the aforesaid ICCPR obligations.
The cataclysmic apex court juridical logic reinforces the otherwise racialist Indian mainstream philosophy. Some body had rightly said that capitalist USA should never appoint a Marxian judge in the supreme court and in similar vein, Cuba should never appoint a capitalist judge in her bench. mutatis mutandi, Indian hegemons would never make an exception to the isotopic hegemonic law.
He is at first a first blood hegemon a la Nazi judge and then, a judge with bequeathed colonial common law traditions. Before the world fought the noble Nazis, it had to fight out the Nazi gospel and preaching. Under these given conditions, universally endorsed human rights standards have to be the first casualty and the rest is masterpiece of rhetoric and political metaphors- the metaphors that sabotage and hijack justice from within thereby leaving the civil society to respond naturally, presumably under the social contractarian theory that justifies the ultimate revolt.
The national institutions do the inbreeding of the cataclysms and the cycle continues in the best tradition of the hen or, chicken: which comes out first _ the state repression or the NSA counter-violence- which comes first. The CATACLYSM exists in one form or another- constitutional, juridical, institutional and whatever.
The phenomena sustains because of the poverty of Indian political, legal, constitutional and national, hegemonic philosophy. Behind very mistaken theory lies he the great Indian empire instinct.
=========================================
Human Rights issues in South Asia
- Dialectics of Cataclysmic Collective Rights -
- UNIVERSAL BENCHMARK _ THE CASUALTY -
Part 3
By: Dr. Naorem Sanajaoba *
UNIVERSAL BENCHMARK _ THE CASUALTY
The de-hegemonic evangelism which would launch frontal assault on the philosophy of cataclysm and hegemony would be prejudicial one way or other, unless one records and re-affirms the widely approved benchmark of human rights standard setting and principles of good governance in equal measure either in the context of liberal democracy or, left- of- the- centre system .
No other fundamental human rights could ever be exercised until and unless the people in the AANSGT or, dependent territories or, colonial areas are first allowed to exercise their inalienable right to self-determination . In the nation- building process of Indian republic of 1950, peripheral areas in the Indo-Myanmar region have been acquired by the administration without holding popular plebiscites and taking the people into confidence by way of officially assessing their consent to be taken over and governed.
Princely states of early Hindusthan or Moghul empire found the least difficulty in joining the dominion or later day republic. The federating process happened to be smooth and nostalgic; however, resistance occurred in the case of AANSGT in the NES [north –eastern region of India]. The questions remain hitherto unresolved albeit suppressed under tedious statecraft.
The historical imperative of properly addressing the national questions have to confront the Indian nation- building process in acquired territories. Firstly, the government of India with its excellent reasons contest the national liberation movements in the NES as separatist forces that undermine the territorial integrity of the country . Secondly, the national liberation authorities in the region contest the above stance as a colonial pretence of the imperialist India and resist the Indian defense forces by way of guerrilla resistance.
The West as usual, had never seen human causes beyond their western interests only and had never tried to play a peace broker in places where both Marxist rule and hydrocarbons are found missing. They love the Arab oil as long as the subterranean stocks are not exhausted. This is again a demonstration of poverty of Western philosophy. The international community simply ignores the conflicts and eludes responsibility.
The Gandhian state of India while proclaiming itself as the natural democratic ally of the USA, particularly after the 1991 liberalisation period and by conducting naval warfare, military exercises in Bay of Bengal in September 2007 has projected itself as a junior partner of a defacto and imagined Asian- NATO so as to invite Asian militarization in one form or another and inaugurate China-USA cold war in the mid-21st century. Tiny Himalayan states and micro states like Bangladesh may undergo the cold war unrest in the region thereby putting at stake, the developmental agenda.
Militarisation of the civil society coupled with the imminent cold war environment in Asia- pacific are likely to push out the human rights agenda and human security commitments as the back burner. The myopic third world academics , opinion makers and political decision- makers have to address to these vital human causes inspite of operating as the conventional neo-colonial human sources and instrumentalities.
As the sine qua non of the individuals and people willing to exercise their fundamental individual human rights has been a victim of poverty of philosophy, the fundamental human freedoms queue at the end of the traffic jam. The much talked about conflict-resolution of the epoch has given stress to democratic and people friendly mechanisms whatever. One of the most efficient and peace conducive instrumentalities, among others, is the resort to plebiscite on the political status of people or, the status plebiscites.
The international law and international relations had been consistently favourable to the resort to the peaceful, democratic method ,in the course of conflict-resolutions. Henry Kissinger armed with his unprecedented Vietnam statecraft, in his Diplomacy had categorically stated that guerrillas could not be given a decisive defeat even by the USA. If conflict-resolution is taken seriously by the parties in conflict, plebiscite could be instrumental.
The contemporary state practices in regard to resorting to plebiscite as a credible, democratic mechanism of peaceful conflict- resolution of chronic national issues of vital importance give evidence to the strong possibility of reaching out to durable and fair solutions across the five continents.
In the past, during the epoch of the League of Nations too, as many as fifty two plebiscites had been conducted. Judicial settlement of disputes and armed conflicts might have been chosen ways of advancing international relations, yet the plebiscite had never been made a second choice by several rational actors in international relations. The applied science of international law and relations demonstrate the success story of plebiscites. Proven cases testify the mechanism as reliable and democratic.
The British system which the modern Indian system has very closely followed for historical reasons, among others, could work out Good Friday Agreement in April,1998 in order to resolve nearly a century-old British-Northern Ireland armed conflicts with the USA as a guarantor, and has also allowed its province Scotland to resort to plebiscites in 1956, in March 1979, in 1997 and to hold one more possibly in the year 2010, which may terminate three century- old merger.
Indian decision makers could look towards Scottish example inspite of drawing inspiration from the statecraft of Idia Amin or President Milosveic et. al. Poverty of philosophy or enhanced imperial thought may block the creativity of the rulers and their conscience.
The USA, which India looks up as the natural democratic ally, also did not hold up the conducting of a series of Plebiscites in its commonwealth Puerto Rico in 1967,1991, 1993 and in 1998. A fifth Puerto Rico status plebiscite has not been rules out. The people freely express their wishes about their political and economic status and no democratic government of significance would stall the people to exercise their inalienable right to express wishes freely.
Puerto Rico case would emulate Indian leadership who had far too long had the hand in armed hostilities. Canada too followed suit in allowing Frankophone Quebec to conduct plebiscites in 1980 and for the second time in 1995. Even the Canadian supreme court in 1998 juristically endorsed plebiscite in Quebec, and the Indian supreme court could take similar positions inspite of taking the assumed stance of political hardliner.
The third referendum as regards the status of Scotland would be conducted in 2010 in the United Kingdom and the parties have geared up their poll preparations without any inhibition from the British government. The government of India could also seek supreme court’s advisory opinion on the subject in order to terminate the hostilities in the NES, among others.
Successful plebiscites had been performed in Montenegrin in Europe in 2006 and also in East Timor[Timor Liste] in Asia in 1999.
In Africa, even after the lapse of the MINURSO mandate of the UN, the Western Saharan plebiscite has been merely deferred . In India, plebiscite had never been an ordinary folk tale. The government of India had performed plebiscite in Junagardh on 20 Febreuary,1948 in order to ascertain the peoples’ choice of either acceding to Indian dominion or to Pakistan.
The select plebiscites substantially demonstrate the successful and peaceful resolution of deep conflicts which rational actors resort to with honest convictions. However, war mongers would not pay heed to peaceful methods of conflict resolutions, of which the plebiscite is the most democratic device so far.
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Human Rights issues in South Asia
- Dialectics of Cataclysmic Collective Rights -
- RATIONAL DISCOURSE -
Part 4
By: Dr. Naorem Sanajaoba *
RATIONAL DISCOURSE
International Human Rights and Humanitarian Laws have been codified and complied by a large number of states in the comity of nations, notwithstanding certain reservations, declarations and selective non-compliance of international obligations by a couple of states or in extreme cases by the rogue states, which selectively comply with general international law at their convenience.
The international community has set the benchmarks, deviation from which is considered exceptional and immoral. A rational discourse, however, has made the world worthy of dignified living and security of communities and individuals.
Indian state has its own legitimate responsibility and enormous contributions to the common human causes, However,it could correct the clearly defined faultlines and address to issues of enormous human rights significance like those cited above.
The dialectics of conflict resolution advances by breaking up the conventional, imperial mind sets of the decision makers and explores new ways of breaking up the impasse.
In the process, the international actors have to honour their treaty obligations- particularly of the 1966 covenants. India unlike other southern states had been a NAM leader and incidentally, India had strongly espoused the global de-colonisation since 1960s by way of seconding the Soviet proposal of UN GA resolution 1514 of 1960.
India’s global de-colonisation agenda would be fruitful if it also implements its own resolution in regard to the AANSGT of the country ,by resorting to peaceful and democratic methods like plebiscite and leaving aside its half a century-old brutal state repression in the NES.
India is also under binding treaty obligations to report to the UN Human Rights Committee, its concern over other under-addressed collective human rights ,at the time of its submission of the fourth report ,which was long overdue in 2001 .
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* Dr. Naorem Sanajaoba is a Professor and former Dean of Law Faculty at the Gauhati University, Asom. The author is a human rights defender and a social activist in the NE region of India for more than 4 (four) decades and is a reknown author of several internationally distributed books on Human Rights, humanitarian laws, among others. The author can be contacted at naorem06(at)yahoo(dot)co(dot)in or alternate email at nsanajaoba(at)gmail(dot)com . This article was first webcasted on September 20th, 2007.
Source: E-Pao
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