Teesta Setalvad: Our political elites have little respect for human life // Independent inquiry into Muzaffarnagar ‘Riots’
No respect for human life
Jan 06, 2014
by Teesta Setalvad
Modi’s statement that ‘relief camps are baby-making factories’ has become iconic of state abdication and cruelty. Uttar Pradesh chief secretary’s claim that “no one dies of cold; go check Siberia” has joined this cruel iconography. No man’s land is land under international law, land between nations or disputing parties, land under dispute, where uncertainty and ambiguity govern, land that no authority or state controls but significantly where no laws, national or others, apply.
Internally displaced persons (IDPs), especially those displaced by man-made tragedies, deliberate plans of development or natural disasters are recognised as among the world’s most vulnerable people because they have not crossed international borders but remain under the protection of their own government, even though the government’s abdication of its fundamental duties and people’s rights may be the cause of their desperate flight. Responsibility for their welfare must and should rest with the state. However, the culture of impunity prevalent in a country that has failed to book powerful state actors for their fundamental failure in governance — to protect, without prejudice or bias, the lives of the poor and underprivileged as much as the politically shrill and powerful — has blurred responsibility for the plight and conditions of IDPs.
In 2002, as 1,68,000 IDPs were forcibly and cruelly evicted from their homes by marauding mobs in Gujarat, Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) supported a PIL that finally ensured that the Gujarat state accepted responsibility for the rations (grains, tea, milk and sugar) that was until then being borne by community organisations. The plight of those who were forced to live as cattle herd in essentially difficult conditions was made worse by the state’s desperate rush to hold elections. This meant “cleaning up” the blood and gore by forcibly closing the camps.
Eleven years later, the response of the state, under a different political dispensation, after the violence in Uttar Pradesh’s four districts of Muzaffarnagar, Shamli, Meerut and Baghpat, is worse. Faced with five petitions in the Supreme Court, and keen to maintain the gloss on its blemished image, the nine reports filed by the Uttar Pradesh government are obfuscations of the reality on the ground. As lead petitioners in one of the cases, we have submitted proof that the reports of the district officials contradict what the state is officially submitting to the highest court of the land.
Over 33,000 people forcibly displaced from their homes by the terror unleashed by a more powerful Jat community are today living on open state and Central government land and private residences. Those in “camps” live in sub-human conditions — many were living in tents, in bitter cold and rain and this resulted in several deaths — until they were forcibly evicted. Nineteen camps in Shamli district and two in Loi were and are testimony to the gross abdication of state responsibility. Food and clothing was donated generously by private individuals; state presence in distribution was limited to a fortnight except the packets of milk that continued to come to Mallakpur relief camp until recently. (In September-October 2013 the numbers were 45,000).
Even as the state cynically carried out forcible evictions, three-year-old Uvez died in the Manna Majra camp on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2013. The affidavit filed before the Supreme Court in mid-December contains the names of 23 children and adults who had died in the camps because of ailments related essentially to the inhuman conditions in sub-human temperatures. Two twin baby girls died within hours of being born as far back as September 10, 2013, at the Jaula camp. Days before we travelled again through the camps where it is impossible to stay after 5 pm, when wind and cold settles in, two-day-old Chhotu (he was not given a name), son of Manga, died; one-day-old Chhotu (again, he was not even given a name), son of Azad, died at Phugana on November 28, 2013.
A few kilometres away from the Mallakpur camp is a colony of re-settlers, displaced by a flood 30 years ago. The state has no desire to vacate them from their irregular habitats and these colonies in Rathoda, Baghpat and Soop-Silana have become their permanent home. Both sets of IDPs had to make homes on forest/state government land, yet the state appears to be treating the two sets of IDPs differently. Why?
What is worse? Death by mob violence (over 80 dead and a few dozen missing) or those deaths that were avoidable and yet took place under the state’s redoubled watch in these camps? Narendra Modi’s statement on September 9, 2002, at the temple town of Becharaji in Mehsana, the launching pad of his Gaurav Yatra and 2002 election campaign, that “relief camps are baby-making factories” has become iconic of state abdication and cruelty. And Mulayam Singh Yadav’s sickening statement that “those in relief camps are Congress and BJP workers” and his chief secretary’s claim that “no one dies of cold; go check Siberia” have joined this cruel iconography... read more:
Press Statement on the Report prepared by Mohan Rao, Ish Mishra, Pragya Singh and Vikas Bajpai; December 30, 2013
A team of independent academics and a journalist carried out an inquiry into the communal violence that shook Muzaffarnagar district in UP this past September. The report is based on the findings of the team during its visit to Muzaffarnagar district on the 9th and the 10th of November and again on the 27th November.
The members of the team were:
Dr. Mohan Rao, Faculty, Centre for Social Medicine and Community Health, JNU.
Mr Ish Misra, Faculty, Department of Political Science, Hindu College, Delhi University.
Ms.Pragya Singh, Journalist, Outlook, and
Dr. Vikas Bajpai, Ph.D. Scholar, Centre for Social Medicine and Community Health, JNU.
Mr Ish Misra, Faculty, Department of Political Science, Hindu College, Delhi University.
Ms.Pragya Singh, Journalist, Outlook, and
Dr. Vikas Bajpai, Ph.D. Scholar, Centre for Social Medicine and Community Health, JNU.
The team also drew upon the assistance of Dr. Subhash Tyagi, Professor of Geography, Machra College, Meerut, and Praveen Raj Tyagi, Principal Greenland Public School, Duhai, Ghaziabad, in the collection of some data and the conduct of the visit.
OBJECTIVES OF OUR ENQUIRY:
To investigate the role of state agencies in either preventing or containing violence, in taking appropriate punitive actions against the guilty and also to investigate some incidents of communal violence.
To investigate the role of the government in providing relief and rehabilitating the displaced and the progress made in displaced people going back to their villages and homes.
To understand economic, social and political reasons that led to the recent spate of communal violence in this area of Western Uttar Pradesh.
To investigate the role of the government in providing relief and rehabilitating the displaced and the progress made in displaced people going back to their villages and homes.
To understand economic, social and political reasons that led to the recent spate of communal violence in this area of Western Uttar Pradesh.
SALIENT FINDINGS:
Role of the agencies of the State
The fact that India is Constitutionally mandated as ‘Secular’ State makes it obligatory on the agencies of the State to uphold secular values. However, the communal incidents in Muzaffarnagar, its aftermath and the continuing tragedy of the riot affected persons have been the undoing of the Indian State in this regard. Regrettably, this has been the outcome of deliberate and calculated decisions at different levels as is evident from the findngs:
The affidavits riot victims were made to sign for availing monetary compensation
The Uttar Pradesh (UP) government has made the riot affected Muslim families in relief camps to sign an affidavit (copy attached as annexure) that enforced following conditions on the signatories in order to avail of financial relief:
“That myself and members of my family have come leaving our village and home being terrorized due to violent incidents in ……… village and we will not now return to our original village and home under any circumstances”.
“That the lumpsum financial help being given for my family by the government will only be used by me to rehabilitate my family. By this money I will live with my family voluntarily arranging for residence at appropriate place elsewhere”.
“That in the condition of receiving lumpsum financial help amount, myself or members of my family will not demand compensation relating to any damage to any immovable property in my village or elsewhere”.
“That in the condition of receiving lumpsum financial help amount, myself or members of my family will not demand compensation relating to any damage to any immovable property in my village or elsewhere”.
The State thus sought to impose a demographic change in the riot affect villages through a legal instrument. The monetary relief being disbursed was not to rebuild the damaged property or lost means of livelihood. This has served to reinforce the terror of communal violence in the minds of affected families besides driving a schism in the composite culture of the area which mars the possibilities of gradual healing. Muslims are now being ghettoized in towns and localities dominated by them.
These aspects were pointed out by the team members to the district administration, The officials however denied that the government was preventing people from going back to the villages and told of an order stating that those who wanted to return to their villages were free to do so. But a copy of the said order could not be provided by the administration.
Nepotism, complicity and inaction of the police in incidents of violence.. read more:
