Gujarat Riots - 2

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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Genocide, my foot!

By Dasu Krishnamoorty

http://www.dasukrishnamoorty.com/minorit...ocide.html

The moment has now come to speak for India. There now  seems to be a general  consensus that Narendra Modi should take the rap for the  events in Gujarat.  It is the grand finale to his trial by the press that sent  hordes of prosecutors to the home of Mahatma Gandhi to investigate and make out  a case of genocide and ethnic cleansing against Modi. This exercise was rounded  up by a visit of the editors themselves to see if their sleuths had done a neat  job.

Together, they mopped up enough evidence for teams of diplomats to prepare  the ground to deliver lessons to the host country on human rights. This scenario  is very dangerously close to the one that generally precedes an international  intervention. Almost all the countries these diplomats represented had pioneered a tradition of genocide, later emulated by the likes of Idi Amin. Our own media  sought interviews with these diplomats asking them leading questions like 'what  do you think about the genocide in Gujarat and do you think that the minorities  in this country are safe.'

The press thus became a judge and a prosecutor. Mediamen  became activists taking out processions and holding seminars to relate sob  stories of how they had escaped death by a coat of paint. It should, however, be  remembered that the debate on Modi had already broadcast a message showing that  the objective of his critics is not his punishment but political mileage and a  display of their secular credentials. However, what is of interest to the entire  nation cannot be left to political parties and the press to resolve. This  shortsightedness will certainly gladden the hearts of the country's enemies who  know to what advantage they can use the word genocide. Far from absolving the  role of a Congress leader in starting the fire, such political vocabulary will  deliver the country, and not the ruling party, into the hands of its  adversaries. 
The genocide debate has already damaged social harmony  and, more than all, the nation's intellectual equilibrium. Succeeding  governments will find it hard to restore that balance. The lurking internal  danger is one side of the story. The other side, a consequence of lack of  national vision and pride and sense of false consciousness, concerns a  treacherous essay to subordinate the country's sovereign status to international  hegemony. The quest for political or ideological gains should not blind us to  the repercussions of throwing the Gujarat issue into the international arena for  a final judgement. This privilege to be judges of our own affairs is too  precious to be jettisoned for fear of hurting a disoriented intelligentsia. 

The country cannot own the guilt for what a party has  failed to do. It was the duty of Modi's party and the federal government headed  by his party to call him to account. If both of them have failed as they did,  there are several domestic agencies that have the power and the jurisdiction to summon him suo moto for a trial. In the debate on censure motion, opposition  parties concentrated on a single phrase: double failure, the failure of the Modi administration to protect the property and lives of the people and the failure  of the federal government to ensure that Modi did what was necessary under such a situation. The emphasis was more on omission than on commission. Since this thesis sounds more like a defense of Modi, let us agree that it was a crime of commission if that is going to defuse the Gujarat situation. 

Whoever uses the word genocide to refer to events in  Gujarat belongs to the category of either political innocents or clowns. They  preclude any alternative interpretation of the situation because the current  norm of their discourse is 'if you are not with me you are against me.' To  determine whether genocide had actually occurred in Gujarat, we will need a  definition of that word. That word as defined in the 1948 UN Convention on  Genocide has a history and context. It is the work of Raphael Lemkin, whose  family was a victim of Hitler's Jewish repression in the Third Reich. He single  handedly drafted and lobbied the convention at the UN. Lemkin had Nazis in mind.  Allied powers had different and wider objectives to achieve through the  convention. 

It is important to remember that the convention was the  work of the victors and that its legitimacy is closely linked to the fact of a  victory in war. There is hardly any propriety in embracing this terminology for  convenience in reporting or for scoring partisan gains. Such use demands  substantiation and that in turn ends up in the reporter doing the job of a  prosecutor, unearthing evidence to buttress a prior conviction. No school of  journalism assigns this role of a prosecutor to a reporter. 

Let us look at the implications of the word. First,  genocide will attract the provisions of the 1948 convention and thus impart an  international colour to the problem (remember the Kashmir albatross), even  though the guilty men can be tried in a domestic court. Second, it provides a  handle for anti-national forces to have the case heard outside the country. It  is the use of this word that has put ideas into the heads of Gujaratis in  Britain to sue Modi not in India but in the British High Court, the  International Court of Justice at the Hague and in Belgian courts. The interest  shown in the issue by countries like Canada, Switzerland, European Union and the  United States is only a first step to a full-fledged trial of the country by  global media and NGOs. It is essential to understand that though it is Mody who  is the accused, for all purposes the name of India will figure at every stage of  the trial. The world will try not Modi but India. 

People who talk about genocide will have to decide  whether what they want is punishment for Modi or humiliation of the country.  Those who are too responsive to international opinion will do well to take a  look at the genocide history of the European powers and their allies. Otherwise,  there is no need for an outside court. Cannot the aggrieved approach the  President of India who has the powers to dismiss a state government? There is  also the Supreme Court in which all political parties and their communal  constituencies constantly reiterate faith. 

In my view, describing the Gujarat events as genocide is  aimed at displacing national jurisdiction in the matter and inviting  international intervention. If what we want is punishment for Modi, the Indian  Penal Code or even POTO meets the needs. The hundreds of NGOs in the country and  PIL lawyers can always drag the entire BJP government before a domestic court.  Any other action would imply lack of confidence in our judicial system and an  ardent desire to embarrass the country. 

Once the case is before a domestic court, the latter will  decide whether it is genocide or some other crime that can be tried under the  law of the land.
True, Atal Behari Vajpayee and the External Affairs Ministry  have overreacted to statements made by foreign diplomats. But that also seems a  natural response to the high pitch hysteria that marks the Gujarat debate. There  is no question of fear of transparency when thousands of print and TV media  persons were allowed to cover the events. 

It is an open secret that foreign media, when they  operate outside their country, work as agents of the state departments of their  countries and many a time as spies.  Imagine how unwittingly we have  fabricated all the evidence that the foreign diplomats needed to convince  themselves of the fact of genocide. Those who talk of justice forget the  principles of jurisprudence and journalism too. Jurisprudence treats everyone as  innocent till his guilt is proved. Journalists know that trial by press violates  the principles of journalism.

It is difficult to understand the reluctance of the BJP  government to remove Modi and guarantee security to the minority community. Even  if the intention to tarnish the BJP is laudable, that goal can be achieved  without dragging the country into the marketplace of international justice. It  is common knowledge that these world institutions and treaties are instruments  devised by western powers to preserve their sway over third world countries even  after the end of colonialism. Has Britain that is screaming about the Gujarat  tragedy stood trial for the genocide in India during the freedom struggle or for  the man-made Bengal famine of the early forties? 

Are there no courts in the country, which have the  jurisdiction to try Narendra Modi? India has not signed the convention on  genocide because it believes that the convention should be based on the  principles of complementary, state sovereignty and non-intervention in the in  the internal affairs of the state. Though God is an antithesis of secularism, he  alone can save this country from its politicians and, may I add, the press. I am  reminded of an Oscar Wilde epigram: In the olden days you had the rack. Today,  you have the press. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->