MY KHAKI DEMOCRACY – An Intervention

Posted on | April 25, 2008 | No Comments

The latest national shame, as revealed under judicial intervention, of the “encounter” killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife Kausar Bi by Gujarat police ATS cell and arrest of three IPS officers may have shocked a few activist and media analysts. It has, by and large, not moved the people of India irrespective of the disjointed mosaic they are fragmented into. Events prove that even Vanjaras have their supporters. Even the war against terrorism is being communalised.

On April 28, 2007 I received a SMS from a Mumbai based fanatic who styled himself as the chief of the Lashkar-e-Hind, which described DIG Vanjara and his colleagues as Patriotic Generals. The SMS coincided with an assembly of “Hindu minded” people in Mumbai in which senior retired IPS officers had taken leading part. I was invited, but my reply to them was that India was run by the constitution and laws framed by the people. There was and is no need for Hindu Lashkar. Citizens and public servants cannot assume the roles of the terrorists and vigilantes. Both the terrorists and vigilantes defy and challenge the established constitution and legal framework.

The latest aberrations reported from Gujarat are not new developments and should not be construed as demonic actions of a Hindu Rightist State persecuting the minorities. The perpetrators may have had communal bias but they represent a state of mind that has gripped India for nearly two decades. Other political territories and bureaucratic thugs have also indulged in killing hundreds through extra-judicial means.

I have had the privilege of working and living in insurgency infested Northeast and had enough shoulder rubbing with insurgency and terrorism in the West by Northwest and certain Heartland areas.
Way back in seventies and eighties people hardly bothered about Human Rights and the media were just trying to pierce the cocoon and flutter wings. I have witnessed innumerable “encounter killing” in Manipur, Nagaland and Assam. It is futile to log such incidents and count the body bags. Somewhere in the labyrinth of government records these figures have been fudged and lost.

Incidents of Army, Para-military and police forces picking up mere suspects and eliminating them were nauseating daily occurrences. Logging of such incidents were treated as “unprofessional and tactless performance”, leading to couple of black entries in the character sheets, most important stepping stone to bureaucratic Nirvana. Officers assuming total power of intelligence operator, investigator, interceptor and liquidator were treated with highest awards and adulations. Some of them, even from the intelligence fraternity, succeeded in becoming the cheery on top of the bureaucratic pies-cherries like Governors and other post-retirement feather caps. Some were decorated as gallant Khaki Dungaree and Olive Green (KDOG) peers of the nation.

Anatomy of each and every incident is desired but there is no one to bell the cat. The men in Khaki, Dungaree and OG have the legal rights to kill armed adversaries in “war like” situation live actions. War killings are legal killings, however painful that might be. However, killing of the innocent people or people merely suspected to be involved in terrorist activities are extra legal killings. No force of the nation, whether it is Khaki, Dungaree or OG can assume the role of “total justice dispensers.” However, they often indulge in such atrocities on the plea that the criminal jurisprudence system is unable to cope with terrorist activities. Dead men do not walk up to a court rooms.

These corps of officers is not driven by any ism, though some have been infected by communal bugs. They seek out shortcuts to dispense what they call “justice.” They act like vigilantes, often without knowledge of their political and departmental superiors. They kill and shrug-one more pest has been taken care of. Often the State connives as they presume that vigilante elimination process short-fuses the total criminal jurisprudence systems (CJS) that often fail to punish an offender. Frustrated by the CJS road-blocks they act as vigilante executors. Religion of the offender is no consideration.

I have blood curdling experiences of witnessing killing of Hindu Meities, Tripuris, Bodos and Ahoms and Christian Nagas and Mizos, besides Sikhs and Kashmiri Muslims. Religion does not play any major role in such “encounter killings.” Very often the State also connives with the Khaki and OG and claim proliferation of Khaki, Dungaree and OG is the only cure of all problems. They do not address the problems, they “take care” of certain activists fired by ideas, however misconceived those ideas might be. We Indians are afraid of facts and enjoy the fantasy that “sab thik thak hain.” This “thik hain and chalta hain” mindset of the people encourage killers like Vanjaras.

The same philosophy of empowering the KDOG and their white collar intelligence partners with the right to “dispense total justice” was stridently followed in the Punjab and Kashmir. Having been associated in intelligence operations in these areas I can assert that all “militants and terrorists” are not killed in action. A number of men in uniform and civvies managed to grab rewards and honours at the blood-value of innocent people. Sizeable numbers are innocent people who have to live in the war-zone simply because they happen to live there. The ground rules of living in a war-zone are different from rules accepted in “peace” areas. The unfortunate part of the tale is that such things do happen in Delhi, Mumbai and Ahmedabad. Our system has obliterated the boundaries of war and peace zones.

Having had a stint at Naxalbari when the historic revolutionary concept had manifested first, I can say with authority that similar “encounter killings” happened there way back in 1966-67. The same game was played by the Congress government in Kolkata and elsewhere in West Bengal when hundreds of Naxals were killed in “dark night encounters.” No one had lamented for the ideologically fired youth, who simply wanted to bring changes through means not approved by the laws of the country. A revolutionary is supposed to break the law and a law enforcer is trained to “kill within the framework of law.” He cannot be allowed by the society and the system to assume “total power” and kill at will. Similar “annihilation” attitude is manifested in major anti-Naxal drives all over the country even today.

The shameful events that occurred in Delhi and other places in 1984 and in Gujarat in 2002 had stained the hands of “secular” Congress and “communal” BJP. The same role is being played by the CPM, other political parties and the police at Nandigram and other places in the name of promoting and opposing SEZ. These are armed political clashes in which the Khaki regimen is being used to promote political turf wars. Some one like honourable Sitaram Yechuri should not speak so loudly about Vnajara and gang’s “communal” misdeeds. They have answers to be given to Indian people about political “extra-judicial killings” carried out in West Bengal and Kerala. Let them not take cover under the umbrella of “secularism” Let them examine the total disease the country’s criminal justice system suffers from. The very same political classes refuse to implement Soli Sorabji Committee recommendations and directions of the Supreme Court on Police Reforms. How these witch doctors expect to exorcise the system-by political gang wars?

Another unfortunate kind of “war” is clouding the geopolitical skies. Hundreds of “hate Internet sites” operated by the Islamist Tanzeems and Hindu Patriotic Fronts are blaring war cries. Group mails are sent both by the Islamist and Hindu protagonists to proclaim that the flags of the warring groups of 1946-47 are still fluttering on the soils of New India, which again requires branding as Hindu-Muslim-Sikh-Christian-Dalit-Tribal India. These fanatics are again at the old game of spreading hate and pushing the country to the throes of another painful division. Sohrabuddin and Kausar Bi are latest illustration of this ‘hate game’ that has percolated down to the inner core of the society.

It is perhaps high time for the right thinking people to force the governments and systemic machines to rescue India from this mindset and the emerging dark clouds of communal and societal divides. In today’s India the Khaki, Dungaree and Olive Green dresses are replacing the normal colours of life. Nearly twenty States cannot run administration without generous doses of Khaki, Dungaree and OG. They demand more and more and the Union obliges them in the name of fighting “terrorism, Naxalism and communalism.” The men in Khaki, Dungaree and OG are dominating our democratic edifices. Did we dream of this democracy? Where is my Bharat, mahan or no mahan?