All over the country, institutions teaching human rights are sprouting up. Mumbai is no exception. Men and women join these in large numbers because this is a new subject and leads to animated and fashionable discussions. Heck, no one can ignore young men and women who appear dedicated to the welfare of humanity, by flaunting their affiliation to human rights.
Yet, human rights in India is often viewed from unusual angles. Not only in India, but in most other developing nations, the basic belief is that the rich, developed Western nations like the U.S. can never be guilty of human rights violations. Even the Indian media often reported the shooting and killing of innocent, unarmed civilians including school boys by the racist, white local police in the southern U.S. states like Louisiana, South and North Carolina or Missouri. But the western media seldom bothered. Obviously, human rights awareness does not seem to exist in these regions.
But the most despairing human rights violations take place in the Middle East, and perpetrated by Israel. Recently, 3000 Palestinian civilians were shot down and bombed by Israeli militia for protesting against Zionist violence and illegal encroachments. Now the Arab-Israeli dispute, for over 40 years has witnessed the worst kind of human rights violations by the Israeli forces, armed to the teeth by the U.S. Going against world opinion and supported only by Big Brother U.S., the Israeli state has killed, starved, and prevented even water supplies to areas like the Gaza strip, but the conscience of the world remained silent. It is a fact that organisations like the HAMAS had targeted civilian targets in Israel, but the reprisals from Israel have been savage. While we were quick to raise human rights issues over ‘Arab and Islamic terrorism’, not much is heard about Israeli terrorism.
India, of late has joined the Israeli bandwagon. There was a time when ‘independent’ India, which did follow a really independent foreign policy, supported Arabs and denounced the treacherous attacks from Israel. The Arab world appreciated the stand taken by India. The lure of the new economic policy, tilted our foreign policy towards the fat, bloated western nations, and the media chose to highlight that. The injustices, human agony, and the systematic torture of Palestinians were lost on the Indian audiences. Reporting from these regions was meagre because for decades, these human tragedies were covered by ultra right wing Jewish lobbies in the US, whose idea of fairness was, yet another attack on the Arab regions. Indian foreign policy, frightened by the increasing attacks by Islamic terrorism felt that nations like her would be protected only by the U.S. strength. If Israel was willing to provide arms, why not accept them and forget the atrocities inflicted on the Arabs.
Former Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao moved closer to Israel, and entered into an arms deals with them, and the rightwing Modi government seems to gleefully follow such a policy. Our Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who is incapable of thinking beyond his beloved U.P., recently toured Israel, and one saw his photographs dancing with the female members of the Israeli armed forces. Singh looked embarrassed because it is the traditional belief in U.P. that women should only cook and take care of the children. The Indian leader must have sighed in relief on returning home, and am sure, has taken a bath in pure gangajal (water of the Ganges river).
As for human rights, such gangajal it is hoped, will wipe away all our sins including our current wrong approach to human rights.
[/column][column size=”4/5″]
V. Gangadhar
The writer is a well-known satirist.[/column]