Casual bigotry used to break Indian state’s promise

India’s attorney general, Mukul Rohatgi, who is also the government’s chief legal adviser, asked why there is “so much noise” over Indian soldiers tying a man in Indian-occupied Kashmir to the front of a military jeep as a “human shield” against protesters throwing stones at the vehicle.

“The recent report about a stone pelter tied to an army vehicle, helped contain stone pelters and saved the poll officials. Why so much noise?” Rohatgi asked an Indian news channel, adding, “Every day people are dying. It’s a surcharged atmosphere. The army is dealing with terrorists not with protesters, so they will have to be dealt with...everyone should look at the army with pride, they are doing a great job. Sitting in AC rooms, you can’t criticise the army. Please put yourself in the army’s position.”

I want to examine his words from a legal point of view. As citizens we arrive at a contract with our government and give it a monopoly over violence. The term ‘monopoly’ coined by the German sociologist Max Weber, who studied India and its religions, means the state is the only legitimate possessor of the power to physically harm someone.

This is why crimes such as murder and rape are crimes against the state. Hence, the state prosecutes them. They cannot be negotiated in a settlement out of court. The state can demonstrate its willingness to practise legal violence through such crimes, like executing citizens, but it promises to always do so according to law. All elected officials take an oath of office by which they solemnly swear not to break the Constitution. The state, abided by the promise, then proceeds to use violence where it sees fit through its agents.

In the subcontinent, this comes frequently through crowd control. Indians, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis are familiar with the term ‘lathi charge’. Our governments are convinced that the citizenry is often up to no good and must be controlled by force. It is not unusual for our states to open fire on their citizens.

One of the turning points of the Vietnam War came in 1970, when students at a university in Ohio were fired at by the police, killing four. This became a landmark event because it shocked Americans that their government would kill its own citizens. Popular folk group Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young wrote a song on the event.

In our part of the world, of course, the government shooting dead its citizens is common. For example, consider this news report from October, 2016: “Four people were left dead and as many as 40 were injured after the police opened fire on a protest this morning, according to sources in the Chirudih village, near Hazaribagh in Jharkhand. Residents have been protesting the acquisition of land by the National Thermal Power Corporation for their coal mines. “

Such cases are frequent in India. If it had been a terrorist attack on rich urban Indians, readers may have seen it in the newspaper or on television but the state killing citizens, who were protesting against the seizure of their land, is not a big issue.

Most of the people the Indian security forces kill are their own citizens. In India the killings are carried by the military and paramilitary in the Northeast, Jammu and Kashmir and the coal-rich belts populated by Adivasis, a word that means original settlers or indigenous people.

To return to Rohatgi, what he is essentially saying is two things. Firstly, all protesters, including stone throwers, are terrorists. Secondly, because they are terrorists, it is fine for the army to break the law when dealing with them. The army not only broke the law but also the Indian government’s commitments to its own citizens, and showed the world that it would not conduct itself in a particular way.

This violation, according to the government’s legal adviser, is right and Indians who have air conditioners are not allowed to say anything. Presumably he does not use an AC and so is authorised to say whatever he wants. I am amazed this buffoon has been made the attorney general. He has not paid heed to what the Jammu and Kashmir government, of which the BJP is part, and retired generals have said about it. They said it is an awful thing that will backfire on us — and they are right.

The Indian state breaks its promises with its citizens regularly, it is not new. What is new is that the casual bigotry and half-literate arguments of the drawing room are being peddled as reasons the promise is being broken. We are in a dark and dangerous period. Those of us who care for the Indian Constitution are worried.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 23^rd, 2017.

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