The writer holds an MBBS (Calcutta) and a PhD (Harvard University) and is currently a postdoctoral scholar at MIT
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) of India has found that Ishrat Jahan, the 19-year-old woman killed in an “encounter” in 2004, was not a terrorist. It also found the involvement of senior officers of the Gujarat police and the Intelligence Bureau (IB). Rest assured, no other case of “encounter” involving the IB and the Gujarat police will be heard of in the near future. Everyone learns from past mistakes; institutions learn even faster to cover up tracks. However, the expose or “investigation” of the CBI has more to do with a breach of trust — that sacred pact of looking the other way.
But is there a lesson that Ishrat Jahan is teaching us? Staying clear of trouble is what Ishrat had done all her life. That did not prove quite useful. I maniacally walk in straight lines — only son, propertied family, the curly-haired dreamer and old parents — lots to lose that I deeply love. Fear, as a method of silencing, is as old as inhumanity. And I am not immune to fear. But does walking straight help? Does it ensure safety — of life and property, as they say? If Ishrat Jahan wasn’t safe, who is? There were the words — Pakistan, terrorism — words that do not need proof for culpability. Though I inhabit that cool vantage on an iceberg, Ishrat’s murder is a rare peek into that world in the submerged part of the iceberg — icy and ruthless. And what I see scares the hell out of me.
Those involved in Ishrat Jahan’s murder are not small fry. They include higher-ups entrusted with enforcing the law. Why are those, who are more likely to murder and torture than ordinary citizens, so over-represented among the ranks of certain state-funded institutions? Why are they almost always “protectors of law”? What is this “law” that they protect? What are its contours? Is this law to be found in the umbra and penumbra of the constitutional guarantee to life?
In an interview aired by the BBC, journalist Andrew Marr asked Noam Chomsky — during an exchange on Chomsky’s views on media distortion of truth — how could Chomsky know for sure that he, a journalist, was self-censoring? Chomsky replied, “I don’t say you’re self-censoring. I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying; but what I’m saying is, if you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.” And it is the production of this believer-citizen that is essential for “encounter” murders to go unlamented, for very few enjoy the spoils of being a cynical insider. The insiders may come in different colours, shapes, sizes, tongues and even faiths, but unless they shared contempt for habeas corpus and veneration for this “other” rule-book, they would not be sitting where they are sitting.
Similar to what Michael Moore said, I have never been slapped by a Pakistani Army man for walking too briskly on Srinagar streets, never been murdered in broad daylight in the streets of Imphal, Manipur, by special forces from Pakistan, never been tortured for days together in jails by the Sindh police. But there is no gloating to be done here by my Pakistani readers either. For Ishrat Jahan of Gujarat shares just too many things with Sarfaraz Shah, gunned down in Karachi in broad daylight by the Pakistan Rangers. Sarfaraz’s pleadings, the utter helplessness in front of the law-enforcement agencies, that moment when the gun fires, that look on the face of Sarfaraz a moment before he is shot — a look that shouts out “Please” in a way that would make the Himalayas crumble if the gods were as benevolent as they are said to be — these are all too familiar on the other side of the Radcliffe.
Every time we ignore an extra-judicial murder, it brings us that much closer to being a cold reptile. We have a stake in this. “The freedom of others extends mine infinitely,” said a famous graffiti from Paris, 1968. And when this “other” is the one where all our collective prejudices and hate converge, ensuring that “other’s” freedom has ripples everywhere. The flood of empathy needs such ripples now. We owe it to us and to the Ishrat Jahans and the Sarfaraz Shahs of the subcontinent.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 9th, 2013.
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COMMENTS (27)
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@Np: I have not condoned PVN Rao, the Brahmin Pilate who rubbed his hands with glee while Hindutvas broke the Babri mosque, for anything, nor Rajiv on whose watch Sikhs were massacred. Rao or whoever ruled Maharashtra were wrong & so are the rest involved in killing people & breaking the law that they had sworn to uphold.
You question my "patriotism" which I have never claimed. I have no patience with evaporative sentiments encased in hollow words. Besides, certificates or censures from some anonymous entity of shady antecedents are worthless.
Ummah & Ishrat & all! Wow! Do you even know what Ummah, if it's there at all, is all about? Well, if it satisfies you lemme say Ishrat & her guilt/innocence are not even the issue. You & your ilk who support extra-Judicial killing of Muslims are the issue. You are the one that is unpatriotic enough to demand breaking of Constitutional Law. I am not mourning Ishrat who though dead appears to be a living soul. I mourn your ilk who though living appear to be with soul quite dead.
ET mods - pls. Allow response to a comment directed at me
@Rakib: your sophstry cannot change 2 facts - without political cover given to Julio ribeiro by Narsimharao Rao, you would be calling Punjab Khalistan today. No one accuses Narsimharao Rao of ordering those encounters and rightly so. - without encounters to deal with extortions and gang wars that plagued Mumbai in the 90s, it too would have become Karachi. http://tribune.com.pk/story/575955/lyari-exodus-escaping-violence-but-not-misery/
It takes a true nationalistic leader to give political cover to police to take firm action against terrorism instead of playing politics and throwing police officers to the wolves to save their own skin. I salute Narsimharao Rao and Modi.
Calling Ishrat Jahan innocent despite all evidence to the contrary shows that our loyalty to the ummah transcends your patriotism. I am not the first one o point this out of course but with every post of yours you make it more and more clear.
@np: What sophisticated barbarism! Eye for an eye even before the eye is eyed, let alone gouged These are the bright hopes of tomorrow that justify a blatant crime with sophistry! It is a chilling thought that the State-murder actually gets support- be it in Punjab, Maharashtra or Gujarat! Then whatever the Bodyguard Cops did to Indira Gandhi was justified!? If it is true that the murder of Ishrat took place without instructions from Home Minister Modi then what makes you think that a trigger-happy Cop is capable of such judicious wisdom that he can kill a suspect without trial? Today it is Ishrat & some are happy a Muslim is murdered, tomorrow it will be some other innocent non-Muslim the Cop doesn't like the face of & will you applaud still?. Something has gone terribly wrong with our education & ethics. Instead of demanding reforms & that the Cops be more efficient, the evidence be gathered diligently & prosecution pursue the case relentlessly you are fine with killing the suspect! Anyway, I suggest don't boast ever again, ye Patriotic hypocritical lot, that India follows civilised law & suspects are given a fair trial & due process is observed. Truth is you are as bad or far worse than Pakistanis. At least the Pakistanis do not pontificate.
@Salman: (.... a suicide bomber who in the prevailing times would almost certainly have escaped justice due to the Maharashtra government policy of appeasing minorities and killed who knows how many more....).
"Appeasing Minorities"! Wow!! Such a sweetly typical Hindutva phrase! Quite a slip, right? Role-playing is an art that not all can master. So, how many times you think a suicide-bomber would have suicide bombed & then escaped justice & then again suicide bombed? Aren't you sounding ridiculous? You claim to be patriotic by virtue of supporting this murder. I have not & will never question a trait called "patriotism" of one whose screen-name sounds Muslim/Christian/Jewish. I understand the compulsions of such lot to keep asserting "patriotism" but IMO, an average Indian Muslim's opinion, though not his vote, is quite inconsequential outside Bollywood. Don't worry too much about my adding anything worse to an Islamophobe; I assure you Modi never gets influenced by me.
@Salman: David HEadley provided this information to FBI .LeT itself has claimed her to be their own. To call her innocent is a joke.
I am impressed by the high esteem in which you hold David Headley & LeT & their Word. With clinching evidence from such worthies of immaculate probity all that Gujarat Govt had to do was to prosecute her in a "fast-track" court of law where every spoken word of Headley the gentleman would have been taken at face value without corroborative evidence, & got her punished. Instead, they killed her illegally, criminally. I have heard of accused destroying evidence before it could be paraded; this is a case of police destroying the accused & then parading the evidence! Simple fact is in couple of fake encounters innocent Muslim ladies like Kausar Bi & Ishrat Jahan who were allegedly planning to murder (?) the publicity hungry CM, have been murdered.
ET Mods - please allow response to someone who wrote to me. @sahil: In India, we are Indians first. Your innuendo that I am misrepresenting my identity s not welcome
@salman, or sanjeev!
@Average Indian: That is because the Guj. CM as all evidence points out was not involved in this at all. Case in point is the fact that the witnesses against IPS Officer D. G. Vanzara have been protected by the Guj. govt. Also as you point out, it makes no strategic sense. . I do not condone this incident and that is why I refrained from commenting. But what some of the other posters say is also true of back then. That was the time when there were "encounter specialists", such as Daya Nayak of Mumbai Police, because the police themselves felt the anti terror laws were lax. There was a sense then that the accused would escape the arms of the law as can also be seen from the fact that a bunch of politicians are still rooting for Ishrat and calling her innocent. The Congress also is mum on the terrorism angle whereas there is overwhelming proof that Ishrat was in fact a suicide bomber. . I hope the day comes soon when there are no encounters, CBI becomes an institution under the constitution and those guilty of terrorism are given the harshest treatment under our legal system.
For the bleeding hearts from across the border in Pakistan, I have this to say:
1) Indian Muslims are quite capable of taking care of themselves and do not need help from Pakistanis.If Pakistanis can take care of Shias and Ahmadis that will be good enough.
2) We have said in the past and reiterate that terrorism has nothing to do with religion. We cannot make that claim and at the same time get all worked up the moment the state deals with a Muslim terrorist. In case you are not aware 40 Muslims were amon those that died on 26/11
It is sad to see many people supporting Fascist actions of Guj CM/govt.
It is wrong in any country to kill somebody in coldblood who is in custody. ...even if they are terrorists from enemy countries.
and the point the author is making is that dont see this as Hindu vs Muslim. Just put yourself in Ishrat's shoes and imagine for a sec that you are innocent. Then what right does IB have to judge you as a terrorist and what rights do the police have to execute you all in cold-blood without any explanation and accountability.
I think what happened is most likely an entrapment by IB, which means it is not legally valid to convict based on entrapment, that is why Guj Police & IB finished of the victims, because they have no case if the 4 victims were ever produced in court
I am completely against extra judicial killings, and I am all for same set of rules for all citizens. In case Ishrat was innocent then guilty must be punished. However at this time, I dont know what the truth is in this case. And I am waiting for it to come out but even after seeing all the above arguments, purely from a strategic point I cant see what will an aspiring Prime Minisiter candidate gain by ordering the killing of 19 year old innocent Mumbai student in Ahmadabad. The risk is so high (if the truth gets out then he looses his PM ship for which he has worked all his life) and benefit (assuming there is any benefit of perpetrating a religious stereotype) is so marginal even in the most amenable circumstances. Compared that to an extra judicial killing by an unknown rangers who in his own mind is doing instant justice. I mean both these cases look apple and oranges to me and killing of Ishrat makes no sense to me from a tactical point.
One more thing for the bleeding heats from across the border. We Indian Muslims are well capable of defending ourselves. On the one hand if we say terror has no religion - a terrorist is a terrorist and on the other hand as soon as a Muslim terrorist is involved, we start to make noises, we would be supporting Islamophobia nothing else.
Ishrat and 4 others were part of a failed operation in 2005. If it had succeeded we would have had another 26/11 - which in case Pakistanis do not know also killed 40 Muslims.
SO please leave us be. We don't want terror attacks - whoever does it.
@Stranger: "@Average Indian I am happy at your remarks. Being an Indian , you did not support the killing of that innocent girl. There is no proof that she is a terrorist."
David HEadley provided this information to FBI .LeT itself has claimed her to be their own. To call her innocent is a joke.
For all indians, the purpose was to perpetrate muslim terrorist image. Like reyaz said, could have been anyone else. Ishrat was not chosen for being her, just a young muslim, she was a pawn in a far bigger game. Before you start off on incidents of radicalized Muslims, I do not deny cases where this has indeed been true and nor do i deny that some of my fellow Muslims shame and disgust me and insult our religion (to a level tantamount to, dare i say it, blasphemy) but in ishrat's case, please accept facts.
@Average Indian I am happy at your remarks. Being an Indian , you did not support the killing of that innocent girl. There is no proof that she is a terrorist. Many so called ' patriotic' Indians are today supporting her killing .
Can't believe how gleefully indians are justifying extra-judicial killing of a teenaged girl whose only crime was that she followed Islam. There is no chance of her family getting justice in that country - they should take asylum here and then seek justice in ICJ.
indians - your bigotry and congenital hatred is sickening - worse than Nazis.
@Average Indian:
He needs some one to be killed in encounter to uplift his name. Creating media report that Modi is on target will uplift his Image. Just like actor and actress in bollywood create scandles to be in media. It was Ishrat bad luck that she is picked up for a larger conspiracy. It could have been any one to make a big news for Modi.
@Average Indian: In a universe where the 19 year old would have killed dozens of 19 year old kids. In a universe where the Maharashtra police would not have prosecuted her and made her accountable due to vote bank politics, It is not in doubt that she was an LeT member.
The encounter may or may not be fake but there is no proof that Ishrat was innocent. She was named by Headley in the interrogation done by FBI. One can cook up stories about Modi administration coming down on Gujrati muslims but why would a foreign agency like FBI circulate false information? You may have differences on how people with terror links should be handled, but don't paint an adult with outright terror links as an innocent. I for one may believe that it is not a bad option to kill such people in cold blood because terrorism cannot be handled with kid gloves unless ofcourse you want to end up like Pakistan. http://ibnlive.in.com/news/fbi-says-ishrat-jahan-may-be-a-suicide-bomber-claims-ib-letter/404338-37-64.html
Mr.Writer with all his big degrees has surely not faced the harsh truth of life and does not realise that terrorisim is much nearer to us than we think. Its these agencies and their legal and some not so legal steps keep us safe from that next bomb going off. But then its easy to sit in cool MIT office in USA and be philosophical about it. Terrorism will not be defeated by a war of words, which seems to be the weapon of choice here.
I dont understand one thing. Can someone please tell me. Assuming that the encounter was fake and all the four people were killed in cold blood. What I dont understand is that why will the Chief Minister of Gujrat who is aspiring to be the Prime Minster of India order killing of a nineteen year old college student from Mumbai. I dont understand in what universe is 19 year old student from Mumbai important to him so that he gets her killed.Can someone please enlighten.
The media is creating a false image of the entire event. This is the most shameful abuse of journalist power and degrades the dignity of a powerful tool. This weakens efforts to curb terrorism for the sake of politics and paid media reporting.
LeT claimed Ishraat Jahan worked for LeT.
The report is based on half-truths and lies. Ishraat Jahan , as per the same government reports that the author quotes, was working with 3 other LeT terrorists in India, including 2 pakistani nationals, who too died in the staged encounter. Its true that the evidence suggests that the encounter involving the LeT militants was staged but the report does not establish any innocence of Ishrat Jehan.