The Communist government of West Bengal engaged in rape and murder to forcibly evict thousands of lower caste immigrants from Bangladesh, who got tired of living in rotten conditions in refugee camps and decided to move to an island and build a new life.

They did not want any government assistance but just wanted to be left alone to live their life. In a short time, they built a strong and vibrant community, till the Left Government led by Jyoti Basu decided to evict them. They poisoned their well, kids were murdered, women were raped and dead bodies dumped into the river. The same left government that once promised these refugees assistance if they were voted into power were the ones that destroyed them.

Why were they dealt with in such a way? Some survivors believe it was because of their caste because the upper caste Hindu refugees who have similarly occupied land elsewhere were not evicted. Some survivors think that it was because they refused to vote for the Left parties and were doing fine on their own without government help, the communist government could not stomach it.

Mamta Banerjee promised to start an investigation after she came to power, but as is common in India, it was an empty promise. Nothing has happened and nothing will.

The author collects and narrates stories from the survivors who even till date are traumatized by the memories of what happened. The perpetrators of these crimes are probably still alive, and so are many of the victims, but there will be no justice because according to the government, nothing of consequence happened…

Maybe this incident doesn’t get much attention, because it was perpetrated by a ‘left government’ and doesn’t fit the narrative of the Marxists and Communist sympathizers who have infested Indian intellectual circles and are purely interested in historical revisionism and framing every incident to fit their ideological narrative. Or maybe because it happened to a marginalized community that the rest of the country doesn’t care for…

Whatever the reasons, Blood Island is a book you must read, and a story you must tell your friends and family, till this piece of history and the year 1979 is etched into the collective consciousness of our society, just like 1984 or 2002.

About the Author : Deep Halder has been a journalist for almost twenty years, writing on issues of development at the intersection of religion, caste and politics. Currently, he is executive editor at India Today Group.

The post BLOOD ISLAND: AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE MARICHJHAPI MASSACRE — Book Review appeared first on WISER WORLD.

To say that these are cases that India forgot might be a stretch since cases like Minerva mills v Union of India, Rameshwar Prasad v Union of India are pretty well known and keep popping up in references every other day. Even the Bajaj v KPS Gill case was widely discussed by the media.

Overview of The Book

Each case takes a few pages at most and is more like a summary than a detailed description of what happened. If you’re looking for a more in-depth analysis, then this book isn’t it. But it’s a good collection of cases.

One of the things I want to talk about is the sharp contrast in the outcomes of two court cases. In the case of Tukaram v State of Maharastra (Mathura case), two policemen raped a tribal girl in the police station and the supreme court acquitted both of them and made disgusting statements that conflated absence of injury with consent. Ignoring that a person under police custody cannot even be considered to have consented, the court also ignored every principle of common sense or justice in this case.

Contrast this with the Bajaj v KPS gill case where Bajaj a senior government officer was slapped on her arse by KPS gill. She won the case all the way to the supreme court, despite the supreme court letting KPS Gill off with a small fine and overturning his 3-month imprisonment sentence given by the lower court.

It is rare for those who aren’t privileged or well off to get justice in India because the system is stacked against them. Another interesting fact is the coverage of the ‘liberal English media’ (The Hindu, Indian Express, Deccan Herald) on the Bajaj v Gill case. one would have thought they would have taken the side of Bajaj, but they were full of sympathy for KPS Gill and his ‘misfortune’ and were interested in praising his role in clearing the militancy in Punjab and felt it was the injustice that he was being punished by the courts for a different crime. Even Tavleen Singh defended Gill and tried to portray this as an over-reaction by Bajaj.

After the horrible judgement by the supreme court in the Mathura case, there were huge protests by women and massive outcry by civil society. Then the Supreme court in a face-saving measure decided to issue future guidelines by not requiring corroborating evidence (other than the statement of the victim) for such cases by making an even more Retarded justification behind those guidelines.

>>>The court reasoned its decision on the basis that Indian women were different from women in the ‘Western World’, and were unlikely to concoct an allegation of sexual assault. Women in the West could be driven by economic motives, ‘psychological neurosis’, vengeance or jealousy to fabricate allegations. An Indian woman, conscious of the ‘danger of being ostracised’, the ‘reflect[tion] on her chastity’ and other factors, was unlikely to do so.

The book also mentions cases like Naga People’s movement of Human rights v Union of India which talks about how the supreme court did not do anything to declare AFSPA unconstitutional or even dilute some of its guidelines in light of egregious human rights violations being committed. The Court also did nothing to fight for the rights of citizens against the draconian TADA act which was being misused by the police to file cases against anyone they wanted to target. In many cases, if they were angry that someone got bail, they would slap a TADA case.

We are seeing a parallel of that currently with the BJP government using NSA act to throw people like Dr Kafeel Khan or Sharjeel into prison.

One point I’d like to make is that in the case of the TADA, it was not the Supreme court that helped protect the citizen but the PV Narasimha Rao government which set up an NHRC commission. They did not do this because they cared about the citizens but because they were worried about an international backlash on the rampant custodial deaths/torture/human rights violations in India.

So sometimes it is a good thing for people around the world to raise their voice on issues anywhere and hope that those governments at least pretend to care about their image and do something. Instead of crying about outsiders interfering, maybe it is a good idea to focus on what they are saying and whether there is merit to it than focusing on who is speaking out. International pressure has been instrumental in helping the cause of human rights across the world.

About the Author: The Cases that India Forgot  

Dr. Chintan Chandrachud is an associate in Quinn Emanuel’s London office which he joined the firm in 2016.  His practice deals with matters on complex commercial litigation, tax litigation and international arbitration.

He possesses a PhD from the University of Cambridge on the subject of judicial review in India and the United Kingdom. His academic qualifications include postgraduate degrees from Oxford and Yale. He is also the author of Balanced Constitutionalism: Courts and Legislatures in India and the United Kingdom.

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Understanding of colonial origins and ethnic violence in India

The author takes the examples of Jaipur & Ajmer and Malabar & Travancore to show the contrast in ethnic violence and religious violence between both. The British did not rule all of India directly, their rule was direct in the form of British administered provinces or native ruled princely States. This was largely a result of the 1857 riots which scared the British and put their expansion on hold as they figured out a better model to control the Indian territory.

According to Verghese, local rulers were more progressive towards caste issues and friendlier to tribals as opposed to those of the opposite religion. For example, the Nizam of Hyderabad was hostile to Hindus, the ruler of Kashmir was hostile to Muslims. He gives examples of Jaipur vs Ajmer and Malabar vs Travancore. Jaipur was ruled by a Hindu king while Ajmer was a British province. He claims that Jaipur till date has a strong polarization/conflict over religion while Ajmer is relatively peaceful while it is the opposite in the case of caste-related conflict.

He makes a similar case Malabar which was ruled directly by the British while Travancore was under a Hindu ruler. He also claims the Malabar rebellion was largely based on caste-based fault lines due to the lower castes who converted to Islam fighting against the landlords who oppressed them. He goes on to cite evidence of arrests of a large number of Hindu bandits during the time where the disturbances started as well as the fact that during the early stages of the revolt, there were Hindu lower castes as well who fought against the British administration as well as the landed class who were mostly Hindu upper castes.

He explains how Hindu rulers while being antagonistic towards Muslims and Christians were pretty progressive in recognizing tribal property rights and even tried to empower them. The British who were spooked by the 1857 riots and worried about religious fanaticism, tried to secularize their administration and were more worried about religious conflict. Their actions such as giving a greater representation of Muslims in their administration helped reduce religious conflict. On the contrary their policies such as declaring criminal tribes, a census that identified and listed the castes that were considered ‘untouchables’, declaring some tribes as criminal tribes and prosecuting them created more barriers against social mobility for the lower castes and also increased the stigma against them.

The British interest in exploiting forests led them to deprive the property rights of tribals, ones which no ruler in India, including the Mughals, ever imagined or tried. Rulers in India largely recognized the rights of tribals over forests and were even given recognition/appointment in the royal courts/administration.

He uses this theory and uses statistics to calculate the chances for religious/ethnic violence in many districts and he finds that statistically his theory holds good.

While his theory holds well for the cases he lists, he also mentions Bastar which is the hub for caste-based violence/conflict. This would disprove his theory since Bastar was not administered by the British and had a ruler. he explains this conundrum that while it was true on paper, the rulers of Bastar were mere puppets and the British had a huge history of interference even replacing the rulers and changing their own rules to maintain their control. and by proxy, they implemented the same policies against the tribals as they did in British administered territory.

Personal Views on The Colonial Origins of Ethnic Violence in India

Personally, I’m not totally sold on this theory as a general explanation or an overarching theory of ethnic conflict in India. But for the cases he specifically mentions, it does seem that he might have a point. Since there are many complex variables that are hard to quantify such as the amount of British interference in the administration of princely states/territories (almost none in the case of Travancore versus high in the case of Bastar), it would seem that it would be hasty to use statistics to jump to a conclusion since these variables cannot be properly quantified.

Also, some of his data is based on surveys of various govt officials, academics and maybe that’s an acceptable methodology to gauge sentiments, I think there is no substitute for hard empirical data since it is prone to biases. It was an interesting read for sure, but this theory doesn’t seem watertight.

Also while he states that the data shows a lesser amount of religious conflict today in the Malabar region than compared to Travancore. when I asked a bunch of people who reside in Kerala, all of them felt the opposite(i understand that’s not a reliable indicator) but some of the most violent riots like the Marad massacre seem to have occurred in the Malabar region.

Also personally I think that sometimes you can’t just use the number of incidents of religious conflict as a proxy for how strong the religious conflict animosity in an area is. one big large scale riot that is extremely violent is not the same as 10 smaller ones with an equivalent injury/kill count spread over a few years. Also, his data doesn’t capture the number of people who participate in a riot, which can also be a good indicator. If 5000 people take to the streets it definitely means a lot more than smaller groups causing equivalent damage to life and property.

About the author

Ajay Verghese is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Riverside. Verghese was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University from 2012 to 2013.

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This book talks about the history of the Public Interest Litigation and how it evolved to the current form. No other country has anything similar to the PIL and clueless western commentators who praise the PIL are often referenced by Indian judges as an endorsement and take great pride in that.

Public Interest Litigation — A Dangerous Farce

Courts today are involved in everything from whether car windows should be tinted or how wide the roads should be, by using the PIL as an excuse to play God and take over the domain of the legislature and the executive. PILs have contrary to public perceptions been extremely anti-poor. The courts have used PILs as a way to demolish slums at a rate that even Indira Gandhi during the emergency wasn’t able to. Tribals were displaced. Industries were shut and even the government wasn’t able to do anything about it. They had to obey the court.

The courts don’t even need a petitioner anymore. They just take Suo Motu cognizance of random things and start ordering the government. There is no role for the petitioner in public interest litigation. The court appoints an amicus (who tends to be a prominent lawyer chosen by the court, usually people like Harish salve etc). And once appointed it becomes more like a private discussion between the amicus and the court. There are no standards of evidence. Courts literally operate on hearsay and treat those as facts.

Most of the time the petitioners get stiffed, parties who are affected by the judgement are not given a chance to be heard or made a party to the proceedings. This is the definition of injustice and runs contrary to all accepted principles of law and jurisprudence.

About the Author

Prof. (Dr.) Bhuwania did his B.A., LL.B. (Hons) at the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru and an LL.M. from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, before completing his Ph.D. at Columbia University, New York. He has previously held teaching positions at South Asian University and Ambedkar University Delhi. 

He has also held various visiting positions, including at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS) in the University of Göttingen, Centre for the Study of Law and Governance (CSLG) in Jawaharlal Nehru University as well as at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in New Delhi. 

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