A former Director General of Border Security Force, DGP, UP and Assam, Prakash Singh has written a piece in Indian Express saying that Kathua and Unnao incidents of rape were not as much of darkest hour since Independence as claimed by 49 prominent retired bureaucrats, which include N.C. Saxena, E.A.S. Sarma, Harsh Mander, Wajahat Habibullah and Aruna Roy, in a protest letter written to the Prime Minister. Prakash Singh has suggested in the end that rather than playing into hands of forces out to tarnish the image of India the distinguished civil servants should have asked for systemic changes in the criminal justice system. If he thinks that the incidents of Kathua and Unnao were bad enough by writing this article he is conveying a totally opposite message. His article seems to be playing down the incidents.
They were not mere rape incidents. They were incidents in which the government was taking the side of accused. Even that is not something new. In a number of incidents the political parties in power have for their vested interests sided with the culprits. But what is most appalling about the Kathua incident is that in a rally in support of accused Special Police Officer Deepak Khajuria of rape and murder 8 years old nomad girl Asiya, tricolour was used by right wing Hindutva group and Bhartiya Janata Party office bearers who participated in it. Such things have never occured before in this country. The politics of nationalism is being used either to conduct crimes or to defend criminals.
Consider the kind of things which have started taking place with the rise of BJP as political power and specially since it ascendancy to seat of power in Delhi.
Narendra Dhabolkar was shot dead on 20 August 2013, Govind Pansare was fatally attacked on 16 February, 2015, Professor M.M. Kalburgi shot dead on 30 August, 2015 in Dharwad, Karnataka and Gauri Lankesh too was shot dead point blank on 5 September, 2017 in Bengaluru for holding views which were critical of the right wing thinking.
On 28 September, 2015 a mob killed Mohammad Akhlaq near Dadri by lynching on the suspicion of having slaughtered a cow and consumed its beef. There is a law in Uttar Pradesh to deal with cow slaughter.
On 18 March, 2016 another mob calling themselves gau rakshaks lynched 32 years old Mazloom Ansari and 12 years old Imtiaz in Latehar district of Jharkhand and hanged them to death by a tree when they were walking 8 oxen to a cattle fair.
On 11 July 2016 four dalit youth who traditionally used to skin dead cows were accused of cow slaughter and beaten in public by gau rakshaks in Una, Gujarat, an incident which created national uproar.
On 1 April, 2017 Pehlu Khan was returning from Jaipur after purchasing cows and calves and heading towards his village Nuh in Haryana when he was stopped by a cow vigilante group and lynched to death even though he had all proper documents from Jaipur Municipal Corporation to show that the cattle was meant for dairy. Sadhvi Kamal didi praised the muderer gau rakshaks and equated them to Bhagat Singh and Chandrashekhar Azad.
On 20 April 2017 BJP Member of Parliament Raghav Lakhapal Sharma from Saharanpur, U.P., tried to forcibly take out a rally to mark the birth anniversary of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar through a Muslim locality of Sadak Dudhali village. Ambedkar’s birth anniversary is 14 April and why did he insist on taking out a rally through a Muslim locality? When the police denied him permission the MP attacked the residence of Senior Superintendent of Police with his supporters. Two FIRs have been registered against him that day.
On5 May, 2017, members of Thakur community forcibly wanted to take out a Maharana Pratap Jayanti procession through a Dalit bast in Shabbirpur village of Saharanpur. There were clashes at Sant Ravidas temple in which a youth Sumit Singh died due to asphyxiation after he tried to burn the idol of Sant Ravidas. Thakurs took revenge and burned 55 Dalit houses.
District Magistrate of Bareilly, Raghvendra Vikram Singh publicly raised the question as to why Hindutva groups forcibly enter Muslim dominated areas, raise anti-Pakistan slogans and create ruckus, when violence erupted in Kasganj on Republic Day, 2018? One person died that day in the ensuing violence.
Akhila Ashokan converted to Islam, adopted a name Hadiya, and married Shefin Jehan. In May 2017 High Court of Kerala annulled the marriage based on a report of National Investigation Agency stating that she was a victim of indoctrination and psychological kidnapping. In March 2018 Supreme Court restored her marriage. NIA has been supposedly established to combat terror in India.
India is not short of problems from farmers’ suicides to malnourishment of children that we needed these new types of problems to be thrust upon the country. It is a series of abovemention incidents, which by no means in complete, that has vitiated the atmosphere of the country in which Dalits, Muslims and dissidents of right wing ideology have been the main targets which has jeopardised the Constitutional values against which 49 former bureaucrats have expressed concern. The BJP government by not taking action against trouble makers has sent out a message that such incidents promote its political agenda of polaritsation of the society and hence the votes.
Prakash Singh should have stood up against this usurpation of our Constitutional values and should have completed the half century of former bureaucrats who have spoken out rather than appearing to take the side of forces which he himself believes to be divisive.
He calls Babri Masjid a dilapidated mosque and regrets that there was no protest over damage to 208 temples in J&K. The first serial bomb blast incident in Mumbai took place in reaction to the Babri Masjid demolition. Even though it might have been a dilapidated structure but it was responsible to triggering a series of terrorist incidents in India. It is a pity that a person of his standing makes this kind of comparision. It is people like him holding responsible positions in government because of whom incidents described in the series above are allowed to take place and culprtits are not restrained. We hope that he’ll review his position.
Email: ashaashram@yahoo.com
