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Obama showers praise on MMS, but
India’s walk will be tough
Priyaleen K
Renuka
 Washington: For
New Delhi’s elite society and apologists of the kind of democracy
that India practices, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s meeting with
US President Barack Obama, the frills of the state dinner, the
encomiums of a “wise leader” and personalized certificates of
“honesty and integrity” may have broken new ground and won some
brownie points for India, but that all of it happened just as the
Indian Parliament and polity was in turmoil over lack of justice to
Muslims who had witnessed the demolition of the Babri Mosque 17
years ago and were again watching the polity having changed little,
underlined the real kernel of the country.
Of the many
things that Manmohan Singh would have loved to wish away – the
Liberhan Commission’s report leak timing being one of them – there
is one visible, pronounced statement that his attire makes which he
cannot escape: his trademark blue turban that underlines the Sikh
identity of the Prime Minister whose community is observing the 25th
anniversary of massacre of more than 4,000 Sikhs in Delhi, many not
far away from where the PM lives.
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With India’s
rise as an ally in the US
scheme of things, New Delhi
will realize to its utter chagrin that it is now more vulnerable to
criticism on the human rights front. It will be a heavy price to pay
when
India
finds that the world has become aware of how it consistently denied
to the Sikhs the minimum semblance of justice. Justice loving
Americans will ask tough questions, and India
better be prepared. |
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It will be naive
to think for a moment that President Obama, ostensibly one of the
best informed people on the planet about the dignitary whom he is
meeting at any given time, would not be well aware of the fate of
the Sikhs in India or the fact that the Sikh community used the
summit meet as an opportunity to draw attention to its struggle for
justice.
While spewing
the expected rhetoric of Indo-US strategic partnership, PM Manmohan
Singh and Prez Obama talked about carrying forward “defining
partnership of the 21st century” and of India being a leader in Asia
and “indispensable” to the “future we want to build,” the US
president said, “One of the things I admire most about Prime
Minister Singh is that I think at his core he is a man of peace.”
It was not lost
on human rights activists and advocates across the globe and the
Sikh community in general that it would be lot better for democracy
on this planet and the idea of cooperation and harmony if PM Singh
also vows to live up to the praise and becomes “a man of justice.”
At hand to
underline this fact and remind Washington, New Delhi and the
community of nations about the criminal absence and denial of
justice for Sikhs in India were a host of organizations, forums,
individuals and campaigns, the collective voice of whom all took
away much of the sheen from what Manmohan Singh could have
considered his golden moment in history.
Amnesty
International thought it better to beseech President Obama to take
up the issue of justice to 1984 massacre victims (see separate story
on page 5) than to turn to New Delhi’s better sense. Sikhs for
Justice (SFJ) kept mounting its own effective campaign, this time in
collaboration with the Punjab-based All-India Sikh Students
Federation (AISSF).
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At hand to
underline this fact and remind Washington, New Delhi and the
community of nations about the criminal absence and denial of
justice for Sikhs in India were a host of organizations, forums,
individuals and campaigns, the collective voice of whom all took
away much of the sheen from what Manmohan Singh could have
considered his golden moment in history. |
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The SFJ, by now
a well known US-based human rights advocacy group, and AISSF wrote
jointly to President Obama, telling him how “in November 1984,
thousands of innocent human beings were killed, butchered,
slaughtered, maimed and burnt in Delhi and more than 100 cities in
18 Indian states. The victims were only Sikhs and they were targeted
and killed solely because of their religion. The killings were
instigated and led by leaders who had taken oath under the Indian
constitution to protect the lives of citizens.”
As India grows
as a more important ally in the
US
scheme of things, New Delhi will also realize to its utter chagrin
that it also makes the country more vulnerable to criticism on the
human rights front. That price will be a very heavy one for India to
pay when it will find that the world has become aware of how it
consistently denied to the Sikhs the minimum semblance of justice
even when thousands were killed in its national capital as per the
government’s own data, most burnt to death and that this massacre
was led by ruling party leaders who were later rewarded with plum
posts and even a Union Ministership in none other than Manmohan
Singh cabinet.
For New Delhi,
there is no other way than to pay this price of utter ignominy or do
justice to the minorities of the country if it indeed wants to
celebrate its success in becoming important enough to figure in
Obama’s efforts to build a partnership.
Also, the Sikh
community celebrated President Obama’s comments about “preventing
the spread of the world’s most deadly weapons, securing loose
nuclear materials from terrorists, and pursuing our shared vision of
a world without nuclear weapons,” a position which most Sikh bodies
in and outside India have already underlined. New Delhi is trying to
escape signing non-proliferation treaties but the pressure will
gradually force it to move towards the NPT, something that will hurt
the nerve centers of India’s hate spewing saffron lobby of RSS-BJP.
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So as
President Obama talked about the dedication of the two countries to
ideals of liberty, justice, equality, and the “never-ending work of
perfecting their union,” would Manmohan Singh in his mind have
wondered about the state of federalism in his own country and what a
mess New Delhi has made of the ideals of “liberty”, “justice” and
“equality”? |
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Obama’s words
also held new hope for peaceful relationship with Pakistan when he
said, “(W)e want to be encouraging of ways in which both India and
Pakistan can feel secure and focus on the development of their own
countries and their people.”
“With respect to
the relationship between the United States and Pakistan’s military,
I think that there have probably been times in the past in which we
were so single-mindedly focused just on military assistance in
Pakistan that we didn’t think more broadly about how to encourage
and develop the kinds of civil society in Pakistan that would make a
difference in the lives of people day-to-day.”
The Sikh
community hopes that it is exactly the development of such a civil
society in Pakistan that will help improve Islamabad’s relationship
with the community. Even now, the regular visits of Sikh jathas to
Pakistan and the people to people contact between East and
West Punjab
are steps in this direction which the Sikhs have supported for many
years now.
Earlier, as
Obama welcomed Singh, saying: “Yours is the first official state
visit of my presidency, it is fitting that you and India be so
recognized... We want to build a future in which India is
indispensable... India and US can strengthen the global economic
recovery,” it would not have been lost on Manmohan Singh that the
references to the “common story” of two “proud people” who
struggled to break free from an empire and declare their
independence would not have been possible but for the great saga of
sacrifices of Punjabi and particularly the Sikh people.
So as President
Obama talked about the dedication of the two countries to ideals of
liberty, justice, equality, and the “never-ending work of perfecting
their union,” would Manmohan Singh in his mind have wondered about
the state of federalism in his own country and what a mess New Delhi
has made of the ideals of “liberty”, “justice” and “equality”? Well,
your guess is as good as mine, and since the truth is so obvious,
you think a man of the eminence of President Barack Obama would not
have known?
It will help the
community of nations more and India’s urge to be seen as a
superpower more if, while talking of “addressing global challenges
of combating terrorism, making our environment cleaner, and moving
towards a world free of nuclear weapons,” it proved that it was
serious to do things that were in its power and that would prove it
worthy of the world: Give justice to the minorities. Punish the
killers of thousands of Sikhs. And assure the Muslims that those who
demolished their historic mosque in front of millions of people will
not have to wait 17 years before being named by a Commission that
was given three months to do its job, but ended up taking 17 years,
and still did not do it properly.
25
November 2009
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