PM Narendra Modi has now made it clear: Human Rights come much after people’s basic needs. This is a false chronology, fraught with many dangers. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) is now led by a man who publicly hails Amit Shah’s approach to Kashmir and finds a messiah in Modi. As the regime targets human rights activists and accuses them of bringing a bad name to the country, here is a debate that unpacks all related dimensions, including the selective silence of activists themselves. Moderated by Senior Journalist SP Singh, “Daleel with SP Singh” remains a voice of sanity amid much cacophony that passes off as debate. -Editor, WSN.

FOR INEXPLICABLE REASONS, THE ENTIRE BROAD SPECTRUM OF PUNJAB POLITICS has not even squeaked when Prime Minister Narendra Modi formulated a hugely problematic sequencing, relegating human rights chatter much below the more urgent issues of roti, kapda, makaan, gas connection and toilets.

Speaking at the 28th Foundation Day of India’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Modi made it clear that any stress on human rights chatter matters only once the basic needs are fulfilled, thus making the two disparate and divisible, a chronology fraught with danger.

Also, he slammed India’s human rights defenders, accusing them of seeing “human rights violations in certain incidents but not in other similar incidents” and declared that such a “selective” human rights lens “tarnishes the nation’s image”.

“Narendra Modi is the internationally acclaimed visionary who can think globally and act locally”.

Justice Arun Mishra, Chairperson National Human Rights Commission, former Justice Supreme Court of India

Sitting next to the PM, the incumbent chairman of the NHRC, former Supreme Court judge Arun Mishra, hailed Modi as a “versatile genius” and an “internationally acclaimed visionary who can think globally and act locally”.

Also, the former SC judge left no one in doubt about his political leanings when he declared from the dais, in the presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah, that “It is due to you (Shah) that a new era has now begun in Jammu and Kashmir.”

“It is due to you (Amit Shah-Home Minister) that a new era has now begun in Jammu and Kashmir.”

Justice Arun Mishra, Chairperson National Human Rights Commission, former Justice Supreme Court of India

“Some people characterise human rights from their own perspective these days. They see human rights violations in some cases but not in other similar cases. We have to be wary of such people,” Modi said.

This was a clear and cogent move to redefine the very turf of human rights, talking up certain basic needs as human rights and running down other concerns for which human rights activists have been castigating the regime.

Shockingly, and yet, excuse my oxymoronic formulation, unsurprisingly, the prime minister’s latest twisted chronology did not stir any debate in Punjab, a state that had witnessed widespread violations of human rights over decades.

The only serious debate that happened at this platform “Daleel” were senior journalist SP Singh thought it prudent to underline the issue, explore and unpack the regime’s true nature, and discuss the prime ministerial fulminations against human rights activists to gauge their true intent.

As advocate and grass-roots activist Rajeev Godara pointed out in the debate, there is selectivity on all sides but the country needs to take serious notice when the prime minister or the NHRC chairman pushes a certain agenda to the exclusion of all else.

As Kavita Krishnan, an activist from the deep red cadres of CPI-ML Liberation pointed out in response to statements by Modi and Mishra, India’s human rights defenders have held every shade of government responsible and accountable for human rights violations while it is Modi himself who is guilty of the “selective” gaze. “He tweets his concern for a cricketer’s thumb injury but is silent when the SUV belonging to the son of his deputy home minister mows down protesting farmers, or a Muslim man is shot by police in BJP-ruled Assam, and his body desecrated by an embedded photographer,” Krishnan wrote in the Indian Express.

“He tweets his concern for a cricketer’s thumb injury but is silent when the SUV belonging to the son of his deputy home minister mows down protesting farmers, or a Muslim man is shot by police in BJP-ruled Assam, and his body desecrated by an embedded photographer,”

Kavita Krishnan, activist and Politburo member -CPI(ML)

Considering the fact that the NHRC is India’s statutory human rights body, its chief kowtowing in such an obsequious manner to the powers that be hardly assures anyone of an objective hearing, much less a sympathetic consideration. If we have such a mai-baap state, why do we need an NHRC at all?

Going by the speeches at the Foundation Day of the NHRC, “the watchdog could easily be mistaken for a loyal lapdog of the institutions it is supposed to monitor.”

Advocate Arjun Sheoran, National Organising Secretary of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), pointed out how the Modi-Mishra narrative was in continuation of the problematic equivocation between Rights and Duties indulged in by previous regimes. “Dictators and strongmen around the world peddle the same inanity to people, asking them to concern themselves with issues of bread and butter, and not bother about why the regime is suppressing dissent,” he said.

Going by the speeches at the Foundation Day of the NHRC, “the watchdog could easily be mistaken for a loyal lapdog of the institutions it is supposed to monitor.”

Godara, in fact, pointed out how even the human rights activists have remained selective at times, and pointed out recent incidents at Lakhimpur Kheri and at the Singhu Border where a man was hacked in death and his body strung up on the barricades at the outskirts of the national capital – only for the ensuing selectivity to expose the chinks in our understanding of the idea of human rights.

Please watch the debate and let us have your feedback because we need to further explore these selective silences, including the silence of the same human rights activists who cry hoarse, and justly, about Sudha Bharadwaj, Safoora Zargar, Umar Khalid, Varavara Rao, Surendra Gadling, Sudhir Dhawale, Shoma Sen, Rona Wilson, Mahesh Raut, Arun Ferreira, Gautam Navlakha, Anand Teltumbde et al, but remain deafeningly silent about Sikh youth caught in the UAPA net or other false pretexts.

While Punjab’s politicians simply let the row pass them by, leading newspapers, including the Indian Express, the Hindustan Times, the Punjabi Tribune did comment editorially. Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram and columnist Tavleen Singh were prominent among those who rose up to be counted.

Please watch the debate and let us have your feedback because we need to further explore these selective silences, including the silence of the same human rights activists who cry hoarse, and justly, about Sudha Bharadwaj, Safoora Zargar, Umar Khalid, Varavara Rao, Surendra Gadling, Sudhir Dhawale, Shoma Sen, Rona Wilson, Mahesh Raut, Arun Ferreira, Gautam Navlakha, Anand Teltumbde et al, but remain deafeningly silent about Sikh youth caught in the UAPA net or other false pretexts.

Punjab has witnessed a long silence by human rights activists, and in some cases, even their collaboration with the state — their selectivity mirroring PM Modi’s declarations in the past — “No Hindu can ever be a terrorist”. What does the Left’s silence over the years say: “No Sikh could ever not be a terrorist?”

Now that the PM has set the ball rolling, let us debate who was being selective, and who continues to be so.