This year, we celebrate Human Rights Day with India on its knees. For the last many years and decades, we have been pushed to the wall. Every International Human Rights Day heretofore has been a day of prayer and hope -a hope that India will respect its commitments to honour the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and a prayer to the international community seeking its intervention in areas of violence by the Indian state -from Punjab to Kashmir to the North-east.

THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY HAS FINALLY COME OUT OF ITS COCOON admonish India and its wayward ways. Prime Ministers, legislators, international media et al have put India to so much shame that even the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has run out of the text for démarches.

In the last two weeks, India has not only violated the UN Declaration of Human Rights but also the 2018 UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants, to which India is also a signatory. Though the spokesperson of the United Nations secretary-general has spoken, it was in the fitness of things that the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, should have made an unequivocal statement today asking India to stop repression on farmers seeking their rights. Even the chairperson of the UN Human Rights Committee’s intervention is awaited.

Today, on 10 December 2020, the whole of Punjab, the whole transnational Sikh community across the world, the conscientious people of India are not just observing the World Human Rights Day in a symbolic manner, but are virtually celebrating it -celebrating with a taste of victory to have brought the Indian state on its knees. The unity of thought, intention and purpose demonstrated on the streets outside Delhi has smashed the pride of the ruling troika of the political brigade, the corporate mafia and a pliant media.

The unity of thought, intention and purpose demonstrated on the streets outside Delhi has smashed the pride of the ruling troika of the political brigade, the corporate mafia and a pliant media.

Today’s Human Rights Day is historic in Punjab and India. In one voice, Punjab is today reiterating its commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The images of camaraderie, friendship, love, affection amongst peoples on the borders of Delhi are pictures which will make the international community proud.

This Human Rights Day, for the people of Punjab, the beleaguered Sikh nation, heretofore, observing the Human Rights Day with a litany of grievances, human rights violations and suppression of Sikh rights, is a day with a difference. Today, with the number of protestors swelling into millions, with a quarter of the Punjab population, a huge cross-section of the people of Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh having laid the siege of Delhi, has forced for the first time in many years and decades into listening to the demands of the people.

Every Punjabi -men, women and children, the rich and the poor and those in between, the urban and the rural, the educated, the illiterate and those less educated, the devout and the atheists and those swaying between the two, the farmer and the consumer, the manufacturer and the distributor, the university teacher, the army person, the sportspeople, the singers, the Punjabi heroes and heroines, students and teachers, lawyers and civil libertarians, are all out under the cold winter sky, enjoying Punjabi and Haryanvi hospitality, fraternity and love.

This year’s UN Human Rights’ call to action is “Stand Up for Human rights” and UN aimed to engage the general public, our partners and the UN family to bolster transformative action and showcase practical and inspirational examples that can contribute to recovering better and fostering more resilient and just societies. The Farmers Morcha is just that.

We know that we have a long way to go. There are many still languishing in prisons of Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Punjab, Kashmir and the North East. There are many young activists whose civil and political rights have been suppressed and they continue to be behind bars.

The people of Punjab have shown the way and stood up. 10 December 2020 Human Rights Day, is undoubtedly dedicated to the farmers of India.