Why SE­LEC­TIVE SI­LENCE about cit­i­zen-led fact-find­ing mis­sions has a role in dis­course? When an In­dian Ex­press colum­nist chooses to be dis­hon­est black­ing out what is too well known and the ed­i­tors look the other way, then the pub­li­ca­tion does in­jus­tice to the vic­tims of the fact-find­ing mis­sions ig­nored by them. WSN ed­i­tor Jag­mo­han Singh tears apart the Opin­ion piece in In­dian Ex­press on 21 May as un­fair and per­fid­i­ous.  He says that this is also in­sult­ing to that sec­tion of the jour­nal­is­tic fra­ter­nity, even within In­dian Ex­press, who ably and boldly ex­posed the guilty in their in­ves­tiga­tive re­ports of such tragedies.

MAK­ING A CASE FOR THE ROLE OF cit­i­zen-led fact-find­ing mis­sions in democ­racy, Dr. Ankita Pandey of Del­hi’s In­draprastha Col­lege, re­calls sev­eral such mis­sions, in­clud­ing the Gandhi-led Cham­paran in­digo farm­ers in­ves­ti­ga­tion, the Jal­lian­wala Bagh Mas­sacre fact-find­ing panel of the Con­gress, the 1924 Kan­pur Cot­ton Mills fir­ing and killings in­quiry, the “sev­eral fact-find­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions” into en­counter killings in the 1970s “dur­ing the counter-in­sur­gency op­er­a­tions against the Nax­alite move­ment and dur­ing the Emer­gency” as well as 1977 Andhra Pradesh Civil Rights Com­mit­tee’s probe into “33 cases of en­coun­ters of Nax­alite po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers dur­ing the Emer­gency.”

She goes on to men­tion the “sev­eral fact-find­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions” by the In­dian Peo­ple’s Hu­man Rights Com­mis­sion (IPHRC) in 1987 and then peo­ple’s tri­bunals work “in the wake of the 1992-93 Mum­bai ri­ots af­ter the Babri Masjid de­mo­li­tion.” She did not for­get the Al­ter­na­tive Law Fo­rum’s fact-find­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in 2008. and goes and on to un­der­line that the find­ings of such civil so­ci­ety probes “can po­ten­tially trans­form pub­lic and gov­ern­men­tal un­der­stand­ing of an event or crime.”

How much ef­fort do you think it takes to so scrupu­lously avoid the most widely known civil so­ci­ety in­ves­ti­ga­tion into the 1984 killings of Sikhs in In­di­a’s na­tional cap­i­tal?

How much ef­fort do you think it takes to so scrupu­lously avoid the most widely known civil so­ci­ety in­ves­ti­ga­tion into the 1984 killings of Sikhs in In­di­a’s na­tional cap­i­tal? 

As­so­ci­ates in Delhi re­called that in Feb­ru­ary last year, she de­liv­ered a lec­ture en­ti­tled ti­tled “Self Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of Civil Rights Ac­tivists in In­dia” at Ashoka Uni­ver­sity. There too she had also ac­ci­den­tally for­got­ten to men­tion any­thing about the ac­tivism about 1984 killings while trac­ing the his­tory and trends of civil rights ac­tivism from the 1960s to 1980s. When pointed out, her re­ac­tion was along the lines of “Oops!”

In her piece on JNU not very long ago, Dr Pandey said the JNU was spe­cial, “is dif­fer­ent from other in­sti­tu­tions,” be­cause it hap­pened to be in Delhi.

“It has a na­tional voice — helped by its lo­ca­tion in the na­tional cap­i­tal, rais­ing un­com­fort­able ques­tions be­fore gov­ern­ments.”

Now, you know why the omis­sion of “WHO ARE THE GUILTY?” RE­PORT is im­por­tant -sim­ply be­cause the Si­lence in Delhi Suits Sec­tions of Civil So­ci­ety, Too.

The scholar-colum­nist of In­dian Ex­press will do well to re­call that ac­tivist N. D. Pan­choli -gen­eral sec­re­tary of Cit­i­zens For Democ­racy was ar­rested on 10 Sep­tem­ber 1985 for a re­port en­ti­tled Op­pres­sion in Pun­jab pre­pared by Amiya Rao, N.D. Pan­choli, Au­robindo Ghose, Sunil Bhat­tacharya and Tejin­der Singh Ahuja.

Sub­se­quently, on 13 Sep­tem­ber, Jus­tice Tarkunde, who had writ­ten the Fore­word of the re­port, was also threat­ened with de­ten­tion. This well-doc­u­mented re­port into the killings in Pun­jab was pro­scribed by the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and George Fer­nan­des pub­lished it as a Hind Maz­door Kisan Pan­chayat pub­li­ca­tion.

The Cit­i­zens for Democ­racy re­port -Truth About Vi­o­lence in Delhi, by the same set of au­thors, is an­other re­port whose omis­sion is con­spic­u­ous.

The PUCL-PUDR re­port-Who Are the Guilty, about the guilty of 1984 killings named names. Some of the top Con­gress lead­ers fig­ured in that. In the face of mas­sive pres­sure, Tarkunde re­mained stead­fast. As did many oth­ers, in­clud­ing the great Ra­jni Kothari.

We don’t ex­pect schol­ars like her to men­tion the work of Jaswant Singh Khalra or a Ram Narayan Ku­mar into forced dis­ap­pear­ances in Pun­jab, but to for­get the largest mas­sacre of cit­i­zens af­ter 1947, that too, in Delhi, shows metic­u­lous at­ten­tion to de­tail.

To not re­call the work of Jus­tice V M Tarkunde and a host of other in­spired civil so­ci­ety ac­tivists in an ar­ti­cle like this re­quires de­lib­er­ate ef­fort or crim­i­nal neg­li­gence. In­di­a’s na­tional(is­tic) civil so­ci­ety is guilty of both, of­ten at the same time. Dr Ankita Pandey’s piece in to­day’s In­dian Ex­press falls in the same box.

We don’t ex­pect schol­ars like her to men­tion the work of Jaswant Singh Khalra or a Ram Narayan Ku­mar into forced dis­ap­pear­ances in Pun­jab, but to for­get the largest mas­sacre of cit­i­zens af­ter 1947, that too, in Delhi, shows metic­u­lous at­ten­tion to de­tail.

In her own words – “Seek­ing to dele­git­imize cit­i­zen-led fact-find­ing is in fact a way to con­trol the nar­ra­tive — it robs cit­i­zens of the abil­ity to state their side of the story.”

Oops! Dr Pandey, you just told your own story, too.
Thank you, civil so­ci­ety, and, I for­got to say, Oops!, Shame on the na­tion­al­ist ones among you. You let down the best amongst us.