Concerning Human Rights

                                                                                                              CONCERNING HUMAN RIGHTS

                                                                                      T.G. Jacob

                                                                                  CONTENTS

 Introduction

1. Defining Human Rights

2. Human Rights in India

3. Human Rights in South India

4. SICHREM’s Position on Human Rights

5. Rationale and Need for Constructive Interventions - A General Perception

6. Proposed Programmes

7. Extension Centres in Three States

8. Local Mobilisation of Financial Resources

Appendix: List of Preventive Detention Laws

Select Bibliography

Acronyms  

                                                                                  INTRODUCTION

Internationally, nationally and regionally Human Rights have become a lively topic for discussion during the last couple of decades due to a variety of factors that are social, cultural, economic and political in essence. Certain issues have emerged as focal points mainly through the interventions of the United Nations, its various instruments and agencies. At the same time in South Asia, East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa etc. controversies have also erupted which have not remained confined to countries within these regions, but have also been carried over into international forums and conventions. And within different countries themselves Human Rights enjoy differing status. On the whole the issues have evolved into a complex web with certain common strands.

The expression Human Rights is very broad and is inclusive of civil rights, democratic rights, right to clean air and water, right to sustainable livelihood, right to education, right to free movement, women’s and children’s rights, and so on. The individual has certain inalienable rights as well as duties. The community and nations also have certain inalienable rights. All these rights can be subsumed under the expression Human Rights. As against an exclusivist approach which is the hallmark of neo-liberalism and imperialism Human Rights is inclusive and is against all forms of discrimination and oppression.

Human rights have become a subject of debate and discourse with diverse angles mainly due to the large-scale violations of the very same rights. Awareness on Human Rights is on an ascending scale and one visible index is the increasing concern shown by the media, academia and the formation of large number of Human Rights organisations at different levels. Many of these organisations are international in scope and operations, while the large majority are area-specific and sometimes even issue-specific.

The discourses on Human Rights now cover a number of disciplines including Sociology, Social Anthropology, Economics, Politics, Public Administration, Jurisprudence, Science and Technology, Criminology and Military Sciences including civil war strategies. Issues of Human Rights have thus become an all-encompassing field of concern. The problematic has become deeper and broader with ever expanding frontiers and often we find dividing lines vanishing, and this itself has of late emerged as a topic of vociferous debate.

There is an imperative need to spread the message of Human Rights among all sections of people and thus liberate it from the domain of professionals like lawyers and human rights activists. It is from this viewpoint that human rights education ought to be made mandatory from a young age itself. After all, the fundamental motive of education is to mould good human beings who are capable of intervening in issues concerning the well being of society at large as well as of individuals and communities. It is in this context that a sufficient awareness on issues of human rights ought to be made part of the curriculum of schooling itself. 

                                                                                          Chapter 1

                    DEFINING HUMAN RIGHTS

 The United Nations and Human Rights

In the post Second World War era, after the victors of the war took the initiative in concretising the UN as a world body, with the declared objective of preventing any repetition of what had happened, the UN has done much to universalise and widely percolate the ideas of Human Rights in the world.

Even before the Second World War struggles for civil and political rights had preceded global Human Rights efforts. The Magna Carta and Bill of Rights in England, the Rights of Man declaration of the French (1798) and the American Declaration of Independence of 1776 were such precedents. And after the First World War the Versailles Treaty (1919) sought to institute at least a quasi-permanent arrangement or mechanism to ensure Human Rights. This was a mandate system linked to the League of Nations. It was a faint attempt to create accountability for Human Rights violations. But this mechanism was by nature highly tentative and fickle as was eminently proved by the subsequent occupation of Poland and Czechoslovakia by Hitler and the outbreak of a World War of unprecedented horrendous dimensions.

Though both the World Wars were fought by the advanced capitalist countries to territorially redivide the world, the second one was marked by ruthless efforts to exterminate religious groups, minorities and ethnic groups. It was the scale on which such efforts were made that traumatically shocked international consciousness. This was possibly the reason why right from its inception the UN emphasized on Human Rights. These and other inalienable rights were considered mandatory for world peace and progress.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

It was in 1945 at the San Francisco conference of the Big Four that the UN Charter was adopted, which made Human Rights as a key component of the international organisation’s work.  The General Assembly was made responsible and a special commission for executing this specific purpose was recommended. Under the auspices of the UN Charter an International Bill of Human Rights was formulated with four constituent parts. These four components adopted at different points of time are: 1) Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR); 2) International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; 3) International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; and 4) Optional Protocol allowing petition rights. Subsequently, many specialised Commissions, Conventions and Covenants were added on and this process is still an ongoing one.    

The UDHR proclaimed in 1948 has now become customary law. Many of the newly independent countries incorporated articles of the UDHR into their Constitutions, sometimes with modifications and conditions. Some resolutions, like the one on Torture, are yet to be ratified by many countries including India. A Secretariat called the Centre for Human Rights with its headquarters at the UN office at Geneva has been established to deal mostly with Human Rights questions. A formidable array of senior officials and rapporteurs has also been institutionalised.

Discourses on UDHR and Related Issues

It was the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights in 1993 which categorically declared that the protection of Human Rights was the priority duty of the concerned governments. It was also this declaration that emphasized the universality and indivisibility of Human Rights despite divergences in cultural, social systems and development stages.

The Vienna Declaration is important because it came in the post-Cold War era after the reform process was instituted in China. The earlier one-sided emphasis on civil and political rights is given up because of colossal violations of economic, social and cultural rights widely prevalent in large chunks of the globe. It was probably for the first time that global relations of economic power were coming to the forefront in Human Rights debates. This declaration has been very controversial. The universality and indivisibility of Human Rights was questioned sharply particularly by China and Malaysia with the support of the rapidly developing Southeast and East Asian countries.

The Chinese version, which was the most articulate, in summary stated that there cannot be a single set of universal Human Rights for the whole world. Eighty per cent of the total world resources are consumed by 20 per cent of the population and to speak of universal Human Rights in the absence of economic development is simply unreal. The cultural and social differences between the East and West were also highlighted. The Asians were characterized as being more community oriented than the Westerners who are more individualistically oriented.

The essence of their criticism was that the UDHR is Eurocentric in approach and the West is trying to impose its own cultural values which are in variance with those of the East. Imposing the Western values is nothing but cultural colonialism. The question of human rights is being used as only a ploy to impose Western hegemony over the poorer parts of the globe.

The priority for poor countries is rapid economic development and this may not always be in consonance with individual freedom. This viewpoint of China and some other East Asian countries has come to be known as the statist approach to Human Rights. In effect, it was trying to counterpose political and civil freedom to cultural and economic freedom.

Criticism of the UDHR has also come from certain independent quarters averring that citizens too have strong duties towards the community. Western philosophy is based on individualism and it is individual freedom that it has traditionally emphasized. The reckless individual based consumption in the West has resulted in great environmental degradation, which is denying the basic human rights of the large majority of the world’s people, especially the poor and indigenes.

The counter position at the Vienna Conference stuck steadfastly to the various articles in the UDHR and other UN sponsored Conventions and Covenants. It forcefully stated that economic imperative do not warrant Human Rights violations; on the contrary civil and political freedom and rights facilitate economic and social development. It was also pointed out that Asia is far from being a homogenous unit. Having countries ranging from the highly advanced Japan and Singapore to starkly poor countries like India, Nepal and Bangladesh, there cannot be any uniform Asian perspective. Therefore economic development cannot be considered as mandatory to Human Rights protection. The very fact that all are human beings entitles them all to certain basic human rights. Economic development and cultural peculiarities cannot be made into an excuse for large-scale human rights violations, whether they occur in Asia, Africa, Latin America or anywhere else in the world. Human Rights are inalienable and cannot be compartmentalised into various segments. The Right to Development has to be considered as an essential component of Human Rights and this is clearly enshrined by the world body.

Another angle that emerged asserted that universalisation of Human Rights in the present era of unbridled globalisation and forcible imposition of highly advantageous global economic terms for the rich of the world, who are already monopolising the economic resources of the world, is nothing but double-dealing. According to this perspective, universal Human Rights is yet another means for hegemony over the world by the few rich countries and international capital, and speaking of universal Human Rights is only a means of strengthening this already existing hegemony. Any talk of universal Human Rights has first to address the gross economic inequalities in the world getting ever more vicious with the terms and conditions imposed through the international bodies like World Bank, International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organisation. According to this viewpoint, removing the gross inequalities becomes a precondition for strengthening universal Human Rights.

The devastating impact of centuries of colonial plunder on the present day poor countries is cited as historical proof to this logic. Looking through this prism colonialism enabled the present day rich countries to become what they are now and new forms of economic colonialism through capital, finance market and product market control is only accentuating the already existing huge disparities. To talk about universal Human Rights without looking at these concrete realities is considered as only yet another means to outrightly cheat the poor of the world.    

These sometimes acrimonious but forceful arguments and counter arguments are bound to get intensified in the coming days. And often we can see that sectarianism, partisan attitudes and expansionist big brother nationalisms are seeing into such debates. At the same time it is an undeniable fact that Human Rights violations in the contemporary world are ever on the increase in spite of the increased awareness on the same. Poverty of the large majority of the world’s population is certainly a big stumbling block on the path of achieving universal Human Rights simply because poverty and starvation destroy the basic dignity of human beings and this basic human dignity is a must for effective universal Human Rights.

Certainly, more fruitful and non-sectarian debates and discourses are required to help in clarifying many important questions concerning Human Rights. There are enough examples in the world to prove that economic development by itself does not guarantee Human Rights. Contrarily, there are ample illustrations that rapid economic development has in fact polarised economic and social inequalities further resulting in more Human Rights violations, often colossal at that.

                                                                                                Chapter 2

                                                                                HUMAN RIGHTS IN INDIA

India, subject to its tremendous geographical, religious and linguistic diversities, has a rich history of movements that called for the equality of human beings. These movements were expressed through religious reformers, poets and philosophers, and their theoretical bases have changed considerably over this long period. These movements were expressed through struggles against caste oppression and religious bigotry. The Bhakthi movements developing in different parts of the subcontinent spanning the 12th-18th centuries were popular mass upheavals driven by a sense of intrinsic justice for all human beings irrespective of caste, religious and gender differences. The movement initiated by Basaveswara in the areas that later were denominated as Karnatka was a pioneering one of its kind in India. Similar movements developed in other parts like Kalinga (present-day Odisha), and much later in the Punjab when Guru Nanak preached that all mankind is one. Sufism, a reformist movement among the Muslims, preached essentially the same worldview.

 Colonialism altered the circumstances and the paradigms changed.

 A Short History of the Civil Rights Movement during Colonial Rule

The birth of the Indian National Congress in 1885 was itself propelled by the racist and discriminatory practices of the colonial administration. By the beginning of the 20th century educated Indians had become conscious that they ought to demand their rights as free citizens of the British Empire. This was the historical and intellectual backdrop to the 1918 Special Session of the INC in Bombay adopting a Declaration of Rights. This charter was submitted to the British Parliament and it included freedom of speech, expression and assembly and the right to be tried according to law.

The colonialists responded to the Declaration of Rights with the infamous Rowlatt Act1, the application of which resulted in massive human rights violations in large areas of British India. This includes the Jallianwallah Bagh massacre in which an unarmed peaceful assembly of people was continuously fired upon by British soldiers resulting in thousands of deaths and many more  maimed for life. The Rowlatt Act spurred the Indian intelligentsia to organise itself on the civil rights front in a more serious manner.

At the Kanpur Convention in 1925 a new Declaration was adopted. Besides reiterating the earlier demands the new Declaration proclaimed freedom of conscience and religion, sexual equality and the right to free primary education. Later, when the Nehru Report on the Indian Constitution was accepted in 1928 trade union rights became one of the clauses. All these developments were further concretised when the Indian Civil Liberties Union (ICLU) was founded in 1936 in Bombay under the presidentship of Rabindranath Tagore and the working presidentship of Sarojini Naidu. The “right to oppose the government” was accepted as the key principle of the ICLU.

The ICLU’s activities included conducting investigations on civil liberties violations and publishing the reports. The violations covered police atrocities, imprisonments and harassments, and restrictions of the rights of citizens. Of course, apart from publishing reports and complaining to the authorities the ICLU could not achieve much in concrete terms. But its activities enormously helped the freedom fighters to popularise the very idea of freedom from the colonial yoke by making the people conscious about the violations of their basic rights by the colonialists. Rammanohar Lohia’s book, “The Struggle for Civil Liberties”, published during the same period explicated the need for the struggle very forcefully.

When some provincial governments came under Congress control in 1937 the party promised extension and protection of civil liberties as enunciated in the declaration of the ICLU. However, it could not fulfil this basic promise, and as a result the ICLU suffered a serious setback. The organisation virtually became a one party affair and subsequently became totally inert. The preoccupation with the Quit India movement in 1942 also contributed to the demise of the ICLU. Thus ended one chapter of the Indian civil liberties movement.

Civil, Democratic and Human Rights during the Post-Colonial Period

The attainment of freedom in 1947 brought changes in the Indian civil liberties movement. Those who had advocated the “right to oppose the government” became the government, and very soon they found that state and popular interests clash. The Communist Party of India was very soon banned. Prime Minister Nehru’s argument was that in such a nascent and fragile situation some rights of the citizens have to be sacrificed in the “broader national interests.” Accordingly, popular agitations for the basic rights of food, shelter and civil rights were also sought to be silenced with brute force. This situation once again triggered the civil liberties movement. The difference was that this time it was targeting those who had advocated strengthening and development of the civil liberties only a few years back.

It was in these circumstances that a Civil Liberties Conference was held in Madras in 1949. In Bengal, where all-out suppression was let loose on the cadres and supporters of the Communist Party, the Civil Liberties Committee (CLC) was formed with the participation of non-partisan intellectuals. What made the ICLU defunct were mainly organisational reasons. But this demise did not give rise to debates on the rationale and theoretical basis of a civil and democratic rights movement. With the formation of the CLC in Bengal, such an ideological debate took place mainly due to the active involvement of prominent non-partisan but progressive intellectuals.

The ideological questions that came to the surface in the CLC centred on the undesirability of sectarian partisanship in the civil liberties movement. It was a fact that the denial of basic rights to dissenters (in this case, to members of the CPI) gave rise to the CLC, and the demands and campaigns of the CLC focussed on the release of the communist cadres and sympathisers and lifting of the ban on the party. As far as the CPI was concerned this was the sole objective, and they saw the civil liberties movement only as an instrument for securing the release of their cadre. The broader and deeper meaning of any civil or democratic rights movement was not in their dictionary. Intellectuals like Meghnad Saha sharply criticized this sectarian position of the Leftists, though they were sympathetic to the socialistic goals of the communists. Their opposition was fully vindicated when the CLC died away with the lifting of the ban on the CPI in 1951 and the release of their cadres from jail after the withdrawal of the Telangana agrarian uprising. 

The main point of difference between the CPI members and others in the CLC is of great relevance to the civil liberties movements in India today also. The Communist Party position before 1951 was that it did not recognise the independence of India and believed in armed struggle to overthrow the newly established Congress government. Only after the unconditional withdrawal of the peasant armed struggle in Andhra Pradesh there was a change in this position. The pertinent question that came up for the CLC was the justification or non-justification of political violence on the part of the dissenters as well as on the part of the state. The non partisan sections within the CLC took the position that the violence unleashed by the state is authoritarian and anti-democratic to the extreme and the due process of law should be exercised by the state to counter the violence of the communists. The communists on their part held that the violence resorted to by them is only a reaction to the authoritarian and feudal relations of production and is justified because it is in the interests of the downtrodden. Hence the civil liberties movement ought to take a pro-people (read pro-Communist Party) stand. This controversy in the history of the civil liberties movement has repeated itself time and again in India.

During the late 1960s and ‘70s India witnessed another big political turmoil when Maoist armed militancy erupted in many parts of the country and in a particularly challenging form in Bengal, Punjab, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh. Again the state reacted with highly arbitrary measures including extra-judicial executions and widespread torture and killings. By labelling the Maoists as ‘brigands’ and ‘terrorists’ the state and the various mainstream political parties sought legitimisation of their arbitrary and undemocratic actions, and this time, too, the civil liberties movement came up as a response. Thus the Association for the Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR) was formed in Calcutta in 1972, and the Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee (APCLC) was formed in 1974. As in the case of the earlier CLC these organisations also had non-partisan intellectuals in the forefront. In West Bengal, Amiya Bose and Promode Sengupta among others were instrumental in forming the APDR, while eminent writers like Sri Sri and Cherabandu Raju took the lead in the APCLC. Punjab and Bihar remained dormant on this front.

The civil liberties organisations were at the receiving end with the declaration of emergency in June 1975. The APDR was banned and the APCLC members were put behind bars. Many of its prominent activists were either tortured and killed, or killed in what has come to be known as ‘encounters.’ The civil liberties organisations were labelled as front organisations of the Maoists and legitimacy for repression was sought thus. The 1970s became the most daunting period for the civil liberties movement only to be matched by the 1980s and ‘90s when an altogether different kind of challenge confronted the Indian state. The APDR was forced to go underground and from there it documented the atrocities and published and circulated a report called “The Real Face of Indian Democracy.”

 Even before the declaration of Emergency the political trend of marginalising and making impotent the civil society had become too obvious. And civil liberties had become a broad-based issue. Now the Lohiaite socialists and radical humanists along with independent lawyers and academics took the initiative. They convened an all-India conference in 1974 in Delhi to launch the Citizens for Democracy (CFD) under the presidentship of Jayaprakash Narayan. Thus for the first time after independence a civil liberties organisation steering clear of sectarianism was formed. But it suffered from various built-in limitations, the chief one being the one-sided reliance on legal remedies, when the scope for any such action was almost nil.          

 The declaration and withdrawal of internal emergency in the late 1970s was a turning point in the history of the civil liberties movement also. In 1976, when the Emergency situation had become lax, Jayaprakash Narayan organised an all-India forum, and later the same year an all-India organisation called the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) was formed in Delhi. This was the first all-India civil liberties organisation having branches in the majority of Indian States. Its membership was not restricted as in the case of CFD and it networked with other State-based organisations like Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights (CPDR) in Bombay and the rejuvenated APDR and APCLC. 

Once again the civil liberties movement faced a crisis. The newly formed government at the Centre had a close relationship with many of the leading luminaries of the PUCL, and it showed some hesitancy in tackling the civil liberties violations. Again the problem in essence was sectarianism and undue fixation on legalism. The term ‘democratic rights’ was counterposed to ‘civil rights’ by the radicals in PUCL (particularly in Delhi) finally leading to a split in the Delhi unit of the PUCL, and another organisation called the People’s Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) came into being. The split was on the approach to the ruling governments at the Centre and the States’ level.  A debate on similar lines occurred in Bengal, too, on the approach to the Left Front government. 

Nevertheless, the debates over the terms democratic rights and civil rights have remained vague to date mainly due to the absence of any real difference. Sectarianism actually remained the core of the issue. As defined during the split in PUCL the term ‘democratic rights’ also encompasses even those rights of the citizens which are outside legal limits as codified in law texts applicable to the country. But in practice the distinction remained blurred and overlapping became the rule rather than the exception.

Emergence of Secessionism as a Political Demand and its Implications for the Human Rights Movement 

It was during the 1980s that secessionism emerged as a major threat to the very existence of the Indian state. Secessionist militancy was already there in the North-Eastern parts of India even during the 1960s and large-scale violations of human rights were also rampant. No doubt these violations were committed from both the opposing sides. But as long as it was happening in Nagaland or Manipur it was not paid much attention by the rest of India. The militants were simply dubbed as ‘anti-national’ and ‘foreign agents,’ and hence their rights as citizens were discounted. Military actions including aerial bombings took place in Nagaland as early as 1966 but there was not much hue and cry over the issue. In this process the Naga People’s Movement for Human Rights was formed.  

Present-day India is a land of tremendous geographical, linguistic, ethnic, religious and caste diversity, and the aspirations of several groups are rooted in these diversities. These factors rooted in history and structural factors cannot just be wished away. At present these grievances do not enjoy any effective legal remedies. When Sikh militancy burst over Punjab in the early 1980s the reaction was drastic. The labelling of the militants changed to ‘anti-nationals,’ while retaining the earlier ones lie ‘terrorists’ and ‘brigands.’ Preservation of ‘national integrity’ became the legitimisation slogan of the state. Subsequently, when the movement for secession picked up in Jammu and Kashmir the situation became truly precarious. The logic that when national security is threatened the dissenters have to be eliminated using all means at the disposal of the state was projected relentlessly, and accordingly the Army, Navy and Air Force were let loose on Punjab. ‘Encounters’, ‘disappearances’, mass torture including rape became commonplace and are still a regular feature in J&K also. 

The secessionist movements in Punjab, J&K and the North-East threw forth formidable challenges to the civil rights, democratic rights and human rights movements. Amnesty International, Asia Watch, CFD, PUCL, PUDR, Punjab Human Rights Organisation, Movement Against State Repression, Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab, All-India Federation of Organisations for Democratic Rights and individuals like Justice Ajit Singh Bains and D.S. Canadian have all compiled reports and articles on the massive human rights violations that have been going on in Punjab since the emergence of Sikh militancy. Similar is the case of J&K. Amnesty International has paid particular attention to the situation in Kashmir probably because it has already become an international issue. 

As in the case of A.P. and Bengal during a previous period the human rights activists in Punjab and J&K were also dubbed as ‘anti-national’ and front organisations of the ‘terrorists.’ Activists, who attempted to document the mass graves and similar such human rights violations by the army and paramilitary, were done away with. Several of them (some with their families) simply disappeared. Amnesty International has documented some of these disappearances along with several other persons who have ‘disappeared’ or are ‘missing.’ In this phase of human rights violations in modern India the most gruesome is certainly the large-scale massacre of Sikhs in North India, especially in Delhi, in the wake of the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister, in 1984. 

Estimates vary, but the minimum is considered to be above 3,500 killings in Delhi alone. Hundreds of women were kidnapped, gang raped and killed and tens of thousands were left without a roof over their heads. Reports have conclusively proved that all this was done by rampaging mobs organised by the ruling party with the able aid of the Delhi police. Moreover, when investigative reports on these riots were published by the civil and democratic organisations there were hysteric demands to ban them and arrest the ‘anti-national’ authors. The norms of civil society hit the rock bottom. 

Taking an overview, we can see that the scope of civil, democratic and human rights organisations has tremendously broadened during the post-1947 years; the challenges and issues to be covered have changed significantly and become much more formidable. The movement has passed through many phases, both in organisational form and theoretical discourses. The political reasons behind gross civil rights violations during the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s still remain but newer issues, often not directly political in nature have been added onto the agenda of human rights activism. From 1991 onwards, with the opening up of the all-India economy, issues are cropping up and this continuing process is showing an unmistakable tendency to multiply.     

The National Human Rights Commission 

Internal and external pressures prevailed on the Government of India resulting in the Parliament of India enacting The Protection of Human Rights Act (PHRA) in 1993, and thus forming the National Human Rights Commission. NHRC, with a high profile composition, has been in operation since then. The PHRA also provided for the formation of State Human Rights Commissions (SHRCs) and Human Rights Courts. 

Since it was constituted the NHRC has raised a broad range of human rights issues in the country including custodial violence and deaths, prison conditions, starvation deaths, child labour, basic health, working conditions, conditions in psychiatric asylums, the rights of persons with disabilities, environmental issues, human rights education and the training of police and security officials on human rights. This shows that the NHRC has tried to raise civil and political rights issues as well as social, cultural and economic ones. NHRC is also playing a role in international fora like the UN Commission on Human Rights and the Asia-Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Organisations. 

By definition, the PHRA states that ‘human rights’ means the rights relating to life, liberty, equality and dignity of the individual guaranteed by the Constitution of India or embodied by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and enforceable by the Indian courts. In its 1993-94 annual report to the Parliament the NHRC sought to amend the definition of human rights to mean “the rights relating to life, liberty, equality and dignity of the individual guaranteed by the Constitution or embodied in the international covenants, conventions and treaties to which India is a party” thereby widening the definition still further. The government ignored this proposal and instead formed an advisory committee to propose any possible amendments. 

Though the NHRC has succeeded in highlighting many vital human rights issues it remains a very handicapped commission. Its powers are limited and it has very little legal authority. It does not have explicit powers to refer cases in which it has found sufficient evidence to merit prosecution for a human rights violation so that appropriate action can be taken against individuals concerned. In the words of Amnesty International, NHRC’s one hand is tied behind. It has only recommendatory ‘power.’ 

Another important factor hindering NHRC is that it does not have jurisdiction over the armed forces personnel. This makes the whole idea of constituting the Commission meaningless in our context. This has been time and again raised by the NHRC itself to the government. Yet another limiting factor is that a time limit of one year has been fixed for NHRC to take up cases, i.e., the violation has to be within the period of one year before the complaint is made. In conditions of civil strife like in J&K and the North-East or Punjab the victims, their friends or relatives will find it certainly very risky to rush to the NHRC as soon as a violation is committed by the armed forces or police. The dangers are real and sometimes it will take years for even civil liberties organisations to raise the issue of violations openly. 

The formation of the NHRC by itself is a good beginning and it can certainly play an important role in enhancing awareness about human rights issues. And to a certain extent it has already done so. A few States have constituted SHRCs, but it is still in a nascent stage. The contradictions plaguing the PHRA articles have already stalled the activities of the SHRC formed in Tamil Nadu. A comprehensive review of the PHRA is what is needed.

Note

1. The Rowlatt Act was a law passed by the British in colonial India in March 1919, indefinitely extending "emergency measures" (of the Defence of India Regulations Act) enacted during the First World War in order to control public unrest and root out conspiracy. Passed on the recommendations of the Rowlatt Committee, named for its president, British judge Sir Sidney Rowlatt, this Act effectively authorized the government to imprison for a maximum period of two years, without trial, any person suspected of terrorism living in the Raj. The Rowlatt Act gave British imperial authorities power to deal with revolutionary activities.

                                                                                            Chapter 3

                                                                  HUMAN RIGHTS IN SOUTH INDIA

 For our purpose we identify the four southern States of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Keralam as South India, though geographically the entire area south of the Vindhya mountain ranges is traditionally considered the peninsular south. These four States have many similarities as well as dissimilarities. Historically, these four States underwent a lot of interaction through the ages. The languages have a common Dravidian origin, though the penetration of Sanskrit varies from language to language. For example, Malayalam which owes its parentage to Tamil has become heavily sanskritised in its written/literary forms, while Tamil remains true to its linguistic lineage, though with regional variations.  

On the human rights front the whole of South India has a very rich but varied history. Whether it was the Bhakthi movement during the 12th and 13th centuries, the anti-Brahmin movement among the Tamils, or the anti-caste movements in Keralam, the history is replete with struggles emphasizing the dignity of man against caste bigotry. A State by State brief overview of the human rights situation is attempted below.

                                                                                          KERALAM

Keralam is the smallest of the four southern States. It is a thin strip of land with a 590 km coastline, narrow midland and high land throughout the length of the State. It has a very colourful ancient history with the Romans, Chinese, Persians, Syrians and Jews establishing trade contacts from the BCEs onwards. In earlier times it was called the Land of Spices. Many of the traders like the Syrians, Jews and Persians settled in this land for good. Present-day Keralam has a significant decisive section of Christians and Muslims, but the majority is Hindu with many castes and numerous sub-castes. The Adivasis come to less than one per cent of the population. 

In post-independence India Keralam has come to be known as a “progressive” State and is often cited as a “model” for the other States to emulate. This model is based on the parameters of what is called the physical quality of life which includes high literacy, lower death rates, lower birth rate, etc. and was popularised by eminent scholars like Ashok Mitra, Amartya Sen and international bodies like the World Bank. Keralam was highlighted as a State where the quality of life can be drastically improved without any significant corresponding increase in the productive capacity of the economy. On the social and political levels, the 19th century anti-caste struggles waged under the guidance of Sri Narayana Guru and Ayyankali and the post-independence land reforms executed by the first elected communist government are highlighted. 

True, Sri Narayana Guru, Ayyankali, the temple entry movement epitomised by the famous Vaikom Satyagraha, and the land reforms were important landmarks in the social history of the State. These gains were the results of highly popular struggles waged under reformist and communist leaderships. But when we look at the present-day human rights record of Keralam, the situation is quite disappointing. The following aspects emerge poignantly: 

a)    The areas of the State bordering Tamil Nadu and Karnataka are inhabited by a mixed population of Malayalees and Tamilians, and Malayalees and Kannadigas. Though the average wage rate is higher than in the rest of India the migrant workers from the neighbouring States are paid only about half of the wages earned by a Malayalee worker, say, in the construction or plantation sectors. This is a gross violation of the basic rights of the migrant workers. Moreover, their women are ruthlessly exploited. 

b)   Within Keralam the unemployment level is extremely high. At the same time, the Malayalees are relatively more skilled and educated and there is therefore large-scale migration to the metro centres within India and the Gulf countries. At least five lakh Malayalee workers are in the Gulf countries and a far bigger number is in the cities and industrial centres within the country. The Malayalee workers in the Gulf come from relatively poor backgrounds, and Gulf is generally projected as an El Dorado. The reality, however, is often grim. The overwhelming majority of migrants are heavily discriminated against; their conditions of living are miserable and they enjoy no political or social freedom. A large number of women are taken to the Gulf as sex and domestic slaves. Again, it is a question of gross violation of the basic rights of migrant workers.    

c)    The crime rate against women is one of the highest in the country. “Sex rackets” have become a thriving business and various women’s organisations are up in arms against this “industry.” The promotion of the State as a tourist “paradise” is escalating this malady, and it has now come to include child sex workers. Promotion of international tourism, which is very much a part of the ongoing globalisation process, is expected to only to lead to further strengthening and expansion of this flesh trade business. It is not only the women and children from within the State who are subjected to this exploitation.

d)   The conditions of the tribal population are abysmal. They have been outright cheated and robbed by the settler migrants from the midland areas who alienated their land by brute force. Some of them like the Koragas in North Keralam are on the verge of extinction. Starvation deaths are common among many tribal communities, and they are also subjected to severe economic exploitation and social discrimination. Because they are not at all significant as a vote bank no political party is interested in their plight. The state is very much on the side of the settlers because of opportunistic political interests. This is yet another blatant instance of the violation of the rights of the indigenous people.

e)    Environmental destruction is creating disastrous consequences in the State and this is something that is affecting not the present population alone but future generations as well. In 1947 the green cover was over 90% of the total land area, but this has drastically dwindled. Unscientific mono crop cultivation of cash crops for the national and international markets and the large-scale destruction of evergreen forests have resulted in the recurrence of floods, landslides and desertification. A place which has 45 rivers and is scattered with lakes and estuaries is now facing acute drinking water shortage. This is certainly a major collective human rights issue. The basic dignity of human beings is being trampled underfoot in the name of “development,” and it is the state together with the big business lobbies who are squarely responsible for this state of affairs.  

Keralam, a place with a high density of population, has natural endowments highly suitable for environmentally friendly value-adding industries. Instead the emphasis given to date is on highly destructive, capital intensive power guzzling mega projects. Many such projects operating now (like the Grasim Industries near Calicut, Titanium near Trivandrum, FACT (Fertilisers and Chemicals Travancore Ltd) in Kochi, Rare Earths near Kollam) are distributing death via deadly diseases to the people in surrounding areas. 

Instead of learning any lessons from this experience the State is becoming increasingly adamant on bringing in more and more big destructive industries in the name of “development”. It is worthwhile to note that Graasim Industries alone has already desertified more than 30,000 hectares of bamboo forests besides poisoning the perennial river Chaliyar. These industries are recklessly polluting the sea, backwaters and rivers, the most significance resource base of Keralam. 

f)    The coastal areas of Keralam are heavily populated with several lakhs of people depending on the sea for a living. But of late the fishing sector is suffering badly due to the export promotion drive and the fisherfolk practising eco-friendly traditional artisanal fishing are the worst affected. The liberalisation policy allows foreign trawlers equipped with sophisticated equipments to identify fish shoals, which are then able to scoop up the fish in tens of hectares of sea at one go, thus depleting fish resources and sounding the death knell for the indigenous fishing sector of Keralam. 

This is a direct assault on the right to livelihood of hundreds of thousands of poor people. Suicides have become common among the fisher people due to bankruptcy. Simultaneously, the fertilisers and pesticides that are liberally used in the cultivation of cash crops ultimately find their way to the inland waters destroying the fish wealth. The indigenous fish catch from both the sources has undergone more than 40 per cent decline during the last ten years, and the fish from many important rivers are simply inedible because they are poisonous. 

The coastal people’s right to life is also affected by the unbridled growth of tourism. Mega tourism projects are coming up on the beaches in violation of the Coastal Zone Regulation Act. The state is acquiring land and handing it over to big tourism businesses. Tourist areas are essentially in the nature of enclaves, which excludes the local people from the area except in the role of servants. More and more people are getting displaced and thrown into the gutters of the industry. 

Apart from the sea coast the backwaters and hills are also subjected to rape depriving the people of their traditional livelihood means and generating ecological and environmental disasters. As the tourism industry is now accepted as the means to geneate income and employment this has to be viewed as a very dangerous trend. The moral implications are extra. 

g)   Most of Kerala society is organised into tightly defined political compartments nd any encroachment is met with murder and mayhem by the rivals. The political rivalry between the ruling CPI(M) and RSS is the most notorious and more than 600 people have been brutally murdered during the last ten years in the course of this rivalry. Even coation partners are not exempt. Outside the mainstream parties the Maoists also take recourse to killings of members of rival groups/factions. Actually this phenomenon is deliberately engineered by the party leaderships to prevent any sort of erosion of their respective cadre base and is nothing short of human sacrifice. 

h)   Torture under custody is normal and custodial deaths not very uncommon. Custodial rapes are also not uncommon. Whenever the policemen on night duty feel like it they go and arrest a couple of street walkers, bring them to the police station and sexually and physically abuse them. Every police station has to show a minimum number of solved cases by the month end, and the policemen regularly go on a rampage during the last days of every month to fulfil the quota. In most cases it is the innocent people who become the victims. Whether you are innocent or not a few beatings and petty case being slapped against you is the norm.

Custodial deaths of political dissenters are frequent. During the period of Emergency at least five torture camps operated all over the State where the Maoists and their sympathisers were brought in their hundreds and brutally tortured for months on end. Two such cases became famous, and one of them – the Rajan case – led to the fall of the ministry. More recent, when the case of Varghese, an early Maoist leader, came to light it created a furore. The policeman who had shot him dead himself deposed before the CBI that he shot Varghese because his superiors threatened to kill him in an “encounter” if he did not obey the order to kill Varghese.

Sectarianism in the civil liberties movement came out in the open in both the Rajan and Varghese cases. The CPI (M) effectively used the Rajan case for their sectarian interests making it into a major electoral issue and thus coming to power. While in the Varghese case, it was nauseating to note how the various Naxalite groups also tried to outbest each other in order to politically utilise such a highly volatile human rights issue.     

                                                                                   TAMIL NADU

Tamil Nadu is the second biggest State in South India and is marked by a diversity of terrain. It has barren rain shadow areas as well as lush green Western Ghats areas. Large areas still remain non-cultivable though there are enough proven ground water sources. It is the cradle of the Dravidian civilisation and Tamil language, which is considered one of the most ancient languages of the world. Tamil Nadu also has a not very insignificant section of tribals called the Adi Dravidas. The ancient history is glorious with the ancient temple towns of Thanjavur, Thiruvazhur and Madurai as standing testimonies. Their kingdoms had at one time expanded to neighbouring areas and, through the sea route on the eastern coast, they had migrated to distant parts like Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. There is a significant Tamil presence in Sri Lanka and many Southeast Asian countries. The Nattukottai Chettiars are famous traders who regularly traversed the highways of the seas.   

Chennai (called Madras by the colonialists) became the first headquarters of the British Indian Empire before they shifted it to Calcutta after the Battle of Plassey. The Madras Presidency carved out by the colonialists included the present-day Northern Malabar, part of Keralam State now, and large chunks of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. The British developed Madras into a major port in South Asia in their own colonial trade interests, which was based on reckless plunder of the hinterland. 

The freedom movement made early inroads in Tamil Nadu and so is the case with the civil liberties movement. Many of the early leaders of the civil liberties movement like K.R. Pillai were from Chennai. When the IUCL faced demise due to the sectarianism of the Indian National Congress after it got limited state power in many provinces in 1937 the first alternative all-India Conference of civil liberties was held in Chennai. The Communist Party of India also made an early start in Tamil Nadu and threw up many veteran leaders like Kalyanasundram and Ramamurthy. But it was the emergence of Dravida Kazhagam (DK) under the leadership of EV Ramaswamy Naickar that marked a turning point in the modern political and social history of the Tamilians.  

Periyar, as EVR Naickar was reverently called, electrified the Tamilians through his anti-caste and hence anti-Brahminical platform. The colonialists had assiduously cultivated the upper caste Iyers and Iyengars as their loyal administrators and henchmen, and even the INC and CPI came under their leadership. Thus a miniscule minority of Brahmins continued to dominate the social and political life of Tamil society. Periyar raised the banner of revolt against Brahminical hegemony and the people eagerly responded. It became a struggle for justice and the rights of the Tamil people. Tamil self-respect was resurrected and the Tamil language was sought to be put back into its earlier supreme pedestal. The Brahmins were obviously pro-Sanskrit. To date language remains a highly sensitive subject in tamil Nadu. It is the live symbol of the social collective of collective of Tamilians. It is interesting to note that even now only a political party that has the suffix of DK can hope to come to power in Tamil Nadu. The EVR legacy has survived many vicissitudes. This is a historical truth. 

In post-independence India the demand for linguistic reorganisation of State boundaries came up strongly in Tamil Nadu, too, though it involved friction between neighbours resulting from earlier colonial arbitrariness. Many of these frictions remain even now like the ones based on riparian laws pertaining to river waters. Tamil Nadu, large tracts of which are drought prone, is especially sensitive on this issue.

It was the language movement during the 1960s and ‘70s that marked a seriously violent phase in Tamil Nadu politics. Imposition of Hindi was viewed as North Indian colonialism and the old demand of EVR for a Dravidasthan came to the surface again. It was in essence a democratic movement for protecting one’s mother tongue which is everyone’s basic right. Initially, the struggle was met with brute force, which only resulted in the intensification of the struggle, ultimately forcing the apologists of Hindi as the official language to make significant concessions in favour of Tamil, which remains the national language in Tamil Nadu.

The human rights violations in post-1947 Tamil Nadu have exhibited broadly similar patterns as those in other southern States.

 a)    After the linguistic reorganisation of States the major violations of human rights occurred in the drought prone districts of Dharmapuri and North and South Arcot, where the peasantry was groaning under severe conditions of exploitation both in class and caste terms. Here, in the late 1970s, the Maoist movement tried to gain a foothold by organising the landless and small peasantry. In the beginning they reacted to the atrocious class and caste violence being perpetrated by the upper caste, upper class landowner-moneylender class by resorting to individual annihilation. The retaliation was swift. Supporters and cadres were identified by special police squads with the aid of informers and brutally finished off. More than eight people were killed (some of them after torture) and no impartial enquiry was ever conducted. The structural and social problems that led to such a violent outbreak continue but with the wiping out of the Maoists the resistance also died down. This is despite the very large number of NGOs working in the area. 

b)   Dalit bashing has become commonplace in vast areas of Tamil Nadu. The upward mobility of the other backward castes when compared to the stagnancy or even deterioration in the conditions of the Dalits and tribals, even as sections of them particularly the former become upwardly mobile, has resulted in tensions, which often erupt into bloody clashes, mainly village centred. One of the familiar patterns in such riots is the torching of the Dalit and tribal huts, rape of women and severe beating of the men. Complaints to the police by the victims often become counterproductive, i.e., cases are registered against the victims and they are arrested and tortured. This is an ongoing situation, especially in the southern districts of Tamil Nadu. Needless to say, in all violations of the basic rights of the common people, the women and children are the worst victims. There is a large degree of immunity for the perpetrators of these atrocities, whether they are the police or armed private groups.

 c)    Tamil Nadu on the whole is an agriculturally and industrially advanced State when compared to several other States, but the percolation impact is minimal. This is probably the biggest reason why large numbers of them (especially women and children from the rural areas) migrate to other parts of the country where they form a contingent of cheap labour, more often unorganised than organised. In Mumbai itself, more than 25% of the total number of prostitutes is estimated to be Tamil women, a good section among them being children below the age of sixteen. Poverty, promise of jobs, etc. make them easy targets to unscrupulous middlemen. This is a social and economic issue that has to be taken seriously by human rights activists and organisations.

d)   The Tamil plantation workers in Sri Lanka and the Tamil political refugees in Tamil Nadu from Sri Lanka are the other two sections of people whose basic rights are considered dispensable. The situation is particularly dismal in the case of the Tamil political refugees who are herded near the eastern coast. Investigations are to be conducted into their state of affairs to see whether their conditions conform to United Nations norms concerning political refugees.

 e)    Custodial torture, custodial deaths, unprovoked firing to kill, all and more are periodically reported from different parts of Tamil Nadu. Though a State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) was organised in Tamil Nadu it has not be been to function effectively due to the legal duality and glaring gaps and loopholes in the clauses of jurisdiction. This situation has to change. The legal loopholes are to be rectified and the SHRC to be accordingly activised. 

f)    Outrageously blatant violations of human rights are currently going on in Tamil Nadu under the guise of the hunt for the forest brigand Veerappan and associates. The Special Task Force (STF) under the joint command of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka police has arrested hundreds of Dalit and tribal people under the draconian TADA [Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act] and more than a hundred are still in jail without a trial. Their huts have been gutted down, indiscriminate torture is routine, and women have been gang raped by the security forces. Human rights and civil liberties organisations and individuals are actively campaigning for their release or commitment to trial, but as yet nothing concrete has emerged. It is significant to note that these more than a hundred innocent villagers are under detention under TADA which was allowed to lapse in 1995 by the central government after tremendous nation-wide pressure. This makes their detention doubly violative. 

                                                              ANDHRA PRADESH

Andhra Pradesh, the biggest among the four southern States, is internally divided into three sub regions – Telangana, Rayalaseema and Coastal Andhra. These sub regions have their own vatiations – geographically and environmentally, in the composition of the people, and relations and forces of production.  Inter-regional charges of economic, social and political discrimination have a long history and many of the people’s movements that came up in post-1947 Andhra Pradesh owe their origins to these structurally rooted factors.

The Telangana armed uprising of the late 1940s and early 1950s, the separate Telangana movement, the Srikakulam Maoist-led peasant uprising of the late 1960s and ‘70s – are all landmarks in the social and political history of modern Andhra Pradesh. The Maoist armed militancy has spread to more and more areas since the late 1970s and has even crossed the State boundaries by spreading into the bordering areas of Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, or what is called the Dandakaranya region consisting of the vast tribal areas of the above mentioned four States.

The freedom movement and also the movement against the princely State of Hyderabad took deep roots in what is presently known as Andhra Pradesh. It was here that the first salvos for the linguistic reorganisation of States after independence were fired. It was Potti Sriramulu’s fast unto death that triggered the movement on to the all-India level and from that point onwards there was no turning back. To talk about human rights violations during all these previous struggles and agitations is more of archival value than anything else.  

It was after the late 1960s, after the Maoist peasant uprising broke out, that civil, democratic and human rights issues came to the forefront, though the rights violations during the earlier phases were no less grave. During the post-emergency period when the civil liberties movement all over the country took a new lease of life Andhra Pradesh was no exception. During this time the magnitude of human rights violations was equally ferocious in Bengal, Bihar and A.P., but it was in A.P. that a sustained civil liberties campaign took roots and grew. It attracted students, lawyers, poets and other professionals on a large scale. During Emergency the civil liberties activists went underground and hence could avoid some of the worst forms of repression unleashed by the State organs. 

The attacks against defenders of human rights were pioneered in A.P., which subsequently spread to Punjab, J&K and the Northeast. Several leading activists were killed in cold blood, others arrested and tortured. Dr. Ramanathan, killed in his clinic, was the first leading casualty. Before that two peasant activists, Kista Gowda and Bhumaiah, were judicially hanged for being leaders of the peasant movement against landlordism. This was also a landmark violation of human rights. There were several attempts on the lives of nationally well-known human rights advocates. Dr. Balagopal was arrested and tortured and attempts to silence K.G. Kannabiran were made more than once. But none of these attacks and intimidations has succeeded in dampening the acumen of the human rights activists. They have compiled numerous authentic reports on “encounter killings”, disappearances”, torture and illegal detention and a host of other human rights abuses. 

But, of late, certain other serious issues, in the realm of the theoretical discourses on human rights, have come out in the open in the APCLC and among its sympathisers, which can possibly create some confusion, but ultimately lead to better clarity on many human rights issues. In essence, this is the debate on sectarianism in the human rights movement which has already time and again come up in the open during the pre-independence and post-independence periods.   

In APCLC this issue has been simmering for quite some time. The question revolved around state violence versus people’s violence. The violence done by the Maoists was sought to be justified under the logic that they are only protecting the interests of the poor people against the vested class interests and their protectors. The logic advanced by the state is that Maoist violence is outside the constitutional rights of the citizens and extraordinary powers have to be used against it. Hence the law and order organs do enjoy a certain amount of impunity when dealing with such situations. This is an ongoing debate inside and outside APCLC and all of this has come to be known in the press as “hawks versus the doves.” 

This debate which has erupted into the open within the APCLC concerning state violence versus militant armed actions has to be viewed from another angle too. For the last two decades the environmentalist movement has been broadening and strengthening its basis in different parts of the country and this movement is also integrally linked to the human rights issues. The mega projects generally under the tutelage of TNCs and World Bank are relentlessly being projected by their apologists (including political parties and the State) as development, which is a must for “catching up” with more advanced economies. The social costs exemplified in massive displacement of the vulnerable sections of the people and the irretrievable destruction of non-renewable natural resources, are considered disposable at the altar of super profits by industry and business with economic muscle and political patronage. The environmentalists who are steadfastly fighting for the social costs are dubbed “anti-development”, which by implication becomes anti-national too. The Maoists fighting the landlords, moneylenders and the state authorities create instability and economic chaos and are dubbed as “terrorists.” The margin between these epithets is very thin. 

It is true that in the formative period of the APCLC the civil liberties activists’ sympathies were mainly with the Maoists, probably because the Maoists were on the side of the common people and were at the receiving end of violence. But when this violence became self-generative and assumed blood-for-blood character both sides became guilty of gross human rights violations. Certain actions of the prominent groups of Maoists like large-scale extortions, mindless killings and torture of “class enemies” made them indefensible for the human rights activists, who are not instrumentalist in their approach to human rights. They raised such vital questions and the organised Maoist groups eased them out of APCLC. This is the present crisis in APCLC, and its resolution can go a long way in charting out a more egalitarian and comprehensive perspective on human rights. 

We, in SICHREM, believe in the holistic vision of human rights for all human beings; and, therefore, through our educational, theoretical research and several down-to-earth activities we will strive to throw clarity on the questions being raised while firmly upholding a non-sectarian position. From the point of view of a holistic human rights perspective, A.P. with Punjab, J&K, Northeast and Bengal provide a historical flashpoint. The Northeast, J&K and A.P. continue to be in the eye of the storm, also because of the violence that has become self-perpetuating and hence endemic. Often the human rights issues cannot be put in simple black and white terms, the enormity of the violations themselves being overwhelming and subject to contradictory interpretations. And also, political rights become merged with community rights, which again are often identifiable with collective human rights on the question of environment. 

SICHREM is committed to contribute towards clarifying the issues concerned from a non sectarian and holistic perspective so that a more meaningful debate on the intrinsic value of human rights can become the order of the day. A.P. presents a greatly challenging task because of the enormity of the issues involved and because the debate on the theoretical basis of universal human rights is already a live issue there. Active coordination with the APCLC activists (many of whom are now described as “doves”) can certainly give a boost to enlightening everyone on the vitality of strengthening the efficacy of human rights advocacy. This is possible through constructive interactions, like seminars, workshops and publishing. SICHREM believes in this process with no holds barred. On similar levels debates are going on in other places like Kerala, Punjab and Bengal. Attempts will be geared towards launching a coordinated effort to clarify such fundamental questions on human rights.

                                                                                              KARNATAKA

Karnataka is the eighth largest State in the country and the third largest State in South India. The State capital, Bengaluru, has grown into the fourth largest city in India by population and has the fastest growth rate in South Asia. Industry wise Karnataka is one of the most developed in South Asia and in spite of the present global crisis its growth rate is not slackening. The earlier position of Bombay as the centre of transnational operations in the country is now taken over by Bengaluru with over 200 transnationals operating from this city [current figures (in 2026) place them over 400]. Agriculturally, it is a land of much variety with an abundance of fruit trees, coffee plants, oil seeds, sericulture, rice and finger millet. 

In visual media including theatre and cinema, folk and classical art forms, modern literature, Karnataka has established its own eminent position in the subcontinent. In artistic expression freedom is sometimes curtailed and of late this has become a disturbing trend. Also the rapid economic growth is generating its own specific conflicts and contradictions often resulting in human rights violations. The pattern of urbanisation is a case in point. On the human rights front Karnataka does not present a pleasing picture. It rich forest wealth is also under threat and this is certainly bound to affect a large number of less privileged people and communities. 

Communal riots have become frequent in many parts of the State. Not only communal riots between Hindus and Muslims, but resource based riots like between Tamils and Kannadigas on the question of the Kaveri river water sharing dispute, and language based like the anti-Urdu riots which targeted the Muslims have occurred on large scale. Some of these riots like the anti-Urdu and Kaveri river riots were extremely brutal and prolonged. Actually, even the occasion of a festival of any one community can spark off a communal riot. It happened in Hubli during the Holi festival, Shimoga during the Ganapathi festival and a score of other places during the last ten years. In Chitradurga the riots did not even need the facade of a religious festival. Potentially, any place in Karnataka where the minority religion has a strong presence is also a potential communal riot spot. Human rights education has a major role in diffusing existing as well as potential communal hot spots.     

The rich forest wealth of the State is under threat and this is affecting the forest-dependent tribal communities. The tribal population in Karnataka is not as significant as in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. It is about 2 per cent of the total and they are highly marginalised people. Though a number of NGOs work competitively among them their right to livelihood is shrinking with every passing day, whether it is under the name of protecting biodiversity or constructing national parks and resorts for the upper classes. They have no effective voice in protecting their subsistence and resource base – a basic violation of the rights of the indigenes. Literacy and awareness about legal rights are minimal among them, and they are easily hoodwinked by a variety of vested interests including some of the NGOs working amongst them. 

Aspirations towards upward social and economic mobility are viewed with suspicion by the plainspeople and every effort is made to suppress them. Organisations like Tribal Welfare Board have become havens of outright corruption. Recently there have been reports about a Kannadiga tribal community in the bordering area of Karnataka and Kerala (the Koragas), which is on the verge of extinction due to starvation, lack of forest resources to pursue their traditional eco-friendly occupations and deadly diseases like tuberculosis. 

As in the States of Tamil Nadu and A.P., indeed all over the subcontinent, Dalit bashing is routine in Karnataka too. It is generally armed mobs belonging to the upper castes who attack the Dalit bastis (settlements) and raze their huts, beat up the men, and molest the women. Sexual attacks on women are taken as humiliation of the entire community. Generally, these attacks are executed when the men are out at work. Disputes concerning conditions of work, land disputes, disputes on drawing water from the public wells, or even the size of a temple can be sufficient reason for burning down the Dalit huts. Sometimes such gruesome attacks on whole bastis arise out of very trivial incidents. The objective is to teach the Dalits a “lesson”, not allow any protest on their part and to keep them in their place. Any protest fom the Dalits are taken as a serious affront to the ruling order of things and a mob attack can be organised. Various kinds of provocations are resorted to – like putting a garland of chappals (slippers) on the statue of Ambedkar, or something similar. 

And the attackers need not be strictly upper castes. Rather, they often belong to what is known as the Other Backward Caste category (OBC), who own land and are more educated. In these attacks the worst sufferers are women and if everything is burned down they are the ones who work the maximum to put things back on track. There are many instances when the whole basti had run away fearing repeats of dominant caste violence and vandalism. The law enforcing authorities invariably do not turn against the violators. Instead of registering complaints, the police do the opposite. They add their might to the oppression by foisting false cases against the victims and torturing and detaining them. 

On the whole, civil and political rights violations are galore in Karnataka. Torture, illegal detentions and custodial rapes are reported. Custodial deaths are on the increase. Violence against women and dowry deaths are also on the increase. There are several instances of trade union rights beings being violated with impunity. Bonded labour is still prevalent in the State and child labour is rampant and increasing. Regarding bonded and child labour, the situation is no different from some of the more politically backward and feudal States in North India. Illiteracy, especially in the rural areas is widely prevalent. Even though the State as a whole is experiencing high growth rates in agriculture and industry economic and social inequity is steeply rising. The rural urban divide is endemic and impoverishment in rural areas is high. All these are naked human rights violations, collectively and individually. 

The callousness of the State government towards violations of human rights is shown by the fact that it has not taken any initiative in establishing an SHRC and District Human Rights Courts This is despite a sustained campaign by the various human rights organisations, NGOs and democratically minded individuals. Also, it is in contravention of the Protection of Human Rights Act 1993 and the constitution of the NHRC under whose mandate the SHRCs and DHRCs are to be established in order to expedite human rights violation cases and minimise violations. The establishment of a SHRC and DHRCs is a high priority on, particularly taking into account the sheer magnitude of violations in Karnataka. [These were finally established in 2005-06]. 

Terrorists and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act was a draconian Act meant to silence political dissenters without giving any reasons. The TADA along with other Acts Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act was aimed at giving unbridled power to the security organs of the State and led to the collapse of civil and judicial administration. Due to tremendous popular pressure TADA was allowed to lapse in 1995. But ironically hundreds of innocent villagers are in Karnataka jails under this Act for the last many years as in Tamil Nadu and many thousands in other parts of the country and are languishing without trial. The Special Task Force (STF) jointly formed by the Tamil Nadu and Karnataka police under special command to wipe out the poacher and smuggler Veerappan (who is operating in the border forest areas of both the States) is subjecting the villagers around the area to untold tortures and miseries. Hundreds are in jail without trials under the lapsed TADA Act. In spite of the continued agitations of the victims in both the Karnataka and Tamil Nadu areas, neither State is releasing them nor charging them under due process of law. Not only these villagers are illegally detained but their families are looted and women raped by members of the STF. Under the label of nabbing a smuggler the STF is enjoying immunity from all laws of the land. This is indeed a cruel joke on the most basic rights of the poor people. 

What we said about the human rights situation in the four southern States is only the tip of the iceberg. The cases cited are only some of the more reported ones. Collectively and individually, any number of rights violations are going on and various factors prevent them from coming out. Or, even if many of them find occasional mention in the media columns, they are fast forgotten. This is so mainly because the victims are as a rule the socially, politically and economically underprivileged.

                                                                                                Chapter 4

                                                           SICHREM’S POSITION ON HUMAN RIGHTS

Introduction

Of late human rights have become a hot topic worldwide. The discourses are on many levels, and with the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), these discourses have become more political. The so-called Asian point of view calls for a review of the UDHR with the argument that there cannot be universal human rights because the reality varies from country to country – cultural, economic and social values being sharply different, say between Asia and the Western countries. 

Certain rights and duties get precedence at the cost of certain other individual civil and political rights because of the exigency of economic development. The argument is that without economic development there is no meaning in talking about universal human rights, and hence human rights cannot be viewed as an indivisible concept. Citizens have to sacrifice certain rights in the interests of the broader social goals, and once these goals are achieved rights will automatically follow. The UDHR is accused of euro-centrism, of trying to impose western individualistic values throughout the world, and is termed as a form of cultural colonialism. The argument is that the question of human rights is being used in the economic interests of the advanced capitalist countries, which is not acceptable in other parts of the world. The US, for example, links human rights violations to trade and other weapons in their economic armouries. 

It is interesting to note that the dissenting points of view are chiefly the positions of governments. The governments of China and many East Asian countries are the most vocal. They hold that Asiatic values are fundamentally different from the individualistic values of the West and using human rights as an economic weapon is unfair.  

It is very much true that the UDHR and related instruments are couched in western terms and that the United Nations itself as a concept was floated by the victors of the Second World War. But it is quite another thing to state that because the UN and the UDHR originated in the post-War western dominated world the principles enshrined in the UDHR are not applicable to all countries and peoples. 

The human rights discourse in its present form did originate with the Magna Carta (1215) and subsequent declarations including the American Declaration of Independence, and Benthamite individualism formed the philosophical roots to a large extent. But the question of human rights cannot be limited to this recent a history of human kind. All the religions of the world, including Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, upheld the rights of human beings and preached compassion and dharma in unambiguous terms. Caste bigotry is a much later development or degeneration. Buddhism is a classic illustration to man’s striving for human brotherhoods and all the religions have a universal appeal. This is because the philosophical principles are humanitarian in essence. 

In India’s case the medieval reform movements called for the overthrow of the oppressive and exploitative caste system and preached the equality of all men and women. Hence to state that universal human rights in principle are of purely western origin is not historically substantiated. All the different cultures of the world contained the roots of the present day conceptualisation of universal human rights. Europe suffered the two major holocausts of this century, and the UN was a reaction to the later and bloodier one. Hence the UDHR is formulated in western language. At the same time, the principles enshrined, in abstract, are universal in character. 

However, it is incorrect to project a monolithic Asiatic value system counterposed to the Western capitalistic, individualistic values. Asia is comprised of half the population of the world with a number of distinct cultures and hundreds of languages and ethnic groups. There cannot be a single government or a few governments that can authentically represent Asia. In this background trying to project a uniform set of Asiatic values becomes unreal and partisan. 

Western Governments and Universal Rights   

The performance of the western governments, particularly of the United States, on the human rights front is not very creditable. The rise of unbridled individualism has given rise to the increasing breakdown of family and collective values in the Western world. Yet, externally, they try their best to dominate the whole globe, and this has become all the more obvious after the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

Centuries of brutal colonial plunder paved the way for their prosperity and with the decolonisation process gaining momentum after the Second World War they devised indirect means of control which was mainly economic in nature. A new form of colonialism based on control of the world market came into being denying the right to sustainable development to the majority of the world. Environmental devastation became all the more serious and the disparities in consumption and accumulation of wealth widened. The US demands human rights observances from others in a context of subjugation to the accumulation drive of the transnational companies which are mainly western in ownership, as a weapon to their economic and political advantage. One can legitimately call such a tactic double-dealing. 

The United States and its allies use the question of human rights as an economic weapon in the form of trade sanctions and aid blockades. Also, the US and its allies use this pretext to directly intervene in the internal affairs of other countries, and of late this has assumed military form and content, often resulting in massive human rights violations. Iraq is a case in point. For dismantling the present dictatorship in Iraq the US and allies imposed severe economic sanctions which has resulted in terrible privations for the people of Iraq. Tens of thousands of Iraqi children die due to undernourishment and lack of essential life-saving medicines, and this is a direct fall-out of the trade embargo. This is nothing but naked violation of the basic right to live of a whole people. On the other hand, they can prop up outright dictators to maintain their own dominance. There are any number of examples for this. 

Internally, these advanced capitalist countries are facing severe cut-backs on welfare expenditure resulting in great misery to a large number of people. Maintaining and gaining competitiveness in the world economy is the justification that these governments advance for drastically cutting down welfare expenditure. And this is in the face of rising unemployment which compounds the tragedy of the marginalised sections whose numbers are rising day by day. Crime is rising and the prisons are more than full. The crime rate in the US is a prime example. It is estimated that the US has the largest number of prisons and the conditions in the prisons are the worst. With the privatisation of prisons in the US it has also become a high profit sector. Sexual violence leaped up and the cherished human values are getting more and more abandoned. These are all gross violations of human rights, particularly of the weaker sections. 

It is mainly the economic and military might of these countries that makes them demand human rights from others which they themselves do not care about. These governments are politicking in human rights and transforming the rights into a commodity. However, pointing at the violations of human rights by those demanding human rights from others does not invalidate the basic principles of universal human rights. These are very valuable to humankind and represent what is good in human nature. It is in this sense that the UDHR and related Conventions and Covenants are a step forward and it is the duty of those who cherish them to progressively get them implemented throughout the world. 

China, Spokesperson of the Asian Position 

The Chinese government is the most vocal on the question of divisible human rights and an appropriate set of human rights according to different cultures and values. It is not very difficult to understand why it takes this position. The article on self-determination is the most worrisome for China. The minority nationalities within China like Tibetans and Mongolians, and the ethnic communities in East Turkestan are kept under the thumb of Beijing using utmost force. The policy of the Chinese government is to totally undermine and destroy the national identities of these ancient nationalities and on all counts the basic rights of these peoples are mercilessly trampled underfoot. They are treated as “barbarians” and third rate material to be exploited. These peoples are denied their own languages and natural resources and Tibet, for example, is being converted into a nuclear dustbin. 

It will certainly be uncomfortable for the Chinese government if its deeds in destroying the national identities of these ancient peoples get too much exposure. Apart from these minority nationalities the majority of the Han Chinese people themselves are subject to severe suppression by the Communist Party rule. The massacre at Tiananmen Square in Beijing ten years back is an example. No form of dissent is entertained. Prisoners have no rights at all and they are forced to do unpaid hard labour. There is little wonder that the Chinese government wants to review UDHR and wants a separate set of human rights “appropriate” to them and their unique special culture!

The approach of the G-8 governments towards China is even more revealing. For the US China is still the Most Favoured Nation. None of the other ‘developed’ countries are seriously interested in the human rights situation in China. The reason is simple economics. Since China opened up its economy in 1978 (Four Modernisations) and the Chinese market is a formidable one, so huge and with profits so high that none of the ‘advanced’ countries want to seriously question the human rights credibility of the Chinese government. Entities like Tibet can be sacrificed at the altar of this kind of economics. The US is the biggest gainer and no amount of human rights violations can deter it from supporting the Chinese government as long as the present open door policy remains. So is the case of other advanced countries. All of them want a slice of the pie and that is more important than human rights. Democratic rights of the people are dispensable. 

What SICHREM values is that in spite of all these double talks and actions by the prominent governments of the world the basic principle of human rights as inalienable rights of all human being is becoming ever more valid. The enormity of violations and the growth of irrepressible protests against them point out without any ambiguity the great need to strengthen the human rights movement.

 The UN and Human Rights 

The United Nations, under whose auspices the UDHR and other conventions came into being and endorsed by most of the world is also, sad to say, a victim of big power economics and politics. The United Nations Human Rights Commission is also susceptible to arm twisting. The UN Security Council members can veto any resolution that hurts individual government’s vested interests. This has often happened in the past and there is no reason to believe that this discriminatory functioning will come to an end in the immediate future.   

All the major violators including China have grabbed positions in the various Commissions by endorsing the relevant Conventions and Treaties so that they can sabotage any resolution that seriously hurts them. Their representatives strive for not passing the resolutions in their original form and dilute them so that they lose teeth and become harmless. This sort of wheeling and dealing has become endemic to human rights debates under the auspices of the UN. Sometimes the UN is even made to tacitly accept acts of aggression by the big powers. This definitely weakens its original defined role, but can be taken only as a fall-out of the power equations existing in the present day world. But with all its weaknesses the UN potentially remains a forum which is a viable peace maker in the world. 

As we mentioned earlier, the human rights movement is a spreading one across the world and it is this growing human rights consciousness that has to take deeper roots and spread further. The UN instruments and the Constitutions of various countries which include many of these human rights in them are a positive step, however ineffective they are in practice. It is this positive trend that has to be strengthened. More and more people becoming human rights conscious is the way out. The struggle is certainly not a short duration one. 

A Methodological Confusion     

There is some amount of confusion regarding the various components of human rights. The question is whether collective rights encompassing the right to self-determination, rights of communities like the depressed castes, minorities, slum dwellers and women can really be bifurcated from individual civil and political rights? It is true there are differences between the two sets of rights and sometimes they have to be tackled separately. In reality, what we find is that this exclusivity is often unreal because there is a lot of overlapping. This is especially so in countries like India where caste and class tend to merge and discriminatory policies are universal against the weaker sections. A deconstruction [and re-conceptualisation] of this methodological division is found to be necessary to grasp the situation when we work at the ground level. 

Theoretically and functionally integrating this “division” into a single composite programme with different components, and action being aided by research, is the working perspective of SICHREM. This is not a western situation. That is why while upholding the concept of inalienable and indivisible universal human rights we have to evolve our own methodologies to understand and resolve human rights questions in India.

                                                                                                  Chapter 5

                                   RATIONALE AND NEED FOR CONSTRUCTIVE INTERVENTIONS –

                                                                              A GENERAL PERCEPTION

The human rights movement in India, as we mentioned in some of the earlier chapters, has a long history and has passed through many phases, both in organisation forms and theoretical discourses. The post emergency period witnessed the consolidation of a number of civil, democratic and human rights organisation, some of which are all-India in character, but most of them are region-based in their operational and organisational scope. Many States have more than one such organisation as functioning entities. Moreover, localised issue based organisations and movements are springing up everywhere. From 1991 onwards, when the opening up of the all-India economy started in earnest towards integrating the economy with the powerful global economic actors of the post-Cold War era, newer and newer issues are cropping up, and this continuing process is showing an unmistakable tendency to multiply.   

On the international level India is a signatory to the various UN sponsored human rights Declarations, Covenants, Treaties and Conventions. More recently in 1997, it even signed, though not yet ratified, the UNCAT (Convention Against Torture), which aims at abolishing torture in any form. Apart from not ratifying the UNCAT  - the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment - India only conditionally ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights by denying the right to compensation to victims of violations of these rights. Also, this country has not yet ratified the two Optional Protocols to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the second of which abolishes the death penalty permanently. India is not a signatory to the Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families either. The provisions of this international convention grant extensive rights to documented and undocumented migrants, who are to be treated on par with native citizens in areas like housing, healthcare and education. On the national level the Protection of Human Rights Act was adopted by the supreme power, i.e., the Parliament in 1993 and accordingly the National Human Rights Commission was formed and started functioning. Along with the NHRC the process is on to form State Human Rights Commissions and Human Rights Courts. Apart from these there also already exist commissions on Women, Children, Dalits, Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and Religious Minorities. It is, however, only on an institutional level that the human rights infrastructure looks formidable and comprehensive and seems to show evidence about increasing awareness and protection of human rights. 

The government of India’s latest report to the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) repeatedly emphasizes that the Indian approach to human rights is a holistic one, meaning that economic, social and cultural justice is indivisible from civil and political rights. In theory, this is a progressive and correct position. But what is the reality on the ground level?

The Dimensions of Human Rights Violations  

Up to the declaration of internal emergency and its subsequent withdrawal it was mainly the political rights of citizens that was the prime component of civil and democratic rights groups. But this has undergone significant changes of late. And these changes are related to political and economic developments, both nationally and globally. There is growing awareness among human rights activists that community rights are as important sometimes even more important than political rights of individuals and politically dissenting groups. The old as well as the new organisations are paying increasing attention to collective issues. The formation of the Indian People’s Tribunal for Environment and Human Rights (1993) is an interesting development symbolising this new awareness about collective rights. 

The human rights of women, children, adivasis, dalits, and minorities are also being perceived to come within the ambit of the human rights movement. Also the older civil and democratic rights organisations have incorporated these new issues into their agenda. This broadening of the concerns of human rights organisations is a global one and there are global causative factors also. The fast increasing process of globalisation and economic liberalisation is resulting in the large-scale displacement of the common people. Environmental degradation and the total lack of concern by industry and business with economic muscle and political patronage are posing human rights problems not only to the present victims but also to the coming generations. 

The very fact that human rights organisations and movements are coming up everywhere and many of them are targets of repression by the state, big business, industry and upper caste landowners shows that violations are increasing instead of abating in spite of the large institutional infrastructure created to protect human rights. This is equally applicable to political and civil rights as well as cultural, social and political rights. The ‘holistic’ approach of the Government of India is proved in reality to be a negative approach; the sheer magnitude and varieties of human rights abuses rampant across the whole country shows this in stark light. 

Mega projects are coming up in a number of places as globalisation is getting unbridled. The Dabhol (Enron) power project in Maharashtra and the Sardar Sarovar Project in Gujarat are classic illustrations. In both these cases the people agitating against them and the activists who are part of these agitations are denied their fundamental rights including the right to livelihood. Many similar projects are at the execution stage in other places and many more are on the anvil. 

Conglomerates with enormous economic and political clout are determined to take root here, and the state is in full cahoots with them. Blatantly violating the right to livelihood of millions, they are highly questionable on economic, social, cultural and political levels. 

These projects uproot people from their centuries old habitats, kill the environment and convert the victims into the dregs of society.  They are coming up because the power of the state is solidly behind them despite stiff popular opposition. In some cases, like the Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save Narmada Movement), the resistance has got all-India character. As shown in the case of the Enron project any hesitation from the side of the State government was met by the TNCs by plain arm twisting and unconcealed threats. Impunity is the word for big business. The mega projects (whether in the power sector, international tourism, mining or infrastructure building) are mainly sponsored by the TNCs and World Bank and the people are considered as nothing but fodder for the maximisation of their profits. And those who are contented with the crumbs from their tables are the policy-makers internally. The direct and indirect results of globalisation are naked, arrogant violations of human rights and the signing of various covenants, treaties and conventions at the international level becomes a mockery, a cruel one at that. 

There is no real visible difference between the various mainstream political parties who are never tired of swearing by the people, country and ‘development.’ According to them, all these are for the development of the national economy and the good of the people. By the same logic those who attempt to oppose this imposed development by pointing at the gross violations of basic human rights, unsustainability of this model and environmental destruction, which is going to affect the future generations also, are dubbed “anti-development” and even “foreign agents.” The irony of this logic goes beyond the realms of fantasy. 

The large majority of the victims of these violations of the basic human right of the people to live are dalits, tribals or other economically and socially weaker sections. The Constitution of India as well as the UDHR and other Covenants to which India is a party explicitly guarantee the protection of these highly vulnerable sections who are being pushed into the gutter. These projects are invariably highly capital and technology intensive, which is why the TNCs are so keenly involved. In the process they colonise large amounts of land at very low cost to themselves. Land is forcibly taken away from the cultivators and this renders the landed as well as the landless agricultural labourers homeless and destitute. Price rises are concomitant with such ‘development,’ and this is especially so in the case of essential commodities. In short, human rights violations due to the imposition of mega projects aimed solely at super profits are massive, vicious, self-perpetuating and are carried over to the posterity.   

The projects which are displacing hundreds of thousands of common people are resulting in the proliferation of slums in the mega cities and their suburbs with utterly dehumanised conditions of living. Every city and town in the country has sprawling slums. It is difficult to ascertain with accuracy the number of slum dwellers but some estimates even put their number at 50 per cent of the total urban population. Their lot is an eternal struggle for a sub human existence and they are always at the mercy of the city or town authorities and goondas (goons). The predominant section of the slum dwellers is dalits and other socially and economically oppressed castes, and the real estate barons very often brutally demolish or burn their huts to grab the land. And this is done with the help of the forces of the State and private goonda armies.     

Biotechnology is the latest assault. TNCs earlier producing chemical weapons (that were liberally used in Vietnam) are now trying to monopolise agricultural production based on biotechnology. Food is now openly acknowledged as a weapon and hectic moves are on to monopolise the seed and production processes in agriculture. Monsanto is an example. The biodiversity destruction involved is incalculable and millions and millions of farmers are going to be at the total mercy of a handful of TNCs when biotechnology takes over agriculture. Currently it is at an experimental stage but looking at the trend of globalisation it could become a reality. Human rights activists ought to give great priority to this impending disaster. 

Communal and caste violence have become endemic and engineering riots has become a ruthless weapon of political crisis management. The Nelli massacre, the anti-Sikh riots, the Babri Masjid demolition and its violent aftermath, the anti-Muslim Bombay riots, the anti-Tamil riots in Karnataka are only some of the prominent among major riots. Cities like Aligarh and Moradabad are eternally susceptible to large-scale communal riots. Invariably, minorities are the main targets. Caste violence has become routine in Bihar and many other parts of the country. Very often the major carnages are engineered by vested interests to preserve and further their respective political domains and the role played by political parties is self-evident. The vested economic and political interests stand to gain while the basic human rights of the common man, especially tribals, dalits and other weaker sections of society are trampled underfoot. 

The pattern is broadly similar. Caste and communal enmity is generated through spreading falsehoods and deliberate provocations and then taken over by anti-socials with political patronage. Often, the poor people, especially women are the most vulnerable. In all caste and communal riots, women are found to be special targets. Each major riot leaves behind thousands of orphans whom nobody cares about. Besides the terrible destruction of life, the survivors are left with nothing to fall back upon, and are left mentally traumatised and physically shattered. The human rights abuse is colossal. And it is very seldom that the perpetrators are brought to book. An eminent example is the anti-Sikh riots all the leaders of which are even now active political leaders enjoying all the privileges. Many of the criminals who habitually mastermind and organise the riots are members of Parliament, State Assemblies or even ministers. So much for the redressal mechanism on this count! 

Child labour is universal in the country, but more prevalent in the urban areas. Child workers are very low paid, perform hazardous labour and are freely abused both verbally and physically. They have no basic rights as children at all. India is classified as one of the countries with the largest proportion of child labour in the total work force. Out of the estimated 500,000 prostitutes in Bombay city alone at least 30 per cent are considered to be below the age of sixteen. This trend is fast catching up all over the country. Mafias trafficking in women and children of both sexes for flesh trade for the various urban centres in India, operate in the neighbouring countries of Bangladesh and Nepal too. 

Discrimination against the girl child is rampant. Foeticide and female infanticide are not uncommon, especially in some States like Rajasthan, Punjab and Madhya Pradesh and it shows up in skewed sex ratios. Discrimination against the girl child starts from the womb itself and ends only with death. 

Civil and political rights and their violations have received the maximum attention from the media and human rights organisations in India and abroad. These violations can be broadly classified into two types. Foremost are the ethnic, nationality centred human rights abuses which have been documented to some extent. Over the last ten to fifteen years thousands of people were killed in the so-called encounters with the police, paramilitary and army in the Northeast, Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir. Many other thousands have ‘disappeared.’ Tens of thousands are maimed for life through torture under custody. 

Human rights violations from armed militant groups are also on the increase. Inter ethnic clashes have become endemic in the Northeast. A relatively new form of human rights violations is the use of the so-called renegades (those militants who surrender to the security forces) to conduct assassinations of militants still active. And under the cover of fighting armed militancy the innocent people who are not a party to the conflict are often targeted by the security forces, partly out of sadism and partly as a reprisal. Relatives of militants are no longer safe. Outside the mainstream parties the Maoists also take recourse to killings of members of rival groups/fractions. Actually this phenomenon is deliberately engineered by the party leaderships to prevent any sort of erosion of their respective cadre base and is nothing short of human sacrifice. 

Torture under custody is normal and custodial deaths not very uncommon. Custodial rapes are also not uncommon. Whenever the policemen on night duty feel like it they go and arrest a couple of street walkers, bring them to the police station and sexually and physically abuse them. Every police station has to show a minimum number of cases solved by the month end, and the policemen regularly go on a rampage during the last days of every month to fulfil the quota. In most cases it is the innocent people who become the victims. 

Draconian laws like Terrorists and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA), Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, the National Security Act (NSA) and others are in operation. These Acts aim at giving unbridled power to the security organs of the State and lead to the collapse of civil and judicial administration. Apart from all these Acts there are a number of other draconian laws on the States’ level. Under all these anti-democratic laws and Acts tens of thousands are languishing in jails. Though nationwide protests forced the government to allow TADA to lapse in 1995 thousands are still in jails without trial under this outdated Act. 

The second type of civil and political rights violations are class related often mixed up with caste politics. This is especially so in the States of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, parts of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. The land question is at the core of the problem, and it is in Bihar that class overlaps with caste. In this case also kidnappings, ‘encounter’ killings, disappearances and brutal torture and long periods of incarcerations are the rule. The state is also involved in perpetrating such atrocities. 

In both the types of human rights violations the human rights activists who try to document and intervene for the protection of human rights are targeted by the State. Many killings have occurred and further killings cannot be ruled out. Human rights activists are labelled as anti-national and accessibility to information is extremely difficult. Many areas are notified as ‘Disturbed Areas’ and the security forces are given a free hand in such areas. Mass rapes and torture of the inhabitants of entire villages in Punjab, Kashmir and the Northeast are reported. Extortions are usual from both sides. In many such areas the innocent common people are situated between the devil and deep sea; often this results in the internal displacement of people. It is also a common practice in many North-eastern States like Manipur and Nagaland that whole villages are relocated and displaced to places convenient for the security forces so as to prevent any sort of contact with the militants. This process is generally called ‘hamletisation.’ All this is being done in the name of protecting national security. 

Even this sketchy overview of the magnitude of human rights violations belonging to the civil, political and social, cultural and economic categories proves that ratifying the UDHR is one thing and implementing it is a totally different thing. Human rights violations on all counts are terrible and it is this ground reality that makes effective interventions on many platforms a necessity. There is absolutely no scope for any sort of complacency on the part of responsible, socially conscious citizens to remain mute witnesses. On the other hand, human rights activities are to be drastically stepped up and human rights literacy has to be promoted among the various sections of people irrespective of whether they are direct victims of human rights abuses or not. 

The Role of South India Cell for Human Rights Education and Monitoring (SICHREM)   

Founded in 1995 by Mathews Philip and Koshy Mathew SICHREM is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) specialising in human rights monitoring and education. Being an NGO it has certain dissimilarities with other civil, democratic and human rights organisations. At the same time, the complementarities are very strong too. The majority of the civil, democratic and human rights organisations functioning now are doing highly useful social work by investigating human rights abuses and publicizing them: the APCLC in Andhra Pradesh, APDR in Bengal, PUCL in Delhi and other States, Punjab Human Rights Organisation and host of other similar organisations have done tremendous and courageous work in the last couple of decades in enhancing the human rights awareness in the country. SICHREM works in close collaboration with them. 

But there are certain inherent limitations to the work done by organisations like APCLC or PUCL. Their organisational structure is loose, and therefore ad-hocism and anarchy become built-in. They have no regular staff and systematic documentation and research cells, which are necessary for waging effective legal battles on questions of human rights violations. When a violation issue emerges it may not always be possible to immediately collect all the necessary materials to proceed with further actions. This is a serious limitation to properly develop resistance to human rights violations. Most of these organisations suffer from this problem. 

SICHREM, on the other hand, is a proactive permanent human rights organisation with its own regular staff continuously monitoring human rights violations and engages in systematic research into the issues.  It does not wait for a specific human rights abuse to occur to react to it. Another difference is that SICHREM is not limited to investigation of specific human rights violations, but envisages educational programmes at various levels to conscientise the wider public through appropriate training programmes of activists and identified community groups suffering from human rights violations. We believe that this must be a permanent and ongoing process which is subject to expansion and diversification. 

SICHREM, as mentioned earlier, works in close contact with organisations like PUCL. There are certain things that an NGO can do and there are certain things it cannot. Likewise, there are certain things an organisation like PUCL can do and certain things that are difficult for them to perform. We can put in the documentation and research output which are very much needed for a human rights movement and such work can be of great help for the others to proceed with the issues concerned, for example, in fighting a legal case. Likewise, we can provide expertise and ground work of human rights education which can make the tasks of an organisation like PUCL much more feasible. The complementarities are too strong to be ignored; in fact they are to be consciously developed and strengthened. We hold that only such an approach can strengthen the human rights movement in a holistic sense. 

We are already working along these lines, but the need of the hour is to develop further along the same path. Permanent activists at the field, research, and documentation levels are a must for effectively tackling human rights issues. Civil and human rights movements have to be backed up by such basically necessary activities. There is no space for any sort of conflict of objectives because the objectives are the same. At the same time, there is tremendous scope for effective collaboration and coordination. Any human rights movement has to have effective networking among the component elements and such effective networking can go a long way in strengthening the movement as a whole.

Long-term Objectives

The ultimate objective of any human rights organisation is to create a society which will practice the protection of the inalienable rights of all human being irrespective of class, creed, community, gender, ethnicity and nationality. As an image of an ideal society this is not really new in the world. All the major religions and various schools of philosophies preached the same, though in differing vocabularies and social contexts. SICHREM firmly believes in the inalienability of human rights for all human beings and will adopt every means to achieve this ultimate objective. The following strategies are identified as means for achieving the same: 

1.  Human rights education for students, activists, NGOs, staff, government officials and the larger public.

2.  Monitoring the status of human rights in South India systematically and continuously and documenting the same to make the information accessible for everyone who is interested in human rights.

3.  Undertaking advocacy for human rights victims and getting justice for them.

4.  Campaigning and lobbying on regional, national and international policy matters on human rights. This includes a campaign for the immediate and unconditional abolition of the death penalty, which is nothing but premeditated judicial murder by the state.

5.  Maintaining a well developed documentation cum research Centre to disseminate information and other support services to human rights activists and groups. Eventually to regularly publish a newsletter on human rights.

6.  Campaigning for law reforms and implementation of UN Conventions Treaties on Human Rights.

7.  Conduct fact-finding missions on incidents of human rights violations and take follow-up actions at various possible levels.

8.  Raising funds locally for supporting human rights activism, advocacy and legal aid.

9. Supporting the struggles for justice and right to livelihood by people’s organisations of underprivileged and minority sections.

10.  Networking with human rights groups and activists and explore areas of mutual support and common action. This includes international organisations and activists.

                                                                                                  Chapter 6

                                                                          PROPOSED PROGRAMMES

 For any meaningful protection and promotion of human rights a multipronged multifaceted holistic programme composed of distinct but interrelated components is needed. The magnitude of human rights violations in India, the enormity of ignorance concerning human rights, and our own practical experience of the last few years points this out in sharp focus. Towards this purpose we propose to divide our programme into six different divisions. But these divisions should not be taken as mutually exclusive; far from it they are strongly complementary and mutually reinforcing. 

Regional and community differences have to be seriously taken into account when we evolve a holistic human rights protection and development programme.  For instance, a human rights educational programme for urban slum children cannot be the same as for college and general school students in the same metropolis. Their problems and rights violations are different. Hence appropriate models are to be evolved and implemented. 

The following programmes are presently envisaged: 

1. Five-year Programme on Human Rights Education 

Under this five-year programme human rights education in schools, colleges and other training institutions is one vital component. Increasing criminality in campuses and schools is not taking place in a vacuum. There are clear social, economic and political factors behind it. Reckless consumerism and resultant unhealthy competitiveness are the hallmarks of our society. This is having disastrous consequences for the humane development of our children. Lack of sufficient awareness about human rights is very important in this context. 

Children should be caught young and made aware of the great value of human rights, the need to have respect for others’ rights. In fact, efforts must be made to include human rights as an integral part of education, both formal and non formal. And it need not be limited to class room discourses. Rather, it should incorporate exposure trips and powerful media like arts, theatre, music, films, etc. Such a comprehensive, creative, enlightening human rights education programme should be practised. Children should be nurtured in human rights on a priority basis; only this can ensure a safe future for them and other beings on planet Earth. 

Another key component of the proposed human rights educational programme conceived by SICHREM is to organise training programmes and workshops for specific target groups. Exclusive workshops for the following target groups are planned: a) Media personnel (junior journalists); b) Legal professionals (junior lawyers); c) Selected leaders from the slums; d) Teachers; e) Health professionals; f) Voluntary activists g) 45-day Human Rights Diploma for Participants from the Asia-Pacific Region. 

A minimum of ten workshops every year is the goal. These workshops can be held anywhere in South India. For example, the planned extension centres will be encouraged to organise workshops in their own areas.  The content of the workshops will have general and particular aspects and the content on both counts will vary between workshops depending on the specificities of the target groups. 

The media has come to play a central role in today’s society in the dissemination or non dissemination of news and details about human rights. A socially responsible media can do a lot to promote human rights and act as watchdog in cases of rights violations. Workshops and training programmes for media personnel can certainly play a crucial role in more widely and effectively popularising human rights issues and such developments can have far reaching impact on the general consciousness among the people at large about human rights. 

Likewise, health workers including health administrators, doctors and paramedical workers must be made aware about the need to protect human rights, and specific workshops and training programmes specifically targeting them are a necessity. It is common knowledge that health workers often become party to human rights violations, either coerced or due to insufficient awareness. A prime example is falsified post-mortem reports which protect the perpetrators of violations. The same is found to be true about the legal profession. Theoretically, lawyers are supposed to be protectors of justice but in practice it is very often not so. Programmes specifically aimed at lawyers and paralegal workers can definitely strengthen their will to fight human rights abuses, and a heightened awareness can immensely contribute to it. 

It is often a mistaken assumption that all members of the law and order forces are by nature sadists who love to exercise their power over helpless people. There are contrary examples also. It is no doubt an uphill task to bring them (especially the rank and file) to human rights education camps mainly because of the governmental rules. But if it is possible to make them aware of the legal implications of human rights violations and the innate goodness of respecting human rights it will be a great leap forward. This is a policy matter and SICHREM will strive for such policy changes. 

Social activists and their networks have become an extensive phenomenon in the country during the last few decades and no doubt they are doing a lot of useful work in the field of human rights. Unfortunately, they are also subject to competitive empire building and this approach blocks any synergic impact on the social fabric as a whole. Often it is found that many social activists (especially at the grass roots level) are not sufficiently informed about the various legal and social aspects of human rights. It has become a priority sector and better training to them can go a long way in enhancing the human rights values and strengthening the struggles against human rights abuses. 

Teachers are a traditionally influential section in Indian society and they have played leading roles in progressive social ferment throughout. They are an invaluable influence on the younger generation especially, and this great potential has to be tapped to the maximum. Workshops for them will have to be oriented towards how best to implement human rights education among students and developing curriculum inputs. Moreover, teachers are opinion makers, especially in the rural areas, and they can be able defenders and fighters for human rights as has often been proved in the past. 

An important objective of SICHREM in the near future is to start a 45-day long Human Rights Diploma Course for the Asia-Pacific Region participants. It will be conducted in Oct-Nov every year with 25 participants. The course will be an off-the-track one with a minimum of 15 days exposure visits and practical work. The goal is that successful participants should be in a position to become leaders in human rights activism when they go back to their respective areas. In this way it will be different from the routine academic exercises.  

2. District Level Human Rights Centres in Karnataka 

To begin with human rights and legal centres/clinics are planned in ten districts of Karnataka State. These clinics are necessarily mobile and their role is to learn from and educate in turn the people at the grass roots level who are the worst victims and least aware of their rights and the existing legal safeguards. This is especially so in the case of people in the rural areas of the districts. They are mostly illiterate or semi-literate and often spoken language itself operates as a major handicap. A large number of them are totally at sea when it comes to legal matters and dealing with courts and litigation. They are highly susceptible to outright cheating and extortions along with a whole lot of other injustices; and their self confidence evaporates in front of those who are educated, monied, and higher up in the social hierarchy. The district level Human Rights clinics are aimed at removing or at least alleviating these crippling handicaps faced by the common people.

These clinics will be composed of legal and other experts who are well aware of and committed to human rights issues and who are in a position to identify and understand human rights abuses in their various manifestations and specificities, and offer and impress appropriate advice and guidance to the victims. SICHREM intends to go further and take up specific cases in the appropriate governmental and legal institutions. Creating the necessary public opinion through the media and other means as well as directly intervening on the issues will be the strategy. Legal advice and interventions will go in tandem with human rights education and legal literacy. This process is expected to lead not only to redressal of specific grievances but also to enable people to become aware of their rights, on that basis stand up for themselves and regain their self-prestige. Only substantial increase in the awareness of the people on human rights can make a long term change in the present morbid and dehumanised situation. Constructive, constant interactions of the Centres with the people will help precipitate this reality by also throwing up local level leaders and advocates of human rights. 

 The District Centres will periodically send mobile human rights clinics to the interior areas so that human rights issues become a component of mass culture and involve wider and wider sections of people. The Centres will seek to cover the entire district over a period of time. These clinics will identify the rights violations of the people, offer social and legal remedies and take up the cases when necessary at the appropriate forums.    

3. Work among the Slum Dwellers of Bangalore    

Bangalore city is rapidly expanding and has one of the highest investment rates in Asia. The city is growing both laterally and vertically. The lateral growth of the city and its suburbs has mainly meant the proliferation of slums where the poorest of the poor live, mainly belonging to the Scheduled Castes and other marginalised groups. More than a thousand small, medium and large slums exist in and around Bangalore and most of the shacks in these slums are located on “public property.” The slum dwellers are an extremely vulnerable section of people living in miserable shacks and highly prone to diseases due to lack of elementary civic amenities and undernourishment. It is estimated that more than 60% of the total slum population live below the absolute poverty line, i.e., on a daily income of less than a dollar. 

The majority of the slum dwelling workers (children forming a good part) are unskilled or semi-skilled and the literacy rate is abysmally low. They are needed because their labour is dirt cheap and they can be treated as the authorities and business interests like. When the real estate sector is bullish, the demolition of slums follows on the same lines of being bullish. Though there are Municipal Corporation laws concerning regularisation of slums, protection and resettlement of slum dwellers in case of eviction, they are hardly ever followed. Caste, class, social and political organisations are working among the slum dwellers, but they are seldom effective in protecting them from the arbitrariness that is galore. Existing studies show this clearly. SICHREM considers the slum dwellers as an independent target group because of the routinely horrible and never ending violations of human rights that have become endemic to their lives. 

The proliferation of slums is a natural consequence of the lopsided pattern of urbanisation for which the slum dwellers themselves cannot be held responsible. They enable the surplus accumulation of the dominant powers but are not allowed to live and die with even the minimum facilities and rights. Any businessman or political goon, who wants to grab the slum land, can bribe the authorities, and with the able aid of the police and goondas, demolish the whole slum, throw the people on to the streets and take over the land. Sometimes the criminal don need not even seek the aid of the police force; his own henchmen are more than enough. If the people try to resist, they are forcibly evicted by setting their meagre dwellings and possessions on fire. 

Mainstream political parties and their caste platforms often take the initiative to get these people enrolled as voters and coax them with various promises like regularisation of slums and ration cards at election time. But the bitter ground level experience of the slum people is that these politicians and their touts are seldom to be seen around again after the elections are over. SICHREM strongly believes that this highly vulnerable section of urban people should not be left to the mercy of opportunistic politicians, brutal businessmen and contractor, goondas, caste based opportunists, or the police who in any case make it their profession to always terrorise them. These working people, who do not enjoy any rights of the organised workers and lead a sub human existence, are always an easy target for the police and anti-social elements because no one is truly accountable to them. They can be picked up on any flimsy or false charges, tortured and raped. The slum dwellers are often made into scapegoats for others’ crimes.  

If the above-mentioned sordid reality is to be checked and the police, goondas, businessmen, labour contractors and bureaucrats be prevented from committing arbitrary and heinous violations of the human rights of the slum people, they have to be made conscious about their human rights. For this, due to their particularly underprivileged position in society unconventional, innovative tools and strategies will need to be evolved. The use of cultural and media skills to empower the slum dwellers is conceived by SICHREM as a strategy of action. A participatory information process has to be evolved and strengthened. A visible forum has to be provided for interaction, action and reaction. Only through the active participation of the people themselves can the necessary confidence be built up to prevent the ongoing blatant violation of their basic human rights. 

The idea of mobile Human Rights Clinics, as enunciated earlier in the case of the District Human Rights Centres, is even more relevant in the case of urban slums. The slums, as everyone knows, are sprawled all over the city and suburbs and mobile units of professionals are necessary to identify the issues and tackle them. Whenever and wherever necessary, legal remedies should also be resorted to. There should be concerted efforts to legalise the slums, provide potable water and other sanitation facilities and sufficient educational avenues for the children.  

4. Fact-finding Missions 

Fact-finding missions that investigate into human rights abuses have become the standard procedure for human rights movements worldwide. This points to the utter incapacity or unwillingness of the State controlled mechanism, including judicial and quasi-judicial mechanism, to address and redress human rights abuses. Generally, the reports of fact-finding missions have no judicial locus standi, but they can be of tremendous moral persuasive power and act on the collective consciousness. They are thus extremely valuable in spreading and deepening human rights awareness. There are several well-knit international human rights organisations like Amnesty International, Asia Watch and Greenpeace, whose reports are wide-ranging and cover countries, industries and regions. Their international networks span several continents and their reports are used by world bodies like the United Nations and its various agencies because of their authentic and unbiased character.  

In India, as we mentioned earlier, the ICLU had conducted several fact-finding missions towards the fag end of colonialism. But fact-finding missions have become more common and, correspondingly, more dangerous enterprises from the 1970s onwards, i.e., after the Maoist uprisings and their severe suppression by the government. With this new phase of fact-finding exercises the question of defending the human rights defenders also came up sharply. Still, many reports came out and received wide publicity nationally and internationally. The CPDR report on the Bombay riots in 1992-93, the APCLC report on “encounter” killings, the combined report, “Blood in the Valley” about Kashmir by several democratic rights groups, the PUDR-PUCL report, “Who are the Guilty?” on the 1984 Delhi anti-Sikh pogrom are a few of the courageous investigative interventions on the human rights front.  

Fact-finding missions are labelled by those in power as “terrorist fronts,” “anti-development”, “foreign agents”, and “anti-national.” In short, the work of fact-finding missions has become very challenging, extremely hazardous and can even result in the physical liquidation of the human rights activists going on such missions. All sorts of intimidation including refusing accessibility to relevant information are freely practised against them. Rather than being intimidated by this declared and undeclared hostility from those in power SICHREM intends to step up its fact-finding activities in the four southern States with the broadest participation of other human rights organisations and the people. SICHREM will expand its fact-finding activities and venture into newer areas of human rights violations. It will investigate specific issues, unravel the socio-political and economic dimensions of the violations and publicize the resultant outputs using all possible avenues. These fact-finding missions will be constituted by professionals including doctors and lawyers and human rights activists including journalists.  

The reports of the fact-finding missions will certainly be given wide publicity, which is expected to enhance the awareness on the issues concerned as well as strongly support advocacy work. 

5. Advocacy and Lobbying 

Advocacy and lobbying is an ongoing activity of SICHREM for the past many years and is considered as a programme by itself. Two of the ongoing activities in this field are the legal moves to pressurise the government to establish the State Human Rights Commission and District Human Rights Courts, and the movement for the release of the illegally detained TADA victims in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu States.  

This programme includes pursuing legal avenues for redressal. Legal aid as conceived presently includes counselling, extending financial support and mobilising the same, and direct legal interventions at all possible levels through petitions, signature campaigns, letter writing, filing and pursuing public interest cases that can not only redress the grievances of the direct victims but also turn landmark judgements into jurisprudence.  

In a political and constitutional order where already many laws exist (though by no means these can be called sufficient taking into account the enormity of existing human rights violations) to protect basic human rights of the people (as enshrined in the Constitution of India), and where it is more a question of deliberate violation of fundamental rights for the sake of vested interests, effective advocacy and lobbying assumes great importance in the overall work of protecting human rights. As such it ought to have priority in the agenda of human rights organisation.

6. Documentation Cum Policy Research Centre 

A high priority objective of SICHREM is the establishment and consolidation of a Documentation Centre on Human Rights and related subjects with focus on South India but without neglecting other areas or regions. The current level of documentation, to say the least, is insufficient for effectively continuing, expanding and diversifying the human rights activities. The documentation process has to be highly professional, continuous and systematic. The DC will include journals, newspaper clippings, international, national and State level documents and reports, semi-official and non-official documents and reports, the reports of various fact finding committees and missions, relevant books, booklets and leaflets, videos and taped testaments and interviews. 

Primarily, such a Documentation Centre puts in one place all the relevant materials pertaining to human rights. No meaningful research can be done without the ready availability of sufficient relevant materials, and research is a vital component of useful, interventionist human rights activity. Any report or investigation involves significant research inputs and the already available materials are invaluable for this. The background information, general socio-political, economic and ethnic information form the core basis from which any scientific unbiased investigation can be launched and fruitfully completed. Research is also very much necessary for successfully pursuing advocacy and lobbying work. In short, a good documentation cum research centre can enable the human rights cases to be made as invincible as possible. 

The Documentation cum Research Centre and its output will be freely accessible to anyone interested in human rights issues and will work in close cooperation with like-minded individuals and organisations. The DRC is envisaged in such a manner that a centralised collection of relevant human rights materials can help the other scattered human rights organisations to function more constructively. The spread effects of the Centre can be considerable. Moreover, the DRC will be continuously enriching its collection via materials exchange with other national and international human rights organisations.  

An expanding and up-to-date Documentation cum Research Centre can go a long way in facilitating constructive discourses on the theories of human rights. In the present Indian context resolving the theoretical contradictions among differing perspectives on human rights is an important task that SICHREM can make happen. A good DRC is a must for meaningful, constructive resolution of thorny theoretical issues coming up due to instrumentalist/sectarian positions on the one hand and an approach which considers human rights as intrinsic, inalienable, and indivisible applicable to all sentient beings.  

Policy research will be an integral part of SICHREM’s documentation and research activities. It will involve outputs on legal reforms based on studies about inadequacies currently existing in the legal framework. Reports on torture, custodial deaths, civil and political rights necessarily form the cornerstones for such research activities. Policy research on human rights is as such in a dismal shape in India and we plan a breakthrough on this front. The widest cooperation of individuals and groups concerned about the human rights questions will be garnered for this purpose. As can be seen from international experience policy research outputs can contribute immensely to change the statutes as well as the implementation standards. 

SICHREM’s research activities will be clearly oriented to make universal human rights into a viable and concrete alternative to the present situation of rights for a few at the cost of denial of rights to the vast majority.  

7. Public Interest Litigation 

It is certainly a welcome development that public interest litigation (PIL) has become much more of a reality than during previous years in India. This is especially so in the case of certain landmark cases involving the highest court of the country. But still, much more is desired to make it into an effective deterrent to human rights abuses. The impunity enjoyed by the armed forces is a glaring illustration. 

SICHREM is already involved in some public interest litigations in both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. And we are often doing this in collaboration with civil liberties organisations like PUCL-K and PUCL-TN. This working relationship is bound to further strengthen in the coming days as SICHREM expands and diversifies its human rights activism.  

It is often the case that victims of human rights violations are not in a position to seek redressal for many reasons. Lack of sufficient knowledge and financial resources are chief among them and the role of an organisation like SICHREM assumes importance in this context. SICHREM will strive to fight landmark cases which can become a precedent in legal annals. PIL cases enjoy the uniqueness of popularity and often such cases deal not with single individuals but collectives. Environmental issues, anti-people laws, collective rights of communities all can come under PIL. The legal provision for PIL has to be pushed to maximum and this is SICHREM’s objective.  

PIL invariably involves dedicated investigation and research into the issues concerned and the Documentation cum Research Centre as well as the activists at the grass roots level will have to put in considerable effort. This is one instance where the different components of the organisation have to pool their resources to achieve the best possible results. PIL is judicial activism from the side of the oppressed people and as such needs greater cooperation and a sympathetic attitude from the government side. Unfortunately, this is not often found to be the case. Any number of instances from recent history can be cited where the public authorities refuse to part with vital information.  

People are still denied their right to information under the pretext of the Official Secrets Act, 1923, a law that was promulgated to protect the colonial masters. This apathy has to end, and only then PIL can have its desired impact. Human rights organisations will have to step up all possible measures to make the public bodies more cooperative and ensure that the right to information is made into a fundamental right.

8.  Publications

SICHREM proposes to vitalise its publication activities with the objective of reaching out on human rights issues to wider sections of the people. The following four categories of publications are intended: i) Newsletter; ii) Books; iii) Booklets; iv) Leaflets. In addition, a website is also envisaged.  

The Newsletter is planned as a bimonthly one covering developments on the human rights front during the period concerned. All the publications will use simple but coherent language and maximum efforts will be expended to make all the publications available in all the four South Indian languages besides English. Currently, our publications are in English and Kannada and this is recognised as a serious lacuna which has to be rectified at the earliest. The publications are planned at affordable prices so as to be within the reach of the common man. In the case of publications too the Documentation and Policy Research Centre will play a crucial role through input generation. 

Status of Human Rights in India – A Biennial Publication 

SICHREM as part of its publication activities in the coming years plans to come out with a biennial reference manual on human rights in South India. This will be a concrete output of the research and documentation cell. Human rights information will be codified with appropriate commentaries to make it more intelligible reading for the public.

The reference manual “Status of Human Rights in South India” (SHRSI) will list legal developments on human rights during the period under survey; report on human rights violations and action taken; cover international developments in human rights jurisprudence; carry investigative reports, analyses and status of interventions on the human rights front. SHRSI is intended to be an integral part of our human rights education programmes and the broader awareness activities. It is also intended to feed relevant information to other human rights organisations and activists, nationally and internationally.

SICHREM strongly feels the necessity for periodic status reports which can go a long way in documentation and research resulting in enhanced awareness on human rights in general as well as in particular.  SICHREM will try its best to prepare the status reports in as exhaustive a manner as possible, and the inputs will be tested by discussions with other human rights organisations and activists before publication. Thus the status reports will also strive for more cohesive interaction between the various components of the human rights movement in the country.  

9.  Human Resources Development

For the proper functioning of any organisation constant upgrading of the skills of the staff is considered a must and SICHREM is no exception. Rather, being a human rights organisation, it is not just a question of upgradation of technical or managerial skills, but that of social commitment, too. SICHREM plans to have intensive in-house training as well as external training and exposure for developing its human resources.  

In-house training can be in the form of training workshops and periodic in-depth discussions on the issues involved. But we recognise as a cardinal factor that experience of working among the people provides the key to manpower development. The idea is to develop leadership qualities among the staff enabling them to take initiative and decisions by themselves. To an extent we are able to inculcate this feeling among our staff presently, but the policy has to be consciously and systematically fostered. Training camps and retreats specifically oriented towards this objective will be organised periodically. 

Deepening the commitment to human rights, broadening the vision and developing the capability to understand theoretical and practical questions, capability to take the own initiative under critical conditions, development of the necessary communication and other skills to increase the efficiency of work – all these and more will be part of the staff training programmes. Experience in bringing out publications, field work, investigation methods, enhanced articulation capabilities are all necessary qualifications for a human rights activist and we in SICHREM will try the utmost to perfect these skills. The goal is to make each one of them leaders in the human rights movement in every sense of the term.

                                                                                         Chapter 7

                                               EXTENSION CENTRES IN THREE STATES

Presently SICHREM’s activities are mainly concentrated in Karnataka, and partly in Tamil Nadu. This is so in relation to documentation, lobbying and grass root level human rights activities. SICHREM is very much aware of the inadequacy of this situation and wants to escalate on a priority basis its activities into the other two southern States where human rights violations are galore.

As we mentioned in an earlier section, human rights problems are similar as well as dissimilar in the Southern States and the problems cannot be viewed in a linear fashion. Appropriate strategies applicable to the specificities of the different areas are to be devised; and more in-depth involvement and awareness about the human rights issues in an area-specific manner are to be developed. The establishment of extension centres in the three States of Tamil Nadu, Keralam and Andhra Pradesh is envisaged to cover the presently existing gaps in the functioning of SICHREM.

Nature and Functions of the Extension Centres

The extension centres are envisaged as compact units with the minimum necessary infrastructure facilities like staff, communication facilities and office space. Their exact location can be decided after a preliminary evaluation of the logistical conveniences.

One of the vital functions of the extension centres will be to systematically monitor the human rights situations in the respective States and to communicate the results promptly to the SICHREM head office in Bangalore. Consultations between the extension centres and the SICHREM office in Bangalore are to be regular and comprehensive. Though the extension centres themselves, on their own, can conduct investigations and prepare and undertake activities according to their studies and evaluations, it is considered better and more useful if serious moves are made in consultation with the different components of SICHREM. This will be a more democratic method of functioning. At the same time, it should not stand in the way of the extension centres taking their own initiative. The system of functioning has to be an inclusive one without solely relying on any command structure. It should be flexible so that maximum inputs for fighting human rights abuses can be generated and used.     

Another vital function of the extension centres is to effectively network with other human rights organisations in their areas with the objective of making human rights into a movement and broad-basing it. This is very important in the present context because the NGOs (including those in the human rights field) are generally found to be operating in a competitive manner and there is a lot of exclusivity in their functioning. While keeping each one’s identity intact it is very much possible to develop effective cooperation between the human rights organisations if one has the right perspective. Only such increasing cooperation between organisations and individuals can enable a powerful movement for strengthening civil society and the extension centres should work towards this objective. 

To summarise, the following will be the main objectives of the three extension centres: 

1.  Monitor and document the human rights situation in the respective area thoroughly and strengthen the central documentation centre by constantly feeding inputs.

2.  Take independent initiative and conduct necessary investigations and compile reports on human rights violations and action taken in their respective areas.

3.  Effective networking with other human rights organisations and individuals with the objective of strengthening the human rights movement in general as well as in relation to specific issues.

4.  Organise human rights education programmes and campaigns in league with the central office and other human rights organisations and individuals.

In a futuristic sense these extension centres are expected to grow, diversify their activities and attain such a position they are able to generate funds locally itself. They should grow into autonomous units linked with SICHREM in a strongly mutually complementary manner. We envisage that each of the extension centres will be able to generate their own networks, thus immensely strengthening SICHREM’s scope of activities and their efficacy.

Looking at the trends in the past few decades it is clear that human rights violations are on the ascendancy and only a people’s movement against violations can be effective to counter them. If there is a strong and well articulated people’s movement for human rights the judiciary will be able to play a more positive role and this can create further spread effects, all of which will ultimately converge to the point of the emerging of a civil and civilised society where human being will treat each other as equals with equal rights.

Spreading and deepening of the human rights activities have to be conducted in such a way that this situation can be achieved and, contextually, this is the right time for such activities to be launched on a serious footing. The extension centres can play a crucial role in this societal process and SICHREM views the establishment of extension centres in precisely this manner. The ferment is very much there in the society. What one has to do is work towards concretising this ferment by full-blooded involvement in the concretisation process. 

                                                                                                 Chapter 8

                                                  LOCAL MOBILISATION OF FINANCIAL RESOURCES

Right from its inception SICHREM has put emphasis on local fund raising for its work. We believe that as a long perspective dependence on external fund raising is to be minimised or even eliminated. But for development of activities to that level it may not immediately be feasible to establish a viable fund raising mechanism locally. The rationale for establishing a sufficient fund raising mechanism locally is not per se based on reducing the dependency on external sources, which currently is nil. 

Such a strategic goal relies on broad-basing the constructive support for human rights activities among the local people themselves as such a process will certainly strengthen the communication with those who are interested in human rights issues locally, which is a key variable in any human rights activity’s success. Financial contributions generate more commitment from the side of concerned citizens. In other words, the emphasis is more on making the fund raising process a communication process for creating greater awareness and mobilising support. We feel it essential as healthy working mechanism. In this context, SICHREM is already experimenting with a project, namely, “Give as you earn”. This is basically an attempt to raise funds through salary deductions. This experimental project has great potential to widen the circle of friends of human rights apart from mobilising at least a part of the funds needed to conduct activities.     

 Another potential means to raise local resources is through stepping up the publishing work. Coming out with more relevant materials in the form of reports, books, booklets, newsletters, leaflets can certainly help generate financial resources as well as enormously increase the outreach. With the consolidation of the documentation cum research centre and expansion of the other activities we hope to strengthen the publication activity and also evolve a multipronged distribution network, which we hope can, in the long run, help us to become self-reliant. 

SICHREM is also already trying out other innovative means to generate funds, like identifying patrons and donors including from the corporate sector, and regular contributors, and hopes to expand such fundraising activities in future. Another possibility which we can explore is to raise interest free loans from well wishers. Cultural shows and events on human rights issues can also be organised to mobilise resources for campaign activity. As mentioned, all such fund raising activities are aimed to serve the very important task of expanding the working horizon and enabling more and more people to become committed to the protection and promotion of human rights. The track of raising resources can prove itself to be an effective mobiliser.

                                                                                      APPENDIX

            LIST OF PREVENTIVE DETENTION LAWS IN THE STATUTE BOOKS

1.  The Preventive Detention Act, 1950. The PDA was repealed in 1969.

2.  The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958. This was enforced in the seven North- eastern States of the country.

3.  The Maintenance of Internal Security Act, 1971. MISA was repealed in 1978.

4.  The Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Activities (COFEPOSA), 1974.

5.  The Defence of India Act, 1975.

6.  The Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978.

7.  The Assam Preventive Detention Act, 1980.

8.  The National Security Act, 1980.

9.  The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (Punjab and Chandigarh), 1983.

10.   Punjab Disturbed Areas Act, 1983.

11.   Terrorist Affected Areas (Special Courts) Act, 1984.

12.  The Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, 1985. Due to popular opposition this Act was subsequently allowed to lapse, but those who were earlier booked under it continue to languish.

The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act was first enforced in almost all the Naga inhabited areas in Nagaland and Manipur States and in parts of Assam. It was also enforced in Tripura, Mizoram and Punjab since 1983 and Jammu and Kashmir since 1990.

                                                           SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books       

Michael R. Anderson and Sumit Guha: Changing Concepts of Rights and Justice in South Asia. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Noam Chomsky: Year 501: The Conquest Continues. Boston: South End Press, 1993.

  ______: Human Rights in the New World Order. Speech Delivered at the Human Rights Organisation Liberty’s Festival of Rights (a Human Rights Convention), 16 June, 1995, in London, UK.

A.R. Desai: Social Background of Indian Nationalism. Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1982. (c. 1948).

______(ed.): Expanding Government Lawlessness and Organised Struggles. Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1991.

Maritha Iswaran: Understanding Human Rights. Research and Documentation Centre, Bombay, 1995.

T.G. Jacob: Chaos in Nation Formation, Case of Punjab. New Delhi: Odyssey, 1992.

Legal Resources for Social Action (LRSA): State of Human Rights in India. Chengalpattu: 1996.

Rammanohar Lohia: The Struggle for Civil Liberties. Published by the Foreign Department of the All India Congress Committee. Allahbad: 1936. (Foreword by Jawaharlal Nehru). 

Luingam Luithui and Nandita Haksar: Nagaland File. A Question of Human Rights. New Delhi: Lancer International, 1984.

Chandra Muzaffar: Human Rights and the New World Order. Penang: Just World Trust. 1993.

________: Rethinking the Concept of Human Rights. IDOC Internationale, 1993.

Jawaharlal Nehru: Selected Works, Vol. 7. New Delhi: 1967.

Winin Pereira and Jeremy Seabrook: Global Parasites. Bombay: Earthcare Books, 1995.

Winin Pereira: Inhuman Rights: The Western System and Global Human Rights Abuse. Mapusa: Other India Bookstore, 1997.

B. Shiva Rao et. al. (eds.): The Framing of India’s Constitution. Select Documents. New Delhi: 1966.

Sankar Sen: Human Rights in a Developing Society. New Delhi: APH Publishing Corporation. 1998.

S. Shute and S. Hurley (eds.): On Human Rights - The Oxford Amnesty Lectures. New York: Basic Books. 1993.

SICHREM: Fiftieth Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Bangalore: 1998.

Burton Stein and S. Subramanayam (eds.): Institutions and Economic Studies in South Asia. Delhi: OUP, 1997.

J.T. Sunderland: India in Bondage: Her Right to Freedom and a Place Among the Great Nations. 1929.

The Scientific Buddhist Association: Tibet – the Facts. Dharamsala: 1990.

Tibetan Parliamentary and Policy Research Centre: Report of Workshops on Tibetan People’s Right of Self-Determination. New Delhi: 1996.

Mark Tully and Sathish Jacob: Amritsar: Mrs Gandhi’s Last Battle. London: Jonathan Cape, 1985.

Acts, Articles, Declarations, Journals, Reports

Amnesty International Reports

§  Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 40 of the ICCPR. 1995.

§  APEC – Human Rights and Development. 1996

§  India: Human Rights Abuse in the Election Period in Jammu and Kashmir. 1996.

§  India: High Time to Put an End to Impunity in Jammu and Kashmir. 1997.

§  India: Jammu and Kashmir. Remembering Jalil Andrabi. 1997.

§  India: Submission to the Human Rights Committee Concerning Implementation of Articles of the ICCPR. 1997.

§  India: Government Should Respond to Concerns Expressed by Human Rights Committee. 1997.

§  India: the “Enron Project” in Maharashtra. Protests Suppressed in the Name of Development. 1997.

§  India: Official Sanction for Killings in Manipur. 1997.

§  Pakistan: Appeal to the Caretaker Government. 1996.

§  Pakistan: Time to Take Human Rights Seriously. 1997. 

§  Asia: Refuge! Ethnicity and Nationality. Refugees in Asia. 1997.

§  South Asia, Action for Children: Appeal Cases. 1998.

Asia Watch: Human Rights in India: Punjab in Crisis. 1991.

Association for Protection of Democratic Rights: Two Decades of APDR and Human Rights. Kolkata:1991.

Citizens for Democracy: Oppression in Punjab. Report to the Nation. 1985.

Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab: Disappearances in Punjab. 1990.

  _______ : State Terrorism in Punjab - A Report. 1989. 

Pritam Singh Gill: Economic Interests and Human Rights in Indo-British Relations - House of Commons Debate on Punjab. Economic and Political Weekly, 28 March 27 (13), 1992.

Government of India: The Protection of Human Rights Act. 1993.

______ : Report of the Commission on Centre-State Relations (Sarkaria Commission). Nasik: 1987.

Human rights Watch: Behind the Kashmir Conflict. 1999. 

Indian Journal of Human Rights (Bi-Annual). Edited by Professor G. Haragopal. University of Hyderabad.

Lokshahi Hakk Sangathana: Blood in the Valley: Kashmir Behind the Propaganda Curtain.  Bombay: 1995.

National Human Rights Commission Annual Reports.

People’s Union for Democratic Rights and People’s Union for Civil Liberties: Who are the Guilty? New Delhi: 1984.

Amiya Rao, Aurobindo Ghosh et al.: Oppression in Punjab: A Citizen’s for Democracy Report to the Nation. (Foreword by Justice V.M. Tarkunde. Preface by George Fernandes). Hind Mazdoor Kisan Panchayat Publication. 1985. 

United Nations: Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 1948.

  _____: International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. 1966 (Entered into force in March 1976).

______: Convention on the Rights of the Child. 1989.

______ : 1996/1997 Annual Reports of the UN Human Rights Mechanism Relating to India.

                                                          ABBREVIATIONS

A.P.: Andhra Pradesh

APCLC: Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee

APDR: Association for Protection of Democratic Rights

APEC: Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation

BCE: Before Common Era

CE: Common Era

CBI: Central Bureau of Investigation

CFD: Citizens for Democracy

CLC: Civil Liberties Committee

CPDR: Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights

CPI: Communist Party of India

CPI (M): Communist Party of India (Marxist)

DC: Documentation Centre

DRC: Documentation cum Research Centre

DHRC: District Human Rights Commission

DK: Dravida Kazhagam

ICCPR: International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

ICLU: Indian Civil Liberties Union

IDOC:  International Documentation and Communication Centre

J&K: Jammu and Kashmir

NGO: Non-governmental Organisation

NHRC: National Human Rights Commission

OBC: Other Backward Class

PHRA: Protection of Human Rights Act

PIL: Public Interest Litigation

PUCL: People’s Union for Civil Liberties

PUDR: People’s Union for Democratic Rights

SHRC: State Human Rights Commission

SICHREM: South India Cell for Human Rights Education and Monitoring

STF: Special Task Force

TADA: Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act

TNC: Transnational Corporation

UNCAT: United Nations Convention Against Torture

UDHR: Universal Declaration of Human Rights

UNHRC: United Nations Human Rights Committee/Council

  [This write-up was commissioned by SICHREM in 1999}