Author: JK Dutt
Publication: The Statesman
Date: November 26, 2002
Before human rights activists cry
foul, they need experience the conditions under which security personnel
operate, says JK DUTT
Human rights appears to have assumed
a one-sided and subjective face and is more often than not addressed by
tackling the symptoms instead of the core disease. Hence some mulling over
would be fruitful.
What is the exact composition of
human rights vis-a-vis its definition? Let us discuss an arbitrary case.
Does a rapist have any right to live? In India, a rapist is put behind
bars for some time and then let off. A move to introduce the death penalty
through summary trial for rapists was opposed by human rights groups and
the move has since been shelved. In fact, the home minister went back on
his word over this after agreeing to the proposal. The summation, thus,
is that a rapist, having virtually destroyed the life of a victim, has
every right to live life to the full while his unfortunate victim goes
through "living death". How does one reconcile the human rights fitment
in such a case?
Our armed forces, too, have been
targeted. India's contentious zone in human rights is related to the functioning
of our security personnel in Jammu and Kashmir, and North-east India while
undertaking counter-insurgency operations. Amnesty International and its
associates have repeatedly blamed our jawans for human rights abuses but
have opted to keep mum about the same abuses perpetrated by insurgents
on locals. The government on its part, has usually been quite receptive
to the reports emanating from human rights organisations.
The history of human rights in the
military sphere is educative. It was an incident during the Vietnam war
in the late 1960s that made military psychologists sit up and take notice
of a soldier's abnormal behaviour under battle conditions. A US army officer,
Lieutenant William Calley, and his group of soldiers, under extreme provocation
from the Vietcong, wiped out My Lai village. The incident caused an unprecedented
hue and cry and Calley was court-martialled and dismissed from service.
But his action spawned an awakening among psychiatrists and human behaviour
watchers.
The principal point of consequent
intense research and analysis was, "What makes a soldier behave in a highly
abnormal manner? What forces him to bypass his disciplined self and do
something abhorrent? Most of all, what should be done to prevent this kind
of action by him?" The findings showed that the main reason for a soldier's
abnormal behaviour in the field was a combination of his desire to survive
in combat along with his self-induced responsibility for the safety of
his mates. In fact, the American army encourages the "buddy profile" among
its rank and file.
Analysts also argue that a soldier's
battlefield idiosyncrasy in the realm of a hot war may be acceptable to
society as an occupational hazard but his abnormal actions during a cold
war situation, as in counter-insurgency operations, have not yet been effectively
"managed". Further, no panacea has been found that could prevent such abnormalities.
The debate continues.
An incisive point apropos the Indian
scene is, how many human rights activists have actually experienced at
first hand the root causes of a jawan's unnatural behaviour in the field
by physically going out with army patrols to insurgent infested areas in
Jammu and Kashmir and the North-east? Normally, these activists visit places
under guided tours or pick up information from media channels. Surely this
is not first hand? Expressing an opinion from an armchair based on hearsay
or personal prejudices is far removed from assessing an incident resulting
out of a close encounter with highly motivated insurgent sharpshooters
and operators of remote controlled mines, something that an army patrol
lives with 24 hours a day.
Let us discuss another example that
occurs routinely in Jammu and Kashmir and the North-east. A security patrol
while combing a locality comes under accurate fire from a house and suffers
casualties. What should the patrol do? Generally, it has three choices:
one, withdraw to a safe place and save itself from more casualties; two,
destroy the house by distant firing; and three, raid the house in order
to apprehend the culprits who in all probability would have fled by then.
Would any human rights activist care to advise what specific steps the
patrol should take in this case? Incidentally, Calley and his patrol found
themselves in just such a situation at My Lai.
It is impossible for a detached
person to appreciate a jawan's mental frame when he goes out on such patrols
unless the observer accompanies him and experiences every moment of the
mission. A recognised truism is that a soldier goes berserk when his mates
are killed or wounded and rationality escapes him at that moment of time.
I can confirm this truism as a veteran of two Indo-Pakistani wars. The
point to note is, a third party rarely questions the soldier in a hot war
context but demands an inquisition under cold war circumstances as prevalent
in Jammu and Kashmir and the North-east. The soldier finds this perplexing
and annoying. Our jawan has also come to realise another unpleasant fact:
that he makes an appropriate scapegoat for society as the latter shy off
from pilloring the actual villains - our politicians.
Earlier, Punjab too went through
several years of the terrorism scourge together with its connected human
rights issues amid huge adverse publicity. Yet the nation conveniently
forgets that Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale was launched by our very politicians.
Human rights abuses in India are
the fallout from faulty politico-socio-economic systems. India's Police
Act for example, would have done us proud a century ago and the less said
about our general legal provisions the better. A standard scenario is,
the police catch a criminal and produce him in court only to find that
he is out on bail thereafter, cocking a snook at them. Conscientious police
officers are "punished" for doing their duty while politicians who mastermind
massive human rights abuses as in Gujarat go scot free. After all, a policeman
- for that matter, a jawan - is not a robot nor a political tool. He is
a human being with emotions and feelings, besides which he maintains a
high sense of pride in his uniform.
The need of the hour, therefore,
is to bring in radical improvements. Security in all its manifestations
has to be established in Jammu and Kashmir, the North-east and everywhere
else in India. Our governance systems must be subjected to a thorough overhaul,
shedding the colonial appurtenances that some of these still flaunt. The
country's leadership must find sincere solutions. Only then will human
rights abuses become extinct.
(The author is a retired Lieutenant-Colonel
of the Indian Army.)
