PAKISTAN`S human rights icon Asma Jehangir is a frequent visitor to India as a campaigner for friendlier relations between the two countries and occasionally as an anti-nuclear-weapons advocate.
Her visit last week to Jammu and Kashmir and to Gujarat was significantly different and quite possibly a landmark one considering that India does not normally encourage foreigners, much less human rights activists among them, to “poke their noses” in its soft underbelly, its social fault lines.
From all accounts Ms Jehangir`s engagements in both these regions, which have been witness to gross human rights abuses, mostly at the hands of the state, came in her avatar as UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief. For a country that has for all practical purposes confined to a bungalow in Lutyens` Delhi the high-profile UNMOGIP representatives dispatched to India and Pakistan after their 1948 dispute on Kashmir, Ms Jehangir`s fairly visual visit marks a departure for her and for her hosts.
From India`s angle the permission to a UN agent to engage in any kind of fact-finding activity concerning rights violations should be seen as a step forward for all sides concerned. Not too long ago at the perennial peace seminars and other forums that are open to public voices from both sides, the occasional readiness from the Pakistani interlocutors to admit to their country`s abetment of terrorist groups across the border would be met with a smug Indian retort “Yes, you are right. You have done this to us.”
But this was hardly ever followed by matching self-criticism from the Indian corner, be it about the living hell that Kashmir has been turned into by cynical politicians and trigger-happy troopers or about a neofascist leadership`s antics in Gujarat. The fact that Ms Jehangir`s visit to the two regions was predicated on her mandate to take stock of the rotten state of religious freedoms there, not just with Muslims and Christians but also with the Hindus driven out from Kashmir, it is a rare event. Some would even see it as a key shift in New Delhi`s willingness to introspect the unflattering happenings in its backyard.
Not everyone is enamoured of peace efforts between the two countries. The points of resistance primarily include religious hardliners and a bureaucracy on both sides that is so set in its entrenched ways that it regards positive developments from the prism of a time warp and with fear. If Ms Jehangir`s mission has successfully negotiated these two points of resistance the future looks that much brighter for India and Pakistan to hold hands on the high road to peace, as it was aptly described by one of their foreign ministers ahead of the Agra summit.
There are powerful groups that support Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, for example, who range from influential Indian tycoons whose interests he serves (by drowning the voices of once powerful trade unions with the din of Hindutva) to well-connected lobbyists from his state who are based in the United States and who have put their money on Hillary Clinton`s election to the White House. They are powerful enough to have forced the American embassy in Delhi and the State Department in Washington to completely erase from their conscience all records of the communal orgy of 2002.
The Clintons have visited Gujarat since the orgy of violence but only to campaign for the rehabilitation of earthquake victims. They scrupulously avoided mention of the religious bigotry practised there by the elected representatives of the state. The Gujarati lobby`s support for Ms Clinton is another story and needs a separate treatment.
Given the willingness of Mr Modi`s powerful allies in the highest places to accept his brand of politics (even if the right-wing US government denies him the visa so as not to make the tacit support look a complete sell-out) it should not have been difficult for him to keep a mere UN representative for religious rights at bay. The fact that he got himself photographed with Ms Jehangir by his own official photographer and promptly distributed the picture to the media was clearly part of a Goebbelsian ploy to extract mileage from the unusual visitor from Pakistan. What prompted Ms Jehangir to flash such a wide smile as she accepted a memento from the Gujarat despot should be counted among the quizzes associated with Mona Lisa`s smile, etc.
But what is of substance is that she met people in Gujarat who are not normally on the schedule of most visitors from the assorted democracies of the world. Some of the victims tried to correct Ms Jehangir`s reference to the Gujarat carnage as a riot. But beyond this, from most accounts, she came across as an eager listener to the woes of the ordinary victims of state terror in Gujarat at least if not also in Kashmir.
A letter, one of several she must have received in Gujarat and possibly also in Srinagar, presented her with the victims` version of the existing reality. “Even today, six years since 2002, the condition of the victim-survivors is still very pathetic,” said a petition handed to her by Prashant, a Gujarat-based NGO for human rights, justice and peace. It is headed by Fr Cedric Prakash. “The wheels of justice have moved ever so slowly whilst those responsible for these heinous crimes seem to have total immunity. You are aware of all this.”
In case Ms Jehangir was not familiar with all the facts, they were put together in writing for her to prepare an objective report on her trip. “In Ahmedabad and in several parts of Gujarat, the Muslims are confined to ghettos”, she was told. “Several of the housing societies very openly deny Muslims the possibility of buying houses/apartments in contravention of their own bye-laws and rules. In many public places of Ahmedabad and other parts of Gujarat, several hoardings have mushroomed calling the area a `Hindu Rashtra`. This is against the secular fabric of the country and it also hurts the sentiments of minorities and adds to their growing insecurity.”
The petition further states “On Dec 19 last year, a group of right-wing Hindu elements brutally attacked a group of Christians (priests, nuns and students) in Kawant, Baroda District ... Besides this, there are several instances of ... Christians being harassed and intimidated in Gujarat (apparently with government sanction). In quite a few places, officials do everything they can to try and prove a `forced conversion` in order to justify their draconian law. In all these years, there is not a single case of the so-called `forced conversion` that has come to light, leave alone proved.”
Ms Jehangir has handled similar cases under Pakistan`s notorious Hudood laws. All that the Indian victims seem to expect from her is the uprightness that she is known for not only in Pakistan but also elsewhere in the world where human rights and religious freedoms are being trampled. Meanwhile, we should see her visit to India as an important step in self-criticism that both countries need large helpings of to prepare for genuine democracy to flourish on both sides of the border.
The writer is Dawn`s correspondent in Delhi.
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