adarsh bhat’s blog

In my post about the recent terrorist attacks on Mumbai, I wrote that India’s measures to counter the threat of terrorism will pose a challenge to the civil rights of citizens of India. I would like to elaborate on that in this post.

The urban youth of India have been shocked by the audacity demonstrated by the terrorists in the Mumbai attacks. There is wide spread disapproval of the Indian government over its inability to prevent such attacks. These same people also believe that India should take the same path America did post 9/11. The basis of this argument is that America has seen no large foreign terrorist attacks on US soil since 9/11 and this is because of the steps taken by the Bush administration; hence this is a method that works, and we should do the same. To these arguments, my response is that we have more information available about the US example that than little misleading factoid. We should do our best to learn from the mistakes that the US made, and not blindly make the same mistakes all over again.

The first casualties in the US efforts were not terrorists, but the freedom and the civil rights of ordinary citizens of America. In a surge of patriotism, not unlike what we feel today, the representatives of the people voted for the PATRIOT act in a hurry without any real debate. There have been similar controversial laws in India in the past to fight terrorism — TADA comes to mind immediately. The opposition has already made a demand for stricter laws in India, so there is the real danger of putting too much power in to the hands of the government, at the expense of the civil rights, and even human rights, of the ordinary citizen.

In the name of strengthening laws, empowering the police department, and reducing bureaucracy, they may make it easier to arrest and detain people on a whim while bypassing the usual procedures of the law. There may be gag orders on the press. They make make torture of arrested terror suspects under detention legal. They may award the death sentence with more ease. More likely than not, they may violate the privacy of the citizens. If it really got down to it, at least in practice if not on paper, there may be special background checks for Muslim candidates for jobs and college admissions.

Here is a recent example of such occurrences in India. Such incidents will happen more often, and may even become “legal”.

On the surface these may seem like acceptable trade-offs to some people. But we have to remember that real terrorists form a minuscule fraction of the population, but the laws are going to affect everyone. Before any such laws are passed, we need to take time and debate their pros and cons thoroughly. We cannot rush through them in a hurry, in a bid to imitate America, only later to realize what we have lost, and fight for our rights at the end, again like America.

It is often argued that things like privacy aren’t very important in India. There are no explicit provisions in the constitution for the right to privacy either. But India has ratified a number of international treaties and agreements, and is bound by international law to protect civil rights of her citizens. Also it is not correct to take away peoples’ rights just because they don’t know they are entitled to it.

Recently, when sexual minority groups in India demanded their rights in the courts, the government — thanks to ex-home minister Shivraj Patil — took the stand that they did not deserve to have those rights. Given that the government has demonstrated that it is keen on denying basic rights to people, it should come as no surprise if they actually try to do everything that I have described. We can’t let them go scissor-happy on our rights. And if they try, we must fight them with every ounce of strength left.

P.S. A few weeks back, I had written criticizing a blog that had some strong pro-hindutva (and anti-government) writings. It turns out that after the Mumbai attacks, that site has been taken down. If it is indeed true that the government has ordered this site to be taken down, as some websites have suggested, then this is clearly a violation of the freedom of speech. This is unconstitutional, and needs to be reversed.

EDIT (Dec 01 2008): It turns out that the site was down due to increased load and is now being hosted at a temporary new location. But I have to confess that it was a good story.

mumbai, politics, terrorism