Big blow for anti-Modi activism with Judicial stamp on SIT report

Shashi Shekhar26 Dec 2013


 

The verdict today by the trial court in Gujarat accepting the SIT closure report and rejecting the protest petition by Zakia Jafri marks the end of the road for anti-Modi Leftist activism over the 2002 Gujarat riots. How the pursuit of justice for the riot victims of 2002 got transmogrified into the pursuit for political vengeance against Narendra Modi is a commentary on how anti-Modi NGO activism by Leftists has sustained itself as an industry for over a decade with help from home and abroad.

On March 19, 2005, Leftist anti-Modi activist Shabnam Hashmi wrote an email on behalf of her NGO, ANHAD, to a broader ecosystem of Leftist activists and NGOs across the globe to mount a signature campaign against the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s statement in Parliament for expressing the opinion of the Indian Government on a matter of foreign policy and national interest – the American decision to deny visa to a sitting Chief Minister of an Indian State. More than 8 years on, Shabnam Hashmi on August 24, 2013, wrote on her facebook page about the launch of a website to exposed alleged ‘lies’ of Narendra Modi. In the intervening period lies a saga of how a well networked group of Leftist activists in India and spread across the globe have obsessed over every minutia to do with Narendra Modi in their pursuit of political retribution against him for the 2002 riots while showing little faith in the Indian courts and Indian court ordered Investigations.

In January 2011, the proceedings in the Supreme Court were witness to an unusual reprimand, with the highest court expressing displeasure against activists and NGOs well known for Left liberal activism on the 2002 Gujarat riots. The specific reason for the court’s displeasure was a report written by the Left liberal activists to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on the proceedings of the 10 cases related to the Gujarat riots being monitored by the Supreme Court. More recently, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns, made a trip to Gujarat that included meeting the usual suspects from the 2002 riots activist ecosystem of Left liberals and NGOs. If the Express News Service is to be believed, the agenda in Gujarat included in-camera testimonies and a document video dump with the express intent of influencing the rapporteur’s report to the UN Human Rights Council. The intervention of the rapporteur is significant for two reasons.

Firstly, in 2011, the Left liberal activists continued to lobby the office of the high commissioner for human rights even after the Supreme Court expressed its displeasure. In a protestation filed under the heading ‘Generic Torture’ on the OHCHR’s Web site on March 28, 2011, the special rapporteur wrote to some authority within the Government of India, expressing concern on what they called ‘the restriction placed by the Supreme Court of India’ on ‘Ms Setalvad’s freedom of expression.’ What is worse is the fact that the letter from the special rapporteur went further to demand a response on the ‘steps taken by the Government of India to safeguard the rights of Teesta Setalvad.’ Secondly, on April 3, 2012, Frontline magazine carried a report on fund raising by the same NGO; it also mentioned that the said NGO received ‘since 2010, a partial grant from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations.’

This was not the only case of looking outside India to settle political scores in India. From foreign citizens working in the India media like S Varadarajan to US based Indian-origin activists, the anti-Modi brigade has relied on support from abroad to sustain its campaign against Narendra Modi. In March of 2010, American Citizen S Varadarajan, then working with The Hindu, floated a trial balloon on why the anti-Modi campaign should be taken to the International Criminal Court even though India was not a signatory to the Rome Statute and India did not recognise the International Criminal Court. Then you had the Indian American Muslim Council in 2008 giving an award to the now discredited and under trial for sexual assault, founder of Tehelka, Tarun Tejpal, for his anti-Modi activism with Zakia Jafri herself presenting the award. The Leftist activists in attendance at the IAMC event in 2008 in Chicago reads like a who’s who list of those who have obsessed over Narendra Modi for over a decade while making careers and much more on the side. The Indian American Muslim Council and its cohorts in the US did not stop at that. They even managed to lobby a group of clueless India MPs to sign on a petition asking the American President Obama to continue the visa ban on Narendra Modi. From now infamous disinvite by Wharton to this laughable episode in the Boston Review Magazine, one gets a picture of how the campaign to seek political vengeance against Narendra Modi had long left Indian shores while going to absurd lengths.

From complaints against one’s own courts to using foreign entities, the Leftist activists’ scorched earth tactics had ensured there was no safe middle ground that anyone can occupy on the debate on Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and the 2002 Gujarat riots. It is also paradoxical that the Leftist activists in their pursuit of vengeance against Narendra Modi appealed against their own courts to foreign entities despite the court process in India going to great lengths to indulge them. Consider how far the judicial process strayed from the norm as a result of this Leftist activism.

To begin with you had the Supreme Court assuming the role of the executive in running an investigation through the SIT. The supervisory role of the court over the investigation itself is on a matter which the federal division of powers deems to be a state subject:

- The matter being investigated has long ceased to be about criminal acts of commission with political acts of omission being brought in

- An investigation by the Court appointed agency not being satisfactory to assorted NGOs and a vaguely defined, court appointed guardian of public interest, a second investigation is ordered.

- That second investigation now being set aside on hold an open ended review has been ordered with wide discretion being granted to this court appointed guardian of public interest.

As if that was not enough we also had a court appointed Lawyer Raju Ramachandran with known affinity for Leftist causes being appointed as an amicus curiae who was essentially empowered to second guess the SIT’s findings after all of the above failed to find any evidence against Narendra Modi. Eminent public intellectual Dr Pratap Bhanu Mehta writing in a Column in September of 2011 had this to say about the manner in which the Leftist NGOs went about their pursuit of vengeance against Narendra Modi while cautioning the courts on the hazards inherent with this approach.

we create an institution to bypass an untrustworthy process, and then that institution itself requires yet another layer of assessment.

Tailoring process so that the outcome corresponds to our intuitions in a matter also runs risks. Since the court is “crafting” processes, it will have to avoid both dangers.

The SIT’s final closure report made public by CJPOnline (available to them through an Order of the Magistrate’s Court dated 10-4-2012; copies given on 7-4-2012) addresses every claim made by the various individuals and every observation and recommendation made by the amicus curiae. It then goes on to not just factually establish the truth but also gives the fullest benefit of doubt to conclude there is no legal case against Narendra Modi. But this did not stop the Leftist NGOs and their friends in the media from Indian Express to the Economic Times and digital media like FirstPost indulging in Lazy Editorializing and Instant Punditry to attempt to discredit the SIT, even going to the extent of imputing personal motives against an impeccable professional like SIT Chairperson RK Raghavan.

The reality is that the SIT was not appointed by Narendra Modi. It was appointed by the Supreme Court. The multiple investigations and reviews were not ordered by Modi. They were ordered by the Supreme Court. This was the process sought by Zakia Jafri and the Leftist NGO activists with the influence of a lawyer with well-known sympathies for these Leftist NGO activists. Thus, for Zakia Jafri and the Leftist NGO activists to protest the outcome of a process of their own choosing is bit rich. To disown the process they demanded, lobbied and obtained from the highest Court of India just because the outcome was not what they had hoped for all along is both bogus and dishonest.

This outcome was the result of a process that could not have been any more independent or non-partisan, having been steered and supervised by the highest court of the country going far beyond what the Constitution explicitly provided for. To those who still cannot find closure from this outcome, one can only say that their faith in the Indian Republic is suspect. In closing let it be said that justice is a process and closure a state of mind. Neither of them can be reduced to a single episodic event nor can either be achieved by wallowing in victimhood or by seeking vengeance . Those who talk of the Indian State not being relentless frankly have spent far too much time away from the Indian State. Those who have reduced Justice over 2002 to the pursuit of political retribution by one celebrity victim against Narendra Modi have inflicted immense damage to the cause of Justice for the many thousand other faceless, nameless victims – both dead and living.

With the closure report of the SIT being accepted by the trial court in Gujarat, it is time the Leftist NGOs shut shop as well.

Source: http://www.niticentral.com/2013/12/26/prolonged-court-battles-on-jafri-killing-wont-alter-facts-172918.html