[INDOLOGY] मानवाधिकाराः /// Re: latest AI report on India

Thu Aug 6 16:34:51 UTC 2015

मानवाधिकारा आदरणीयाः

Dear Piotr,

Thanks for these links. Although they concern “post-1800” issues, they may
be of interest to list members for instance in the light of debates on the
compatibility or otherwise of Indian traditions with Human Rights – the
latter according to some all implied by the well-known ‘Golden Rule’ known
in one form or another in most major civilisations. As for Indian
philosophical traditions, at least Sāṁkhya acknowledged humanity as unitary
(SK 53 ... *mānuṣyaś caikavidhaḥ *... ) and we do find occasional
formulations of the ‘Golden Rule’ in Sāṁkhya-like contexts as I once
pointed out in a contribution (www.academia.edu/7117708/) in a volume I
co-edited in 1999 with Prof. Karel van Kooij, *Violence Denied *.... The
thematic of this by now almost “antique” volume finds, unfortunately,
abundant illustration in the Kashmir Report *“Denied”* (2015) for which you
provided the link.

Sometimes things can change for the better, and public opinion has some
impact however difficult to measure it may be. To improve Human Rights
conditions they need to be known both by authorities and the wider public.
The Declaration of Human Rights is now available also in numerous Indian
languages, including Sanskrit

(www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Pages/Language.aspx?LangID=skt

nice reading exercise for modern Sanskrit),

and Kashmiri (www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Pages/Language.aspx?LangID=ksh

only in Perso-Arabic script, the Devanagari version a desideratum if not
available elsewhere).

When I became for a short period active member of the Maastricht branch of
Amnesty International in 1977, we “adopted” among countries with very high
numbers of political prisoners detained without (fair) trial, Israel (under
Begin), Poland (PRL under Jaroszewicz) and Eastern Germany (DDR, under
Honecker), and started to write, both to authorities and to the prisoners
themselves, with the hope at least to improve the prisoners' conditions. At
present the human rights conditions have become significantly better in any
case in the last two areas. If I understood correctly from the only easily
readable part, the Preamble, and from discussions such as P.V. Kane vol. V
pt. II p. 1663ff, also the Indian constitution was formulated and meant to
be in accordance with Human Rights, but this is perhaps a topic not most
suitable for this list.

Best, Jan

मानवाधिकारा आदरणीया भारतीयसंविधानानुसारेणापि

*Jan E.M. HOUBEN*

Directeur d’Études

Sources et histoire de la tradition sanskrite

*École Pratique des Hautes Études*

*Sciences historiques et philologiques *

54, rue Saint-Jacques

CS 20525 – 75005 Paris

johannes.houben at ephe.sorbonne.fr

https://ephe-sorbonne.academia.edu/JanEMHouben

www.ephe.fr

On 2 July 2015 at 19:02, Piotr Balcerowicz <p.balcerowicz at uw.edu.pl> wrote:

> Dear Colleagues,
>
> Even though the following does not rise questions concerning the past of
> India, in a way it is relevant to Indological research as one of background
> factors.
> Here’s a link to a highly interesting discussion on serious human rights
> violations, crimes perpetrated by the Indian armed forces and their
> impunity in the Indian-administered state of Jammu & Kashmir:
>
> http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2015/07/kashmir-human-rights-abuse-150701222455840.html
> (emblematic is the Hindutva-saffron T-shirt not to be missed...).
>
> The background for this discussion is the recent report by Amnesty
> International on human rights violations in Kashmir:
>
> https://www.amnesty.org.in/show/news/accountability-still-missing-for-human-rights-violations-in-jammu-kashmir/
>
> The full text of the report:
>
> https://www.amnesty.org.in/images/uploads/articles/Kashmir_Report_Web_version_%281%29.pdf
>
> Strange as it may seem, most Indologists are not aware that
> India-administered part of the state of Jammu & Kashmir is the most
> militarized place in the world with the population of approx. 12 million
> people and approx. 750,000 - 850,000 armed forces, even though such heavy
> military presence has no real strategic justification. According to
> conservative estimates approx. 70,000 people were killed there at the hands
> of the Indian army (other sources put the figure of 100,000 civilians).
> More than 7,000 mass graves of civilians have been discovered in recent
> years, in only five districts (out of a total of 25 districts -- no such
> searches have so far been conducted in the other districts; one of the
> earlier reports: http://www.kashmirprocess.org/reports/graves/toc
> .html)). There are at least 8,000 documented abductions and killings of
> civilians by Indian armed forces. Lawyers in Kashmir have reported crimes
> in more than 15,000 cases of alledged crimes committed by the Indian armed
> forces, but all such police investigations and court proceedings have been
> consistently blocked by the Indian authorities. Numerous inverviews with
> Kashmiris conducted on the spot reveal that virtually within every Kashmiri
> family there is someone who has become a victim of repressions and torture.
> No even a single case judicial proceedings has been been brought to an end
> (except for two cases before military courts, but they do not dislose any
> further information about the actual outcome), which is absolutely shocking
> in a country that aspires to be governed by law. That also calls into
> question the myth of Indian democracy.
> Information on the crimes and human rights violations in Kashmir very
> rarely reach the public, and even Indologists are barely aware of not only
> the scale of these crimes, but even of their existence. These appalling
> crimes and the scale of human rights violations is something which is quite
> difficult to ignore, also for Indologists. Dealing with South Asia and
> doing research on Indian past should not make Indologists immune to such
> news concerning Indian modernity, who should be critical in such cases.
> That is also a part of India we do research on, unfortunately. Unbiased
> criticism of India’s policies is by definition constructive and is in the
> best interest of India and its citizens, too.
>
> With best regards,
> Piotr Balcerowicz
> --------------------------------
> www.orient.uw.edu.pl/balcerowicz
>
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