Shame Of The Long Night

Today marks the 29^th anniversary of the Bhopal gas tragedy – right day perhaps to recall not only how shamelessly the State failed its people before the might of a multi-national, how a duly elected Chief Minister facilitated the escape of the Union Carbide boss Warren Anderson, and how justice eludes the victims nearly three decades after the industrial disaster, but also how it shamed its own judiciary before the world.

It is a lesser known fact from the tragic saga that the Indian government had not only preferred to knock at the doors of United States judiciary but condemned its own judges as incompetent in the eyes of the world.

The Indian petition before the New York district court in 1985 submitted that “courts of India were not up to the task of conducting Bhopal litigation…that Indian judiciary was yet to reach full maturity due to the restraints placed upon it by the British Colonial rulers who had shaped the Indian legal system to meet their own ends!”

It was left to the US judges to hold a mirror before the spineless Indian establishment asking it to have a measure of self-respect. To quote the US Court of Appeal in the Union Carbide vs. Union of India case: “…the Union of India is a world power in 1986, and its courts have the proven capacity to meet out fair and equal justice. To deprive the Indian judiciary of this opportunity to stand tall before the world and to pass judgement on behalf of its own people would be to revive a history of subservience and subjugation from which India has emerged. India and its people can and must vindicate their claims before the independent and legitimate judiciary created there since independence of 1947."

The narrative of Indian government’s farcical conduct did not end with this of course. As is well known now, the Rajiv Gandhi government rubbed in an out of court settlement on the victims, with the Union Carbide having to pay only US dollars 470 million as full and final payment, absolving the company of all criminal liabilities!

It was left to activists and the Supreme Court to get the criminal liability back in 1991. Rest is history as they say. The fugitive Anderson lives out his life in posh Hampton enclave of Long Island in New York, and the Indian government in its latest has maintained they have no documents to prove that Anderson was ever arrested, leave aside that he was bailed out!

The other IM – Integrated Muslim.

 Could Sony Entertainment Television have choreographed it? The first and last winners of the Rs 10 million booty this season of Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) both happen to be Muslims. And like with most KBC winners, Taj Mohammed Rangrez and Fatima Firoz do not seem to have any privileged background.

Do these winners represent a kind of Muslim? Did their achievement ride on the back of any patronage? Did KBC follow any system of reservations or scholarship to assist the duo to win? In the light of the ongoing political debate for Muslim reservations and preferential allotment of national resources to the community, this development comes loaded with a perspective. Let’s elaborate. 

Rangrez, 42, is a history teacher from Udaipur. His surname also suggests he might be from the OBC community. Fatima, 22, is a science student from Saharanpur who had to leave her studies midway due to financial constraints. She also lost her father, the sole bread winner, couple of years ago, leaving behind an all women family, an unpaid loan, and community ostracism.

It is not clear whether either of them is a product of the madrassa system, but what can be said with some certainty is that both must have gone through a very secular preparation for appearing on the show and to have performed to win. Rangrez in fact showcased his understanding of scriptures from multiple religions to audience applause. In case of Fatima, symbolism went the whole hog: her Rs 10 million question was about which Indian woman has scaled highest peaks of all continents across the world.

Do we get a sense then, of what these two Muslims represent? Does merit ring a bell? If yes, then are Rangrez and Fatima representative of something that can be posited as an ideal? If Indian Mujahideen is a certain kind of Muslim, do Rangrez and Fatima present an alternative? It can be abhorrently patronizing to point fingers, but even if partly, Muslims have to find some answers to their ills on their own, does the duo at least flag the direction?

The Sachar panel underscored that not all problems facing Muslims are perception issues; that there are definitely some real concerns that need attention and alleviation. But to make a limited point here, can the prescription be tweaked so as to instill a sense of self-respect among Muslims rather than promote a dependent psyche? Something that has had serious repercussions already in another segment of the Indian society. I shall come back to this issue soon with more.