Rationality is based on the principle that reasoning is the correct way of establishing facts, getting to the truth and ensuring justice. Curiosity is the creed of rationality, dispassionate inquiry the only ritual, and truth the ultimate deity. Apparently, it was a rational but religious sage who ordained that the Truth is Ultimate and Beautiful: Satyam-Shivam-Sundaram.
On the highest plane, all differences between religion and rationalism disappear as they blend to become one: The continual search of justice. When justice is denied, peace becomes elusive and neither religiosity nor rationality can thrive. “True peace is not merely the absence of tension, it is the presence of justice,” declared Martin Luther King, Jr, echoing Mahatma Gandhi’s observation that peace would come out of justice lived rather than clash of arms. Incidentally, King was a clergyman and the Mahatma had full faith in the power of prayers. They were extremely rational campaigners for justice, peace and truth, and yet deeply religious individuals.
Rational people wear reasonableness on their sleeves like badge of honor. Religiosity, on the other hand, is a private matter. It is possible to make informed guesses based on their surnames, but it is also quite possible that Honourable Justices Tahir Ali Ansari and Bharat Bahadur Karki of the Supreme Court hold faiths different from their families. Their competence and conduct must be beyond reproach; had it not been so, they would not have reached where they have in the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal.
Destiny has smiled upon Additional Inspector General (AIG) of police Kuber Singh Rana; he is now almost the chief-in-waiting of Nepal Police. For the atheists, Ansari, Karki and Rana are winners in this world with duties and responsibilities toward their society. However, in case one believes that there are arbitrators higher than temporal institutions, the last hearing on the grievances of plaintiff Late Jai Kishor Labh would perhaps be held elsewhere.
Late Labh was a lawyer and knocked on almost every door of hearing in Janakpur, Kathmandu and Geneva in search of his forcibly ‘disappeared’ son Sanjay Kumar Karna, affectionately called Dipu. Having lost all hopes of ever seeing his son again, he died in despair last year as leaders of the armed conflict got busy in fighting for the spoils of office rather than listening to the families of the dead, the forcibly disappeared or the displaced. With the recent decision of the SC, it seems the closing of the earthly case is now merely a matter of detail. Only divine judgement can now grant eternal peace to the soul of late Labh.
Truth & Justice
A popular saying in Nepali holds that justice has nine horns. The intent of idiom is perhaps to warn litigants of their fate if they are unfortunate enough to be caught in the tentacles of judicial processes. What the maxim fails to mention is that sometimes the court too can be entangled in its own web. The case clearing the promotion of AIG Rana has revealed limitations of legal processes in ensuring justice for the aggrieved.
The story begins in Janakpur, where Officer Rana was the district police chief in Dhanusha when 11 youngsters, including Shailendra Yadav, Jitendra Jha, Pramod Narayan Mandal, Durgesh Kumar Labh and Sanjiv Kumar Karna were picked up from a picnic spot on the suspicion of being Maoists by the security forces on October 8, 2003 at the height of armed conflict. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) subsequently confirmed that the abducted boys had been killed. The NHRC also found that culpability of district police chief in the case was apparent.
The government, however, seldom pays much attention to what statutory bodies like NHRC or NPSC say. The career of Officer Rana continued to progress, completely unhindered by charges of human rights violations. His role was revealed only when a human rights defender and a lawyer dragged the government to court upon Rana’s promotion to the post of AIG. Initially, the court suspended his promotion and prevented him from attending office in uniform but then a division bench vacated the stay pending a final verdict.
According to media reports, the learned court has ordered that findings of NHRC were not sufficient to establish Officer Rana’s guilt. In all its wisdom, the court has also directed government authorities to form a probe panel led by a Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) and conduct impartial investigations into allegations against Additional Inspector General (AIG). Defence forces may emphasize the chain of command, judicial processes apparently have full faith upon independence of junior officers in investigating cases involving their commanders.
It is too early to jump to conclusions, but decisions taken by the government and the way wheels of justice have turned so far, it appears that the case of forced disappearances of Dipu and his friends would meet the same fate as that of Dr Laxmi Narayan Jha 26 years ago. In the monsoons of 1985, Dr Jha was picked up from his clinic in Janakpur on the suspicion of being ‘anti-national element’ and his whereabouts remains unknown to this day. Like lawyer Labh, Dr Jha’s father too died depressed and dejected as none of the officers involved in the abduction of his son were brought to justice even after the restoration of democracy and formation of several governments under a party—Nepali Congress—to which he had devoted his entire life.
The supposed contents of proposed legislation on Truth and Reconciliation Commission is in news these days with its critics buying out expensive time and space in the national media to oppose amnesty and demand an end to impunity. These are laudable endeavors even when funded by foreign agencies. However, the silence of the eloquent elite over an officer’s exoneration, who was possibly involved in a serious case of forcible disappearances, is deafening. It appears as if advocacy for the end of impunity is more of a political agenda than a genuine concern for the aggrieved.
Silence & eloquence
Unlike the post-conflict phase existing in much of the hills, valleys and mountains of Nepal, Tarai-Madhes is still very much embroiled in multiple contestations, some of which turn into criminal activities, violent clashes and reprisals. One of the main reasons behind complete collapse of law and order in southern plains is the lack of confidence in government’s ability to discharge its duties in an impartial manner. It is not just the state machinery, the entire ruling class appears suspicious when looked from the perspective of the ruled in Kapilvastu, Bara or Saptari. When the legitimacy of the state begins to suffer, the very concept of ‘rule of law’ degenerates into becoming merely the ‘rule by law.’
Antics of Madhesi parties in the Kathmandu valley are entertaining diversions for the social elite. Functionaries and propagandists of Pahadi-dominated political parties ignore their own infighting and enjoy taking potshots at perennially squabbling leaders of eternally fractious Madhes-based parties. However, undercurrents that are more disquieting can be felt in Tarai-Madhes where an air of hushed desperation hangs thick. When legal recourses do not work and political processes become dysfunctional, what an option does the aggrieved have other than either taking up guns or praying to the Almighty? If it were not for the power of faith, perhaps plains of Nepal would have been a much more dangerous place than it is now.
No political parties, not even the Maoists, have raised an eyebrow over the quiet burial of the case involving its alleged cadres in Dhanusha. The court has gone by the letter of the law, given a respite to one of the alleged violators of human rights in the police force, and assented to the government’s decision of promoting the official. Not much has been heard from human rights defenders or their counterparts in the legal profession who normally do not let even minor misdemeanors of the government pass without raucous censure. The conduct of the national media in the coverage of row of Officer Rana’s promotion has been regrettable at best.
In a eulogy masquerading as news report, a journalist exonerated the accused opining that ‘Rana had occasionally been dragged into controversy surrounding the murder of someone in Dhanusha at the hands of the Nepal Army...’ Apparently, the scribe had accesses to all the facts while the petitioners—a human rights defender and a public interest lawyer—had somehow less trustworthiness in the case involving forced disappearances of 11 youngsters that had already been investigated by the NHRC!
Some media reports dismissed murdered youths as “Maoist Cadres” without qualifying quotes or the ‘alleged’ adjective. Was the Maoist strain discovered from the DNA samples of their skeletons? Alternatively, were government forces given blanket authority to shoot suspicious youths first and declare them Maoists later? No mainstream media took the trouble of posing such disturbing questions.
Junior officers of AIG Rana have testified to the media that the integrity of their boss is beyond question. Few media-persons found it necessary to enquire what the families of the aggrieved felt about the decision of the honorable court. It would be inflammatory to examine the controversy from ethnic or communal angles, but a distressed academic from Janakpur recited an ominous couplet of Faiz Ahmed Faiz. In a very loose translation from Urdu, the Southasian bard laments about the institutionalized injustice of British India: “These angels of avarice - / They are the guilty, and they are the judges / Whom shall I take my case to, / Whom shall I ask to plead for me?”
Perhaps all prayers need to be directed toward the Almighty, for only His lathi dispenses justice without creating any controversy in this life or disquiet in another. Violence, whether structural or rebellious, is never the answer nor does rationality offer a satisfactory explanation for undeserved sufferings in an unjust world.
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