Today it is African women, tomorrow it will be political opponents who will be victims of Aam Aadmi Party’s high-handedness and blatant arrogance. This cannot go on. Democracy must not be made a mockery of
“When I asked the men why they were subjecting us to this torture, they punched me in the face and said, ‘You will know why very soon’. Despite our refusal we were forced to undergo this painful test. How can they say we are involved in a drug-and-prostitution case just because we are blackIJ” This is what a report in The Indian Express of January 18, quotes one of the four African women who had been traumatised by Aam Aadmi Party supporters, as saying. They were also forced on January 16 to undergo medical test at AIIMS for drug use. The tests ruled out the consumption of any psychotropic substance by them.
On January 17 morning, the women approached the police with separate complaints against unnamed AAP supporters whom they accused of abusing, groping and beating them while keeping them captive. The Indian Express report cited above quoted a police officer as saying, “The complainants state that the women were touched inappropriately by partymen who held them captive. The women stated that the men called them names, abused them saying that they indulged in illegal activities.”
Another report in The Indian Express of January 23, quotes Ms Barkha Singh, Chairperson, Delhi Commission for Women, as saying that three (of the women victimised) had claimed that unknown persons had forcibly entered their house at night, demanded their passports and began opening suitcases. The women also claimed that they were made to take off their clothes while checking for the key. Ms Singh further said, “Two of the Ugandan women have said that they were stopped while returning from work and made to give urine samples while sitting in a taxi.”
Forcible entry into any house at night is a serious offence, particularly when it is inhabited by women; so is the detention of women by a mob. The conduct of AAP members raise serious questions; so does that of Delhi Government’s law Minister, Mr Somnath Bharti, who, according to a Ugandan woman, stood outside their house on the night of the raid, saying that blacks indulged in illegal activities.
As a Minister sworn to uphold the Constitution of India, the matrix for the enactment and enforcement of the country’s civil and criminal laws, Mr Bharti had a duty to prevent his partymen from taking the law into their own hands. Instead, on the night of January 15-16, he, accompanied by his supporters, sought to browbeat the Station House Officer of the Malviya Nagar Police Station, Mr Vijay Pal Singh, into raiding, without following the due process of law, a building where, he claimed, a drug-cum-sex racket was being run!
The allegations of groping and beating have to be proved but cannot be dismissed casually, given the experience that such acts tend to follow from the dynamics of lynch-mob behaviour against helpless victims, particularly women. Also, people who think nothing of intimidating the police to act illegally, have scant regard for the law and are generally themselves prone to behave illegally, even criminally. Besides, the allegation of racist behaviour against the Minister and AAP supporters has to be viewed in the context of the subterranean stream of prejudice against all those who are different — and obsession with the fair skin-prevalent in many parts of India.
There is another aspect. India has built up considerable goodwill in African countries through its principled opposition to racism exemplified by its stand against apartheid when it was in force in South Africa. Outrages like the one by the AAP Minister and supporters not only erode that but endanger the safety of the thousands of Indians who live and work in African countries as well as India’s growing economic ties with these. The Ministry of External Affairs has saved the situation this time by calling a meeting of envoys of African countries and telling them that the Centre considered the matter “condemnable” and promising appropriate action.
Such a promise will not work if there is another similar outrage, which cannot be ruled out given the boost that Mr Bharti’s conduct must have administered to racist sentiments in the area where, according to a report, considerable support exists for what he did. His removal from office would have sent the message around that such outrages will not go unpunished. Instead, ruling out any wrongdoing on the Minister’s part, AAP’s chief spokesman, Mr Yogendra Yadav, said on January 23 that Mr Bharti “should in fact be praised because he gave up his comforts to look into this matter, which many residents had complained about”.
It is not a question of the Minister taking up residents’ complaints but of how. Mr Bharti should have taken up the matter of a drug-cum-sex racket with the police-at various levels, if necessary — and, failing to find satisfaction, could have gone public with his complaint, citing it to strengthen the demand for transferring control over Delhi Police from the Centre to the State Government. He did not do that. If anything, his conduct only strengthens the case for keeping Delhi Police under the Union Ministry of Home Affairs.
The implications of Mr Bharti’s conduct as also that or another Delhi Minister, Ms Rakhi Birla, who wanted the police to break into — without a warrant — another house in connection with the case of a woman being set on fire, call for careful scrutiny. The Ministers’ demands in both cases, that the police violate the law, imply that the law matters little; what does is their command.
Remarkably, the AAP demanded action against personnel of Delhi Police who stood up to them. Nobody holds that Delhi Police is an ideal law enforcement agency. The thrust of the many serious charges against it, however, is that it acts not according to the law but out of considerations that are often questionable and arbitrary. It will be disastrous if questionable and arbitrary conduct by Delhi Police is replaced by such conduct by AAP leaders.
Their weapon is mob violence and intimidation. The targets can be individuals they dislike or institutions that oppose their will. Everything that comes in their way — even the Republic Day function — is dismissed contemptuously. Today, it is African women. Tomorrow, it may well be political opponents, who have vitriolic abuses and threats hurled at them by AAP leaders like Mr Bharti. Those inclined to jump into the AAP’s bandwagon and those watching from the sidelines, should ponder this, and also Pastor Niemoller’s memorable words,
“First they [Nazis] came for the communists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a communist;/Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist; / Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist; / Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew; / Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak out for me.”