Quotations:
“Our only program, I am anxious to repeat, is the work of moral and material regeneration, and we must do this among a population whose degeneration in its inherited conditions it is difficult to measure. The many horrors and atrocities which disgrace humanity give way little by little before our intervention.” King Léopold II of Belgium. 1
“…his early dreams faded away to be replaced by unscrupulous cupidity, and step by step he was led downwards until he, the man of holy aspirations in 1885, stands now in 1909 with such a cloud of terrible direct personal responsibility resting upon him as no man in modern European history has had to bear.” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, commenting on King Léopold II’s crimes against humanity. 1
“There are times, young fellah, when every one of us must make a stand for human right and justice, or you never feel clean again.” Lord John Roxton, a character in The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Roxton was based on the life of Roger Casement, a leader of the Congo Free State reform campaign. 2
Léopold II’s personal kingdom:
King Léopold II (1835 – 1909) occupied the Belgium throne from 1865 until his death in 1909. Outside of Belgium, however, he is chiefly remembered as the personal owner of the Congo Free State. This was a private project undertaken by the King to extract rubber and ivory from his personal colony, relying on slavery. He was ultimately responsible for the death of possibly tens of millions of Africans. 3
Léopold fervently believed that overseas colonies were the key to a country’s greatness, and worked tirelessly to acquire colonial territory for Belgium. However, neither the Belgian people nor the Belgian government were interested, and Léopold eventually began trying to acquire a colony in his private capacity as an ordinary citizen.
After a number of unsuccessful schemes for colonies in Africa or Asia, in 1876 he organized a private holding company, Association Internationale Africaine, which was disguised as an international scientific and philanthropic association. In 1879, under the auspices of the holding company, he hired the famous explorer Henry Morton Stanley to establish a colony in the Congo region. Stanley gained control of the area from local chiefs through “cloth and trinket” treaties. The chiefs thought that they were signing friendship treaties; in fact, they were selling their land. Much diplomatic and economic maneuvering resulted in the Berlin Conference of 1884-5, at which representatives of 14 European countries and the United States recognized Léopold as sovereign of most of the area he and Stanley had laid claim to. On 1885-FEB-05, the result was the Congo Free State (later the Belgian Congo, then Zaire, and now the Democratic Republic of Congo). At 905,000 square miles, (2.344 million km2), it was an area 76 times larger than Belgium, which Léopold was free to rule as a personal domain. He became sole ruler of a population that Stanley had estimated at 30 million people, without constitution, without international supervision, without ever having been to the Congo, and without more than a tiny handful of his new subjects having heard of him.
The genocide, mutilations and other crimes against humanity:
Under Léopold II’s administration, the Congo Free State was subject to a terror regime, including atrocities such as mass killings and maimings which were used to subjugate the indigenous tribes of the Congo region and to procure slave labor.
He set in train a brutal colonial regime to maximize profitability. The first change was the introduction of the concept of terres vacantes — “vacant” land, which was anything that no European was living on. This was deemed to belong to the state, and servants of the state (i.e., any white men in Léopold’s employ) were encouraged to exploit it.
Next, the Free State was divided into two economic zones: the Free Trade Zone was open to entrepreneurs of any European nation, who were allowed to buy 10 and 15-year monopoly leases on anything of value: ivory from a particular district, or the rubber concession, for example. The other zone — almost two-thirds of the Congo — became the Domaine Privé: the exclusive private property of the State, which was in turn the personal property of King Léopold.
Natives were required to provide State officials with set quotas of rubber and ivory at a fixed, government-mandated price, to provide food to the local post, and to provide 10% of their number as full-time forced laborers — slaves in all but name — and another 25% part-time.
To enforce the rubber quotas, the Force Publique (FP) was called in. The FP was an army whose purpose was to terrorize the local population. The officers were white agents of the State. Of the black soldiers, many were cannibals from the most fierce tribes from upper Congo. Others had been kidnapped during the raids on villages in their childhood and brought to Catholic missions, when they received a military training in conditions close to slavery. Armed with modern weapons and the chicotte — a bull whip made of hippopotamus hide — the Force Publique routinely took and tortured hostages (mostly women), flogged, and raped the natives. They also burned recalcitrant villages, and above all, took human hands as trophies on the orders of white officers to show that bullets hadn’t been wasted.
One junior white officer described a raid to punish a village that had protested. The white officer in command: “ordered us to cut off the heads of the men and hang them on the village palisades, also their sexual members, and to hang the women and the children on the palisade in the form of a cross.” After seeing a native killed for the first time, a Danish missionary wrote: “The soldier said ‘Don’t take this to heart so much. They kill us if we don’t bring the rubber. The Commissioner has promised us if we have plenty of hands he will shorten our service’.” In the words of author Peter Forbath’s: “The baskets of severed hands, set down at the feet of the European post commanders, became the symbol of the Congo Free State. … The collection of hands became an end in itself. Force Publique soldiers brought them to the stations in place of rubber; they even went out to harvest them instead of rubber… They became a sort of currency. They came to be used to make up for shortfalls in rubber quotas, to replace… the people who were demanded for the forced labour gangs; and the Force Publique soldiers were paid their bonuses on the basis of how many hands they collected.”
In theory, each right hand proved a judicial murder. In practice, soldiers sometimes “cheated” by simply cutting off the hand and leaving the victim to live or die. More than a few survivors later said that they had lived through a massacre by acting dead, not moving even when their hand was severed, and waiting till the soldiers left before seeking help.
To visit the country was difficult. Missionaries were allowed only on sufferance, and mostly only if they were Belgian Catholics who Léopold could keep quiet. White employees were forbidden to leave the country. Nevertheless, rumors circulated and Léopold ran an enormous publicity campaign to discredit them, even creating a bogus Commission for the Protection of the Natives to root out the “few isolated instances” of abuse. Publishers were bribed, critics accused of running secret campaigns to further other nations’ colonial ambitions, eyewitness reports from missionaries dismissed as attempts by Protestants to smear honest Catholic priests. And for a decade or more, Léopold was successful. The secret was out, but few believed it.
Eventually, the most telling blows came from a most unexpected source. Edmund Dene Morel, a clerk in a major Liverpool shipping office and a part-time journalist began to wonder why the ships that brought vast loads of rubber from the Congo returned full of guns and ammunition for the Force Publique. He left his job and became a full-time investigative journalist, and then (aided by merchants who wanted to break into Léopold’s monopoly or, as chocolate millionaire William Cadbury who joined his campaign later, used their money to support humanitarian causes), a publisher. In 1902 Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness was released: based on his brief experience as a steamer captain on the Congo ten years before, it encapsulated the public’s growing concerns about what was happening in the Congo. In 1903 Morel and those who agreed with him in the House of Commons succeeded in passing a resolution which called on the British government to conduct an inquiry into alleged violations of the Berlin Agreement. In 1904, Sir Roger Casement, then the British Consul, delivered a long, detailed eyewitness report which was made public. The British Congo Reform Association, founded by Morel with Casement’s support, demanded action. The United States and many European nations followed suit. The British Parliament demanded a meeting of the 14 signatory powers to review the 1885 Berlin Agreement. The Belgian Parliament, pushed by socialist leader Emile Vandervelde and other critics of the King’s Congolese policy, forced Léopold to set up an independent commission of enquiry, and despite the King’s efforts, in 1905 it confirmed Casement’s report in every damning detail.
Léopold offered to reform his regime, but few took him seriously. All nations were now agreed that the King’s rule must be ended as soon as possible. No nation was willing to take on the responsibility, and it was not seriously considered to return control of the land back to the native population. Belgium was the obvious European candidate to run the Congo, but the Belgians were still unwilling. For two years Belgium debated the question and held fresh elections on the issue; meanwhile Léopold opportunistically enlarged the Domaine de la Couronne so as to milk the last possible ounce of personal profit while he could.
Finally, on 1908-NOV-15, four years after the Casement Report and six years after Heart of Darkness was first printed, the Parliament of Belgium annexed the Congo Free State and took over its administration. However, the international scrutiny was no major loss to Léopold or the concessionary companies in the Belgian Congo. By then, Southeast Asia and Latin America had become lower-cost producers of rubber. Along with the effects of resource depletion in the Congo, international commodity prices had fallen to a level that rendered Congolese extraction unprofitable. The state took over Léopold’s private dominion and bailed out the company, but the rubber boom was already over.
Author Conan Doyle met Morel in 1909 and was inspired to write The Crime of the Congo — a book which he finished in eight days. It is “filled with graphic descriptions of violence and illustrated with photos of mutilated people, dealt with the atrocities committed in the Belgian Congo on behalf of King Leopold II.” He later campaigned for and end to the atrocities in the Congo.
The situation in the Congo finally improved. However, the territory given the ironic title of Congo Free State is now ironically titled The Democratic Republic of the Congo. Much of the instability of the present country can be traced to the atrocities of Léopold II.
The death toll:
Estimates of the total death toll vary considerably. The massive reduction of the population of the Congo was noted by all who have compared the country at the beginning of the colonial rule and the beginning of the 20th century . Estimates of observers of the time, as well as modern scholars (most authoritatively Jan Vansina, professor emeritus of history and anthropology at the University of Wisconsin), show that the population halved during this period. According to Roger Casement’s report, this depopulation was caused mainly by four causes: indiscriminate “war”, starvation, reduction of births and diseases. Sleeping sickness ravaged the country and was used by the regime to justify demographic decrease. Opponents of King Léopold’s rule concluded that the administration itself was to be considered responsible for the spreading of this dreadful epidemic. One of the greatest specialists of sleeping sickness, P.G.Janssens, Professeur émérite de l’Université de Gand, blamed “…the brutal change of ancestral conditions and ways of life that has accompanied the accelerated occupation of the territories.”
In the absence of a census (the first was made in 1924), it’s even more difficult to quantify the population loss of the period.
British diplomat Roger Casement’s famous 1904 report estimated the death toll at 3 million for just twelve of the twenty years history of Léopold’s regime.
Investigative reporter and author Peter Forbath estimated at least 5 million deaths.
Adam Hochschild, estimated 10 million.
The Encyclopædia Britannica gives a total population decline of 8 million to 30 million.
Léopold II’s reputation today:
In the Democratic Republic of Congo: Léopold II is still a controversial figure. In 2005 his statue was taken down just hours after it was re-erected in the capital, Kinshasa. The Congolese culture minister, Christoph Muzungu decided to reinstate the statue, arguing people should see the positive aspects of the king as well as the negative. But just hours after the six-metre (20 ft.) statue was erected in the middle of a circle near Kinshasa’s central station, it was taken down again, without explanation.
In Belgium: Léopold II is perceived by many Belgians as the “King-Builder” (“le Roi-Bâtisseur” in French, “Koning-Bouwer” in Dutch) because he commissioned a great number of buildings and urban projects in Antwerp, Brussels, Ostend and elsewhere in Belgium. The buildings include the Royal Glasshouses at Laeken, the Japanese tower, the Chinese pavilion, the Musée du Congo (now called the Royal Museum for Central Africa) and their surrounding park in Tervuren, the Jubilee Triple Arch in Brussels and the Antwerp train station hall. He funded these buildings with the wealth generated by the exploitation of the Congo.
There has been a “Great Forgetting“, as Adam Hochschild describes in his book King Leopold’s Ghost: “The Congo offer a striking example of the politics of forgetting. Leopold and the Belgian colonial officials who followed him went to extraordinary lengths to try to erase potentially incriminating evidence from the historical records.”
Remarkably the colonial Royal Museum for Central Africa (Tervuren Museum) does not mention anything at all about the atrocities committed in the Congo Free State. The Tervuren Museum has a large collection of colonial objects but of the largest injustice in Congo, Hochschild wrote: “there is no sign whatsoever.” Another example is to be found on the sea walk of Blankenberge, a popular coastal resort, where a monument shows a colonialist with a black child at his feet (supposedly bringing him “civilization”) without any comment.
References used:
The following information sources were used to prepare and update the above essay. These hyperlinks are not necessarily still active today.
- “King Léopold II of Belgium,” MoreOrLess, at: http://www.moreorless.au.com/
- “Conan Doyle and the Belgian Congo,” at: http://www.siracd.com/
- “Congo Free State,” Wikipedia, at: http://en.wikipedia.org/
- Peter Forbath: The River Congo: The Discovery, Exploration and Exploitation of the World’s Most Dramatic Rivers,” Harper & Row, (1977). ISBN .
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia articles “Congo Free State” and “Leopold II of Belgium.” More from Wikipedia.
October 6, 2010
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular |
1 Comment
Thirteen is the age for a lot of things; it carries a certain significance for every boy that reaches that age with all the promises that life has to offer; it’s a time when boys get their first bike, enjoy their favorite video games, make it into the school’s football squad, it’s a time when boys begin to marvel at and appreciate the mysteries of life pre-adulthood, and for some; it’s even a time when they experience their first innocent crush; but if you’re a thirteen year old boy in occupied Palestine; you’re placed under house arrest by the Israeli authorities.
Thirteen year old Palestinian boy; Karam Khaled Da’nah was sentenced by an Israeli court to five months of mandatory house arrest in his uncle’s house –away from his parents and siblings- and a 2,000 shekel bail after a shameful charade that isn’t very well masquerading as a court hearing last Tuesday September 28th 2010, in complete disregard for anything even resembling human rights (or even common human decency for that matter); Karam was first arrested on the 20th of September right in front of his school in the old city in southern Hebron, dragged away from his friends and classmates and savagely beaten by Israeli forces before being thrown into the back of their military jeep and driven away; and the charge is… wait for it… lopping stones at (illegal) Israeli settlers.
And here you thought that peer pressure was the biggest source of anxiety for most parents, however; Palestinian parents will always have something else to worry about when it comes to their children; whether it’s sudden arrests, deadly assaults, torture, you name it; the list of horrific –and very possible- scenarios that Palestinian families are made to live with day in and day out are endless; indeed parenthood carries a whole different meaning in Palestine.
What’s particularly troubling though; is that the Zionists have -over the years- committed so many crimes and gross violations of international laws that I can’t believe the rest of the so-called civilized world haven’t called them out on it yet, they insist on placing “the only democracy in the Middle East” on a strangely unparalleled, high pedestal as the ultimate paragon of virtue; whereas when it comes to Palestinians it seems; the concept of human rights suddenly blurs, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) becomes a hazy afterthought; is it acceptable only if the victim is a Palestinian kid? Is it acceptable to snatch minors off the streets, torture and browbeat them into submission in Israeli prison chambers? Is all of this acceptable if everyone is practically silent about it?
These days we keep hearing all about poor little Binyamin Netanyahu and how “difficult” it is to be in his place; caught between the hammer of American pressures to re-impose a temporary freeze on settlement building and the anvil of a fragile government coalition of right wing fascists who firmly stand behind the settlement enterprise, we keep hearing how “unbearable” it is to be in the position of President Mahmoud Abbas, who is left with very few limited options; the best of which amounts to political suicide; but what about those who live under occupation and suffer its agonizing consequences, we sure have a tenuous grasp of their bitter reality, we disregard them -and often we do so with intent- in our quest to decipher the intricate details of the Middle East conflict, so let us this time try and place ourselves in Karam Da’nah’s shoes for a moment:
Imagine you’re thirteen years old, living in a neighborhood your family has been inhabiting for generations; yet is becoming less and less familiar to you -thanks to swarms of hostile (and armed to the teeth) Israeli settlers-, the day starts and ends with their vulgar harassments, verbal and physical abuse and often with them hurling their trash at your house for good measure, your daily trip to your own school and back disturbs the very delicate sensibilities of these “new neighbors”, they spit on you, shower you with unspeakable insults that a typical thirteen year old wouldn’t normally hear; there’s absolutely nothing neighborly about that! you try another (longer) route hoping against hope that this “maneuver” will spare you another one of those grueling confrontations, but to no avail; they’re all over the place; they enjoy the very same right and freedom of movement you’ve been long pining for; and always under the attentive watch of the IOF, going to school soon becomes a dreaded burden; an exercise in frustration and futility; you can’t help but feel like you’re a moving target; your destination –no matter how close- is always so far away, well beyond countless of check points, humiliating strip searches, antagonistic soldiers, exclusive Jewish-only roads, life-threatening altercations with over-zealous colonizers and a separation wall that stretches as far as the eye can see.
Nonetheless; you try as hard as you can to reconcile yourself with this harsh reality just to be able to enjoy –even if for a brief and fleeting moment- a false sense of normalcy; until one day and out of the blue; you get rounded up, accused and immediately convicted for a bogus crime you didn’t commit; there is absolutely no evidence except for a testimony by an illegal Israeli settler who’s hell-bent on forcing you out of your own land with no idea what he wants beyond that, you spend about a week incarcerated in a prison cell, exhaustion from ruthless interrogation sessions -designed specifically to “overcome” your frail thirteen year old mind and body- and fears of never being able to see your family ever again start to mount inside your small teenage chest until you can’t even take a proper breath anymore; when you’re finally released; you find out that you can’t live with your family anymore, instead; you’re sent to live with relatives and to top it all off; you’re not allowed to see the outdoors for at least five months; you have to say goodbye to playgrounds, football games, family picnics, going to school and basically all the activities that made up a huge and beloved part of your previous life.
Karam’s story is merely the latest in a litany of brutal practices and policies of aggression by the Zionist state and its raging herds of xenophobic settlers against Palestinians; only a little over a week ago; a Jewish settlement “guard” (whatever that means!) shot down a 32 year old Palestinian man –a father of five- in the Arab neighborhood of Silwan in East Jerusalem: pretty much an open and shut, slam dunk case of cold blooded murder; from which the perpetrator was, yes you guessed it, exonerated after half an hour of “friendly” questioning by Israeli authorities (probably over a cup of coffee for all we know!); while, on the other hand, Karam Da’nah still has to adjust to his new living situation placed under house arrest deprived of all the things that millions of normal kids around the world take for granted.
Moreover; a recent CNN report revealed several cases of sexual abuse of Palestinian children detained in Israeli jails; the report included victims’ heart-breaking detailed accounts of what they’ve endured on the filthy hands of their Israeli captors; molestation, beatings, being forced to remain in painful positions and being grabbed by their private parts; are but few of the many methods mentioned in the report that are systematically employed by Israeli interrogators in sleazy albeit sadistic attempts at extracting forced “confessions” from kids as young as 9 years old; this in no doubt; will take its immense and devastating toll on these youngsters; physically, psychologically and emotionally as well; sure these kids will survive, they will continue to live, some might even grow up to be great leaders for their people; but I think their childhood and everything about it has been seared for life.
Indeed not only lands that are being arbitrarily bulldozed and confiscated in the occupied Palestinian territories, but most dangerously; childhood too.
Ahmad Barqawi, a Jordanian freelance columnist & writer based in Amman, having acquired his Bachelor of Science Degree in Economics; he has done several studies, statistical analysis and researches on economic and social development in Jordan.
October 6, 2010
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture |
Comments Off on Karam’s Story: Confiscating Childhood in the Occupied Territories
The Israel lobby is deeply enmeshed in the Democratic Party, as we frequently note here, for financial reasons. Consider Mark Gilbert of Boca Raton, FL, the deputy national finance chair of the Democratic Party. He loves Israel, his wife Nancy runs tours to Israel. Barack Obama has praised Mark and Nancy Gilbert as “dear friends.” Gilbert raised $500,000 for Obama last time around and has privileged access to White House policy makers.
Lately Alex Cockburn picked up the following fundraising letter written by the Gilberts that reflects the usual complete confusion about national identity that Zionists have– they seem to regard Michael Oren as a political prophet. And note that they are raising money for Obama by quoting a foreign ambassador, Michael Oren, and praising a rightwing leader, Netanyahu. Notice that there is not a word about illegal colonies or Palestinian national aspirations (Jewish prejudice at work), and contempt for the suffering people of Gaza. Emphasis mine:
‘Dear Friends,
“Under the radar” is not what we’re used to in the Jewish community.
We demand it big and bold and we need it loud and clear. (and- that is A. O. K.! )
But- when work is done quietly and not with SCREAMING headlines, we sometimes miss it.
Silly us! WAKE UP EVERYONE…. It’s a new (Jewish) year ! And our President and his team (and YES, our CONGRESS) have done, are doing and WILL continue to do extraordinary work in connection with America’s best friend: the State of Israel.
At the Israeli Ambassador’s residence on Monday, the annual Rosh Ha Shanah (Jewish New Year for our non-Jewish friends on this email) reception guest list included national and international Jewish organization leaders; elegantly dressed Foreign Ambassadors and members of the diplomatic corps, a host of Rabbis from across the religious spectrum ; famous authors, renown professors and magnificently decorated military personnel from several countries including at least one U.S. 3-star General (Dayton). We were invited because my husband Mark is the National Deputy Finance Chairman of the Democratic party, I’m the owner of an Israel tour company and have been heavily involved in tourism to Israel for 15 years and probably- and most importantly- because our daughter was Ambassador Oren’s student at Yale.
Thank You, President Obama!
Ambassador Oren and his wonderful wife Sally warmly received each guest -then stood before the assembled crowd in what was the best stump speech for President Obama that I have heard from any world leader (and yes, Ambassador Oren speaks FOR Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel!). Without a note, Ambassador Oren outlined the brilliant accomplishments and strong support of Israel demonstrated by the Obama Administration in LESS THAN 2 YEARS! Oren invoked our President’s name, time and time again: (please memorize these bullet points and tell everyone you know!)
- President Obama has led the global effort to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
- President Obama’s leadership (and coaxing) has produced an international coalition that INCLUDES China and Russia who have implemented unprecedented sanctions against Iran, which, according to conversations at the Monday reception, appear to have caught Iran off-guard
- President Obama and his team are spending more time on this issue than almost any other issue facing our country today
- President Obama and our Congress have provided Israel with every cent (and then some) of foreign assistance requested by Israel
- President Obama has restored Israel’s QME (qualitative military edge) which had been neglected for the last 8 years
- President Obama is the FIRST American leader to say – in an Arab country (Egypt) that the Arab world must recognize Israel as a JEWISH state and in a support of Israel’s legitimacy to affirm the –quote- “unshakeable “ bond between the USA & Israel
- President Obama & team played a critical role in leading a UNANIMOUS vote to include Israel in the OECD (Organization of Economic Cooperation & Development). The vote was 31-0 admitting Israel to this prestigious organization
- President Obama has dispatched leaders of the Joint Chiefs to Israel not once, but four times already in his less-than-2-years in office ( before that the Joint chiefs had not been in Israel for YEARS (not once during the ‘last’ administration)
- The Obama administration has integrated US missile technology into Israel’s expanding missile shield. NO OTHER AMERICAN PRESIDENT HAS DONE THIS.
- The Obama administration continues to fund development of ARROW-3, Israel’s advanced long-rage, high-altitude system for countering Iranian ballistic missiles
- President Obama asked Congress for $205 million dollars for Israel’s IRON DOME rocket defense system (which will reduce incoming rocket threats from Hizbullah in the north and Hamas in the south…) – this request is IN ADDITION TO the $3 BILLION budgetary request for Israel’s security assistance!
- And my personal under-the-radar item; the Obama team’s clever input to re-wording the Gaza blockade language which not only garnered international support for Israel (and a promise not to condemn Israel if Gd forbid there is another flotilla incident) BUT effectively thwarted several pending flotillas in Mediterranean and Persian Gulf ports… that simply became the boats-to-nowhere!
- And last, but surely not least, (and listed in this basic order by Ambass. Oren) the Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiators are sitting as we speak at a table together – talking. Who knows what the result will be….but talking is the only way to get anywhere. And it is a giant step in a positive direction.
This email is too long already and I hope you have gotten this far, but you must realize that the list of bullet points above is extraordinary.
Unprecedented.
And all accomplished by the Obama team and the current congress- in less than two years in office.
Looking ahead to 5771, may you and your families be blessed with a beautiful year, filled with good health, good times and ….peace.
With warm regards from our house to yours,
Sincerely,
Nancy & Mark Gilbert.’
October 6, 2010
Posted by aletho |
Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel |
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This note is an expression of the shock and disappointment that assailed large sections of Indians in the aftermath of the Ayodhya verdict. The judgment of the Honourable Allahabad High Court appears to be a clean break from the secular traditions of India, where a judicial body has openly intervened on behalf of the people of a particular religious faith and has failed to uphold its role as that of a rational, impartial arbiter.
The land suit in question appears to have been decided on the basis of faith rather than of fact. The judgment has erroneously concluded that Ayodhya was the birthplace of the Hindu mythological character, Ram, because Hindus believe so. The court has delved deep into the evidence placed forth about the fact that Hindus believe Ayodhya to be the birthplace of ‘Lord Ram’ and has concluded that thereby Lord Ram was born in Ayodhya, effectively converting mass belief into a fact, in defiance of logic. This conclusion appears to be all the more absurd in the absence of evidence to prove that Lord Ram was actually a historical character and not just a mythological one. The court appears to have flirted extensively with theology while choosing not to dwell upon the legal aspects of possession and adverse possession of the land concerned. If the judgment had been based exclusively on legal tenets, which is what one expects from the judiciary of a democratic nation, the judgment would have swung the other way because since the Mughal period, the so-called disputed land has housed a mosque.
The court has needlessly delved into the question of whether the said place of worship was used regularly or not, ignoring the fact that in 1949, Hindu fascist groups forcibly entered the mosque, placing Hindu idols in it and thereby creating a ‘dispute’ which prompted the government to lock the premises, declare the matter sub-judice and prevent Muslims from offering prayers therein. Besides, the act of placing idols within the precincts of the mosque was considered an act of desecration of their holy place by Muslims. Not once has the court condemned the act of illegality that took place in 1949. Instead, it set upon itself the task of correcting historical wrongs, dating back to the pre-Mughal period, based on a flawed ASI report that has been discredited by reputed historians the world over. Such flagrant interventionism on behalf of a powerful segment of the Hindu populace has ripped the mask of secularism off the judiciary’s face. We would also like to add that the principle of ‘superior fundamental right,’ as espoused by Justice Sharma to rule that Hindus have a superior right of worship at the concerned spot, appears to have been gravely misinterpreted in this case. The legal precedent set by this judgment has only given birth to a hornet’s nest and legitimised the ascendance of faith over reason, of politics over justice.
The grief and bewilderment caused by the political judgment will only foment a lingering sense of injustice among the minority community, which has been treated contemptuously and has been parcelled out a third of land, almost as if it were being given gratuitously. The most distressing part of the judgment is that while the court has taken upon itself the mission of setting right ill-documented and doubtful historical wrongs, not once has it condemned the criminal act of demolishing the Babri Masjid, perpetrated by right-wing Hindutva factions, under the guidance of leaders of national stature and reputation. It appears that truth and justice have been the chief casualties of a misguided attempt at reconciliation.
Sucheta Chatterjee is a lawyer by profession, currently based in Bombay and the author of ‘Impotent Ire.’
October 6, 2010
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Illegal Occupation, Supremacism, Social Darwinism |
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