India's move to get UN VETO power
- Mohammad Zainal Abedin
Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of
India, desperately tries to mobilize support to get UN Security Council
permanent membership to gain veto power and establish India as a
superpower. In New York on September 25, 2015 Modi hosted a summit of
G-4 that included Germany, Japan, Brazil and India, where he demanded
the inclusion of the world’s largest democracies to make UN more
representative and credible.
Earlier the United States of America,
the Russian Federation and China, the three permanent members of UN
Security Council (UNSC), technically deterred India’s dream to get UNSC
membership, as they declined a proposal to reform the UN Security
Council in what could ultimately pave the way for India to enter the
prestigious and powerful body, its permanent members having veto power.
India’s neighbors apprehend if India gets veto power it will use it not
only to squeeze them, but also to occupy them to implement its dream of
‘Akhand Bharat’ initially merging those countries to India which broke
away and became independent countries in 1947. Indian policymakers
dismayingly recalled American President Mr. Barak Obama, who in 2010
asserted that India deserves a permanent seat in the United Nations
Security Council. But the analysts believe Obama honoring diplomatic
courtesy and strategic policy intentionally overlooked or avoided the
irritable realities that India faces.
The ground reality shows India will have
to go a long way to get UNSC permanent membership. None of the India’s
neighboring countries will sincerely welcome Indian admission in UNSC,
as Indian leadership poses that India is their regional guardian. India
must remove such apprehension from the psyche of its neighbors by
shunning its dream of Akhand Bharat.
Such dream prompts Indian policymakers
to wage a policy of disturbing, squeezing¸ controlling and even, if
possible, occupying them.With that end in view India creates
stooges and agents, even secessionists, in her neighboring countries to
create political and religious unrest to keep them economically
shattered and backward, socially chaotic and restive, psychologically
weak and insecure, and above all, nationally shaky and divided. None of
its neighbors are harmonious with India, whose support is very crucial,
for it in getting the support of all the veto-powered nations of the UN.
Though India is not fit to get veto
power, still for a long time India desperate bids to get it simply
highlighting one ground that out every six of the global people one is
an Indian. But the knowledgeable sources believe if the regions that
were immorally and illegally merged to Indian territory (through
occupation or conspiratorial integration), are segregated from India,
not only its geographical size, but also its demographic volume will
shrink to a great extent. On the other hand, simply huge population
cannot be a factor in attaining the Security Council permanent
membership.
Indians to brand it as a so-called super
power and hence to enter UNSC also distantly point to their extravagant
military muscle as another factor, but such military might is, in fact,
a burden for India, as it eats up the vitals of India earns negative
image wherever its personnel were deployed inside (disturbed areas) or
outside India (in Bangladesh or Sri Lanka). India is the lone country in
the world whose army is engaged in a never-ending war against its own
people since its inception in 1947. India nurses such mega-army keeping
its millions of marginal people in distressed who live in urban slums or
in thatched huts in remote areas who are constantly chased by
starvation, malnutrition, disease, illiteracy, and social or caste
hatred and persecution.
The most serious factor that makes India
unfit to get UNSC permanent membership is that India lags far behind in
all sectors from the current veto-powered members. India is even poorer
than those aspirants (Japan, Germany, Brazil, or Africa) for the same
position in the UNSC. India is widely infamous for its poor economy,
illiteracy, communal riots and caste hatred, religious and social
violence, poor human rights records, and above all, its expansionist
policy of ‘Akhand Bharat’ abolishing the existence of its neighboring
countries.
Uncovering India’s poor and lowly
position, a BBC report says, “Seventy-five percent of India’s population
lives in rural poverty, which results in a stagnated economy…. A
typical farmer feeds and clothes a family of four on $2 per day.
…Poverty drives many farmers to suicide. Typical villages lack basic
services, communications and infrastructure, resulting in a stagnated
rural economy ….” (Ref: http://www.bbc.co.
Mumbai, the so-called dazzling city, is
home to 22 million people, and over 70% of them live in slums. In recent
times, though some of the slum people were removed, but the position
remains unchanged. People living in the slums have limited access to
electricity, clean water, food, and educational opportunities. The slums
are also home to over seven million children under the age of 14 who
are growing up in abject poverty. As young as five and six years old are
forced to work for survival. Slum children work as rag pickers,
sewerage cleaners and other menial jobs all around Mumbai, earning a few
cents a month for their families.
Majority people of India are so poor
that they are deprived of so many modern facilities. Dean Spears, an
economist and visiting researcher at the Delhi School of Economics,
writes, in India “Open defecation is everybody’s problem. It is the
quintessential ‘public bad’ with negative spillover effects, even on
households that do not practice it.” (Ref: http://knowledge.
A new World Health Organization (WHO)
report says more than half a billion people in India still “continue to
defecate in gutters, behind bushes or in open water bodies, with no
dignity or privacy”. They are among the 48% of Indians who do not have
access to proper sanitation. (Ref: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-
India is estimated to have one third of
the world’s poor. India’s Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS)
need to undergo significant changes to address the current malnutrition
crisis in India, according to a World Bank report. The prevalence of
underweight children in India is among the highest in the world, and is
nearly double that of Sub-Saharan Africa, the report says.
Globally, an estimated one in four
children under age 5 suffer from stunting, a form of malnutrition in
which children are shorter than normal growth for their age. In India,
almost 62 million children (48 percent) across all income groups are
stunted. Stunting, or chronic malnutrition, is accompanied by a host of
problems—weak immune systems, risk of sickness and disease, arrested
cognitive and physical development, and a greater risk of dying before
age 5.
India has 287 million illiterate adults,
the largest population globally and 37% of the world total, says a
report by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization,
also known as UNESCO. In India there prevail huge disparities between
the rich and the poor in all sectors from education to health care.(Ref:
http://world.time.com/2014/01/
According to government statistics on an
average 44,000 women still die every year at the time of delivery.
Health Minister J P Nadda on March 17, 2015 informed the Rajya Sabha in a
written reply that as per Sample Registration System (SRS) 2013, the
Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) in the country is 40 per 1000 live births
which translates into the death of an estimated 10.68 lakh children up
to the age of one year annually. (Ref: http://www.outlookindia.com/
The problem of gender-based violence is
getting worse in India. National Crime Record Bureau statistics show
crimes against women increased by 7.1 percent nationwide since 2010.
There has been a rise in the number of incidents of rape recorded too.
24,206 incidents of rape were recorded in 2011, a rise of 9 percent from
the previous year. More than half of the victims are between 18 and 30
years of age.
Figures indicate that 10.6 percent of
total victims of rape were girls under 14 years of age, while 19 percent
were teens between the ages of 14 and 18. Under the IPC (Indian Penal
Code) crimes against women include rape, kidnapping and abduction,
homicide for dowry, torture, molestation, sexual harassment, and the
importation of girls. A total of 2,28,650 incidents of crimes against
women were reported in India during 2011.(Ref: http://www.
India claims itself as the largest
democracy where in reality there is no democratic practice. Its
democracy is confined to holding elections. There is no democracy in
those regions whose people strongly believe that they don’t belong to
India, where people are socially discriminated and persecuted,
economically deprived and exploited. India also behaves with them like
an occupation power. An Indian human rights activist Henri Tiphagne
acknowledged “We have all these great human rights institutions, but
still nobody in India gets justice when the state murders one of their
family members,” Same position, in the truest sense of the term,
prevails all over India, particularly in Kashmir, Northeastern region or
Maoist-infested areas that cover about 11 provinces.
The laws that Indian parliament passed
so far are utterly contrary to democratic values and norms. Some of the
infamous draconian black laws are: Armed Forces Special Powers Act
(AFSPA), Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), Unlawful Activities
(prevention) Amendment Ordinance, Indian Telegraph Act, Criminal
Procedure Code, Newspapers Incitements to Offence Act, Official Secrets
Act, National Security Act, Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act
(TADA), Disruptive Areas Act, Public Safety Act, etc.
Most of these laws are imposed to crush
the people of those so-called ‘disturbed areas’ where encased and
deprived people being annoyed became desperate for liberation. Availing
these laws the armed forces can arrest, even shoot to death anyone, on
suspicion or take him into custody without a warrant.
They can enter and search any premise in
order to arrest so-called ‘wanted’ person, or to recover arms,
ammunition or explosive substances. They can stop and search any vehicle
or vessel that is suspected to be carrying wanted persons or weapons.
Availing such excuses, in many cases,
Indian soldiers simply enter the house with the intention of raping the
women. Incidents of rape committed by the Indian army are so random and
intolerable that the women community in were Manipur enraged, chagrined
and agitated. Their anger went to its zenith when on July 11, 2004 a
32-year Manipuiri women, Thangjam Manorama, was lifted from her house by
the Assam Rifles personnel, raped and repeatedly shot in her vagina to
death. This cruel behavior of the Indian army made the Manipur so
disturbed and perturbed that on July 15, 2004 they stripped themselves
and demonstrated in front of the Assam Rifles Headquarters holding a
banner that says, “Indian Army rape us” and “Indian Army takes our
flesh.”
Protest against Rape by Indian Army
Army officers have legal immunity for
their actions. There can be no prosecution, suit or any other legal
proceeding against anyone acting under most of these laws.
As a result, custodial death, death in
planted encounters, death without trial, arrest or detention on
suspicion, demolition of residential houses or prayer houses or shops,
rape and molestation and so on occur daily in India what is branded as
the largest democracy in the world. Democracy in India is seen only
during elections, but it is absent from Indian social life, as India is
controlled and dictated by Indian Army and intelligence agencies, whose
personnel are above law.
Under such situation Human rights in
India is alarmingly in the lowest position among the existing permanent
members of the UNSC and the aspirants that seek the same status what
India hankers.
India is a prophet of unrest and war in
South Asian region. It is an aggressive country having expansionist
zeal. It deceptively occupied Sikkim; forcibly swallowed Goa, Daman and,
Diu; and illegally captured Princely State of Junagadh, Hyderabad,
Kashmir, Manipur, Tripura etc. Besides, it manipulated the British
colonial power to handover without people’s consents such lands and
regions like Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh,
which never were part of India before their treacherous annexation to
the British India in 1826.
Now India to maintain its controversial
occupation of Kashmir and of Northeastern seven sisters comprising
Manipur, Tripura and Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Arunachal
Pradesh, wages a never-ending war since its inception in 1947 where its
troops, under the cover of democratic fashion, lunches despotic and
ruthless rule. Indian military and intelligence agencies control those
areas where human rights are nakedly violated.
India deployed about 400,000 army
personnel in seven sisters who commit atrocities on the local people
availing black laws that I mentioned afore, and massively violate human
rights. No pen is enough to detail and ventilate the accurate and exact
agonies, sorrows and sufferings, deprivations and exploitation of the
ill-fated people of seven sisters that led them to the path of armed
resistance to liberate their region.
To comprehend the gravity of atrocities
in seven sisters, I prefer to refer to an iron lady Irom Chanu Sharmila,
a Manipuri civil rights and political activist and poet who is on
hunger strike since November 4, 2000 demanding annulment of the infamous
AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act), a weapon responsible for so
many gruesome killings in northeast and elsewhere in India.
On November 2, 2000, the Manipuri
insurgents attacked an Assam Rifles convoy near Malom town of Manipur.
In retaliation, the troops shot at civilians at a nearby bus-stop that
left 10 civilians dead, including a 62-year old woman and an 18-year old
Sinam Chandramani, who had been awarded the bravery award by the former
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Besides, as many as 42 people were dragged
out of their houses and severely beaten up by the Assam Rifle
personnel.
The brutal combing operation enraged and
hurt the heart of Irom Sharmila so much that prompted her to go on
fast-to-death (hunger strike) demanding the repeal of the AFSPA. About
15 years passed by, but Sharmila bending to India neither ended her
hunger strike till date nor her hunger strike could move so-called the
largest democracy India to withdraw its black law.
The most serious allegation that one may
bring to the forefront is that India is such a country that dishonors
the UNSC, better to say United Nations. How a country that denies UN
Security Council resolution adopted on April 21, 1948 that India must
hold a referendum in Kashmir under UN supervision to decide whether the
people of Kashmir want to merge to India or Pakistan. India raised the
Kashmir issue before the UN and politely welcomed the decision of
holding a plebiscite under UN and committed to accept the results, if it
would go against its occupation. Late Nehru who repeatedly declared to
hold plebiscite didn’t honor it in his life time who died on May 27,
1964. How such a country that dishonors the UN Security Council
resolution could desire to get a permanent seat in it?
To keep Kashmir under its occupation
India maintains more than 700,000 troops there who are committing all
kinds of atrocities against the Kashmiri people. Reliable Kashmiri
sources confirmed that Kashmiris are virtually denied of all types of
human rights. Indian armed forces so far murdered more than 203,030
Kashmiris, detained 216,222 people, 110,355 Kashmris were made
disappeared, 116,010 homes have been demolished, leaving 123,110 widows
and 207,664 orphans.
In Kashmir, there are thousands of unmarked graves(Ref: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/
How a country that cheats with UNSC
resolution should desire or deserve to get veto power in the UNSC?
Another crucial issue is that India is on the verge of disintegration,
as people of at least eight provinces of fight to get out of Indian
territory and they treat India as an occupation power. Would leaders
should surely take all these issues that will frustrate India to reach
its goal.
South Asian analysts expressing their
dismay opine how such a poor country that suffers from acute problems
and backwardness in all sectors along with lowest human rights records
should desire the most responsible and prestigious position of the world
body. They apprehend that India’s membership in UNSC will simply turn
South Asia to a permanent battle ground whenever India opts to implement
its aggressive dream of Akhand Bharat. All these realities and records,
including communal and caste violence, crime against the women and
religious minorities, above all, the psyche of the South Asian people,
are to be profoundly taken into consideration before awarding UNSC
membership to such a poor and irresponsible, but occupation-hanker
aggressive, at the same time repressive country, named India.
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