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Violations of Human Rights in India

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Every year, 10th December is celebrated as International Human Rights Day in a bid to recognise basic human rights and speaking out against the abuse. According to the United Nation’s website, “This year’s International Human Rights Day is devoted to the launch of a year-long campaign for the 50th anniversary of the two International Covenants on Human Rights: the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which were adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 16 December 1966.”

Social media was very much active in celebrating the day, but the irony is that, from Dadri killing to whistleblowers’ murder Indian Government time and again failed to protect the human rights of its citizen. On this historic day, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Two years later in 1950, the Assembly passed resolution 423 (V) in which it asked all member states to commemorate December 10 as the International Human Rights Day.

Seminars, public gatherings and awareness campaigns are held on this day to promote human rights and make sure people get to know what they are. In light of recent devastating events around the globe such as the Syria crisis and the Burma massacre, steps should be taken to highlight the plight of refugees around the world.

India is unable to find the reason and motive behind the killings of many social activists. Veteran Left leader Govind Pansare and his wife were shot at near their home in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur. The 82-year-old lawyer, a known anti-toll tax campaigner, was on a morning walk with his wife Uma when at around 8 am, unknown attackers fired at them. The shooters reportedly fired at least four rounds at close range before running away. He was the one who, appealed to workers of Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti (MANS) to remain aggressive in continuing the work of anti-superstition crusader Narendra Dabholkar. Pansare further forced the state government to pass the Anti-Superstition Bill in the assembly and implement it.

Pansare, a communist leader, has fought for years against the state government’s decision to charge citizens for road development. Tolls are indirect taxation. This mode is adopted when the direct taxation is not comprehensive and many people are outside the direct tax net. What can be done is that if one has paid a certain amount as direct taxes, the tolls can be exempted for that person. However, this will require a lot of technology to be put in place to track ones direct taxes paid every year and issue him a card that can be swiped at toll plazas to exempt him from the toll. Pansare was building pressure on government against these toll mafias. Pansare before his assassination had resorted to protest against the Chief Minister Devendra Fadanvis’s U-turn on scrapping the levy. A panel of anti-toll activists from Ravivar Peth in Kolhapur had made CM’s personal mobile phone number public, urging sympathisers to flood him with text messages demanding a rollback of the levy. The anti-toll activists displayed hoardings with these numbers in prominent localities, setting a target of sending over one lakh anti-toll text messages to the CM. Fadnavis’s woes were further compounded with a prominent Marathi daily published his numbers along with a story regarding the unique anti-toll protest. Not amused by the mode of protest, sources said the CM’s office registered its displeasure to the toll activists and the publication house also.

Former Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan had also faced a similar protest following his decision to continue with the local body tax. Activists from Kolhapur were also involved then. However, the mobile number shared then was that of a senior official in the CMO and not Chavan’s. Anyway, there was nothing much done against the abolition of anti-toll tax and toll mafias but the revolutionary was assassinated, within a span of few months of BJP’s government came in power in the state.

In a similar manner, Dabholkar, an anti-superstition activist, was shot dead in August, 2013, while he was on a morning walk near his house in Pune. The Maharashtra government had announced a reward of Rs. 10 lakh for information on his killers. Dabholkar, was at the forefront of a campaign to persuade Maharashtra government to pass an anti-superstition and black magic bill. Dabholkar’s murder comes days after the Maharashtra government assured introduction of the Anti-Superstition Bill even as Right Wing groups continued to oppose the bill. A staunch fighter for the cause of eradication of inhuman rituals and superstitions, Dr. Dabholkar, who had a degree in medicine, started working in the field of eradication of superstition in 1983. In 1989, along with other like-minded people, he founded the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti.

In 2010, RTI activist Satish Shetty was also killed while he was out on his morning stroll was allegedly stabbed by several people. Popularly known as “Satish”, was an Indian social activist, noted for exposing many land scams in Maharashtra. He had used the Right to Information Act to expose irregularities in Government offices in the last five years. He was killed on 13 January 2010, by unknown attackers in Talegaon. Shetty had used the RTI Act to expose large scale land scams involving the leading real estate firm IRB Infrastructure and its subsidiary Aryan. In 2009, he filed a complaint that forged documents had been used by these firms to acquire large swathes of land in the Taje and Pimploli villages off the Pune-Mumbai highway. After investigations, 90 sale deeds were cancelled. After this episode, Shetty started getting threat calls. In November 2009, he filed a request with the Pune rural police seeking protection. In the request, he said that he had been receiving threats. In January 2010, Shetty was stabbed by several people while he was at a kiosk reading a paper after his morning walk. The attack on Pansare is the third in this pattern and I am sure this would also be open and shut case like other two.

Communal politics, religious disputes, riots, atrocities on Dalits, growing rape cases and molestations are the evil things from which India is suffering. These are basic violation of human rights. In such scenario, how can we justify celebrating International Human Rights Day?

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Vaidehi Taman
Vaidehi Tamanhttps://authorvaidehi.com
Vaidehi Taman an Accredited Journalist from Maharashtra is bestowed with three Honourary Doctorate in Journalism. Vaidehi has been an active journalist for the past 21 years, and is also the founding editor of an English daily tabloid – Afternoon Voice, a Marathi web portal – Mumbai Manoos, and The Democracy digital video news portal is her brain child. Vaidehi has three books in her name, "Sikhism vs Sickism", "Life Beyond Complications" and "Vedanti". She is an EC Council Certified Ethical Hacker, OSCP offensive securities, Certified Security Analyst and Licensed Penetration Tester that caters to her freelance jobs.
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