The Policeman and the General Are Now India's Theoreticians of Democracy and Human Rights https://thewire.in/rights/human-rights-violations-modi-government 13 Nov 2021
In recent remarks, both National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat have pointed an accusing finger at civil society.
National Security Adviser Ajit Doval.. told trainee police officers that civil society was the “fourth frontier of war”.. “But it is the civil society that can be subverted, subsumed, divided, manipulated to hurt the interests of a nation,’he warned, reminding his police audience: “You are there to see they stand fully protected.” In other words, the vigilance of the police is needed to identify and act against the fifth column in civil society.
Doval also came up with a new definition of democracy, one that privileged elected representatives at the expense of the electorate. The quintessence of democracy .." lies in the laws made by the people who are elected through those ballot boxes,” and in the will of the police to enforce them:
Taken together with his insinuations against civil society critics, the Doval theory of democracy is nothing more than a policeman’s charter for a police state.
General Rawat spoke publicly about how it was a “good thing” that the public at large in Jammu and Kashmir was ready to “lynch the terrorists” .. When anchor Rahul Shivshankar asked him about the risks of encouraging vigilantism by civilians, he said this was self-defence, and that it was wrong to think ‘terrorists’ had human rights while their victims didn’t, Ignoring all the cases of mistaken identity from Andhra Pradesh and Assam to Palghar in Maharashtra..
Prime Minister Modi at a National Human Rights Commission event last month, when he said that “some people see human rights violations in some incidents but not in others. Human rights are violated when viewed via political spectacles. Selective behaviour is harmful to democracy… Some try to dent the country’s image in the name of human rights… Looking at human rights with an eye on political gains and loss harms these rights as well as democracy.”