Role of Human Rights activists and their impunity

India mourned on the 25th Death Anniversary of Indira Gandhi's death on October 31. She died when her security personnel opened fire upon her. Her death had bought about a devastation unseen before. Sikhs were massacred with impunity and India failed to protect their lives. Rajeev Gandhi after a fortnight famously quoted 'When a huge tree falls, earth shakes!'

The perpetrators of the massacre were never held accountable and Indian society as a whole failed to uphold the rights of its very own citizens. The perpetrators would always want to be left unscathed for their crimes, but what failed more, was the society at large - the media, judiciary, politicians - to get justice for the victims and their families. This failure is something on the lines of busting the myth of a democratic set-up, right in the face of us, Indians.

In fact the impunity or lack of accountability extends to the self-proclaimed human rights champions too.

Arundhati Roy for example denounces - and rightly - the violent Sri Ram Sene kinda outfits, but in the same breath, she talks of support for the Maoists. True that the tribals need more rights and need to be taken care of, in terms of economic prosperity. But violent revolution does not compliment any human rights fight. There are rights of the dead policemen too. To mean that the all the poor tribals are picking up guns would be a sham.

Thankfully for majority of the 450 million poor people sanity prevails and only 20000 of them have picked up guns.

But how can Arundhati Roy denounce Sri Ram sene/SIMI/ Indian Mujahideen but embrace the Maoists? All of these claim to be marginalised, some ideologically, some politically, some economically. All of them need to be brought to the mainstream. Its a binding responsibility for every Indian.

We need better, rational and unbiased Human Rights Activists. NGO's and activists have given the nation RTI, they wield lots of power. After all, the Congress has been allowed to get away with 1984, only because of the stony silence of the true do-gooders.

We need more of them.