[Reader-list] Ghost of the Middle Ground 3

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

(contd. from previous posting)

Considering the words Innocence and Guilt

Several amongst us who have thought about this issue at length any with 
seriousness, neither SAR Geelani, nor Nandita Haksar, nor Indira 
Jaisingh, nor Mihir Srivastava, nor Arundhati Roy, nor Nirmalangshu 
Mukherjee, nor Nirmala Deshpande, nor myself, have ever stated that we 
believe that Mohammad Afzal is 'innocent'. Nor have we spoken about his 
'guilt'. Afzal himself has talked at length about the extent of his 
involvement in his statement given to the court under section 313 of the 
Criminal Procedure Code (as distinct from the statements extracted from 
him in police custody which are in any case inadmissible as evidence 
under the Evidence Act, and do not even meet the requirements that were 
thought necessary under POTA). We do not find it necessary to contradict 
something that Afzal himself has said about the nature and extent of his 
own culpability. We are simply asking whether the the culpability is of 
a nature that enables a court to indict Afzal alone, and also whether it 
is adequate, beyond even a grain of doubt, to necessitate a sentence of 
death, especially when Afzal was not represented by a lawyer and when he 
was not given the opportunity to cross examine the majority of the 
witnesses who appeared against him in the trial court.. Neither of these 
requires us to believe in, or to make statements about the non-issue of 
Afzal's so called innocence.

Some of us have made statements (and for quite some time now) that 
reflect our conviction (borne out by the acquital) that SAR Geelani was 
innocent. Our statements about the purported guilt or innocence of 
Mohammad Afzal have been made in public fora, (if and when they have 
been made) and they are easily retrievable and read. Mohammad Afzal Guru 
is not SAR Geelani, and our conviction about Geelani's innocence cannot 
be automatically translated into a statement about Afzal Guru's 
innocence that most of us have never made, without sleight of hand, 
misrepresentation, or an unforgivable laxity in terms of what is called 
a 'fact check' in the media business.

In fact it does not require us to declare that a man is innocent in 
order to demand that an assessment of his guilt necessarily include a 
consideration of who else may be wholly or in part share responsibility, 
along with him, for the substance of his intentions and actions.

Guilt and Association

Even the court's verdict of Afzal's part in the 'conspiracy of December 
13' is actually built on this logic.

[See http://openarchive.in/judis/27092.htm for the full text of the 
Supreme Court verdict on the 13 December Case, sentencing Mohammad Afzal 
to death]

The mobile phones found on the bodies of the dead "terrorists" indicated 
that they knew Afzal. Afzal knew about what they were going to do, he 
even helped them do it. Ergo, Afzal is a terrorist. Even if, and 
especially if, we accept this line of argument, we have to take this 
line of thinking to its logical conclusion. If one of the terrorists who 
knew Afzal (the man called Mohammad) also knew, according to Afzal, 
personnel serving with the STF, then that makes it necessary for us to 
investigate whether or not the said STF functionaries were or were not 
party to what is being called this 'conspiracy'. Afzal says they were. 
Afzal says he knew Mohammad. The court (and the majority of media 
commentators so far) accepts the second statement, but not the first, 
thereby refusing to carry their own argument to its own logical conclusion.

  If Afzal is guilty, then a consideration of his guilt has to establish 
whether or not the others he names, particularly STF officials like 
Dravinder Singh (and others whom Dravinder Singh may be acting on the 
orders of) are also quilty of induced or threatened him to act in the 
way that he did.

Only once the exact chain of culpability is established  (who told whom 
to take which person to which place to do what) can the guilt and 
consequently, just and adequate punishment, be apportioned in a manner 
that is not arbitrary. If Afzal is alone in this, then justice would 
require that the punishment be his alone. If he is not alone, then 
everything changes. If it is established that he was made to do what he 
did under pressure or threat, then we get a different picture 
altogether. Until this is conclusively decided one way or the other, all 
judgements about guilt or innocence , should, in the fitness of things, 
have been held in abeyance. Those of us who have spoken in favour of 
Afzal's right to live have never said that Afzal is innocent, and we 
have also never said that he is guilty. We have never speculated, like 
the media at large has delighted in doing, on the quantum of his 
innocence or guilt.

If what Afzal is saying about the involvement of the STF is true then 
one of the things that is also likely to change is the meaning of the 
term 'terrorism' as it has been deployed in this case. If what Afzal is 
saying is true, then the word 'terrorism' would have to include in its 
ambit actions done by agents of the state ostensibly against itself, in 
the pursuit of complex tactical and strategic objectives. In other words 
we would have to come to an understanding that 'terrorism' and 'state 
terrorism', at least in this case, have been seen to be synonyms of each 
other. Until a satisfactory conclusion regarding this matter is reached, 
the automatic conflation of Afzal's purported guilt with his identity as 
a 'terrorist', is only so much loose talk.

The majority of the media is unwilling to say that Afzal is innocent, 
but they are more than willing to say that he is unqualifiedly guilty of 
aiding and abetting 'terrorism'.  In fact it has gone to great lengths 
in the last few months to try and establish the credibility of this 
position.

Rather than harp on the non-issue of Afzal's 'innocence', most of us 
have asked whether the circumstantial evidence that has been 
demonstrated in court would be sufficient, even in an ordinary criminal 
trial to hang a man, and whether a man can be hanged to death after it 
has been demonstrated that he did not have an adequate legal defence. We 
are not debating Afzal's guilt, we are questioning whether he is 'guilty 
as charged', and this is an important distinction. Consequently, we have 
consistently demanded that we, and everyone else in this country has a 
right to know to what degree Mohammad Afzal was acting under orders, the 
source of which, seem to point in several directions at once, including 
in some instances the security apparatus of the state.

Until such time that these questions are comprehensively and 
exhaustively investigated, the attempt to hang Mohammad Afzal and to 
stall a possible enquiry into the events of December 13, has to be read 
as an attempt to hurriedly ensure that the truth remains obscured.

The Ground We Stand On

We have stood our 'ground' in this argument without consideration as to 
where our positions could be placed in the three step ('middle', 
'higher' or 'lower') guide to 'ethics made easy' as seen on TV. We have 
attempted to stay consistent to a reasoned scepticism (that has grown 
over time) about an official version that is patently plagued with 
inconsistencies. In fact, we have tried to think this through without 
giving way to motivations that have to do with the 'emotional and 
psychological satisfactions' that come from quick and easy answers.

The thought that the answers to  the enigma that is 13 December may lie 
in places far more shocking than a simple, 'do-it-yourself' 'terrorist' 
conspiracy can account for is as disturbing to us as it is to those who 
accuse us of 'extremism'. We derive no comfort or smug satisfaction from 
knowing that people have been tortured, or from suspecting that people 
working within the intelligence apparatus and the security establishment 
may have been playing a dangerous game which is only just beginning to 
come to light. What disturbs us even more is the fact that so much of 
the media and large sections of the political class in this country are 
in a state of total denial, and are unwilling to countenance any 
reasonable doubts of all that is disturbing about December 13.

The Ghost of the Middle Ground

This 'middle ground' in the case of December 13, that is so sure of 
itself in the face of so much that cries out to be explained can only be 
a ghost. It died a quiet death long ago, the day that so much of the 
media started pushing police hand outs as 'news', it died again on the 
day that no one from the mainstream media thought it fit to apologize 
for the way in which they had printed and broadcast lies about SAR 
Geelani, it has died a third time in this winter of our discontent. It 
is the ghost of this middle ground, a hungry, bloodthirsty spectre, 
lingering on years after the event, that we can see flicker and 
beckoning at us through the fog of newsprint and pixels. The factories 
that manufacture consent in this country today are haunted and possesed 
by this ghost. The next time you see an anchor spin 13 December for you 
on TV, or read a commentator make what they claim is a 'balanced' 
assessment of the case on print, you should take care to notice the 
rigour mortis in his or her style.

This brings me finally, to a consideration of the two 'specials' that I 
have seen in the past few weeks on CNN IBN and NDTV India, which 
promised sensational revelations to their viewers with regard to the 
role that Mohammad Afzal Guru played in the events of 13 December 2001. 
Let us take each of these in turn.

Decoding 'Decoding Afzal'

On November 27, CNN IBN aired a 'sensational' exclusive - a hidden 
camera sting operation, in which Davinder Singh, STF officer, and 
Afzal's brother - Aijaz speaks at length about the fact that Afzal was a 
dreaded Jaish e Mohammad terrorist, and in fact close to none other than 
the late and legendary Ghazi Baba. Davinder Singh admits to have 
tortured Afzal, at great length, on more than one occasion, but then 
says he let him go. He denies that he ever introduced him to anyone at 
the STF camp who then turned up, a few months later, as a dead body in 
the precincts of the Parliament.

[See 'Decoding Afzal: Truth is out there' a CNN-IBN 'Investigation' by 
Siddharth Gautam, broadcast on November 27, 2006 - 
http://www.ibnlive.com/news/decoding-afzal-truth-is-out-there/27156-3.html ]

What I find interesting here is the necessity to stage this as a 'hidden 
camera' confessional. Why do I talk about the 'staging' of the so called 
'hidden camera' segment? Davinder Singh talks extensively to a person 
who is outside the frame, to his right. The camera is filming to his 
left. Evidently, there are at least two other people in the room. In 
other words, we are asked to believe that two people have entered a 
space where a responsible officer of the most dreaded counter insurgency 
unit in India is meeting them, without being body searched for concealed 
weapons, or without their 'hidden camera' being detected.

The two (or more) people then proceed to have a lengthy conversation 
with Davinder Singh,  over a cup of tea, where Davinder Singh admits to 
a few crucial things, such as the fact that he knew Afzal, and that he 
had in fact tortured him, months before the Parliament attack happened.

The Performative Epistemology of a Staged Sting Operation

  So, a certain degree of calibrated disclosure occurs. One of the 
brothers, Hilal,  in another segment of this episode, says that he was 
arrested with Afzal, but no laptop, on which so much depended, was 
seized. So a degraded piece of evidence, on which so much of the 
'circumstantial evidence' was based in the trials, is thrown out of the 
window. Incidentally, the name of Hilal never figured in the 
prosecution's arguments. But, another brother says, Afzal was a 
terrorist. And so does Davinder Singh. And this must be true, because 
they said this, on 'hidden camera'. And the 'hidden camera' like 'narco 
analysis' and 'truth serums' only produces truth in the gospel according 
to CNN IBN, because those filmed on 'hidden cameras' do not know, 
ostensibly, that they are being filmed, so they reveal everything.

Thus, one way of coating a testimony with the sheen of truth is to 
present it as if it were harvested by  a hidden camera. If we were to 
the reasons why a functionary of the repressive apparatus of the state 
might actually want to expose their 'vulnerability' in what is dressed 
up (incompetently) to look like an encounter with a 'hidden camera', we 
would not have to look much further.

I find this episode remarkable for its performativity. A torturer meets 
a journalist (or at least two people with a hidden camera, a cameraman, 
and the other off camera presence the torturer adddresses) admits to 
some surprising facts, (which were not investigated for these five long 
years) denies a few crucial ones. The aura of truth around the denial 
actually consists of the fact that there is a counterweighted admitted 
to some pretty surprising stuff in the first place, and that too, 
ostensibly without the knowledge of the people involved. Stealth meets 
stealth and produces a convenient set of 'truths'. So, no more need of 
circumstantial evidence, inconvenient laptops, and mobile phones, we 
have it from the horses mouth. Afzal says he was tortured, blackmailed 
and forced to take some people to Delhi by the STF operatives, and these 
men later stormed operative. The key STF operative, and Afzal's brother, 
who also admits to have known the same STF operative, admit that he was 
tortured, extensively, but deny the rest. Calibrated disclosure, 
credibility and variety. When the 'deep state' encounters a crisis, as I 
believe it has done with the 13 December case, it reveals some of its 
depths, a few unofficial secrets act, only to ensure that our momentary 
disorientation as a result of these revelation actually prevents us from 
looking any further. The murky waters part momentarily, only to close 
even more decisively after. The deep state just gets a few fathoms 
deeper. Somewhere at the edge of the frame while Aijaz, the elder 
brother sings his piece, we sometimes get a glimpse of a shadowy face. 
It might be interesting to get some information on who this person is, 
and what they are doing while a hidden camera is filming a 'top secret 
sting' in an undisclosed location.

(contd. in next posting)