AUNG SAN SUU KYI: INDIA'S CRIMINAL SILENCE

The military junta in Myanmar has sentenced Aung San Suu kyi to 18 months imprisonment, dashing the hopes of millions all over the world. In fact the military court sentenced her to three years of hard labour. Than Shwe, the leader of the junta commuted it to eighteen month’s house arrest. With this she stands disqualified to contest the election in 2010. Suu Kyi, who has been under detention since 1989, is accused of meeting and accommodating John Yettaw, an American national at her house. Yettaw has been sentenced to seven years of hard labour and imprisonment. However, the security personnel who had been guarding her house have not been punished for dereliction of duty.
Southeast Asian Nations, the US and the United Nations have expressed their disappointment over the sentence. The Dalai Lama extended his support to Suu Kyi and said the verdict ‘deeply saddened’ him.
US secretary of State Hillary Clinton who was visiting the Democratic Republic of Congo said “We continue to call for a release from her continuing house arrest”. Clinton opined that, “She should not have been tried and should not have been convicted”.
Indeed no one had expected the Junta to act otherwise. That she would be kept under house arrest was a forgone conclusion.
All the same none of her neighbours such as India and China have raised their voice against the Junta. China said it respected Myanmar’s sovereignty. One can understand the silence of China a country that has silenced many a dissenting voice. Dalai Lama and Rubiya Kadeer are lucky enough in that they are able to air their views. They are also lucky to have a large audience who share their concerns and strain themselves to see to it that these leasers are not silenced by the mighty Chinese State.
What appalls me is the silence of India that never tires of thumping the chest claiming to be the largest democratic county in the world. Moreover Suu Kyi belongs to the rarest of a rare species. She is a living example of truthfulness and non-violence, of the spirit of Gandhiji, the father of our nation. Hence, India’s silence can be described only as criminal.
We do not dare to speak for the Dalai Lama and his people. True Nehru let him stay in India and operate as a government in exile. But he dared not speak for the Lama. He knew the Chinese intentions very well. He new well that China had no right over Tibet. In fact it is one of the few countries that had a language and culture of its own. It has almost all attributes of a ‘nation’. I dare say neither Benedict Anderson nor Eric Hobsbawm, the modern scholars on nation and nationalism, would challenge Tibet’s right to call it a ‘nation’.
However, Nehru fascinated as he was by the communist, socialist ideals failed to recognize the socialistic pretensions of China. He was also obsessed with his concept of the ‘brotherhood of India and China’. Even when mountain of evidences showed that China was crushing the Tibetans and trying to annex it Nehru kept looking the other way. Finally when the Chinese descended the Himalayas and marched into India he was shattered.
Of course Myanmar does not pose any such threat to India. However, the possibility of China joining hands with it and threatening India is to be kept in mind, though such a possibility is very remote at present. Besides, as stated earlier as a country that is proud of its legacy of non violent struggle for freedom India must speak loudly and clearly against the kind of treatment meted out to Aung San Suu Kyi and her people. We must exert all the pressure we can on the Junta and see to it that Suu Kyi is freed from her house arrest soon.