Nandita Haksar’s The Colours of Nationalism reminds us of a gentler past

The memoir nostalgically reflects on a simpler India where justice and the rights of the poor and politically disenfranchised held great significance.

Hajra, whose son and relatives fell victim to the incidents of communal trouble in May 1987 in Hashimpura in Uttar Pradesh, a 2018 picture. | Photo Credit: R.V. MOORTHY

Nandita Haksar’s memoir is like a roller-coaster ride through an India that is disappearing, or perhaps, has already disappeared. For the post-Independence generation, who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s like the author, it is a nostalgia trip—through a simpler India, a country where it was not unusual for a young person to be idealistic, to want to “do something” for the country and to make that a life mission.

Born into privilege, the daughter of a diplomat and powerful bureaucrat who had the ear of Prime Ministers, in a city where doors opened effortlessly if you had the right antecedents, Haksar could have chosen to lead a comfortable life following any career of her choice. Instead, she decided to immerse herself in fighting for human rights of groups and individuals who were victims of state-endorsed violence.

After a short stint in journalism, she chose to become a human rights lawyer even as she admits she knew that law cannot be an “instrument for change or liberation”. She says being a lawyer allowed her “to take sides” and she chose to stand by “the economically poor, the politically disenfranchised”.

The Colours of Nationalism: A Memoir of Dreams, Hopes and Betrayals

By Nandita Haksar

Speaking Tiger 2024

Pages: 399

Price: Rs.599

Access to those in power is the defining theme even today in India’s national capital. It does not matter whether you are a lawyer, in business, an artist, or even a journalist. Nothing moves without access. Although Haksar did not follow in her father’s footsteps, her recounting of her early days, where all kinds of well-known people were “uncle”, “chacha” or “aunty”, it is evident that many of the hurdles others without her pedigree would have confronted, melted away because she was born into a family with influence. That said, she used this not to promote herself, but the causes for which she was fighting.

Compared with other young women who came of age during that time, she is also fortunate that her parents did not stand in her way and allowed her to pursue her passion.

Haksar’s exposure to human rights issues happened in the post-Emergency years, when the excesses committed by Indira Gandhi’s government spawned several human rights groups across India. Her book reminds us of that period when these different civil society groups sent out fact-finding teams comprising lawyers, journalists, and activists to investigate human rights violations. Maliana, Hashimpura, Oinam. How many of those growing up in the last decade even know what these names mean? Yet, thanks to the efforts of the fact-finding teams, these cases were investigated, documented and in some instances pursued through the courts.

On May 22, 1987, after incidents of communal trouble in Hashimpura in Uttar Pradesh, the Provincial Armed Constabulary in the State rounded up hundreds of people. Of these, 33 men were shot dead and their bodies dumped in a canal. In his book Hashimpura: 22 May, Vibhuti Narain Rai, who belonged to the Uttar Pradesh Police, called this “the country’s biggest custodial killing”.

The book is densely packed with accounts of the many causes that Haksar took up. Even though the subject matter is grim, these stories make a racy read. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement

Haksar was part of the team that painstakingly collected evidence that was placed before the Indian People’s Human Rights Tribunal in 1989. The tribunal was presided over by two retired judges, former Supreme Court Justice A.C. Gupta and former Calcutta High Court judge Jyotirmoyee Nag. Their report was released the same year. It is an important record of a violence that would have otherwise been erased. Also, the very fact that there was such a tribunal, that it could hold sittings in Delhi, that people could come and depose before it, and that it could pronounce its conclusions is a stark reminder of how much has changed.

Haksar makes an interesting observation following her experience of urging human rights groups to investigate the violence in Uttar Pradesh. She writes: “What troubled me most then—as it does now—was the lack of protest by civil society, specifically the Hindu liberal. Even the human rights movement did not seem to think this was an issue worthy of being taken up.” One could argue that this is a generalisation and that there are several so-called “Hindu liberals” who have actively pursued the course of justice for minorities affected by growing communalisation, and who have also led teams to document communal violence. But it is worth debating whether such concern has diminished.

Reports, such as the one on Hashimpura and Maliana, also remind us of the need for more such documentation today as we witness multiple incidents of violence against the vulnerable, often with the complicity of the state, that fail to be investigated. Yet, the space that had opened up for civil society intervention in the post-Emergency years has virtually closed now, especially in the last decade of the Bharatiya Janata Party in power at the Centre and in several States, making such civil society interventions much more difficult.

The issue for which Haksar is perhaps best known is for her immersion in the Naga issue, in particular the Nagas who are a part of Manipur State. Although the current conflict in Manipur has not touched the Nagas living in Ukhrul and Senapati districts, Haksar reminds us of the years of clashes between different Naga underground groups and the Indian security forces that were stationed in Manipur.

One of the worst incidents was in Oinam, a village in Senapati district. On July 9, 1987, following an attack on an Assam Rifles outpost in the village by one of the Naga underground groups, in which nine soldiers were killed and a large cache of arms and ammunition was stolen, the Assam Rifles launched Operation Bluebird in Oinam and 30 surrounding villages. It led to the killing of 27 people and reports of widespread torture, rape, and destruction of property.

In October 1987, Haksar filed a case in the Gauhati High Court on behalf of the Naga People’s Movement for Human Rights. She spent time with Naga activists, collecting evidence and testimonies, and presented these in 12 volumes to the court. The case dragged on for years and finally, in 2019, the court stated that as the evidence had been “misplaced”, the district authorities should once again collect testimonies of an incident that occurred more than two decades earlier. Haksar calls this “nothing short of a mockery of justice”.

The story of how the evidence was collected in the first place, the hazards and hurdles the people involved had to go through, the people who were killed even as this process was on, is a heart-breaking reminder of the continuing failure of justice on human rights issues in this country.

Haksar’s passionate involvement in every step of the way on issues like Oinam is evident in this book. This is a difficult choice that people like her, and other human rights defenders like Harsh Mander, for instance, have made. Yet, so much of this history would have been erased if not for the determined effort of these individuals.

The book is densely packed with accounts of the many causes that Haksar took up. Even though the subject matter is grim, these stories make a racy read as the author spins through the early years, her own choices, the Emergency, the formation of human rights groups, her involvement in feminist issues, her work as a lawyer, and her involvement in the Naga cause.

In the midst of all this grim business, there are also some fun episodes, like her marriage to Sebastian Hongray, a Tangkhul Naga. How do a privileged Kashmiri Pandit from Delhi and a Naga from Manipur get married? What kind of vows can they take when one, Nandita, is an avowed atheist who will not follow any religious ritual, and the other, Sebastian, is a Catholic? The account is hilarious.

Reading Haksar’s memoirs in 2024, a year when the election results hold out a promise of some change but also the reality that much will remain the same, makes one wonder: if in recent times India saw so many groups and individuals exposing the oppressive power of the state, can this not happen again?

Kalpana Sharma is an independent journalist and author. Her most recent book is The Silence and the Storm: Narratives of violence against women in India.