Friends,

As I stand here to accept this award given in
memory of a man who has been described
alternately as a passionate democrat, a patriot
and above a good human being I cannot but recall
how this one man institution associated with us,
Communalism Combat, in its nascent years. In
response to one of the darkest moment this great
metropolis, Mumbai (then Bombay) has lived
through, December 1992 and January 1993, he sat
alongside the inimitable and unique, the late Mr 
HM Seervai to speak to the then President of
India to ’call in the army’. When a subsequent
government in the state reaped the benefits of
hate politics and in a stroke of executive
arrogance scrapped the Justice Srikrishna
commission of inquiry investigating the mass
murder and police complicity behind the violence,
Mr Palkhivala stepped down from Bombay House and
along with another captain of industry Mr SP
Godrej joined us in the nationwide protest that
was one of the citizens actions that eventually
led to the reinstatement of the commission. That
was January 30, 1996. A year earlier, two
judicial decisions one of the Bombay High Court
and the other by the Supreme Court had shaken the
common man’s faith in the judiciary. Citizens had
challenged the hate writing in the Saamna, and
through a writ petition urged for a judicial
directive to compel the state government to
prosecute the author of these speeches a man who
went unchallenged by the law and order machinery
in this great city, Mr Bal Thackeray. Mr 
Palkhiwala said the future of India was at stake
if the court did not compel the state to
intervene and take action against this kind of
journalism.

Today, in 2007 we see a glittering and glamorous
India everyday, through the media and parts of
our large cities ; an India that suggests growth
and wealth and prosperity yes, but only for a
section of our population. A third of Indians
reel under rural hunger where the lack of access
to nutrients in their diet should be a matter of
national shame. Narrow and aggressive definitions
of patriotism coupled with rank unprofessional,
if not biased conduct in the intelligence
services and the law and order machinery, have
’othered’ many sections of Indians, reducing them
to irritants, trouble makers or rank
anti-nationals.

It is a moment of profound test for all our
institutions. The paradigms of fair play, equal
rights to life and ownership of private property,
make both the shock of farmers being shot dead in
communist West Bengal and the shame of the mass
victim survivors of the Gujarat carnage of 2002 a
living reality. Closer home, in Maharashtra,
protests following the brutalization and murder
of a Dalit family in Khairlanji allowed the
Nagpur police to pull out 55 year old women and
other protestors from their homes and thrash them
into silence. In Amravati a rickshaw driver
protesting was shot point blank in the head by
the police.

Does the Indian state need to answer, any more, to the largest number?
Does the executive initiate and take decisions of
economic and social policy after due
consultation, through the vote, in a democratic
manner?

Have our Courts shown due and democratic concern
to issues of economic and social access, equity
and non-discrimination?
Does our media, television and print reflect news
at all, leave aside news and views of the
majority of Indians?
Do institutions of Indian democracy adhere to the
word and spirit of the Indian Constitution?
Is India a living and breathing democracy?

Be it West Bengal, Gujarat, Maharashtra or Orissa
lands belonging to voiceless Indians are being
seized, without adequate debate, transparency or
Constitutional accountability. ’Globalisation’
has come here in partnership with vengeful and
vindictive state terror and repression. State
force at its most brutal is being used to stifle
democratic protest and dissent. As I look forward
to the memorial lecture by an icon of modern
India, a captain of industry, I urge this
prestigious audience here to ask some of these
difficult questions. Of themselves.

Friends, next month is the fifth anniversary of
the Godhra mass arson and the post Godhra
genocidal killing. Justices VR Krishna Iyer and
PB Sawant both retired judges of the Supreme
Court- who headed a citizens tribunal into the
Gujarat carnage, have observed that "the post
Godhra carnage was an organized crime perpetuated
by the state’s chief minister and his government“and held Gujarat’s CM Modi to be”the chief
Author and Architect of all that happened in
Gujarat after the arson of February 27, 2002.".
The National Human Rights Commission and the
Supreme Court of India have drawn similar
conclusions about the head of the state of
Gujarat.

Today for the same captains of industry who see
the vision of a glittering India exemplified in
the ’strong political leadership of Mr Narendra
Modi’. I refer to the recent investments promises
to the state. I would like to place this reminder
on record. All and each of us, especially those
who hail from Gujarat would like to see Gujarat
vibrant, and prosper. The community that Mr 
Palkhivala hailed from was first given refuge
within what is today known as Gujarat when the
Parsis migrated to India, from Persia. Strength,
cohesion and prosperity can be built through an
enlightened administration and polity that
respects the rights of all, harbours dissent and
respects the struggle for rights and justice, a
state of affairs that supports the natural order
of things.

However, when ’normalization’ and strength’ are
equated with a vindictive administration and
political repression, when brute compromise is
thrust, when acknowledgement of the horrors of
mass crime are denied hundreds of thousands of
victims, when villages, cities and mohallas are
divided by borders, when the victim survivors and
human rights defenders who stand up for justice
are threatened arrest and torture, it is
repressive strength and state power that we are
talking about. Civil liberties, the struggle for
the defence of which I am being honoured here
today, are severely trampled upon.

Friends, even what actually happened at Godhra
railway station on February 27, 2002 is hotly
contested today. There is absolutely no proof of
the theory perpetuated shrilly by Mr Modi to
justify state sponsored mass rape, killings and
murder. As we approach the fifth anniversary of a
truly bleak period in Indian post-Independence
history, I request each one of you present here,
to remember. The struggle of man against power is
the struggle of memory against forgetting.

As I acknowledge the huge contribution of my
family to my work, I would like to laud the joint
vision of my comrade in arms, Javed Anand that
launched us into this collective battle since
1993. Colleagues at Sabrang and the board of
trustees of Citizens for Justice and Peace and
its myriad supporters (even from captains of
industry) who have the vision to support the
dissenting voice, Raisbhai and Suhel, my tribute.
Top lawyers of the Supreme Court and the High
Courts, masters in their field, continue to offer
pro bono services for the causes that we plead.

Our work of a decade and a half has made us
experience the relentless attempts of the system
to tire out the protestor, the dissenter, the
victim. Therefore today’s award, I dedicate to
one man within the Indian system, who stood (and
still stands) mighty in the face of a murderous
and vindictive Gujarat administration. Mass
murder, mass rape and mass arson were allowed in
Gujarat by a complicit and participatory
administration and police force. Many police
officers stood out. But only one man has remained
a stoic and principled dissenter until today,
refusing to cave in even as weeks lapsed into
months and months into years. This man that I
dedicate today’s honour to not a victim, he did
not loose a dear family member. He does not hail
from the victim community. His only quality- that
many but his co-travellers have seen as a fault-
is that he refused to sit by and let the mass
crimes planned at the highest level go
unchallenged. He documented the illegal and
unconstitutional orders spat out by Mr Modi in a
meticulously maintained personal diary. He filed
well-documented affidavits before the ongoing
Nanavaty-Shah Commission. He suffered for these
acts by being denied due promotion to the post of
Director General of Police, Gujarat, the highest
post in his field that as a policeman and thrice
Presidential Award winner for bravery, he would
and should aspire to. He faced attempts to
browbeat him in and out of the courts. He and his
wife live socially and politically ostracized in
a state that captains of industry tell us is
vibrant and shining due to (quote) ’a strong and
political leadership favouring rapid growth’. Mr 
RB Sreekumar, Additional Director General of
Police, the state of Gujarat, I salute you.