Washington: The Asia which, a Washington-based human rights organisation, has blamed India’s educated middle class for the failure of the civil liberties movements in the country where, it says, the lower class gets a raw deal from the law enforcement machinery. let’s report, on the prison conditions in India, says the fact that the educated middle class has not felt the need to support a strong civil liberties movement is only one of the factors that seems to be responsible for its inability for develop strong institutions. Another factor, it cites, is the lack of adequate financial support from other sources. The report, prepared by Aryeh Neier, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, and Prof. David Rothman of Columbia University, who made a two-week tour of India last October, notes that the religions which are most influential within the country have not identified themselves with the human rights cause. Though India’s human rights groups are devoted fo the protection of such persons and do excellent work on their behalf, they have not succeeded in making civil liberties a reality for India’s have-nots. Whenever middle class and upper-class dissenters were imprisoned, they were generally spared the abuses in police lock-ups as Class A or Class C prisoners — (Deccan Herald, April 11).
Editor: Since India has no “classes” but only “castes”, the reference to “middle class” in the above American report should to be taken as upper cases/Aryans/Savarnas.
