The odd man out
Published on Tuesday, October 18, 2005The second world war seldom means anything more to the average Indian than a rather important chapter in a history text book. A war that took place too far away for it to leave any lasting marks on the Indian psyche or landmass, save for remote parts of the North East. In this context it is not surprising that Junichiro Koizumi's recent visit to the Yasukuni Shrine received little, if any, coverage in the local media.
The shrine is a tribute to over 2 million japanese who have laid down their lives for the country in various wars from 1869. Since the end of the war it has been a privately run institution and is under the watch of Shinto priests. This is in itself is nothing alarming. Most countries have a meticulously maintained memorial to its martyrs. What makes Yasukuni so controverial is a memorial to 14 Japanese martyrs from World War 2. All 14 Class A war criminals prosecuted by an Alllied war crimes tribunal.
The Weekly Wayback however was able to find an interesting Indian connection to this story. To better understand this we need to go back to May 1946 when the International Military Tribunal of the Far East (IMTFE) was convened to try Japanese war crimes. The tribunal comprised of judges and prosecutors from the 11 victorious countries, including India, under the stewardship of Chief Prosecutor Joseph Keenan of the USA.
Mr. Keenan led a tribunal that since has been alleged with American bias and with ignoring possible allied war crimes. Critics also point out that Emperor Hirohito was left untouched and Japanese war crimes in China and Korea received inadequate coverage.
When the tribunal closed in November of 1948 it had sentenced 7 defendants to death by hanging and 16 more to life imprisonment. The former included war-time prime minister Hideki Tojo. The tribunal was unanimous in most judgements. Save for one judge who went to the extent of trashing the legitimacy of the tribunal itself. In a rather startling move Justice Radhabinod Pal of India labelled the tribunal as mere "victor's justice".A lecturer of law from Calcutta University, Radhbinod Pal seems as much an enigma today as he was then. Google throws up a number of links when you search for his name but most merely indicate Justice Pal as the sole dissenting voice in the IMTFE. Some more diligence reveals his 1200-page ruling to be a path breaker in international law. One that questioned the legitimacy of unilateral tribunals in serving justice.
Justice Radhabinod Pal is probably yet another figure in Indian history who is hardly written or spoken about. Ashish Nandy's "The Savage Freud" was the only work the author could find that studied this "Odd man out' in any depth. It may make interesting reading. While there maybe opinions for and against Justice Pal's ruling he surely deserves to be remembered as a non-conformist who held his own. And in this age of trading old friendships for nuclear-powered new ones it is a good memory to have.
TWW
iw
sidin, dont open your new blog with this article.
hopelessly boring.
iw
do me a favour. can u delete these comments by any chance?
while i find my wayback.
better stick to humor
Of course as someone said DO not stop the humour on your other blog
As the saying goes.. the winner writes the history. No tribunal was ever set up for the trial of Allied forces. In fairness, the allies never had any gas chambers, but more than made up for it with an A-bomb. Surely it ended the war, but the end result was the same. Lost civilian lives.
What any theatre of war would bring about is that people try to defend their freedom and the right to determination at any cost, but as Radhabinod Pal rightly pointed out, victor gets to dish out 'justice'.
A good movie about this is "To End All Wars". It shows the lives of British POWs in a Japaneese camp.
Nice post. But could you invoke a response more deep than 'hmm..interesting'??
PS: MALLUZ ROKZ
CobraToM
It shows that apna justice was the only one with balls ;-)
Hope TWW would be as interesting in the days to come.
-EP
http://squashedbrain.rediffblogs.com/
There's a fine dividing line between speaking your mind and useless feedback. Let's give our man his space, shall we?
PS: I liked it. Interesting stuff!
:P
You will lose some readers(with the new blog) and gain some.
The very-thoughtful-looking picture looks fine for TWW, but doesn't got well with Domain Maximus.
That the North East region remains an enigma to us 'Mainland' Indians is really a shame...Hardly are the Seven Sisters, taught in the School/Colleges or discussed in the mainstream media. The strategic or historical Importance of the region remains neglected.
The uproar over Japanese PM visit to the shrine remains a domestic issue which is being sought by the Chinese/Korean Government to deflect attention and let out steam. As they say " It's better to have them inside the tent, pissing out than outside the tent, pissing in."
Hope you continue writing on such topics which are anathema to most bloggers...Noam Chomsky would certainly be proud !!!
I am by no means condoning such a victor's justice, but given the anger and hatred that people would carry for their vanquished enemy just after the war, one can't see how a different justice could be arrived at.
I do not think that we, as a race, are yet civil and mature enough for this to be any other way, for if this were possible, there might not have been a war in the first place.
I think your blogs are hyper-interesting and shed light on issues we need to discuss more. :)
This new blog is a great way to pepper up the other lighter one.
Makes my ten-minute-surfing-between-work very rewarding/informative. Atleast I'll go to bed slightly more informed than yesterday...
Thanks!
tho its hard to imagine Sidin as serious....
but great as usual....
for more mundane stuff do log on to www.aumkarnur.blogspot.com
Shameless publicity!!!
make it twice a week
I enjoyed this blog as much as I enjoyed the other one.
Looking forward to more such blogs!
href="http://tony_imp.blogspot.com/2005/10/home-at-farway-land-home-for-me-have.htm
l">Manipur-I
I am not selling anything here. :-)
keep up the good work.maybe you should rename the blog to 'The Monthly Wayback'.
This is an excellent effort by you and is a laudable endeavor.
I find the article very fascinating(I hope there are more to come).Pls Keep Writing.
WRT to Japanese war crimes in China going unpunished. It may also be noted that war crimes perpetrated by Allied troops resulted in very lenient or no sentences at all. There was also this article/page I was reading about some concentration camp guards who went unpunished because the inmates were German. :( Well, the world is a cruel place.
P.S. I like this new blog Sidin. It is a bit more, 'serious'.
Regards,
Bernard
yeah...the Japs have never truely come around...
"Nanjing Massacre" is one of the worse genocides of WWII...esp. considering the lengths to which the invading Jap army went in inventing terrifying and inhumane ways of killing
...but rarely is it as given much publicity as the Jewish Holocaust..probably because there are very few survivors...or probably because western media is very inward looking...
..just hit google and you will be taken to some really thought provoking articles...
...and where is justice in war...tribunals are just a way of moving on...
Though, if we're being realistic, the Allied bombing of Japanese cities, resulting in the death of about half the nation's population, would certainly have qualified Allied generals for war criminal status -- if they'd lost.
The Indian prosecutor who accompanied Pal was P.Govinda Menon. My grandfather.