S P Udayakumar could easily be a character in a spy thriller. This week, as protests surrounding the Kudankulam nuclear plant flared again, Udayakumar was on the run, hiding in the houses of villagers, with the police in hot pursuit. House-to-house searches were reported and the activists accused the police of harassing villagers. Udayakumar declared that he would surrender, as he did not want the harassment to go on.
Drama followed. Within hours, it was reported that the bearded activist had been taken away by fishermen who formed the main component of the protesting communities. Arvind Kejriwal, who has been leading anti-corruption protests in Delhi, and who declared his support for the movement, made a surprise announcement that Udayakumar would not surrender at any cost.
Udayakumar’s flight from the law began when villagers in their thousands, demanding not a safer nuclear plant but a non-nuclear alternative, surrounded Kudankulam once again, led by Udayakumar. Later, his wife Meera told this paper that it was felt the government wanted to end the protests by removing him from the scene, which, she said, would have the opposite result.
Udayakumar has played a central role in the protests that have roiled this seaside community and has done so under the platform of the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy, or PMANE. This month, the year-old agitation got fresh legs, as the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board gave a green signal for loading fuel in the nuclear plant. This contradicted the agency’s own recommendations for taking additional measures to ensure preparedness in the face of a natural disaster.
Udayakumar has been a part of the network of activists of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) based in Tacoma Park, Maryland, in the United States. This is how NIRS describes him on its website: “Dr S P Udayakumar (Kumar to his friends) is a longtime leader in the peaceful resistance to nuclear power in India, as well as a leader in the NIRS/WISE international network.’’
The home ministry had recently ensured that his house and institute were raided, accusing him of getting foreign funds for the Kudankulam struggle, a charge he has denied, saying that no funds were needed for fasting people.
Born in Nagercoil in Tamil Nadu, Udayakumar left for the US after his post graduation from Kerala University in 1981. He pursued higher studies there and ended up working in Minnesota. He also worked in Ethiopia before he packed his bags for India. He bought some land in Kanyakumari and started a school and a research centre, settling down there with his wife and two sons.
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Before landing in Kanyakumari, he had already been involved in anti-nuclear protests. In an interview, he refers to how in the late 1980s, he had started an organisation called Group for Peaceful Indian Ocean with his friends to protest against the presence of the American, British, French and Soviet navies with nuclear weapons in their Indian Ocean bases such as Diego Garcia. “We were naturally interested in nuclear power, as well as the Koodankulam issue,’’ he says. When the Koodankulam project was revived, he says he started an email list against it.
When he returned to India in 2001, he met with Y David, who had spearheaded the movement previously, and then started PMANE, in Madurai. Now, 11 years later, PMANE is one the largest anti-nuclear energy movements the world has seen, according to NIRS. The police had been asking him to surrender for a year, and already around 500 cases have been lodged against him, mainly on sedition charges.
In one of his letters to the NIRS email list, he writes of his life in exile, along with another activist, Pushparayan: “Ever since March 19, 2012, when the Tamil Nadu government changed its stand on the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Project issue, we have been protected by the people, mostly women and children. They come in thousands and sleep around the Parish Priest’s Bungalow, where Rayan and I stay and sleep. Of course, Rayan and I miss our families. We would love to go home.”