It is with a deep sense of indignation one writes this piece today, May 14, 2009. Exactly two years ago pediatrician and human rights activist Dr Binayak Sen was picked up by the Chhattisgarh police and incarcerated in a Raipur prison on charges of ‘waging war’ against the state under various sections of the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act, 2005 and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (amended) 2004.
The charges against Dr Sen include aiding and abetting Naxalites and sedition. Both the CSPSA, 2005 and the UAPA (amended) 2004 are ridiculously draconian laws, ultra vires of the constitutional guarantees provided to the citizen, and several human rights organisations along with the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) have been campaigning for their repeal and for the release of over 178 people detained under it. Those detained include lawyers, journalists, film-makers, tradesmen, agricultural workers, activists in NGOs, cultural workers and such.
Both nationally and internationally, enough mobilisation and solidarity has been expressed by concerned citizens, including a committee of Nobel laureates and associations of professionals from the medical field. Amnesty International has described Binayak Sen as a ‘Prisoner of Conscience’. But the state has refused to budge. It has stuck to its version of the good doctor being a threat to law and order through actions interpreted as supporting the underground Maoists in the region.
In a more substantial sense, Binayak Sen’s work was seen as pioneering and life-saving in the Dantewada region of Chhattisgarh, where poor adivasis were subjected to extreme terror and coercion by agents of the state disguised as ‘Salwa Judum’, who were on a land-grab spree. Over three decades of work in the region by Dr Sen to restore rights to the dispossessed has boomeranged, he himself now being dubbed an ‘enemy of the state’. That he has consistently been denied bail for two years and that now he is even being denied necessary medical help seems just a churlish retaliation against a humanitarian doctor who spared no opportunity to criticise and expose the abysmal human rights record of the Chhattisgarh government.
Of course, there has been widespread dismay at the bullying attitude the state has adopted, with scant respect for legal or constitutional niceties and, across the country, there have been protests and pressure groups that have sprung up nauseated by the shameless excess of the use of power. But the question we need to ask is, what is the state really afraid of? Who constitute the enemies of the state?
During British Raj, this was easy. The ‘us’ versus ‘them’ binary was clear. To fight against the oppressive rule of colonial masters and topple their regime was seen as a holy birthright by the likes of Tilak, Gandhi, Bhagat Singh and Nehru. They all had IPC Sec.124 and 124-A (sedition) slapped against them. In his own ‘defence’ Gandhiji said to the overawed British judge, “If fighting for the freedom of my countrymen is sedition, then so be it. I am seditious. And you must punish me with the highest punishment available in your law books.”
That was resistance to imperialism. But in a constitutional democracy which guarantees you freedom of speech, how can ‘sedition’ hold? How is it ‘sedition’ to say the government you have elected is corrupt or violent or anti-people? On top of it, how can ‘sedition’ hold against one state in the Union? Which sovereign is being dethroned here?
Then we have this mosquito-like pestilence called ‘Naxalites’. At least, everyone uses the terminology of the war against mosquitoes when they describe Naxalites. They need to be ‘smoked out’, someone thunders. They need to be ‘eradicated’, another echoes. Indeed, if they showed as much passion for eradicating mosquitoes, we would have solved the malaria problem in the country, taking some of the wind out of the sails of the Maoists.
How do these Naxalites become enemies of the state? Is it because they have questions regarding the efficacy of Parliamentary democracy and want out? Well, so perhaps does almost 40 per cent of India which did not vote this time. If struggling and fighting for retaining their own forests and lands and water in their own country makes large sections of adivasis and dalits resort to take up arms, should not the state feel at least partly answerable? If, as they say, the Naxalites today range over some 25 per cent of India, should not someone feel compelled to look at the conditions that have provided ballast to this infantile ideology, rather than just want to make a mockery of your own commitments to your Constitution through use of grotesque violence?
If speaking up for the rights of the people amongst whom Binayak Sen worked made him ‘seditious’, so be it. This law won’t hold too long. But don’t be so barbaric as to deny a sick man his medical needs. Even the worst of your laws don’t permit that.
