Five hu­man rights ac­tivists de­tained by the In­dian state get tem­po­rary re­prieve from the Supreme Court of In­dia, as the coun­try and hu­man rights de­fend­ers world­wide are out­raged at this bla­tant vi­o­la­tion of the right to dis­sent and dis­agree. In­dia seems to be lik­ing its tag of be­ing a ba­nana re­pub­lic. It is time to stand up in sol­i­dar­ity with these ac­tivists and pre­pare more ef­fec­tively to ward off any such move against oth­ers in fu­ture. 

Giv­ing a damn about what the world would think, in a co­or­di­nated plan to give a body blow to all peo­ples who op­pose the “world’s largest democ­racy”, Ma­ha­rash­tra po­lice, by­pass­ing all norms of ar­rest went across to coun­try to de­tain a poet, lawyers and hu­man rights ac­tivists, who were es­pous­ing the Dalit cause, nine months af­ter “the crim­i­nal con­spir­acy”.

Noted au­thor Arund­hati Roy called the move “worse than emer­gency”.   In an email re­sponse to the news­pa­per The Hindu, Ms. Roy has said, “The si­mul­ta­ne­ous state-wide ar­rests are a dan­ger­ous sign of a gov­ern­ment that fears it is los­ing its man­date and is falling into panic. While killers are be­ing gar­landed and pro­tected by peo­ple in high places, any­body who speaks up for jus­tice or against Hindu ma­jori­tar­i­an­ism is be­ing made into a crim­i­nal. What is hap­pen­ing is ab­solutely per­ilous. In the run-up to elec­tions, this is an at­tempted coup against the In­dian Con­sti­tu­tion and all the free­doms that we cher­ish,” she noted.

““Worse than emer­gency””

Arund­hati Roy

The Supreme Court of In­dia, in a quick re­sponse, di­rected the state agen­cies to place all the ac­tivists un­der house ar­rest till 6 Sep­tem­ber. Call­ing dis­sent as the “safety valve of democ­racy” the court di­rected the Ma­ha­rash­tra gov­ern­ment to come up with cred­i­ble ev­i­dence at the next hear­ing. Em­i­nent lawyers Prashant Bhushan led the ar­gu­ments from the front on a pe­ti­tion by noted ac­tivist Romila Tha­par and oth­ers. But for this re­prieve, the In­dian state had done every­thing to qual­ify as a ba­nana re­pub­lic.

The Ma­ha­rash­tra Po­lice ar­rested Ver­non Gon­salves, Ex­ec­u­tive Mem­ber of CRPP,  ac­tivists and lawyers Ad­vo­cate Sudha Bharad­waj, Gau­tam Navlakha, Arun Fer­reira, rev­o­lu­tion­ary poet Var­avara Rao, and Kranti Teluka. Raids were also con­ducted across Goa, Jhark­hand, Delhi, and Telan­gana in the houses of Anand Tel­tumbde, Fa­ther Stan Swamy, Anala, Ku­maranth and Prof. Satya­narayana.

“This is gov­ern­ment-spon­sored ter­ror and height of mis­use of gov­ern­ment agen­cies.””

Mayawati, Bahu­jan Samaj Party chief 

So far no charge-sheet has been filed for the five ac­tivists -Pro­fes­sor Shoma Sen, Ad­vo­cate Suren­dra Gadling, Ma­hesh Raut, Sud­hir Dhawale, and Rona Wil­son de­tained ear­lier in June this year. The two Mum­bai based lawyers who were en­gaged in de­bunk­ing the state the­ory and pro­tect­ing these five ac­cused of ter­ror­ism, have been de­tained, ef­fec­tively scut­tling le­gal as­sis­tance to them. 

Work­ing on the well-tested In­dian the­ory of “call the dog mad and shoot him”,  var­i­ous sec­tions of the In­dian Pe­nal Code and the anti-peo­ple UAPA -Un­law­ful Ac­tiv­i­ties Pre­ven­tion Act have been foisted. 

It all started a year ago, when so-called up­per caste peo­ple un­leashed vi­o­lence on Dal­its in Bhima Ko­re­gaon in Ma­ha­rash­tra. The Com­mit­tee for the Re­lease of Po­lit­i­cal Pris­on­ers ac­tivists Prof. SAR Gee­lani, Amit Bhat­tacharya, Su­jato Bhadra, Sukhendu Bhat­tachar­jee, MN Ravunni, P. Koya, Malem and Hany­babu MT con­demn­ing the ar­rests, in a state­ment to the me­dia nailed the de­sign of the state say­ing, “These ar­rests and raids are a bla­tant at­tempt at sti­fling dis­sent­ing voices re­veal­ing a sin­is­ter, pre­med­i­tated and po­lit­i­cally mo­ti­vated ef­fort to ma­lign the ar­rested and dis­credit them through brand­ing in­stead of ev­i­dence. All ar­rested per­sons are well re­garded hu­man rights ac­tivists who have pub­licly worked for the rights of dal­its, adi­va­sis, mi­nor­ity com­mu­ni­ties, wom­en’s rights, work­ers’ rights and spo­ken and writ­ten ex­ten­sively about the poli­cies of the state.” “The cal­lous dis­re­gard for the rule of law and the fun­da­men­tal rights of peo­ple by the in­sti­tu­tions of the state re­veals a stark im­age of a fas­cist In­dian State.” said CRPP.  

Bahu­jan Samaj Party chief Mayawati slammed Naren­dra Modi gov­ern­ment in the Cen­tre say­ing, “This is gov­ern­ment-spon­sored ter­ror and height of mis­use of gov­ern­ment agen­cies.” The vi­o­lence that fol­lowed the Bhima-Ko­re­gaon cel­e­bra­tion was a con­spir­acy to in­stil fear among Dal­its and sup­port­ers of Dalit ac­tivists. “Bhima-Ko­re­gaon cel­e­bra­tion ex­hibits Dalit pride,” she said.

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Dal Khalsa chief Harpal Singh Cheema said “this was clearly a con­tin­u­a­tion of the trend of the In­dian state to sup­press dis­sent and crush the voice of hu­man rights de­fend­ers who stand up for Dal­its and their cause. The Modi dis­pen­sa­tion is try­ing to raise the bo­gey of ‘Ur­ban Nax­al’ to stem po­lit­i­cal dis­sent”.  He ap­pealed to the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity to rise to the oc­ca­sion and not al­low In­dia to wage a bat­tle against its own peo­ples.