Yes, he has been a fearless activist and he took on the
state for its anti-people acts in the Naxal violence hit areas of Chhattisgarh.
Yet, during a phone conversation with him for a story in
2010, when he was out on bail before being sentenced in December 2010, he was
guarded in response. He was not willing to speak anything on his line of work
and the recent developments happening around that.
That is what the state does with the activists who take a
different line on the implementation of policies.
Policies are mere written documents until put into effect
methodically and honestly. Almost of the policies are well planned. The problem
lies in their implementation. And the chronic levels of corruption in every
aspect of Indian society – in its political systems – in its social structures
– in the wings of governance – has left millions to live and die in conditions
of abject poverty and no dignity.
And such issues have been hurting the cause of the Indian
democracy for long. The curse of the administrative apathy and the bureaucratic
corruption of the colonial India
only deepened in the Independent India and with the all pervasive political
corruption, that had started showing its symptoms in the very first years of
the Independence and has grown to monstrous levels
now, corruption in India
And there have been voices against this corruption,
against the corrupt practices, against the corrupt people. In Mahatma Gandhi’s India
But while the non-violent protests movements have been
able to maintain their sanctity by continuing the legacy with social and
political activists in every generation fighting for the cause of the democracy
and the common man with democratic means, the violent protests ceased to exist
ideologically a long ago. Such armed groups are nothing but criminal gangs now.
Yes, there are leftovers, some honest comrades or people still following the ideology
honestly. But they are reduced to the scale of fringe elements largely. Yes,
violence was never a way to protest because our democracy was still functional
and growing but such people with honest intent still got (and get) sympathizers
among the common people, among the activists who face the System’s apathy and
who witness the how the System’s apathy kills the people it is made for.
And being the sore points, all such activists are in the firing
line of the System’s tools, because they question the tools, because they expose
the System, because they hurt the interests of its corrupt elements, because they
take a different line to sanctify the Indian Constitution and because they act
within the realms of the Indian Constitution.
Yes, violence cannot be accepted in the name of protest,
but the problem is, the state, targets even those who act non-violently, as we
have seen in cases of many ‘prisoners of conscience’ – activists like Binayak
Sen or Irom Sharmila.
The state uses its tools like draconian laws and acts regularly
harassing and putting activists behind bars. All such laws and special acts
need to be scrutinized for the changes to be incorporated. The archaic laws
need to be made contemporary.
Yes, it is easier said than done. But nothing is easier in
running the governments in an ethnically, religiously and culturally complex
country like India India
The state needs to behave when it acts with activists
raising voices in democratic ways. They are our own people. They are from among
us, speaking for their people, for us, and not for the insurgents.
The state needs to give space to the voices like Dr. Binayak
Sen or Irom Sharmila in place of implicating them in silly cases under the
draconian sections of the legal code. The wide support to these voices tells
they represent for the millions who cannot speak or are not allowed to speak
and the state must listen to them.
In place of forcing them in jails or in confined spaces, like
has been done again with Irom Sharmila with her re-arrest.
©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com
