Jan
Myrdal
On the net
it is possible to read in various languages how Professor GN Saibaba of Delhi
University has been detained since May 9, 2014. I cannot find anything about
this printed in a single official or semi-official Swedish newspaper. But the
question is of great concern to Aftonbladet's readers.
Professor
GN Saibaba teaches literature at Ram Lal Anand College. He also invited me to
lecture on Strindberg. Some of the students were Swedish. The last time I saw
him was here in Varberg two years ago when Sven Lindqvist was awarded his prize.
The reason Saibaba was imprisoned is that he is a leading Indian civil rights
activist who actively made public and opposed the kinds of legal, police and
military assaults that are now being made against indigenous people in the
bloody "Operation Green Hunt."
Four times
since September 2013, the police in Delhi conducted house searches and
interrogations without finding legal grounds to arrest him. On May 9, however,
police came from Maharastra to Delhi without prior warning. They seized him,
without giving him the opportunity to contact a lawyer, and took him away to
Maharashtra. The law under which he is held there is the "Unlawful Activities
Prevention Act" ("UAPA"), strongly criticized by all Indian jurists. GN Saibaba
is charged with secretly being a member of the "Communist Party of India
(Maoist)," which is banned in India, and having contact with its general
secretary Ganapathy. On June 13, 2014, the Court refused him bail.
"The
Sunday Standard" of May 20, 2014, reported under the headline: "Red Terror's
Scary Urban Footprints " on the declassified secret service dossier, "Maoist
plan for urban areas," which is the basis for the arrest of Professor Saibaba.
It described him as follows:
"Saibaba
recruited such academics as teachers and doctors to become members of
above-ground organizations. They participated in meetings and donated money to
the Maoists' coffers. / ... / Some meetings connected with left-wing extremism
were also held at his residence in 2010. He organized a meeting with Jan Myrdal,
a Swedish author and Naxalite sympathizer, sometime in February 2010. Myrdal is
said to have played a role in the contact between Maoist leaders and
above-ground cadres by using his high profile as a writer. / ... / The plan is
to gather such strength, so many weapons and so much popular support that a
simultaneous uprising in all areas of the red corridor could be converted into a
mass revolution that would be self-supporting."
The date
and details of what was written about me are wrong - something I can take up in
another way - but it is similar to what security minister Jitendra Sing told the
Rajya Sabha (upper house of the Indian Parliament, JM) on May 16, 2012: "Jan
Myrdal during his stay in India advised CPI (Maoist) to garner support from the
middle-class in India by focusing on propaganda against security forces and
highlighting human rights issues."
Professor
GN Saibaba is now in bad health. He sits in an isolation cell in prison without
access to the care he, as cardiac patient, needs. That the authorities in
Maharashtra do not want to provide medical care is, given the caste and
class-ridden nature of Indian society, quite obvious. Saibaba is one who,
according to the traditional ruling class, should not have existed. He is from a
poor peasant family in Andhra. He is wheelchair bound and 90% disabled. He was
able to acquire the wheelchair only after he began to make a living as a teacher
in Delhi. From the age of three, he had to crawl forward. With the help of some
rural teachers who recognized his remarkable talent and then grants - and
friends - he has been able to struggle through school. This has shaped his
character and worldview, was has the reading of such great Telegu writers as Sri
Sri - and Kenyan writer Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, with whom he was personally
acquainted.
Professors
and students of Delhi as well as human rights activists and union / politically
engaged people throughout India are now working to build public opinion against
the legal assault on Professor GN Saibaba. Yes, all over the world there are
petitions and protests. However, I know India. Surely one can argue that
experience teaches protests do not mean much, given the power structure in
India. On the other hand, India is no fascist dictatorship. It is not a society
like Pinochet's Chile. The human rights situation is now far better than it was
in British India. What may save GN Saibaba is not just protests, even
international ones. I therefore suggest that we start by organizing in Sweden a
broad-based group of lawyers who will travel to India and examine on site the
situation of GN Saibaba as well as other political prisoners.
I should
explain what I mean by broad-based. This is not a sham issue. Certainly there
are incompetent and comprising lawyers in Sweden as elsewhere. But more
important is that there are lawyers who regardless of their own right-left color
(ideology) actually take seemingly formal issues seriously. Let them gather a
group and go to India.
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