Naxals and Pseudo-Naxals

Dr. Binayak Sen: with and without

Believe it or not, there are pseudo-naxals, and the term wasn't coined by some BJP leader:

HYDERABAD: Ramgopalpet police arrested two pseudo naxalites who were attempting to extort Rs 96 lakh from a businessman in the city. Zakir Hussain, 25, and Mirza Iqbal Baig, 35, of Bahadurpura were arrested by the police for making extortion calls to Rakesh Bhansal, a steel manufacturing unit owner of Banjara Hills. [link]

Anyway, don't let that fun bit distract you from the seriousness of the topic at hand.

Ever heard of a tribal girl simply called Pappe? How about a man called Ujjani Gowda? But we will bet you even money you have heard the name of Dr. Binayak Sen, you have even seen that face before, splashed on TV screens and pages of newspapers.

• Pappe is a deaf and mute tribal girl and a victim of mistaken identity. Police picked her up on suspicion of being a naxalite. She finally ended up in a women's shelter. She was reportedly sexually abused by a drunken cop. 
  
  
• Ujjani Gowda spent four years in prison, sans bail, only to be acquitted a few days ago. 
  

"She started clapping"

The bench, did not allow even the counsel for the Chhattisgrah government, former Additional Solicitor General Mukul Rohtagi, to make his submission. "Please sit down, I have already heard you," remarked the bench twice every time Rohatgi wanted to make his submission. 

The bench's curt order granting bail to Sen prompted one of the civil rights activists to start clapping in the courtroom itself, but realizing her mistake, she immediately stopped. [link]

As discussed in the previous post on this blog, the Binayak Sen case vividly illustrates the pitfalls of activism. While these activists claim to bat for social justice, their zeal for defending a particular individual seems to be inversely proportional to the helplessness of the "victim". Actually that is not true. Activists always go after the politically high value targets. That is where the juice is, the publicity is, the TV appearances, magazine and webzine columns, talk shows and even Bollywood films. 

In terms of civil liberties, India remains at par with with the worst of autocratic regimes. Much of the problem stems from the natural state of affairs in a resource constrained socialist state. The rest comes from hare brained policies. 

The civil rights activists may feel good about Dr. Sen's release, good enough to spontaneously break out into wild cheering in the courtroom, but they are clearly not serving anyone's cause other than their own.

The legal reforms considered by the Congress in the last term were expressly aimed at pleasing their constituencies. They repealed the POTA. The brought in the CrPC amendment, which eventually turned out to be impractical. Repealing the POTA might have helped only a few dozen minority youth at the outside. Extra-legal confinement, custodial beatings and occasionally even encounter killings continued - in Congress ruled states of Hyderabad, Delhi, Maharashtra.

The party is simply not interested in implementing anything that does not bring in electoral dividends. This is where activists could make a difference. Don't count on it though.

The principal opposition, BJP made it very clear in its vision statements and also in the manifesto that it would bring in crucial legal reforms necessary to fix our creaking justice system. Think anyone read those? 

Bonus tailpiece:

As Ram Guha noted in one of his articles, human rights activism really took off since the early 1980s. If you look at India's historical GDP growth chart, this roughly coincides with the first departure from the "Hindu" rate of growth, with a noticeably steeper slope than prior years. Since the 90s, the line goes through the roof. This is no coincidence, "activism" follows the money trail. The more money there is to be made, the more activism there is.

Anyway, here is a fantastic article about the first Naxal movement and its brutal suppression. Those days we had a pretty elitist situation in India. You could not criticize the Government. There were those who were in on the game and those who were on the outside. 

soumen was archana's brother and latika's husband. gouri happened to be soumen's relative. the police were in hot pursuit of soumen as he had been tortured as a "prized catch" by the lalbazar top-brass. after repeated attempts to hunt soumen down failed, the police resorted to a much known below-the-belt-tactic. torture other family members and force the "wanted man" to surrender. but the officers pushed themselves too hard. the three women repeatedly pleaded with the interrogating officers that soumen had not returned home for days and they didn’t know about his whereabouts. they were assured that after the "routine inquiry" they would be released. but they were in for more. the police officers took a stricter line of action to "extricate" information from latika and archana—the third degree. this inhuman torture in the police custody did not last for one, two or three days... but for 27 days.

Read on to find out what happened to the hapless woman called Archana. You won't feel like clapping for sure.