Waiting For Binayak Sen
By Radha Surya
14 March, 2011
Countercurrents.org
A new phase has begun. The struggle for justice of Dr. Binayak Sen, his wife Dr. Ilina Sen and others who are closest to him could be approaching its culmination. Over the years many have campaigned on Binayak Sen's behalf and made his name and his shining work known to a steadily increasing national and international public. This public has swelled to formidable proportions and will not be silenced or denied. Finally the efforts of the campaigners could be coming to fruition. With the Supreme Court admitting on March 11 Binayak Sen's bail petition and issuing notice to the Chhattisgarh government to file its response, the waiting game has undergone a transformation for supporters, admirers, well-wishers and importantly the patients whom Dr. Sen served in his forest clinic. Anger, outrage, apprehension and anguish still remain predominant. But at long last a glimmering of hope exists,
Before Binayak Sen can walk free, a tedious ritual must be enacted. The prosecution will present in court for the umpteenth time the cock and bull story whose details are now well known. The bench will be regaled with an account of the chimerical letters that were by some mysterious sleight of hand given to Binayak Sen by the prisoner Narayan Sanyal under the eagle eye of the jailers of Raipur jail. Thereafter the bench will be called on to believe in the providential appearance of the “incriminating” letters in the bag of Piyush Guha who all too conveniently for the police happened to be wandering in the vicinity of the Raipur railway station. Too bad that the ironclad links necessary to substantiate the conspiracy allegation could not be established in court. Too bad that witnesses for the prosecution turned hostile when they were called on to testify that they had seen Binayak Sen visiting Piyush Guha in his hotel. Alas that the contents of the letters are not even remotely subversive. After all Chhattisgarh is rife with Maoist groups. There's no lack of revolutionary ideas in this part of India. At least the Raipur police might have enlisted the services of a revolutionary writer prior to planting evidence. This would have enhanced their sorry fiction. Its shoddiness notwithstanding, the prosecution's rigmarole will be rehearsed at length. This at any rate is the expectation of Ilina Sen who has said that the hearing could take up to six weeks.
One hardly knows whether to laugh or cry. There is a farcical aspect to the state sponsored persecution that began with Binayak Sen's arrest in 2007 and appeared to culminate on December 24 with his being sentenced to life imprisonment by the trial court. The prosecution's clumsy manoeuvring would have been comic had its consequences not been incalculably grim. The lives of Binayak and Illina Sen have been ravaged by the years that have been spent in and out of court and prison. It's true that the situation has changed now that the Supreme Court has admitted Binayak Sen's bail petition. But there is no immediate respite. Not for Binayak Sen the luxury of contemplating his exoneration in circumstances of ease. He continues to be kept in Raipur prison's maximum security unit where the living conditions are worse than those of zoo animals. He is a heart patient and is in precarious health. The mind flinches from contemplating the privations that Binayak Sen has suffered since the most recent phase of his incarceration began at the height of winter in Raipur. In Tihar jail the officials issued blankets to former Telecommunications Minister A. Raja who (along with others) was instrumental in causing losses to the tune of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the national exchequer. Only the incorrigibly naive would believe that any such alleviation was given to Binayak Sen as he lay in his cage like cell in the dead of winter.
The legal experts are hopeful that Binayak Sen's bail application will be granted by the Supreme Court. For instance the Supreme Court advocate and human rights activist Colin Gonsalves has said he is certain Binayak Sen will get bail. The signs are propitious. At the international level there has been an outpouring of support from watchdog organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International and in the editorial pages of specialty publications like British Medical Journal and Lancet. This has led the well regarded American news magazine The Nation to say that the case of Binayak Sen has become an embarrassment to the government (The Nation, “Draconian Sedition Laws Imprison Indian Human Rights Activist for Life,” March 11, 2011).
Independent of the fact that the bail application is yet to be accepted there is a grim reality that must be reckoned with. In past years there had been reports of threats to Binayak Sen's life. In fact there was a saving grace to the earlier period of incarceration from 2007-9. At least in prison Dr. Sen was free from attacks on his person. It's a sad commentary on the state of law and order in Chhattisgarh when a physician whose work is crucial to the well-being of a large population must find safety within the walls of a prison. Even if Dr. Sen is released on bail in the coming weeks the ground realities in Chhattisgarh may not admit of his going back to minister to the patients who have been awaiting his return. Over the years, the atmosphere in Chhattisgarh has been vitiated by the vicious workings of a vindictive state apparatus. Ilina Sen has talked about the harassment to which Binayak Sen's family has been subjected. Their phone is tapped and they receive hostile calls where heavy breathing is the only sound that can be heard at the caller's end. This form of intimidation will be familiar to those who have watched Aakrosh, Govind Nihalani's powerful film about tribal exploitation. Also―quite unsurprisingly--there is the social ostracism that must be confronted on a day to day basis. Some of Ilina Sen's neighbors in her middle class residential area in Raipur apparently look the other way when they come face to face with her. The press in Raipur has peddled the prosecution's point of view and has called Dr. Binayak Sen a Naxal dakwallah (postman). Observers have said that the life's work of Binayak Sen stands destroyed even if the Supreme Court were to overturn the verdict of the lower courts.
The breath-taking scope of Binayak Sen's work in Chhattisgarh's tribal belt has been brought out by many able writers. To say that he set up health centers, trained a pool of tribal health workers, organized literacy camps, saved the lives of thousands by finding path breaking treatments for tuberculosis and malaria and served on a government body for developing public health policy for the underprivileged is only to enumerate a fraction of what he accomplished in the course of the thirty years or so that he has deliberately chosen to spend in a benighted part of India. Having graduated with flying colours from a premier medical institution, he could have become a wildly popular urban doctor with a clientele made up of Delhi or Mumbai's page 3 luminaries. He could have minted money and led a life of luxury. But early on in life he and his wife decided on a completely different career trajectory. Not for them a fancy, sprawling mansion in a posh neighborhood, chauffeur-driven cars, legions of menials, glittering parties and foreign vacations. Instead they established a health clinic in Chhattisgarh's heart of darkness, started work in areas like seed and forest conservation and sought to alleviate the nutritional deprivations of populations that existed one step away from starvation. Finally the time came to undertake the work that led to the state of Chhattisgarh becoming their nemesis―Binayak Sen's fearless human rights related mission of exposing atrocities committed by the state. The all powerful state apparatus struck back by imprisoning Binayak Sen in 2007 on trumped up charges. Finally after two years―and a succession of appeals in various courts―the Supreme Court released him on bail. Chhattisgarh's charge sheet still held and the trial continued. In that situation any decent, self-preserving person would have concluded that discretion was the better part of valour. But not Dr. Binayak Sen. By 2009 he had become a sort of celebrity as a result of national and international campaigns that were partly responsible for his release on bail. Having obtained a platform he chose to continue speaking out on such issues as the genocide that the state of Chhattisgarh was perpetrating in its tribal belt by cutting off the population's traditional access to common property resources.
Is it then really true--as has been said--that the life's work of Binayak Sen has been destroyed even if the Supreme Court suspends the verdict of the lower courts and orders his release? Will his decades long noble, selfless, devoted, enlightened and path breaking striving have taken place for nothing? Despite being defeated in the courts will the state of Chhattisgarh―Chief Minister Raman Singh, DGP Vishwa Ranjan, others of their ilk―and such media loyalists as Kanchan Gupta and Swapan Das Gupta emerge victorious? Will the wealthy and the powerful, will the mining and manufacturing conglomerates whom the state exists for the express purpose of serving―Tata, Jindal, Essar and others heave a sigh of relief when the fearless doctor and his wife depart from Chhattisgarh? The short answer must be in the negative. This is not merely the product of wishful thinking. It's possible that when the time comes Binayak Sen and his wife will have to make the difficult decision of whether or not to continue living in Raipur. To remain in Chhattisgarh could well be for Binayak Sen to embrace an early and untimely death. Here the fate of his murdered mentor and inspiration Shankar Niyogi will be relevant to any decision made by Dr. Sen.
However Binayak Sen's inspirational work in the area of human rights can go on. Unlike his clinic this work is not limited to his physical presence in Chhattisgarh. His crucification at the hands of the state has already led to calls for repeal of the sedition law and UAPA. His influence is present in the expansion of the Free Binayak Sen campaign to embrace the rights of the lesser known, the not so noble or the nameless thousands who have been thrown into prisons across India for the crime of questioning the policies of the state or exposing atrocities it has committed. There is a country wide battle that is being waged. On one side there is a tiny well-groomed minority, the proponents and beneficiaries of nine percent annual growth rates. On the other side is the overwhelming majority of India's population consisting among others of those whose livelihoods are being destroyed by India shining and who are reeling under the impact of galloping food inflation and deprivations of every kind. In this ongoing battle Binayak Sen and his wife have and will continue to play a key role in holding the fort, in fending off or potentially defeating the assault of India's business and political elites on the life, liberty and well-being of the teeming millions.
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