“In what discourse
Can we converse
With the heartless?”
We need to reckon with dissent. The nature of a people’s democracy is such that it cannot possibly exist without dissent. More recently, it is coming to be observed that in the public sphere, going against ruling practices and what is deemed as ‘moral’, is coming to have enormous consequences. Not that it was very different earlier, but what has changed recently is the magnitude the nonchalance that has come to exist with respect to reason. The greatest of India’s leaders have been taken behind the prison in the past for various reasons. So have public intellectuals, poets, and writers.
The aforementioned poem that goes by ‘ The Other Day’ had been written by one such poet, Varavara Rao, a ‘prisoner of conscience’, in 1990 right before he was arrested. The travesty is such that, 30 years later, Rao is in prison again. This time, however, he is older and weaker, amidst a pandemic, and there doesn’t appear a way out for his truth.
But who are these ‘prisoners of conscience’?
To put simply, ‘prisoners of conscience’ are usually citizens who imprisoned for questioning the authority and trying to hold them accountable for their modes of governance.
Differentiating between the obscure normative sensationalism of the term ‘political prisoners’ and the quasi-religious sentiment of ‘prisoners of conscience’ that questions the moral sanctity of presiding social conditions, Encyclopedia Britannica expands, “the terms ‘political prisoner’ and ‘prisoner of conscience’ have been used interchangeably, although most agree that the latter expressly refers to dissident prisoners who neither condone nor advocate personal violence.”
While it’s not talked about as much, prisoners of conscience or political prisoners in our country are defiled and exploited without due process, endlessly and carelessly.
In the light of the existence of such carelessness with people whom someone might call a ‘public intellectual’, one wonders how does the voice of conscious dissent reason with it? Is there room for authority to be flexible with criticism or at least hold democratic discussions?
Perhaps, that’s too much to ask.
The Bhima Koregaon battle celebrations on January 01, 2018, was the precipice for another wave of assault on human rights freedom in India. Bhima-Koregaon, a small village in the Pune district of Maharashtra is linked to an incredibly crucial phase of Maratha history. On January 01, 1818, in Koregaon itself, a British army contingent consisting of a majority of Dalits had successfully overcome the Peshwa Brahmin army led by Peshwa Bajirao II.
For Dalits, this was a huge victory against the injustices of the stratified caste system as well as those acts of violence perpetrated by the Peshwas themselves. The Vijay Stambh (victory pillar) was erected by the East India Company to commemorate this triumph and it is this pillar that thousands of Dalits come to pay their respects to every year.
2018 is also remembered for the tensions between the Maratha and Dalit Bahujan people that led to violent clashes at the site. The year before, the Shaniwarwada Elgar Parishad, an event held to commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Koregaon Bhima was followed by unforeseen violence. In the months following the event, a number of participants were arrested under laws such as the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
Those who were arrested on supposed pretences that could disarm the sanctitude of India, as described by the Wire.in’s Sukanya Shantha, were “Sudhir Dhawale, a writer and Mumbai-based Dalit rights activist, Surendra Gadling, a UAPA expert and lawyer from Nagpur, Mahesh Raut, a young activist on displacement issues from Gadchiroli, Shoma Sen, a university professor and head of the English literature department at Nagpur University, Rona Wilson, a Delhi-based prisoners’ rights activist, advocate Arun Ferreira, advocate Sudha Bharadwaj, writer Varavara Rao and Vernon Gonsalves.”
Further arrests of several other activists and thinkers have also been made since then.
In light of recent events, Varavara Rao has been ill-treated at the hands of the prison system. The Telugu writer, literary critic and poet, who founded the Revolutionary Writers Association also known as Virasam is undergoing treatment at JJ hospital currently.
The Scroll reports, “Sir JJ Hospital Dean Dr Ranjeet Mankeshwar confirmed to The New Indian Express that the 81-year-old poet is being evaluated by doctors at the facility” and reiterated statements by Rao’s family which “said the poet’s health has been a cause of worry for over a month now. They said that their last telephone conversation with Rao, on July 11, had only increased their fears. A fellow inmate had informed the family that Rao was not in a position to even walk by himself. He needed assistance in carrying out daily chores such as brushing his teeth and going to the toilet.”
Varavara Rao’s treatment is a failure of our systems. It is indicative that personal liberties can be slashed seamlessly without due recourse. According to the Indian Express, “Varavara Rao, who has been behind bars since 2018 in the Elgar Parishad case, tested positive for Covid-19 on Thursday. Doctors said he was asymptomatic but unable to walk due to weakness.” This recent development on Varavara Rao’s health and safety is disturbing, agitating and most of all unjust.
Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla, Rao’s niece, pens an incredibly intimate letter about her uncle, she mentions the “The newly minted Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, or UAPA, gives the Indian government the power to designate someone an enemy of the state without a trial,” and when she recalls the last time she contacted him, she says harrowingly, “I checked my phone and saw that we’d heard from my uncle, currently a political prisoner in India. “I’m alright,” he said. But he wasn’t alright. His voice was weak and feeble, and his words, disjointed, slipped into Hindi instead of his beloved Telugu.”
The visceral reality of our conscious dissenters is degrading by the day. How do we form non-apathetic discussions? Is the discussion stage past us? Rao and many other political thinkers, writers and activists lives have been threatened, degraded and questioned without even the capacity for a trial to voice their truth.
One remembers the title of Meena Kandaswamy’s chapbook of poems titled, ‘This Poem Will Provoke You,’ because isn’t that the truth?
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