Justice travestied

by Sandeep Pandey
(The Statesman, July 8, 2008)

I first met Dr Binayak Sen, his wife Ilina and their two daughters, Aparajita and Pranhita, at the conclusion of the ‘Pokhran to Sarnath Global Peace March’ on 6 August 1999 at the Central Tibetan Institute of Higher Learning in Sarnath, near Varanasi. Sarnath is where Buddha delivered a sermon to his first five disciples after attaining enlightenment at Bodh Gaya. The peace march was symbolically between a place of destruction ~ Pokhran ~ and a place of peace ~ Sarnath. It began exactly a year after the day India tested nuclear weapons in 1998 and concluded on Hiroshima Day. The objective of the march was to push for total global nuclear disarmament.

While the march was in progress for 88 days and over 1,500 km, the Sens were busy organising activities in Raipur, now in Chhattisgarh, and their work area in its support. We also later got a chance to work together for the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace, a national platform.

Dr Sen is currently in Raipur Jail. He has been targeted under the draconian Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act, 2005, and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 2004, to silence the voices of humanity and justice. He is charged with sedition and conspiracy to wage war against the state. His trial has just begun after a year in jail and he has been refused bail, even by the Supreme Court. Six prosecution witnesses, out of a total of 89, who have been presented in court have so far failed to stand up to cross-examination. There doesn’t seem to be an iota of evidence against him. He is being illegally detained so that nobody dare question the experiment of the Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh which legitimises extra-constitutional violence and pits adivasis against adivasis.

Dr Sen, who is the Chhattisgarh general secretary of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) had exposed the killing of three teachers and one student, all innocent, by the police in Gopapalli, in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district, on 4 November 2004, in an ‘encounter’. In November 2005, he organised an all-India team of human rights activists to visit Dantewada and study the systematic rape, loot and arson perpetrated on ordinary adivasis and their properties by the police and special police officers organised into the Salwa Judum. He also opposed the oppression by the police of adivasis who were opposing takeover of their land in Bastar to set up a Tata-Essar unit. How could the Chhattisgarh government tolerate Dr Sen, who was out to expose what they claimed was a successful experiment to counter Naxals through a ‘self-motivated people’s movement’, the Salwa Judum?

After completing his MBBS, Dr Sen finished his MD in paediatrics from the Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore. That he had a social commitment became obvious when he chose to write his masters’ thesis on malnutrition. He was a faculty member at the Centre for Social Medicine and Community Health at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, from 1976 to 1978. He left his job to join a community-based rural health centre in Hoshangabad, Madhya Pradesh. From 1983 to 1987 he helped the late Shankar Guha Niyogi, the famous trade union leader, build the Shaheed Hospital in Dalli Rajhara in Durg district for mine labourers. This 100-bed hospital, managed by the labourers, still provides affordable, quality treatment to hundreds of labourers. It is a unique experiment in which a community runs its own hospital. There are some competent and dedicated doctors who provide their services here. Dr Sen was one of them.

Dr Sen was at the same time making his services available elsewhere in the region. Interestingly, the state took his help in designing the community-based health workers programme across Chhattisgarh, now known as Mitanin.

Realising that health care was closely associated with human rights issues he joined the PUCL and is currently its national vice-president too. He has been continually raising issues covering the spectrum from fake encounters and custodial deaths to hunger deaths, malnutrition and dysentery epidemics.
Dr Sen was awarded the Paul Harrison distinguished alumnus award in 2004 by CMC, Vellore. He was cited as a role model for students and faculty members. After incarceration, he was awarded the RR Keithan Gold Medal in recognition of his service to the community at the Indian Social Science Congress on 31 December 2007 by BL Mungekar, member, Planning Commission and chairperson, Indian Academy of Social Sciences. Most recently, the Global Health Council awarded him the prestigious Jonathan Mann award for global health and human rights. He is the first South Asian to receive this award. Subsequently, 22 Nobel laureates requested the Indian government to release Dr Sen. Rarely has a prisoner been honoured so profusely, nationally and internationally. It speaks volumes about the man as also the enormity of the government’s blunder.

Dr Sen and his family’s commitment to peace is beyond doubt. They are people with a deep respect for human life. When a group of us met Dr Sen in jail in January 2008, I was surprised that after spending over eight months in jail he was more worried about the cause of civil liberties than anything else. He said that by targeting him and creating an atmosphere of terror the authorities were irreparably hurting the struggle for justice and human rights. The spirit he and his family have shown will inspire all who are trying to make the world more humane.

(The writer, who heads the National Alliance of People’s Movements, is a recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay award)

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