Gandhi versus Power

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As we are on the eve of yet another Gandhi Jayanti, it is appropriate to look at how far India has come from the Mahatma’s vision. Gandhi envisaged an India in which every citizen is free to think, speak and act according to his conscience. And today nearly six lakh Indians are in the country’s prisons most of whom (80%) are undertrials of whom many were arrested for thinking freely. You may not be entitled to think, speak and act according to your conscience in today’s India unless your conscience has been dyed in saffron.

When you realise that 21% of the prisoners in the country are SCs, 9% STs, and 18% Muslims, you may begin to wonder why half of the prisoners belong to the marginalised communities. You look further into the stats and realise with a touch of chagrin that the country’s prisons are overcrowded. The occupancy rate in 2021 was 120% while it rose to 130% in the next year. Now it must be still more with the recent arrests related to the PFI affair. Go further and you may be amused to notice that the state governed by a saffron yogi has an occupancy rate of 185% in its jails, the highest in the country.

The Supreme Court has just ordered the Taloja jail superintendent to shift Gautam Navlakha to hospital for treatment. Navlakha has been in prison for exercising his freedom and helping the downtrodden to exercise theirs. He is a 70-year-old social activist and journalist who dedicated his life to the causes of honesty and justice. He was one of the 16 activists arrested in relation to the Bhima Koregaon case. We know that the real culprits in that case were some saffron goons who attacked the Dalit gathering and created a riot. But the real culprits were not arrested. Instead, the activists who worked for the welfare of the Dalits were arrested on fabricated charges. Octogenarian Stan Swamy who suffered from Parkinson’s disease was one of those arrested activists and he eventually succumbed to death without even being allowed to have sufficient food in the prison. This is the present India. It kills honest activists. And it garlands rapists and killers who are acquitted after facetious trials.

Interestingly many of these activists like Stan Swamy who couldn’t even drink water without someone’s help were accused of plotting the murder of none other than Narendra Modi whose security cover is such that the world’s most trained killers won’t succeed in reaching anywhere near him.

But Mr Modi won’t take any chances. He makes sure that all those who criticise him are eliminated one way or the other. Recall what happened to people like Teesta Setalvad and R B Sreekumar recently. Many more people like Sanjeev Bhat were arrested or simply killed much earlier in connection with the 2002 Gujarat riots and Modi’s alleged role in it. The arrest of the co-founder of the fact-checking portal Alt News, Mohammed Zubair, within hours of Modi being given the clean chit by the apex court is no coincidence. Zubair was arrested ostensibly for a tweet he had made four years ago! Modi’s India hasn’t started arresting people for checking facts yet.

The number of people arrested in the second term of Mr Modi’s Prime Ministership has gone through the roof. 1.39 crore Indians were arrested in 2020 and the figure for 2021 is 1.47 crore. Will our Prime Minister arrest the entire country in the long run?

India today is just the opposite of what Mahatma Gandhi had envisaged. Political power was meant for the service of people, for Gandhi. Now political power is used for arresting people. Only one man seems to matter now in India. Gandhi had said, “Government of the people, by the people and for the people cannot be conducted at the bidding of one man, however great he may be.” If there was indeed greatness – we are left wishing.

Let us not despair, however. Gandhi can inspire us. He said, “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall… think of it, always.”

Wish you a thoughtful Gandhi Jayanti.