Photos: Authors Suchitra Vijayan and Francesa Recchia
By Shevlin Sebastian
The book, ‘How Long Can the Moon
Be Caged?’ (Voices of Indian Political Prisoners) by Suchitra Vijayan and
Francesca Recchia begins with a quote from the book, ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ by
Russian literary great Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:
‘At no time have governments
been moralists.
They never imprisoned people or
executed them for having done something.
They imprisoned and executed
them to keep them from doing something.’
And the authors prove this in
chilling, frightening and alarming detail.
As Vijayan and Recchia stated,
‘Political prisoners challenge existing relations of power, question the status
quo, confront authoritarianism and injustice; they stand with the
disenfranchised. Theirs is a ‘thought’ crime: the crime of thinking, acting,
speaking, probing, reporting, questioning, demanding rights, defending their
homes, and, ultimately, exercising citizenship.’
The state’s response: widespread
arrests and incarcerations. Even illegal bulldozing of homes. One of the
authors’ research colleagues, student activist Afreen Fatima’s house in Uttar
Pradesh, was demolished by the authorities on June 10, 2022.
The first chapter, ‘A Season of
Arrests’ chronicled in a timeline, from May 9, 2014, to April 17, 2024, the
many arrests, temporary releases and rearrests of many activists, poets,
fact-checkers, journalists, lawyers, social workers, intellectuals and members
of the Dalit community. It came to 41 pages.
It also chronicled the judicial
fight waged by these people, while the government continued to amend laws to
give even more unfettered power to the security agencies. Far too many times,
the courts have sided with the government.
Incidentally, authors Vijayan
and Recchia took the book’s title from a sentence that activist Natasha Narwal
sent in a letter from jail. Narwal had been incarcerated for protesting against
the Citizen Amendment Act (CAA).
In unflinching detail, the book
chronicles the arrest of academician GN Saibaba, who was in a car.
‘Plainclothes police from Gadchiroli dragged the driver out, then assaulted,
blindfolded and kidnapped Saibaba from the [Delhi] university campus in broad
daylight,’ wrote the authors. ‘No warrant was issued, and he wasn’t allowed to
call his wife or lawyer.’
For those who don’t know,
Saibaba is 90 percent physically disabled and needs a wheelchair to move
around. And a district judge, despite scant evidence, did not give him bail.
During his first 14 months in prison, Saibaba’s health deteriorated, his left
hand became paralysed and he had to be taken to hospital 27 times.
‘The vast power granted under
the UAPA [Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act] and the regimes of impunity it
offers have fundamentally remade what it means to disagree with the Indian
state,’ wrote Vijayan and Recchia. ‘The UAPA essentially reversed criminal law
by shifting the burden of proof from the prosecution to the defence and making
it illegal to hold certain political beliefs, especially those that question
the Indian state.’
Tragically, Saibaba joins a long
list of activists and politicians like Binayak Sen, Soni Sori, Gaur
Chakraborty, and Kobad Ghandy, who have been falsely charged under UAPA. But
the authors state that for every activist whose name is remembered, and their
case reported, hundreds disappear unknown.
Suchitra and Francesca talk at
length about the notorious Bhima Koregaon case, where 16 activists, teachers,
intellectuals, university professors, writers, and lawyers were arrested and
charged with arms smuggling, for allegedly helping Maoists, and having a plan to
kill Prime Minister Narendra Modi, apart from waging war against the state.
They include Arun Ferreira,
Sudha Bharadwaj, Varavara Rao, Vernon Gonsalves, Sudhir Dhawale, Mahesh Raut,
Anand Teltumbde, Gautam Navlakha, Hany Babu, Sagar Gorkhe, Ramesh Gaichor,
Jyoti Jagtap, Rona Wilson, Surendra Gadling, Shoma Sen, and Fr. Stan
Swamy.
But the case against them has
been flimsy. As the authors write, ‘First, information asserted without
evidence; second, tampered evidence presented as a fact of complicity. A
forensic report issued by [US-based] Arsenal Computing found that Rona Wilson’s
computer was compromised for over 22 months and the attack was intended for two
reasons: surveillance and planting incriminating documents using Netwire, a
remote malware infrastructure.’
The Delhi riots
The authors also focus on the
six-day Delhi riots that began on February 23, 2020. BJP leader Kapil Mishra
provided the impetus by stating that the police should clear the roads within
three days of protesters against the CAA. Otherwise, he would act.
The riots began soon after.
‘Mobs roamed the streets, unchallenged by the police in the days following the
riots: an inferno unleashed in the heart of the nation’s capital,’ wrote the
authors. ‘The perpetrators dumped bodies and severed limbs into open drains,
and bloated bodies were fished out of the gutter in the aftermath of the
pogrom.’
A list of names had been
published in the book of those who had died. Out of 53 people, 40 are Muslims,
while the rest are Hindus.
In an extraordinary twist, the
police accused those who were the victims of having inflicted the violence.
‘The Delhi police claimed Muslims had targeted their own communities,
properties, and people, killed fellow Muslims, and burnt down mosques to
protest a discriminatory act directed towards their communities,’ said Vijayan
and Recchia. ‘In one instance, the police arrested an imam for burning down the
mosque where he used to preach. He had been the one to file a complaint with
the police.’
One of the accused was Khalid
Saifi. Once, Saifi’s wife, Nargis, took her eldest son to a court hearing. When
the boy saw his father, he reached out to touch his father’s arm. But a
policeman violently pushed the boy away, citing security reasons. The son broke
down. Later, he told his mother, “How can I be a danger to my father?”
Nargis thought, ‘Who is going to
answer this?’
But there is a streak of
sunlight and hope that penetrates this numbing darkness when the authors talk
about ‘a community in resistance’. They write about people who are in the same
struggle to uphold individual and human rights as well as democracy.
And whenever the authors met the
families of political prisoners or former prisoners, there was a long
discussion on the status of other prisoners and their families and their communities.
Inadvertently, Vijayan and Recchia became ‘carriers of information in this
wider network of people, who may or may not have met before, but who are now
intimately connected by a shared destiny.’
And the prisoners were grateful
for the support. From prison, Fr. Swamy (1937-2021) wrote, ‘First of all, I
deeply appreciate the overwhelming solidarity expressed by many people during
these past 100 days behind bars. At times, news of such solidarity has given me
immense strength and courage, especially when the only thing certain in prison
is uncertainty.’
In the last line of the missive,
he said, ‘A caged bird can still sing.’
Once, when Sahba Husain went to
meet her jailed partner, human rights activist Gautam Navlakha, he quoted a
line from Canadian singer Leonard Cohen: ‘There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.’
One of the most moving chapters
is called ‘Small Things’. The authors had asked the families of prisoners and
the prisoners themselves to share objects that were meaningful to them about
their experience in jail. These photos are displayed in the book.
For example, Fr Frazer
Mascarenhas, who was Fr. Swamy’s guardian and official next-of-kin, preserved
the hearing aid that was used by the late activist. There are paintings and
photographs. But the most touching was when Khalid Saifi’s daughter Maryam drew
a card for her father, but the guards would not allow Khalid’s wife Nargis to
show it. So Maryam requested Nargis to draw it on her arm, and they took a
photo.
In another section, there are
poignant letters written by the prisoners to family members, to jail
superintendents, and friends.
This is a heart-breaking book.
Most people are not aware of how bad things become when the state moves against
you when you show dissent. So the authors have to be commended for an
extraordinary achievement. Publisher Westland, through the Context imprint,
deserves plaudits for having the courage to publish it.
Finally, the authors make a
telling statement in the epilogue: ‘The Indian state, with its immense power
and vast resources, was scared of its writers, thinkers, scholars and
activists. Its prisoners stood tall, laughed and sang in the face of
unrelenting assaults.’
(Published in scroll.in)
