Awakening our sensitivity

 

Photos: Pramod Thomas and his family; Pramod's friend, the journalist Jobin Augustine, who passed away in May, 2012. A condolence meeting was held at the Ernakulam Press Club

Journalist Pramod Thomas focuses on the everyday moments of life, as well as the tragedies that afflict society in his book of poems

By Shevlin Sebastian 

Pramod Thomas was my former colleague in The New Indian Express, Kochi. He was and remains an ace business journalist. Today, he works for an UK-based media group. 

But what nobody will realise when you meet him, with his focused, professional attitude, is that he is a sensitive poet. At spare moments, which I am sure, is rare since he has a wife and two daughters, Pramod writes poems. This is his way of battling stress and the lack of meaning in life that afflicts everybody now and then.  

In 2017, he published his first book of poetry, ‘A Shoe Named Revolution’. Now, he has published his second book, ‘Biography of a Couch Potato’. It comes as no surprise that he has dedicated it to his two daughters, Ayaana and Ahaana. 

It is also dedicated to ‘those who find comfort in the quiet moments and beauty in the ordinary; To the ones who see poetry in everyday life — in the sunrise, the rain, a stranger’s smile or a fleeting thought. May these poems be a companion on your journey, offering solace, reflection, and a sense of belonging.’  

When you realise how conflict (Ukraine/Gaza/Lebanon) has been dominating the news for over two years, the first poem, ‘Eulogy of the Unborn’, is about war:

‘Do not stare at me, for I am dead

Don’t cry for me, 

Cry for my child, unborn. 

Her eyes shattered 

In the rubble,   

Only I can see a rainbow,

A colourless one though.’ 

The book comprises 21 poems. 

One poem, ‘Blood Butterfly’, draws inspiration from a 13-year-old girl in Tamil Nadu who tragically lost her life during Cyclone Gaja. Her family forced her to stay alone in a barn because she was having her periods. 

Here is the concluding verse: 

‘While trying to please gods, 

We become less human. 

Forgive us, 

In the name of a zillion unborn. 

Now, we have blood on our hands.’

Pramod dedicated another poem, ‘Echoes of a Lost Spring’, to his journalist friend, Jobin Augustine, 28, who passed away in May, 2012. A sub-editor with the Madhyamam Daily newspaper in Kochi, Jobin fell from a private bus, got crushed under its wheels, and died. He was on his way to his home at Ramapuram.    

The poem, ‘A Poetic Flower’ is dedicated to the Kerala poet, A Ayyappan. Pramod is a fan of his work. Ayyappan was found unconscious on October 21, 2010, in front of a theatre in Thiruvananthapuram. 

The local people informed the police, who took the poet to the government hospital. Nobody, including the police, had recognised him. A bachelor, Ayyappan was 61 when he died. People knew him as the ‘Icon of Anarchism’ of Malayalam poetry.  

Pramod writes: 

‘The street was not deserted

There were a few people,

But none recognised the poet; 

They mistook him for a drunkard, 

Considering him a bad omen.’ 

Pramod concludes the poem by saying: 

‘In a city far away, many awaited the poet,

Eager to honour him for his poems, 

An event was ready to welcome him,

Ears eager to listen to his verses,

But life had other plans.’ 

‘The City of Sins’ focuses on the rape and murder of a 31-year-old trainee doctor at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata on August 9, 2024. 

‘Kolkata, hang your head in shame, 

Retreat to your ugly thoughts, and end yourself. 

How can you raise your head now? 

There is blood on your hands, 

Your dark streets can never be the same again.’ 

At the end of the poem, Pramod states: ‘Sexual violence against women is a widespread problem in India — an average of nearly 90 rapes a day was reported in 2022 across the country.’

In the title poem, ‘Biography of a Couch Potato’, Pramod says: 

‘There is no endgame in this dull drama,

You live the same life every day, year after year. 

When you’re glued to the screen, 

Your comfort zone embraces you,

And there’s no going back.’  

However, the book is not all gloom and doom. 

Pramod writes about love too. 

‘There is no boundary to my love for you;

I am connected to you, 

Like a train to its track, 

A thunder to the cloud. 

And a chalk to the blackboard. 

You are the last drop of my rain, 

The final drop in my blood bank,

The last atom in my body,

The last prisoner in the world’s last prison.’

One gets the feeling his wife Stephena is going to be moved to read this. 

Other poems include dealing with the suffering of a writer who has received rejection, the birth of a child to a gay couple, which is overseen by a lesbian nurse, American Vice President Kamala Harris, wokeism, the Wayanad landslide tragedy, a Filipino woman who donned a mermaid suit and performed in a large aquarium at Kochi, and the biography of a stone.

The poems reveal Pramod’s sensitivity to human suffering and emotional pain. He writes from his heart. And so it affects us who read these poems. It makes us pause in our hectic daily life and activates the sensitive aspects of our being. In short, these poems humanise us.    

‘Couch Potato’ is nominated for the 21st Century Emily Dickinson Award. 

Life on the trains

 

For 57 years, KJ Paul Manvettam has been travelling daily by train from his home in Kuruppanthara to Ernakulam, a distance of 43 kms, and back. He talks about his experiences and also about his activism to double tracks, improve services and ask for new trains

By Shevlin Sebastian

KJ Paul Manvettam gets up every day at 5 a.m. He does not need an alarm. Whatever time he goes to sleep, which is mostly at midnight, he gets up on time every day. He goes through his morning routine of getting ready.

At 6.40 a.m. his wife prepares a breakfast of idli or dosa. Then his son Pritto drives Paul to the station. Pritto is an optometrist. He works at his father’s shop, Polson’s Opticals, in Kochi. He comes later by bus.

Paul has been travelling on trains every day, except Sundays, for 57 years. His journey is from Kuruppanthara to Ernakulam, a distance of 43 kms.

At 7.20 a.m., the Palaruvi Express arrives at the station. It starts at Tuticorin and travels to Palakkad, a distance of 537 kms. Kuruppanthara is the 28th stop. Paul gets into any of four general compartment bogies. Despite the crowd, someone always offers Paul a seat because he is 75 years old.

“The train is punctual 95 percent of the time,” said Paul. “But this is because they have now converted the stretch into double tracks.”

Earlier, the journey from Kuruppanthara to Ernakulam was on a single track. So, the train would have to stop at stations so that other trains on the opposite track could go past. Inevitably, the train was late.

Paul carries a monthly season ticket. In 1967, the price was Rs 18. Now it is Rs 180. “The daily charge for me for going and coming is Rs 6 only,” he said. “And if the discount for senior citizens is re-introduced, it will almost be free.”

Asked whether the scenery had changed from the window over the years, Paul said, “Yes, there were a lot of trees and forests when I started. There were paddy fields where pelicans would use their long beaks to catch worms in the water. The houses were small. I remember one such house, near Mulanthuruthy, which belonged to a senior IAS officer.”

Now, there are a lot of villas where there used to be paddy fields. The birds have vanished. “I wonder whether these people have any guilt about what they have done to the fields,” he said. “Many small hills have become denuded because of the quarrying of mud for house building and levelling of land. I feel sad.”

Asked how fellow passengers have changed over the years, Paul said, “There was a lot of conversation in those days on several topics. People would play cards. It was usually rummy. There was a convivial feeling. It was lively. We had good relationships with each other.”

But nowadays, when people get in, they immediately fixate on their mobile phones. A conversation can only be started when Paul taps them on the shoulder. He said it takes time for people to become friends with each other.

Nowadays everybody can collect information on the mobile phone. “You don’t need to ask anybody whether the train is running late,” he said. “You can check it on the app.”

Despite this, for the past 39 years, Paul has bought the handbook, ‘Indian Railways - Trains at a Glance’. The latest edition of the handbook, from October 2023 to June 2024, is priced at Rs 100 and contains 450 pages. “In the earlier days, everybody would consult it,” said Paul.

Paul closes the shop at 7.30 p.m. He takes the 8 pm train from Nilambur to Kottayam. Paul gets down at Kuruppanthara at 9 pm. When he reaches home, it is 9.30 p.m. He has a bath, followed by dinner. Then he chats with his wife, Annamma, before he goes to sleep. The couple has two boys and a girl.

Railway Activism

Paul came to the attention of many in Kerala when, on January 3, 1997, he and his fellow passengers took out a jeep rally from Chengannur station to Ernakulam. They were demanding the doubling of the railway tracks along the 114 km route from Kayamkulam to Ernakulam.

The group stopped at every station on the route. Many Parliament and Assembly legislators offered their support. The media provided extensive coverage. “It was the first time somebody had launched a campaign on this issue,” said Paul.

It took three years before the Railways gave the nod. In May 2022, the Railways completed the doubling of the entire stretch. It was a wait of 25 years.

For the past several years, at least once every three or six months, Paul, as State President of the All Kerala Railway Users Association meets senior officials, like the Division Railway Manager and the Chief Operations Manager, apart from officials from the Chennai office, at the Divisional Railway Users Consultative Committee meeting at Thiruvananthapuram.

Around 20 people will be present. They will include representatives of merchant associations, disabled associations, chambers of commerce and passenger associations. All of them offer suggestions on ways to improve the railway’s efficiency. Besides that, Paul meets officials at the Ernakulam Junction railway station.

A year ago, he asked officials whether the newly launched Vande Bharat train could have its ‘crossing’ at Mulanthuruthy (18 kms from Kochi) shifted to Tripunithura (10 kms from Kochi).

The benefit, he said, is that a lot of commuters can get down at Tripunithura. “From there, they can get buses and metro trains to various destinations,” said Paul. The officials politely said they would look into it.

“It is difficult for the Railways to make changes quickly,” said Paul. “A passenger thinks, ‘Why should it be hard?’ But the Railways are dealing with over 300 trains at a time. If it can be implemented easily, they will do it. No official wants to cause problems for the public. I am sure of that.”

Paul also successfully campaigned, with the help of Parliament legislators from Kerala, for the Palaruvi Express to have stops at Ettumanoor and Angamaly. Earlier, he had campaigned for a stop at his hometown of Kuruppanthara and Vaikom.

“I have always been polite in my requests,” he said. “I never raise my voice. And I have never lost my cool. As a result, the officials are receptive to my suggestions. I would like to add that the requests should be reasonable.”

People have complained about the bogies being overcrowded.

“Yes, I agree. Because train travel is the cheapest, there are so many passengers,” said Paul. “There is a limit for the Railways to increase bogies. The platforms cannot accommodate the extra bogies. They added four additional bogies to the Palaruvi Express. Still, there is no place to sit.”

Paul campaigned for an 8 pm train from Ernakulam to Kottayam for many commuters. This happened on July 1, 1995.

In early 2000, when Union Railway Minister Bangaru Laxman came to the Ernakulam Junction railway station for an event, Paul presented a memorandum requesting the doubling of tracks from Ernakulam to Tripunithura, as a beginning. Also present were the General and Divisional Manager.

When Bangaru asked Paul about the benefits of doubling only 10 kms, Paul said, “Sir, because Tripunithura is a single line, many trains, including goods trains and oil tankers, get held up.”

Bangaru conferred with the senior officials. They all agreed that trains have experienced delays. Immediately, he wrote a special note recommending it. They also submitted a petition to senior BJP leader O Rajagopal about this. In 2001, Rajagopal became the Minister of State for the Railways. Immediately, he campaigned to set aside money in the budget to begin work on track doubling.

The rest is history.

Asked about the character of Malayali passengers, Paul said, “They are comfortable, tolerant and accept difficulties. But there is a minority, who complain through their social media posts about deficiencies. They end up influencing the other passengers.”

But Paul said the people know the railways are the best and cheapest way to travel, especially for elderly and disabled people.

“Bus travel is so cramped,” said Paul. “You can get stuck in traffic jams. You can’t move around. And there is no possibility of using a washroom unless the bus stops somewhere. And the ticket charge can be as high as Rs 80. As for the train, it is Rs 3. Also, on the train, you can eat comfortably. Many people bring their breakfast in tiffins and have it on the train. It is just like being at home.”

(An edited version was published in The Sunday Magazine, The New Indian Express, South India and Delhi)

How history has shaped the Indian mind

 

Rahul Bhatia’s book, ‘The Identity Project — The Unmaking Of a Democracy’ through narrative, anecdote, research and on-the-spot reporting explains why India is the way it is today

By Shevlin Sebastian

In the book’s introduction, author Rahul Bhatia talks about an aunt’s partner who told him to be careful about Muslims. ‘They don’t see themselves as Indians,’ the man said. “Jaat hi alag hai (they are made of something different).” His aunt butted in, “You don’t know. They’re savages. I’ve seen what they are capable of.” Two friends told Rahul about the howling of the ‘mozzies’ minarets near their home.

Disturbed, Bhatia decided to investigate what had happened. He did six years of research and met all kinds of people. The result is a memorable 449-page book, ‘The Identity Project — The unmaking of a democracy’.

The book begins with a protest by the faculty and teachers of the Jamia Millia Islamia University. It was against the Citizenship Amendment Act. Parliament passed this act on December 11, 2019.

The police entered the old library at the Ibn Sina block. Then they began wielding their plastic sticks. ‘Squeezed in the crowd [student] Minhajuddin made for the exit,’ wrote Bhatia. ‘As Minhajuddin went by, he felt a whip and a burning pain across his left eye that almost made him faint. Although he did not know it then, the attack rendered his eye useless. It may have been his beard, he said later, that got the police’s attention. He wore it long then.’

Bhatia describes the students’ reaction to the CAA at Mumbai and Ambedkar University in Delhi. Most students were fearful. ‘They knew the police were using new technologies to identify dissenters,’ said Bhatia. ‘They had seen unidentified drones flying over protests, taking pictures, picking out dissenters and saw police point cameras at crowds. Their data was being transmitted to an unknown location, for unknown purposes.’ No surprises then that someone had scribbled, ‘Hindutva Gestapo everywhere.’

Bhatia wrote about the Shaheen Bagh protests. And the 2020 Delhi riots. At the police station at Gokulpuri, a photographer, Meherban asked Bhatia to walk from the building to a few Muslim-owned body parts and tyre repair shops. It took 91 steps.

Meherban said Hindu gangs set the shops on fire in February 2020. ‘It had been a slow-burning, with men returning in waves to set fire to one more shop, one more vehicle, one more tyre,’ recalled Meherban. ‘Despite the calls, no police had traversed the ninety-one steps.’

And in a chapter called Testimony, a mob gathers in front of a lane, shouting ‘Jai Shri Ram’ slogans. They also shouted hateful slogans, like ‘Kill the mullahs’, ‘Make the circumscribed run away’ and ‘Burn down their houses’. Then they moved into the lane and attacked all the Muslim houses.

Nisar, who built a successful business in textiles over decades, lost everything in one night.

But there was apathy everywhere for their suffering. Grievously injured Muslims would arrive at the Lok Nayak government hospital. The woman at the admissions desk said, “Didn’t you think before firing bullets and throwing stones? Do you have no shame?”

And when the people accompanying the injured said, “Does that mean you were there? You’re sitting in a hospital and accusing him of doing those things. So you were there too?”

But the woman did not budge. And the patients had to be taken elsewhere.

Despite pressure and threats, Nisar decided to testify against those who had pillaged and burnt his home. He had to attend the case at a sessions court in the Karkardooma court complex in East Delhi. Bhatia attended it and wrote a brilliant on-the-spot report about what happens inside a court. You will burst out laughing and after that pull your hair in frustration too. Finally, you will spread your hands out in exasperation as you watch the judge at work. It seems like things are moving ahead, but that is an illusion. Owing to endless delays and postponements, it took two years for Nisar to testify for the first time in front of the judge. No wonder people say the process is torture.

In the next section, called A New Country, the author traces the rise of the Arya Samaj in the 1850s. Dayanand Saraswati, a philosopher and preacher (1824-83), was the founder. Dayanand railed against the bloated idol worship of Hinduism. He spoke against child marriage and widow remarriage. And it was Dayanand who propagated the protection of the cow through a slim book, ‘Gokarunanidhi — Ocean of Mercy for the Cow’. This concept caught fire. The meetings on cow protection were attended by 5000 people. Soon, cow protection societies sprung up.

There was strife between Hindus and Muslims about it. In May 1894, the Allahabad-based newspaper, the ‘Pioneer’, reported that, for generations, the rival sects (Hindus and Muslims) had lived in harmony. But now the strain was showing. Sometimes, there was violence instigated by the cow protection societies.

‘Large numbers of Hindus armed with sticks and knives attacked smaller groups of Muslims with guns,’ wrote Bhatia. In 1882, there was a full-fledged riot in Salem. Many Muslim homes were burnt, according to the ‘Pioneer’. The mob razed a mosque. Along with the Arya Samaj, the Hindu Maha Sabha came into being in 1915.

In later years, a prominent Mahasabha official was a cataract surgeon named Balakrishna Sheoram Moonje. He worshipped Italy’s leader Benito Mussolini. Moonje wanted to set up a military school, like the way Mussolini had done in Italy. In the paperwork for the school, which was set up in 1937, Moonje stated that if the school is dissolved, the assets should go to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). A Marathi-speaking Brahmin, Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, had set up the RSS in 1925.

Bhatia traces the career of Hedgewar and comes up with interesting statistics. Between February 1926 and August 1927, there were 52 riots. Seventeen riots occurred because of processions and music played outside places of worship. Total dead: 200. Injured: 1700.

In the riots in Calcutta, from April to May 1920, 113 died, and the injured were 1070. ‘Moonje and other stalwarts of the movements to unite Hindus travelled to Calcutta shortly after the unrest had subsided,’ wrote Bhatia. ‘The injured had barely healed, and tempers barely cooled, when Moonje delivered an incendiary speech about the ongoing “civil war” between Hindus and Muslims.’

When Bhatia described the chaos and the bloody riots after the partition of India in 1947, he quoted Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru: ‘There is a limit to killing and brutality and that limit has been passed during these days in North India. A people who indulge in this kind of thing not only brutalise themselves but poison the environment…individual attacks continue in odd places by the kind of persons who are normally quiet and peaceful. Little children are butchered in the streets. The houses in many parts of Delhi are still full of corpses. These corpses are being discovered as people go inside and find dead bodies which have been lying there for many days.’

Later, Nehru stated that the RSS and Sikhs mostly fomented this organised violence.

Other subjects include the experiences of Partha Banerjee, who was a loyal RSS worker. However, he left the organisation in 1981. Banerjee wrote a book called ‘In the Belly of The Beast: The Hindu Supremacist RSS and the BJP in India, An Insider’s View’.

He told Bhatia that the RSS foot soldiers had ‘sub-par intelligence. Ninety to ninety-five percent of its members were practically brainless idiots. They dumb you down so that you are not allowed to think, question or challenge. You just blindly follow directives from leaders.’

Bhatia noted that in the RSS magazine, ‘Organiser’, a surgeon, wrote that if a woman had a contraceptive pill, she would grow a beard. ‘An opinion held in 1949 was likely to be held in the year 2023,’ wrote Bhatia.

Bhatia also wrote about the President of the Bharatiya Janata Party Lal Krishna Advani’s Rath Yatra in September 1990. The aim: to build a temple where the Babri Masjid stood. It was believed to be Lord Rama’s original birthplace. One of the rallying cries was: ‘Just one more push, break the Babri mosque’.

As the yatra proceeded from the Somnath Temple in Gujarat, deaths began occurring owing to inflamed rhetoric. On October 27, 52 were killed in Jaipur. On October 29, 88 died in Bijnor, Rampur, Lucknow, Howrah and Ranchi. By October 30, the death toll reached 67 in Colonelganj and Hyderabad.

And the story went on….

This book will shake you up. It is a must-read. The author writes it in a straightforward manner. So, it is easy to read. People will get an idea of how India is today, thanks to events that took place during the past 150 years. The need to know the past is imperative.

As Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana said, in his most famous and oft-repeated aphorism, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

(Published in kitaab.org)

‘How Long Can the Moon Be Caged?’ by Suchitra Vijayan and Francesca Recchia is an examination of how the Indian state stifles dissent

 

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)