Then They Came for Me
On 24th Dec 2010 when a central Indian court handed down a life-sentence to human-rights activist and physician, Dr. Binayak Sen, it was a vicious strike by the power of a state against a threat it defines and perceives. That threat, the Indian state says, is posed by left-wing insurgents, who are referred to as Maoists or Naxalites. The latter term derives from the place, Naxalbari, of an armed peasant uprising in the eastern state of West Bengal in 1969 which spawned a variety of left-wing resistance movements. Dr. Sen was accused of being a courier between a known Maoist ideologue in jail and other Maoists outside.
Dr. Sen's story as a talented doctor out of a prestigious medical school in India choosing to work among the tribals in remote central India instead of a lucrative city-based career is the stuff of legend. His work is substantive, let us have no doubt about it: he established a hospital for mine workers which was subsequently run by them; he set up a weekly clinic in a village plagued by malaria and malnutrition; he initiated the community based health worker programme across the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh which became the model for such community health workers throughout India.
It was in the course of his work in Chattisgarh that Sen became aware of the state government's vigilante army called the Salwa Judum which was ostensibly to fight the Maoists but which ended up creating havoc amongst the tribals. Dr. Sen raised his voice against the injustices perpetrated by Salwa Judum, an outfit the government never acknowledged it had raised and supported. The govt. chose to characterize it as a spontaneous people's movement
Such criticism of the government's efforts was met with obvious displeasure. He was arrested in 2007 on charges of colluding with the Maoists but none of those charges could be proven against him in two years when he was finally released on bail in 2009, after intense domestic and international pressure.
The prosecution, acting on behalf of the Chattisgarh government, had obviously not rested since he was released. They tirelessly tried to make the scant evidence they had to work in their favor, even though at every stage they could hardly hold their story together.
In the end, the judge seems to have been convinced with whatever case they presented and announced a life-imprisonment for the 60-year old Sen along with two others accused. It is important to note that extensive reference was made in the judgment to a law called the Chattisgarh Special Public Security Act (CSPSA), an all-powerful, all encompassing law much like the Patriot Act, which according to the civil-rights body Peoples Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR), "broadens the ambit of what is deemed 'unlawful'."
It is indeed a condemnable fact that despite flimsy evidence and no direct involvement of Dr. Sen in any identifiable anti-state activity, he was handed the severe sentence of life-imprisonment. This especially in an environment of rampant corruption among the ruling elite in India which implicates almost every branch of the state. One is constrained to ask: who is the guilty party then, robbing the people's money with impunity, such that, in the end, there is no money to provide basic healthcare services in rural India? And one also has to ask: if one does not air disaffection with such a state, then how does one seek redress? But as it seems from Dr. Sen's case and those of many others like him, such expression of disaffection with the state is a crime. They will come for you -- and get you.
For more information and to learn how you can help Dr. Sen, go to http://www.binayaksen.net/ .
Umang Kumar is a volunteer with the Association for India's Development.
