History will remember that on the former Prime Minister’s watch, the rights of activists and protesters were imperilled using methods that have been scaled up by the Indian State to stifle dissent
Under Manmohan Singh, the State’s claws were sharpened and bared. File Pic/PTI
Media outlets publishing the “first rough draft of history,” authored by journalists, retired officials and academics, have been extraordinarily kind in estimating the legacy of late Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Their lavish praise of Singh conveys the impression that his tenure, between 2004 and 2014, was without a blemish. This might be ascribed to the Indian tradition of not speaking ill of the dead, or to the nostalgia for the Manmohan era when the national life was calmer, more harmonious than now, or to the media’s gratitude for the man, whom they criticised without facing retribution.
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Yet, in later years, when historians write about the modern Indian State’s evolution into a behemoth that crushed, without mercy, the rights of citizens, they would apportion the blame for it to Singh as well. They will puzzle over why his government, at its inception in 2004, repealed the Prevention of Terrorism Act, 2002—and yet, in the same year, amended the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA), equipping the State with an even deadlier instrument for tormenting dissenters. They will note how a countrywide witch-hunt was triggered by Singh’s statement in 2005—that the Maoists were “India’s greatest internal security threat.”
Activist Arun Ferreira, in his book Colours of the Cage, says Singh’s statement was a signal to the State to indiscriminately arrest or encounter or disappear Ambedkarites and activists broadly labelled Left. In Colours, Ferreira provides a graphic account of the mind-numbing torture he suffered during his five years of incarceration under the UAPA. Tossed into the prison for years, under the same Act, were also Vernon Gonsalves, Sudhir Dhawale, Ramesh Gaichor and Sagar Gorkhe.
I take their names among the many who experienced the State’s sharp edge only because the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Maharashtra government incarcerated them yet again in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon case. Once again, the five were booked under the UAPA, which the Singh government had amended in 2008 and 2013, further enhancing the draconian features that were earlier incorporated in 2004.
These amendments expanded the definition of a terrorist act to include any act “likely to strike terror in the people…” This means even a protest or strike can be construed as terrorism, that too, even before it strikes terror in people. The State could get the period of filing a charge sheet extended to 180 days, from the customary 90 days, and keep the accused in jail until then.
After 2008, the presumption that an accused is innocent unless proven guilty was done away with in certain circumstances. Worse, the court could deny bail on the grounds that the charges against the accused in its opinion are “prima facie true.” This is both absurd and oppressive as at the bail stage, witnesses are not cross-examined nor evidence tested. It is because of this provision that UAPA detainees languish in jail for years, waiting for their trial to begin.
The Singh government was also party to the Salwa Judum, a vigilant movement that the Chhattisgarh government launched against the Maoists in Dantewada district. Surrendered Maoists, illiterate Adivasis and even minors were appointed as Special Police Officers and pressed into counter-insurgency operations. They would, between 2005 and 2007, raid villages, brutalise the residents and kill suspected Maoist sympathisers. Villages were burnt down to shepherd their residents into government camps. Hundreds were killed and scores of women raped.
On a petition of academic Nandini Sundar and others, the Supreme Court outlawed the Salwa Judum, remarking that Joseph Conrad’s description, in his novel Heart of Darkness, of Evil running amuck applied to Chhattisgarh. The judges expressed their “deepest dismay” over the Singh government’s role in the Salwa Judum. They said they had no confidence that it intended to “mitigate a vile social situation that it has, willy-nilly, played an important role” in creating. Their observations exposed as mere subterfuge the Centre’s attempt to blame the Salwa Judum on Chhattisgarh.
Then, in 2011-2012, Singh tacitly endorsed the Tamil Nadu government’s suppression of the popular protest against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant. Apart from disrupting peaceful protests, the police booked as many as 8,956 people in Idinthakarai and the adjacent Kudankulam villages for sedition. As the revulsion against the punitive measure grew, Singh accused the United States-based NGOs of funding the protests. The licences of three NGOs, issued under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, were cancelled, a method the Modi government has scaled up to disable a large segment of civil society groups.
When the Chhattisgarh police arrested civil rights activist Binayak Sen, in 2007, for being in league with the Maoists, he became to the Manmohan era what Umar Khalid is today. Believing he had been arrested at the behest of Central agencies, rights activists sought to persuade the Singh government to intercede on Sen’s behalf but were stonewalled.
Many blame then Home Minister P Chidambaram for vesting extraordinary powers in the State that turned it into a monster. But then, what kind of prime minister lets citizens’ rights be imperilled than rein in his home minister? Under Singh, for sure, the State’s claws were sharpened and bared, and that continues to frighten and hurt dissenters.
The writer is a senior journalist and author of Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste
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