All men must die, but death can vary in its significance. The ancient Chinese writer Szuma Chien said, “Though death befalls all men alike, it may be weightier than Mount Tai or lighter than a feather.” To die for the people is weightier than Mount Tai, but to work for the fascists and die for the exploiters and oppressors is lighter than a feather.
–Mao Tse-tung
Scene 1:
A 57-year old’s final journey is accompanied by a sea of comrades as his body is donated to a hospital as per his last wishes to help medical students. The Indian state had incarcerated him for almost a decade in abysmal jail conditions leading to his untimely demise barely 7 months after his acquittal. While his mortal remains were brought to the Martyr’s memorial near the Telangana assembly for his family and comrades to pay their last respect, the Telangana police barged in demanding to be shown permission for the gathering. In death too, he remained a thorn in the flesh for the state.
Scene 2:
An octogenarian capitalist dies of natural causes at a private hospital leaving behind billions of blood money worth of assets. His death is mourned by many, from the PM to the CMs but probably not by the underpaid, overworked factory workers employed by his company. Perhaps the Adivasis displaced by his company and its various ventures too have similar feelings. He is given a ceremonial guard of honour by the Mumbai Police before cremation as hundreds of people including a horde of top politicians pay him a last visit exemplifying the high stature he held within the state.
Such has been the contrasting roles and responses of the Indian state with respect
to these two lives and recent deaths- that of the revolutionary intellectual Com. GN Saibaba and the industrialist Ratan Tata. One was a life dedicated towards building a more just society for the vast masses, while the other was spent on crafting more and more devious ways to loot people, labour, and natural resources. The latter did not merely work for the fascists, rather he was an equal party to the state that was turning fascist with the intensifying crisis of moribund capitalism. The wrath of the state came down on the former as he lived a life dedicated to exposing the deeply unequal society capitalist exploitation leaves in its wake.
As comrade Lenin said, the state is a product of the fact that in society classes exist with their conflicting class interests. Its role is to keep these conflicts in check through the use of a hundred arms in the forms of the police, army, judiciary etc. In the present case of a parliamentary democracy, the façade of an institution that upholds people’s collective will, disguises the true intents of the state guided by ruling class interests. In a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, democracy too exists only for the bourgeoisie, with the laws framed in a manner to facilitate perpetuation of their class rule.
In this regard it is important to scrutinise the law that was used to wrongfully jail Prof. GN Saibaba and other activists on charges of conspiring to wage war against the state as part of a banned outfit and to also note the hundreds of legal/semi-legal provisions that Ratan Tata himself helped formulate to increase ‘ease of business’ (read ‘ease of exploitation’) on the Indian soil.
Unlawful Activities Prevention Act or UAPA is one of the many draconian laws that turns the process into punishment. Prof. Saibaba, Pandu Narote, Fr. Stan Swamy, and many others were and continue to be victims of it. This act is a part of the sinister neoliberal strategy of not just intensifying economic assault, but also ‘safeguarding’ national economic security by branding individuals as terrorists even if clear connections to terrorist act(s) are absent. Such were the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a Paris-based international watchdog that functions in tandem with the International Monetary Fund. In the process of becoming a member-nation of the FATF, the existing UAPA was amended to make it mightier by the Congress. No wonder, one of the staunchest critics of Operation Green Hunt, a tool to facilitate corporate plunder, had to fall prey to it. It must be noted that despite the long jail-term, all had to be acquitted by this very structure on grounds of ‘vague allegations’. But who could ever have compensated the ten years he and his close ones lost?
On the other hand, the legal manoeuvres facilitating the Tata empire will fill an encyclopaedia. An instance of the Tatas being a huge benefactor of neoliberal reforms may help. In 2005, business houses from USA and India set up the US-India CEO Forum. Co-chaired by Ratan Tata, the Forum made several recommendations to craft new laws, and establish policy to make India more investor-friendly, pushing for weaker labour laws, facilitation of Special Economic Zones (where labour laws go down the drain), increased focus on postgraduate education, relaxing liability laws, and expediting resolution of disputes especially following events such as the Bhopal disaster. Was it any wonder that he got a ‘tata’ with a 21-gun salute?
As the death heavier than Mount Tai weighs down on the conscience of democratic activists, it is important to continue the work that GN Saibaba did with his life. The struggle for a true democracy did not start with him, nor will it end with him. Let this be a moment to strengthen the resolve to fight against this moribund system till its collapse.
Repeal UAPA! Release All Political Prisoners!
