Binayak Sen

Excerpts -

"Sen highlighted and publicised the Malik Makbuja system. It was a form of corruption by which tribals have for several years been scammed out of valuable timber on their land by colluding traders and politicians. He later lifted the lid off Salwa Judum (‘Purification Hunt’, in the local Gondi dialect), which has since 2005, through state sponsorship, destroyed villages in south Chhattisgarh and forcibly resettled tens of thousands into concentration camp-like horrors to deny Maoists shelter, recruits and network. Exceeding the energy of the Maoist rebels they accuse of brutality, police, paramilitary and Salwa Judum recruits have in concert freely killed unarmed men, women and children."

"As the state fought back with overkill, Sen suggested that the Salwa Judum could have been created to help business interests. He named the Tata, Essar and Jindal business houses, among others. The government, he suggested, hadn’t safeguarded the interests of tribal and forest dwellers before trading their futures for Rs 17,000 crore in memoranda signed with businesses from home and abroad to mine iron ore and diamonds, and to set up iron and steel and power plants."


"Four years ago, on a cold February morning outside a court in Raipur, a man with gentle eyes and a long grey beard had pressed his face through the iron grill of a jail van and spoken urgently as I stood outside on my toes, straining to hear him. Gun-toting commandos surrounded the van. It had not been easy to push past them to get face time. No one had really heard of Binayak Sen then. It was the first time someone from the national media had come listening. There were many things Sen could have pleaded through that window. He had already been in jail for nine months. He could have urged one to talk up his story in Delhi’s power circles, urged one to start a campaign for him. But, astonishingly, Sen’s urgencies had lain elsewhere.
“You have to go back and write about how we are creating two categories of human beings in this country,” he had said, as the commandos tried to nudge us out of range. “You have to write about the famine and malnutrition rampant everywhere. We are living out the Malthusian theory…”

Activist and a Doctor
Falsely accused by Govt. for sedition
life-term imprisonment
later released in April 2011

This did not sound like a man who was a dire national security threat. But Sen had been put in jail for “waging war against the nation” and it took another year and more for him to get bail from the Supreme Court. The freedom was shortlived. On 25 December 2010, a trial court convicted him and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Sen was re-arrested. Last week, the Chhattisgarh High Court refused to suspend the sentence and denied him bail again. He may not have waged war against the nation, it said, but he stood guilty of sedition: Why had he raised his voice against the State?"

"SOME STORIES need to be retold. Binayak Sen’s is one of them, for it asks uneasy questions about our society, governance, even ourselves. In his aptly titled The Curious Case of Binayak Sen, Dilip D’Souza looks at the farce that is the sedition case against Sen for his alleged interaction with Maoists. He presents facts that throw light on the rot that exists at the core of the system.

In the very first chapter, D’Souza unapologetically explains that he is not attempting a biography. He cleverly builds a context through which Sen must be viewed before he is pronounced a hero, offering details like why Sen chose medicine, the various speeches and presentations he made and what he believed in as a doctor.

Examining the sedition case, D’Souza puts forth plain facts — emails, chargesheets and witness accounts to illustrate the absurdity of the charge made against Sen. For instance, D’Souza successfully punctures the Indian Social Institute and Chhattisgarh Police’s claims that there was no medical equipment in Sen’s house. These details, though intriguing, will be familiar to those who have followed the case closely. But then the truth lies in the details.

For D’Souza, Sen is the reference point for what he identifies as the two major setbacks for civil society. First, he mourns the loss of the desire for nation-building that informed the worldview of independent India’s first generation. Second, he is critical of the apathy of the urban middle-class towards social issues. For instance, no young doctor has volunteered to shoulder Sen or his colleague Saibal Jana’s responsibilities at their Shahid Hospital in Dalli-Rajhara.

I remember meeting the Sen family two years ago in Raipur when Binayak was sentenced. The family was calm, except for Dipankar, Sen’s Belgium-based brother, who wanted to take his nieces and sister-in-law out of the country. Each time, Dipankar made an offer, Sen’s wife Ilina turned it down. His family’s resilience and grace under pressure reflected Binayak’s own.

The Supreme Court granted bail to him in 2011. Far from being disillusioned, Sen, the man labelled a Maoist, continues with his humanitarian work. D’Souza’s book pays tribute to a man undeterred by a government’s blatant bullying."

Tehelka Interview - here
Open Magazine - The SIN of Binayak Sen - here