Free Binayak Sen! Or pretend we are still a democracy.

This is not a political blog. I do have political views but i do not use this blog for those. This blog was supposed to be about letting the funk flow. The small things, the simple things. But there are somethings that cannot be ignored. Binayak Sen is not Jessica Lall. He is not glamorous. Bollywood celebrities have not spoken out for him. (Although Konkona Sharma did tweet about it if that counts) His case is set in Chattisgharh, not in one of the "cool" metros. And he is not a socialite. But I'll telll you what he is. Binayak Sen is a social worker who could have gone towards a succesful and prosperous career after finishing his education from Christian Medical College, Vellore.

But instead, Binayak dedicated himself to social service and became a human rights and health activist.He and his wife played key roles in the foundation of the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha's Shaheed Hospital, which is an interesting model in community healthcare. The hospital owned and operated by a workers' organization. The couple also run a community-based NGO called Rupantar.He is also an advisor to Jan Swasthya Sahyog, a health care organization.

But this is not why Binayak has made himself an enemy of the state. Sure, the mainstream might find it amusing that a man should sacrifice everything for the greater good of the people, but surely they cannot want to crucify him for that. Granted, they had a whole other reason for that.

That reason is the PUCL- People's Union for Civil Liberties. As national vice president and Chattisgarh general secretary of the PUCL, Binayak had stepped on quite a few toes. Big ugly ones. He was involved in various investigations against human rights violations in anti-Naxalite operations. He especially spoke up against the vigilante terrorism of the Salwa Judum, an anti-naxalite group backed by the state that engages in horrific atrocities on tribals with even a vague link to Naxalities. And sometimes even that vague link is not needed. Women have been raped, children have been killed and houses have been burnt. Binayak Sen spoke out against that.

The case of sedition for which Binayak was arrested in 2007 is a joke at best. He has been accused because he was accused of being a courier between Narayan Sanyal, a jailed naxalite and businessmen Piyush Guha, who has been accused of having links with Naxalites. And oh yeah, he visited Narayan Sanyal 33 times. Of course these visits were all approved by the police and he was there in his capacity as a doctor. None of that matters ofcourse. The evidence against Binayak is even more ludicrous than the accusations against him. The "incriminating" documents that the authorities found include Das Kapital, communist literature and some articles on the Naxalite movement. Wow. That evidence is rock solid. Hey I know someone who has a copy of Mein Kampf. Can i report him as a genocidal Nazi?

On christmas eve, Binayak Sen has been sentenced to life imprisonment. This is a shame. I am not a political person but the Naxalites cannot all be killed. Movements like this need rehabilitaion. But who will rehabilitate them if social workers like Binayak Sen are singled out for their courage and convictions and then brutally crushed? Amnesty International has expressed solidarity with Binayak Sen. As have intellectuals across the globe from Ramchandra Guha to Noam Chomsky. I would finally like to end with a quote by Noam Chomsky that simply articulates what we have all been thinking.

Noam Chomsky: Dr Sen's arrest is clearly an attempt to intimidate PUCL and other democratic voices that have been speaking out against human rights violations in the state.

Don't we always brag about how we are so much better than China and Pakistan when it comes to an idea of democracy and freedom of expression? Can we really really cling to that conviction anymore?