Binayak Sen and Rakesh Dixit

A public meeting was organized on January 1 to express solidarity with jailed human right activist Dr Binayak Sen at Yaadgar-E-Shahjehani, the public park in Bhopal made famous by Abdul Jabbar’s indomitable organization of gas tragedy victims-- the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sangthan-- through its regular meetings over the last two decades.
I was standing at the main entrance of the park trying to figure out fiery speech by a tribal activist in his West Nimar dialect. Abdul Jabbar and senior journalist LS Herdenia saw me from near the dais and beckoned to come. I reached there and quietly sat on a chair.
As I looked around, a strange sensation ran through me. I found myself surrounded by activists of various peoples’ organizations with banners and posters, condemning life term to Binayak Sen by a judge in Raipur. The case is too well known to reiterate here.
Some of the activists present there such as Madhuri, Silvi, Sathyu and Sunil are well known. But most others were very ordinary, poor people fighting against governments to ensure a dignified life for themselves and their communities. I felt myself small before them.
Overwhelmed by empathy for the gathered activists, I imagined myself being asked by Abdul Jabbar to make a speech. How will I begin? I started framing sentences in mind. The speech began with “Dear comrades” though suddenly it occurred that this form of address is rather clichéd. Never mind, I told myself and proceeded. “My name is Rakesh Dixit. I am a journalist by profession and a leftist ideologically”.
Beyond that, the mind got clogged with too many ideas. And then the mind shifted to the tribal speaker who was still on the mike, undaunted by the fact that hardly two percent among the people gathered might be following his speech.
The tribal’s courage was inspiring and made me recall Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh’s famous poetry—O Mere Adarshwadi Man, O Mere Siddhantvadi Man….. .
The poetry is a loud but genuine self-pity of the poet over the hypocrisy of having to genuflect before the rotting, anti-people system with all the boasting about living with scruples and idealism. This is a quintessential bourgeois feeling of helplessness in the face of dehumanizing but mighty system.
Now I understood what that strange sensation was that had run through me when I saw the crowd while sitting on the chair barely five minutes ago. Now I realized why too many ideas had clogged my mind when I was imagining a speech.
Such occasions jolt me to ponder what I had intended to do in life when young and what have I become.
Of course, I am honest to my family, to my profession, to my ideology and, most important, to my conscience. But is that enough? Is it too late to join the peoples’ movement upfront ?
On that day I felt Binayak Sen’s incarceration for ridiculously flimsy charges should make every conscientious person to think where the democracy in India is headed. Legislature, executives, judiciary and the press—all four pillars of democracy seem to have combined to conspire against the peoples fighting for the rights of the dispossessed.