The snowballing global campaign for the release of Dr. Binayak Sen, a public campaigner for the human rights of the tribal population of the newly (2000) carved out state of Chhattisgarh in eastern India who has been held in the Raipur Central Jail on trumped up charges for over a year, is a telling comment on the ease with which state governments violate basic human and fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution of India. A qualified paediatrician widely respected and known as the region’s ‘barefoot doctor’ for ministering the state’s desperately poor tribals dispossessed of their lands and forest habitats by ruthless mining and timber mafias operating hand-in-glove with the state’s BJP government, Sen’s prolonged incarceration has attracted protest from 22 Nobel laureates and an equal number of British MPs apart from several human rights activists in India. They are pressing for his release so that he can travel to New York on May 29 to receive the Jonathan Mann award of the Global Health Council.
It’s a sad commentary on the concern for human rights in contemporary Indian society that even high profile activists can be arbitrarily locked up by state governments in the country’s hell-hole insanitary jails for months on end without protest from the community. In this particular case it was the vigilance and activism of foreign, offshore human rights groups which has belatedly focused the attention of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) on Dr. Sen’s imprisonment under constitutionally suspect legislation which PUCL (of which ironically Sen is a vice president) should have challenged in the courts a year ago.
But the plain truth is that despite its resonant title, PUCL is a moribund organisation bereft of a corpus fund or permanent secretariat. Typically, it operates in fits and starts on the whims and fancies of honorary officials. Although there are thousands — perhaps millions — of citizens ready and willing to contribute towards an endowment corpus of PUCL which would enable it to speedily fight human rights violation cases, grandly titled PUCL activists lack the minimal organisational capability to solicit ready contributions in an organised fashion.
Secondly, the prolonged incarceration of Dr. Sen in Raipur for the ‘sin’ of speaking up for the deliberately impoverished and ignorant tribals of Chhattisgarh, is a reflection of the quality and purposes of people entering the legislative assemblies of India’s state governments. As the recently held Karnataka state assembly elections have made plainly manifest, 21st century India’s democratic institutions — particularly state legislative assemblies — have transformed into the happy hunting grounds of the nouveaux riche and real estate developers who have little time or patience with the fundamental rights of rural and tribal folk — or their spokespersons. A massive confrontation between this neo-rich class of land-grabbers and developers and the liberal intelligentsia is in the offing. Constitutional and human rights organisations need to prepare intelligently and organise for this imminent clash of ideologies.