[Reader-list] Lawrence Liang- Tribute to K. Balagopal

[siddharth narrain]

*The Passing away of a Hero: Goodbye Balagopal*

A sense of irony is the only way for me to describe how I felt when I heard
about Balagopal’s death. Ordinary people leading ordinary lives die of heart
attacks. And despite the simplicity with which he led his life and
interacted with people, every time one met Balagopal or heard him you
always  knew you were in the presence of someone extraordinary. Whenever he
left after any meeting, Balagopal left you a little scared about whether you
would ever see him again. As a result of the position that he took- against
the violence of the state as well as the violence of the Maoists, you were
always left with the lurching fear that any point of time, you would be
given the news that Balagopal had been killed in an encounter.

At the same time it is perhaps not surprising that despite living a life
which was scripted towards a violent death, it was only appropriate that his
death transcended any partisan act of violence. Film maker Deepa Dhanraj
captures the essence of Balagopal when she describes him as a ‘moral force’
whose authority emerged from the integrity with which he led his life and
the courage with which he stood by his belief. If Balagopal was a regular
anti violent activist or a pacifist, then there would have been nothing
surprising about his stance on violence, and to argue for the importance of
non violence would hardly be an act of courage. But for someone who had
spent a better part of his life in struggles, and in battles against the
impunity of the state, the commitment to an ethical position on violence
becomes a deeply ethical choice of bravery.

In an ironic way Balagaopal could be seen as a true inheritor of the
Gandhian legacy, of leading a particular kind of life, and through such a
life aspiring to change the world around you. In an interview with Janam
Saxi, Balagopal once stated  “The Indian constitution has had a habit, right
from its inception, to destroy democratic values completely in practice
without any recourse to laws. This has grown very much recently. The
apparatus of the police is the chief machinery for this destruction. The
duty to safeguard democratic values from these limitations is a very
important duty……. While performing this duty it is of no use to as the
question in this form: is there or is there not at least a bourgeoisie type
of democracy”. I can think of very few who followed this duty with the same
kind of clarity, conviction and humility as Balagopal did.

The first time that  I met and heard Balagopal was in a workshop organized
by PUCL in Chennai. I was a young student, and like many young students,
whether of the revolutionary or the conservative variety, my main attribute
was a nonchalant cynicism. Curiously Balagopal began by speaking of his
initial love for mathematics. He did his bachelors, his masters a Phd and
even a post doctorate in mathematics, and spoke with immense fondness of his
obsession with abstraction. He then moved on to his encounter with various
peoples movements and struggles, and his descent from the world of pure
abstraction to the very material world of injustice and violence. For those
who have heard Balagopal speak and have been amazed by his clarity of
thought and analysis, you cannot help but think of how his love for
mathematical precision clearly survived in a very different form.

It was one of those moments when you felt you just had to drop everything
and follow this man. In a world where the epithet of hero is just too
generously used, I can safely say ‘Balagopal you were a hero in the truest
sense of the word to many of us’.

And at the same time I cannot help but feel that perhaps this descent from
the heights of abstraction to the very ordinary and fragile business of
activism is also what marked Balagopal as different from most activists. An
abstract transcendental idea of rights was certainly not something for
Balagopal, and yet he did not allow himself to be so immersed in the reality
of struggles so as to forget any kind of moral claim that may be made of a
movement. In an article on moving the debate beyond the terms set by the
binaries of violence- non violence Balagopal argued that “To say that one
should not be dogmatic about violence may be morally a little unsettling but
it is a defensible position even without adopting a relativistic attitude
towards the preciousness of life or a casual attitude towards one’s moral
responsibility for injury caused in the course of a struggle”.

There will be a lot of time for us to think about ways in which we learn
from his life and work, but for the moment let us spend sometime remembering
the man who would be found standing outside a meeting venue selling books
and pamphlets before he proceeded to go to the podium to make the most
insightful speech you were likely to hear. Let us remember the man who when
told that finally Justice Pasayat had retired, remarked that it was
unfortunate that his decisions would not be retiring with him, and let us
remember him most importantly in the days to come when violence and non
violence will be offered to us again to choose, as though it were a real
choice. Goodbye Balagopal, we will miss you immensely but thank you for
giving us the freedom to not have to make false choices.