[Reader-list] PROFESSOR SAIBABA CONCERNS US ALL! Jan Myrdal

[Asit Das]

PROFESSOR SAIBABA CONCERNS US ALL!

Jan Myrdal

On the net it is possible to read in various languages how Professor GN
Saibaba of Delhi University has been detained since May 9, 2014. I cannot
find anything about this printed in a single official or semi-official
Swedish newspaper. But the question is of great concern to Aftonbladet's
readers.

Professor GN Saibaba teaches literature at Ram Lal Anand College. He also
invited me to lecture on Strindberg. Some of the students were Swedish. The
last time I saw him was here in Varberg two years ago when Sven Lindqvist
was awarded his prize. The reason Saibaba was imprisoned is that he is a
leading Indian civil rights activist who actively made public and opposed
the kinds of legal, police and military assaults that are now being made
against indigenous people in the bloody "Operation Green Hunt."

Four times since September 2013, the police in Delhi conducted house
searches and interrogations without finding legal grounds to arrest him. On May
9, however, police came from Maharastra to Delhi without prior warning.
They seized him, without giving him the opportunity to contact a lawyer,
and took him away to Maharashtra. The law under which he is held there is
the "Unlawful Activities Prevention Act" ("UAPA"), strongly criticized by
all Indian jurists. GN Saibaba is charged with secretly being a member of
the "Communist Party of India (Maoist)," which is banned in India, and
having contact with its general secretary Ganapathy. On June 13, 2014, the
Court refused him bail.

"The Sunday Standard" of May 20, 2014, reported under the headline: "Red
Terror's Scary Urban Footprints " on the declassified secret service
dossier, "Maoist plan for urban areas," which is the basis for the arrest
of Professor Saibaba. It described him as follows:

"Saibaba recruited such academics as teachers and doctors to become members
of above-ground organizations. They participated in meetings and donated
money to the Maoists' coffers. / ... / Some meetings connected with
left-wing extremism were also held at his residence in 2010. He organized a
meeting with Jan Myrdal, a Swedish author and Naxalite sympathizer,
sometime in February 2010. Myrdal is said to have played a role in the
contact between Maoist leaders and above-ground cadres by using his high
profile as a writer. / ... / The plan is to gather such strength, so many
weapons and so much popular support that a simultaneous uprising in all
areas of the red corridor could be converted into a mass revolution that
would be self-supporting."
The date and details of what was written about me are wrong - something I
can take up in another way - but it is similar to what security minister
Jitendra Sing told the Rajya Sabha (upper house of the Indian Parliament,
JM) on May 16, 2012: "Jan Myrdal during his stay in India advised CPI
(Maoist) to garner support from the middle-class in India by focusing on
propaganda against security forces and highlighting human rights issues."

Professor GN Saibaba is now in bad health. He sits in an isolation cell in
prison without access to the care he, as cardiac patient, needs. That the
authorities in Maharashtra do not want to provide medical care is, given
the caste and class-ridden nature of Indian society, quite obvious. Saibaba
is one who, according to the traditional ruling class, should not have
existed. He is from a poor peasant family in Andhra. He is wheelchair bound
and 90% disabled. He was able to acquire the wheelchair only after he began
to make a living as a teacher in Delhi. From the age of three, he had to
crawl forward. With the help of some rural teachers who recognized his
remarkable talent and then grants - and friends - he has been able to
struggle through school. This has shaped his character and worldview, was
has the reading of such great Telegu writers as Sri Sri - and Kenyan writer
Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, with whom he was personally acquainted.

Professors and students of Delhi as well as human rights activists and
union / politically engaged people throughout India are now working to
build public opinion against the legal assault on Professor GN Saibaba.
Yes, all over the world there are petitions and protests. However, I know
India. Surely one can argue that experience teaches protests do not mean
much, given the power structure in India. On the other hand, India is no
fascist dictatorship. It is not a society like Pinochet's Chile. The human
rights situation is now far better than it was in British India. What may
save GN Saibaba is not just protests, even international ones. I therefore
suggest that we start by organizing in Sweden a broad-based group of
lawyers who will travel to India and examine on site the situation of GN
Saibaba as well as other political prisoners.

I should explain what I mean by broad-based. This is not a sham issue.
Certainly there are incompetent and comprising lawyers in Sweden as
elsewhere. But more important is that there are lawyers who regardless of
their own right-left color (ideology) actually take seemingly formal issues
seriously. Let them gather a group and go to India.