POLITICAL PRISONERS/PRISONERS OF CONSCIENCE IN INDIA

In a country that used to preen itself as the ‘world’s largest democracy’

Does it still?

A list, most likely incomplete:

Professor Hany Babu

Sudha Bharadwaj (Do google her illustrious name and the “five books” rule with added conditions. Precisely what was the ‘learned’ judge smoking?)

Sudhir Dhawale

Gulshifa Fatima

Arun Ferreira (He’d previously been jailed for four years and had written a brilliant book, Colours of the Cage: A Prison Memoir, 2014, Aleph Book Company, about how those cynical amounts of criminality on the part of the state apparatuses happened and how he emerged.)

Surendra Gadling

Ramesh Gaichor

Akhil Gogoi

Vernon Gonsalves

Sagar Gorkhe

Meeran Haider

Sharjeel Imam

Jyoti Jagtap

Ishrat Jahan

Devangana Kalita

Siddique Kappan

Nodeep Kaur

Dr Umar Khalid

Athar Khan

Hem Mishra

Natasha Narwal

Gautam Navlakha

Shifa ur Rahman

Varavara Rao, 81, hospitalised with various ailments

Mahesh Raut

Professor G.N. Saibaba, 90% disabled

Khalid Saifi

Shoma Sen

Father Stan Swamy, SJ, 83-year-old suffering Parkinson’s. Please google his name and ‘sipper’ and read about the breath-taking cruelty of the Brahminical Sanghi fascists.

Asif Iqbal Tanha

Professor Anand Teltumbde

Rona Wilson

This list is likely incomplete.

All of them having been most bizarrely and cynically framed by the Sanghi terrorists in power.

These are some of our best academics, human rights activists, journalists, lawyers and social workers, who have stood steadfastly by the peoples of India, including the Adivasis (indigenous peoples), Dalit-Bahujan (peoples of oppressed castes) and the minorities.

If their crime is that they were adhering to, defending and upholding the articles of the Constitution of India authored by Dr B.R. Ambedkar and other visionaries, then innumerable others of us can be accused of harbouring criminal intent.

I plead guilty.

Shame on India!

(This list benefited from inputs from Aiman J. Khan and Mahtab Alam. However, the responsibility for its drawing up and any consequences thereof are entirely mine.)

P.S.: Added Mandeep Punia on Feb 1 but happily deleted on Feb 2 after he got bail. Also, as of Feb 5-6, deleting Munawar Faruqi but adding Nodeep Kaur.