On activists’ reading list: Humour, history, hope
MUMBAI: An anthology by English author and humorist PG Wodehouse, Amitav Ghosh’s 2008 Booker prize shortlisted Sea of Poppies, 2019 New York Times bestseller A Man Called Ove, 2002 Holocaust classic Last Train to Istanbul and 2015 Pulitzer Prize nominee Empire of Cotton: A Global History.
These were some of the books sent to jailed activists Sudha Bharadwaj, Gautam Navlakha and Hany Babu -- who are accused of Maoist conspiracy and fomenting violence in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon case -- by their friends, family and lawyers, according to affidavits filed by them.
Last month, Bharadwaj, who is in Mumbai’s Byculla jail, and Navlakha and Babu, who are both in Mumbai’s Taloja prison, filed separate pleas seeking access to books and newspapers from outside prison. On Wednesday, a special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court allowed Bharadwaj to receive five books from outside jail. The court is yet to hear pleas by Babu and Navlakha.
During the hearing on Tuesday, Bharadwaj’s lawyer Chandani Meher told court that she went to Byculla jail on November 11 with a parcel containing two kurtas and a book, Empire of Cotton: A Global History by Sven Beckett, for the activist.
Meher said the prison authorities accepted the kurtas but removed the book, which dives into the history of cotton production in imperial colonies, from the parcel.
In another affidavit filed in September last year by Delhi University professor Jenny Rowena, Babu’s wife , she claimed she sent parcels to her husband between September 15 and September 22, containing three books —Sea of Poppies, A Man Called Ove and Last Train To Istanbul.
“A week later, the parcel containing the books was returned with an endorsement in Marathi called ‘Covid Suraksha’,” she said in the parcel.
Shrimoyee Ghosh, Navlakha’s friend, said in an affidavit in August 2020 that she sent a parcel that month to the activist, containing a book, The World of Jeeves & Wooster, an anthology comprising novels by PG Wodehouse. But Ghosh claimed that the book was returned with a remark that said it was not accepted for security reasons. Navlakha had also sought Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James C. Scott.
Prison officials in the state said they were following the guidelines laid down in the Maharashtra prison manual. Senior prison officials, including additional director-general Sunil Ramanand and inspector-general of South region, prisons, Cherring Dorje, did not respond to phone calls and text messages.
According to experts, the question of receiving book by prisoners is an ambiguous one and the Maharashtra jail manual leaves it to the discretion of the jail authorities to determine whether an individual can be allowed a particular title. The decision is often made on the basis of the prisoner’s profile, behaviour and severity of charges.
The Sea of Poppies offers a historical overview of indentured labour under the arch of colonialism, Backman’s A Man Called Ove tells the story of an old man whose quirky but well-meaning immigrant neighbours save him from his loneliness. The fictional 2002 novel Last Train to Istanbul derives from historical events and narrates the story of a Turkish couple -- a Jew and a Muslim -- escaping the Holocaust.
The three people are in jail under charges of Maoist conspiracy and delivering inflammatory speeches at an event in Pune called the Elgar Parishad on December 31, 2017.