‘Gandhiji too would have been arrested in today’s India’
Maharashtra police on Tuesday raided the homes of prominent Left-wing activists in across the country – Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira in Mumbai; Gautam Navlakha in Delhi; Sudha Bharadwaj in Faridabad; Stan Swamy in Ranchi; Varavara Rao and his family members, Kranti Tekula and Naseem in Hyderabad; Anand Teltumbde in Goa.
The raids were carried out as part of a probe into the violence between Dalits and the upper caste Peshwas at Koregaon-Bhima village near Pune after an event called Elgar Parishad, or conclave, on December 31 last year.
At least five of them have been arrested, sparking a chorus of outraged protests from human rights defenders.
Author and historian Ramachandra Guha lashed out at the government over the raids and arrest of activists, calling it a "brutal, authoritarian, oppressive, arbitrary, illegal act" by the Maharashtra police.
Guha blamed it on the "corporate cronies of the ruling government," who, he said, were bent on grabbing tribal land, forest and mineral resources. The arrest of the activists was meant to take away the only representation the tribals have, he said.
Guha told NDTV that he knew some of those arrested and while he did not always agreed with them, he knew that they "never themselves preached or practiced violence".
"But these are people who represent the country's disenfranchised and the dispossessed," he said.
"What is happening in the adivasi heartland of india... it is murder, rape, physical, natural, social... and these were the lawyers representing the tribals... and their arrest leaves those dispossessed unrepresented in court," he added.
“As a biographer of Gandhi, I have no doubt that if the Mahatma was alive today, he would don his lawyer's robes and defend Sudha Bharadwaj in court; that is assuming the Modi Sarkar hadn't yet detained and arrested him too ,” he tweeted.
Intellectuals and professionals including author Indira Jaising and Arundhati Roy have criticised the arrests in harsh terms.
The arrests are "a dangerous sign of a government that fears it is losing its mandate and is falling into panic. That lawyers, poets, writers, Dalit rights activists and intellectuals are being arrested on ludicrous charges ... tells us very clearly where India is headed," award-winning author Arundhati Roy told PTI.
Earlier today, Indira Jaising tweeted: "One day there will be no one left to defend the rule of law,one day there will be no rule of law left to defend."
“As a biographer of Gandhi, I have no doubt that if the Mahatma was alive today, he would don his lawyer's robes and defend Sudha Bharadwaj in court; that is assuming the Modi Sarkar hadn't yet detained and arrested him too,” tweeted famous historian Ramachandra Guha.