Category Archives: Human Rights

What we dont talk about- Steroid Abuse among Teenagers in Brothels in Bangladesh

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According to a photo essay by Andrew Biraj on Bangladesh’s legal brothels, madams dose (often underage) sex-workers with Dexamethasone, a steroid, to make them look older and fatter. The photographs are sexually suggestive and made me uncomfortable, but the issues are worth examining.

These kids, as young as 12, are bought from parents or lured into sex-trade as an escape from penury and then literally fattened before they are pimped to costumers.

Dexamethasone is a powerful corticosteroid. It suppresses inflammation in the body and is used in the treatment of various disease like Rheumatoid arthritis and other AutoImmune diseases.

One of the most visible and early side effects of corticosteroid use is deposition of fat on the upper body. Typically, short term use will result in chubby cheeks, rounder shoulders and some deposition of fat on the chest. This might give the appearance of being chubby or healthy but is a side effect, and not a pleasant one.

Corticosteroids have a darker side, CDC lists some of the side effects

Possible side effects of short-term corticosteroid use:

  • Increased fat on the face (rounded face), upper back, and belly
  • Upset stomach
  • Increased blood sugar
  • Increased hunger
  • Behavior changes, trouble sleeping, irritability, depression
  • Increased risk of pneumonia, thrush (white coating in the mouth), and other infections
  • Weight gain, salt and water retention
  • High blood pressure
  • Stretch marks on the skin, acne, poor wound healing, increased and unusual hair growth

Possible side effects of long-term use (3 months or longer):

  • All short-term side effects
  • Poor growth in children (can be severe)
  • Brittle bones (bones break easily, problems with hips and shoulder joints)
  • Muscle weakness
  • Diabetes
  • Eye problems

As you can see, not only are these kids subject to being sex-slaves, but also face a lifetime of illness for a decade of two of sex-work.

There is very little medical data from Bangladesh about steroid abuse, The only people who seem interested are news outlets. UNICEF in its “Background Paper on Good Practices and Priorities to Combat Sexual Abuse and Exploitation of Children in Bangladesh” mentions it in passing and refers to an 2010 BBC story about the same.

Most public health and medical research into sex-work looks almost exclusively at Sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS, a few look at violence, but the longer term health and non-psychoactive drug abuse often gets sidelined.

One could dismiss this problem and say “if you are not going to live to be 40, STI’s are more a priority than Diabetes”.

Read more at

Torture porn, brilliant children and radioactive silence: Links for the weekend

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Gayatri Jayaraman recounts her trip to a Teach For India classroom

Journalism? These are kids who are not used to being told that their opinion matters, that what happens to them in life, in person, matters, that they have a point of view, or that others can want to know it, share it and consider it valid.

These are the true failings of our education system.

 

Kanchan Gupta talks about our national shame: the fate of the Kashmiri pandit

Had this tragedy occurred elsewhere in Hindu majority India, and had the victims been Muslims, we would have described it as ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘genocide.’ We would have made films with horror-inducing titles. We would have filed cases in the Supreme Court of India. Our media would have marshalled remarkable rage in reporting the smallest detail.

 

The Border Security Force: braveheart pornographers – SHUDDHABRATA SENGUPTA

Eight soldiers of the Border Security Force, hold down a young Bangladeshi man accused of cattle smuggling. He is stripped naked, hogtied and then thrashed. He screams in agony and humiliation. The soldiers act as if they are out on a picnic.

These are not the deeds of a few ‘bad apples’. The suspension, or even dismissal of eight BSF personnel is not going to make this go away. There is a clear pattern of authority between the torturers, some of them give orders, others act on them.

These are not wild young men on the loose, with no authority supervising their actions. These are soldiers going about their business. Perhaps it is time for us to consider that this might in fact be the norm.

 
There is no way, absolutely none for warfare to take place for prolonged periods without dehumanizing of the enemy. India’s security forces are one of the largest organized human rights violation organizations. This is the truth, and our shame. We have been at war with our own people for too long.

 

Vidyut Kale asks why there is silence about radioactive soil in Punjab

“Uranium found in 241 water samples” the headline could have screamed, but it didn’t. It made modest appearance and slid into obscurity, unheralded on the news site’s social networks.

We don’t hear, think or question these things, because our media carefully filters triggers to such debates. From being the first country in the world to set up a Ministry for renewable energy to being one that doesn’t question harmful ways energy is procured – be it fly ash from thermal power, radioactive contamination from nuclear power, or exploitation of Kashmiris for power – it has been a long way. There is pathetic little interest in sustainable energy or the environment in our media.

The Parable of dead bodies: Looking at the Food Security Bill

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The Parable

Anand Philip on the parable of dead bodies and the food security act

By Great Beyond

When the villagers of Utopia woke up that morning, they found that the current had washed up a dozen or so dead bodies on their river bank. The people quickly got to action, as was normal for Utopians. Frogmen helped by the fire department dragged the bodies ashore, the mayor decided they would be cremated outside the city, the Doctor examined them and concluded that they died of nothing contagious and the priest performed their last rites.

Unfortunately, it was not to be a one time event. The next morning, and then the morning after that and in the mornings after that morning, the barrage of bodies continued. While the frogmen and priests and other workers pitched to get the bodies out and disposed, the city council gathered to ponder upon the matters.

After much philosophizing about what the dead bodies stood for, who they were, whose fault it was and which department should handle them, it was unanimously agreed that the poor souls deserved dignity. The council wrote to the king, known for his big heart, consulted his circle of elders and granted them a nearby wasteland to create a crematorium for the dead, and a fat purse for funding.

Soon it was noticed that picking up bodies in the morning was creating traffic jams and so the mayor decided to launch a technologically advanced boat patrol that would scour the river as it entered their territory and pick up the bodies as they arrived.

The boat workers then started settling near the river, as it was easier for them to go home that way, and with the increased traffic of the boats, the river port could no longer be used for fishing and other usual purposes. The mayor therefore sanctioned that building of a new port, a bit upstream from where the bodies were being found.

As time went by, new problems would arise but Utopians fixed them all as they had done so far. For his astute handling of the situation, and creation of hundreds of new jobs as boats men, crematorium workers, traffic wardens, and what not, the mayor was re elected. For the hard work, solidarity and greatness of heart of the people of Utopia, their King granted them the status of a City and they lived happily ever after.

Problem: Hunger and Malnutrition

India, hunger, free food, malnutrition

by juicyrai

Depending on which source fits you best, anywhere from 28%1 to 80%2 of Indians live in poverty. The real figures are vigorously debated, and the National Advisory Council [NAC] has taken a value of 836 million- 77% of the Indian population as living with food insecurity- a figure they use interchangeably with the number of poor. These numbers fly in the face of common sense and other reliable studies but it clear that a large segment of the population- between 373 and 50% suffers from chronic malnutrition4. And a smaller – around 5% suffers from day-to-day hunger.

Deaths from acute malnutrition are declining rapidly as are the cases of acutely malnourished children. It is possible today for a medical student in a government hospital to pass out without ever seeing a single case of acute severe malnutrition. But chronic malnutrition remains a serious issue and the contributing factors are recurrent disease, chronic poverty5, lack of nutrients in food, lack of access to protein/vitamin rich sources, and peri-natal conditions like maternal nutrition, birth weight and breastfeeding and weaning practices.

Root causes:

  • Poverty
  • Lack of sanitation, access to clean water,
  • Bad farming practices and lack of agricultural reforms,
  • Corruption,
  • Persistence of historic marginalization.
  • Unemployment and wage exploitation in the unorganized labor sector.
  • Unexplained nutritional factors

What has been done:

  • – Integrated Child Development Service (ICDS).
  • — Kishori Shakti Yojna
  • — Nutrition Programme for Adoloscent Girls.
  • — Rajiv Gandhi Scheme for Empowerment of Adolescent Girls
  • — Mid-day Meal programme for schools
  • — Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan
  • — National Rural Health Mission
  • — National Urban Health Mission
  • — Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojna
  • — National Food Security Mission
  • — National Horticultural Mission
  • — Rajiv Gandhi Drinking Water Mission
  • — Total Sanitation Campaign
  • — Swarna Jayanthi Gram Rozgar Yojna
  • — Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme
  • — Targeted Public Distribution System
  • — Antyodaya Anna Yojna
  • — Annapoorna 6

[Note: This impressive list of interventions is a partial list only, there are other state specific and lapsed programs that are not included.]

Of these programs, the ones that have had the most money and effort put into them are those that have some form of subsidized distribution of food, medicines, or un-sustainable job creation.

Study after study has shown that at best the areas that need these the most, have a success rate of under 50% and at worst, almost no benefit has reached the intended targets7. Not just that, there is pilfering and hoarding, reselling to commercial markets and BPL cards and lists miss 50% of deserving an often include those APL.

What does this bill do?

  • Increase spending on food grain
  • increase allocation of Grain per family
  • Adds on bureaucratic processes with no accountability in the form of redress forums
  • Tries to make PDS leak proof, but retains structure and form almost entirely and allocates little for infrastructure.

The key fact being is none of this actually increases food security- only feeds those in hunger, if the food reaches them. These are inherently stop-gap measures, but with the lack of permanent solutions, this leaky PDS pot has persisted 60 years into independence.

Moreover,

  1. There are no bills in the parliament at present‭ ‬ address to resolve the root issues,‭ neither is the NAC doing anything at infrastructure or system level to address the root issues.
  2. The bill Ignores studies that show that the caloric intake of the poorest in India has reduced in-spite of increase in income. It 8equates hunger with poverty and malnutrition, though nowhere does it actually mention malnutrition. ‬The problem might not lie in access to food at all,‭ ‬but in quality of food,‭ ‬work levels,‭ ‬and other factors. which are not addressed at all.9
  3. Disregards the further strain it is going to place on farmers, who are already getting poor returns for their investments. 10

Surprisingly, some of the people who have shown these problems with the bill are on the NAC and are considered very influential.

The NAC, which is pushing the bill, seems to believe that if you pour water into a bucket with no bottom, as long as you keep pouring, you are doing the right thing.

Pouring money into a bucket with a hole

by Coltera

Back to the Parable.

‎Something struck you as odd didn’t it? Why did no one try find out where the dead bodies were coming from? Why did they not try stop the flow of the cadavers altogether? What use is it mopping up the blood if you do nothing to stop the bleeding?

This obvious logic has surprisingly eluded much of our policy makers and politicians, who continue to fish bodies out from the river, and make enemies of those who can help stop the killing.

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Foot Notes

1Planning commission press release for poverty estimates 2005
5Chronic Poverty in India: Incidence, Causes and Policies AASHA KAPUR MEHTA World Development Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 491–511, 2003
8 “Food and Nutrition in India: Facts and Interpretations” (EPW, 14. February 2009), Angus Deaton and Jean Dreze



The Art and Craft of insinuation- A reply to Swapan Das Gupta by Imrana Qadeer

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The day the eminent lawyer Soli Sorabji told the listeners of a TV programme in no uncertain terms that the interpretation of the term sedition in the case of Binayak Sen belonged to a bygone era and is no more legally valid, there were others who were trying to preach otherwise. One of these assertive voices came from journalist Sawapan Das Gupta (SD ji) who chose to tell us “How Binayak Sen became a cause celebre”; while, in the same paper and on the same day, economist Amartya Sen said that the verdict “smacked of political motivation” (TOI Jan 9th, 2011). Thus we hear two sets of voices, one giving reasons for the fallibility of the verdict and thereby questioning the wisdom of the Sessions judge, and the other asking us to have blind faith in the judicial process and not use our reason nor raise doubts about it.

One may ask, if the debate around Binayak Sen is a fabrication of the minds of a handful of cause-hungry intellectuals, then why has it spread so wide? Why has SD ji too joined it and is now emphasising the “image make over”of Binayak Sen? Is he just angry that Binayak Sen, “did not fit the (read ‘his’) mental image of a dangerous man”, or, is he now contributing to theory by introducing such innovative categories of social analysis as bearded men, men without jhola, and men who sport both? He perhaps thinks that through this rude, flippant, and callous articulation (which he well recognises), he will add some weight to the judgement and thereby contain the emerging trend where the judiciary is being questioned and accountability demanded of it, because it is unable to show that it respects the law that it practices.
Let us look at the game SD ji is playing.

According to him Binayak Sen’s crime is:
(a) shaving off his beard (that amounts to destruction of evidence!);
(b) transforming from a relatively unknown activist (only known to the unknown of Chhattisgarh);
(c) choosing to highlight the Chhattisgarh Special Security Act in a state that is “the rotten apple”; and
(d) being deserving of defence by Amartya Sen (who is chided for his “arrogance”).

Since SD ji is not inclined to look at the “technical issues” such as the evidence, the authenticity of legal procedures, or the interpretation of conflicting evidence and evident failure to establish association – all of which makes the judgment unfathomable – he unilaterally acquires the right to assert that “to assume that any alternative perspective implies a bent and biased system is rash”.

The story of Chhattisgarh is no secret. It is best told by its HDI rank, based on achievements in health, education, income, and gender development, where it is ranked among the worst performing States. To address these critical issues the State can think of nothing better than to set up an Army training centre there that would “naturally” require heavy security measures. Is this the alternative perspective that SD ji is hinting at? Where it is natural and justified that judges should be influenced by the seriousness of the overall situation? And where the basic principle of justice, that the more severe the punishment the more careful should be the assessment of evidence, can be easily belied?
Such a perspective attempts to reduce the gap between reason and unreason by making light of the goings on in States like Gujarat and Chattisgarh. It values the glamour of annual Prabasi winter meets, but disapproves of NRIs going beyond the set boundaries to see and experience their own country. It is a perspective that, in its effort to influence “the young and impressionable” thinking people, attacks all liberal intellectual thought attempting to protect a judicial system, and all institutions that represent the liberal dimension of Indian democracy, which is gradually curtailing all rights and freedoms.

SD ji says nothing about all this but he does claim a wide following amongst those who disagree with the perception that there is a concerted programme of expropriation, “governed by the political first cousins of those who administer Gujarat, heavy-handed policing, law of the jungle, capitalist iniquity and the brutal suppression of tribal rights”. He altogether misses the point that majority assertion and reasoned arguments are two different domains, and that he has failed to offer any reason for the susceptible to shed their understanding and join his ideological brand of paranoia. He also misses the point that undermining criminal law amounts to undermining of constitutional provision of fundamental rights. The lower courts cannot be callous towards principles and procedures of justice just because correctives are possible at higher levels of appeal.

SD ji dubs all those who disagree with him as unthinking and providing “unintended” legitimacy to Maoist insurgency. One may be grateful for his generosity in using the word unintended, but will he tell us which India does he cherish? – the one where people have a right to demand reason from governing structures or one where rules, however unreasonable, must dominate?

Imrana Qadeer is a retired Professor From the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, JNU

This Post is in reply to Swapan Das Gupta’s Article in Times of India How Binayak Sen became a cause celebre

The Binayak Sen Digest -1

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Below are some of the best writing on the web on the Binayak sen judgement, for and against. Text in Bold is  for emphasis.
The case of the good Doctor By Rakesh Shukla: an advocate at the Supreme Court of India.

A look at the trial court judgment convicting Dr Binayak Sen illustrates the hazards of retaining provisions like sedition on the statute books. The principal allegation against Dr Sen is of passing three letters written by jailed Naxalite leader Narayan Sanyal to unspecified people in Kolkata… Dr Sen had formally applied for permissions for each of the meetings as the General Secretary of the PUCL, permissions granted by the jail authorities. In fact, the jailors deposed that all of the meetings were strictly supervised, ruling out the possibility of any letters being exchanged between Sanyal and Dr Sen.

The choice of Dr Binayak Sen, a winner of international awards, for prosecution by the state would be really puzzling if the motive were not so obvious. The targeting of an individual like Dr Sen is not something initiated by a Superintendent of Police or an Inspector General of Police. It is but, undoubtedly, a high-level decision made by the powers-that-be to send a message to civil liberties activists to desist from highlighting atrocities committed by the state against people in Maoist-affected areas. Instead of starting a dialogue or addressing  inequalities in society that give rise to Maoist movements, it seems that the state is bent on breaking all forms of connection between the civil society and the Maoist rebels, as if to prepare a prelude to a military crushing,

DR.BINAYAK SEN & TWO OTHERS VS THE STATE By B. Raman: Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies.

The conviction and sentencing of Dr.Sen and two others have been questioned by the critics on grounds of the reliability of the facts as adduced before the court and the interpretation of the laws relating to sedition. There is apparently no independent corroboration of Guha’s statements that the documents allegedly written by Sanyal had been brought out of jail by Sen after one of his meetings with Sanyal and handed over to Guha. The conviction of Sen seems to have been based largely on the uncorroborated testimony of Anil Kumar Singh who claims to have heard Guha tell the police that Sen gave him the letters from Sanyal.

The awarding of the extreme penalty of life sentence on the basis of an independently uncorroborated testimony of a single witness has shocked the critics of the judgement. Questions have also been raised regarding the interpretation of the laws relating to sedition. To prove a charge of sedition, it is necessary to show that Sen—even if he had received the letters from Sanyal as alleged by the police— had intended to cause disaffection against the State and promote acts of violence.

A careful identification of the missing links in the chain and an examination of the evidence regarding the benign personality of Sen might have led to the mitigating circumstances being given greater weight than they apparently were. One would find it difficult to avoid the conclusion that the prosecution and the court had adopted a narrowly legalistic approach to the case without seeing it in the broader context

Our counter-insurgency operations against the Maoists should be more nuanced than they are at present—-marked by strong action against those in the hard core indulging in or advocating violence and a more sympathetic approach to those like Sen, who do not belong to the hard core and do not advocate violence. By treating both as no different from each other who deserve deterrent punishment, we will be driving more people who are now merely in the periphery into the arms of the hard core. The police should not unwittingly become a source of aggravation of the problem.

More detailed anylysis of the verdict and list of protests across India.

Once the central conspiratorial point and incident has been constructed in the judicial narrative, conspiratorial linkages between the three accused and their common causes and actions before the incident also needed to be established. This has been attempted in Pijush Guha’s case by a reference to his frequent visits to Raipur and a case pending in district Purulia, West Bengal. Judge Verma has ignored the fact that Guha was made an accused in the Purulia case after 6.5.2007, the date on which he is said to have been arrested in Raipur. This fact strongly generates a suspicion of afterthought by the police of the two states acting in collusion. Judge Verma’s verdict also naturally ignores the fact that Pijush Guha’s frequent visits are explained by his being a tendu leaf trader trading in the areas of Chhattisgarh.

3. That Binayak Sen had a close relationship with CPI (Maoist) is sought to be established by the unsubstantiated testimonies of police officials claiming that Sen and his wife Ilina Sen had assisted alleged hard core Maoists Shankar Singh and Amita Srivastava. Sen has not disputed that Shankar was employed by Rupantar – an NGO founded by his wife Ilina. Nor has he disputed that he and Ilina knew Amita Srivastava whom the latter, on the recommendation of a friend, had helped find a job in a school. But the Judge has just accepted the police’s word, without any other testimony or material evidence whatsoever that Shankar and Amita were Maoists.

4. Judge Verma has also wrongly concluded, on the basis of hearsay by the police, that one Malati employed by Rupantar was the same person as Shantipriya, also using the alias Malati, a Maoist leader’s wife convicted for 10 years in a case tried in another court in Raipur. The judge has not even mentioned or verified the defence evidence put on record that the Malati employed by Rupantar was actually Malati Yadav.

5. Judge Verma’s narrative seems to have a particular fondness for police hearsay as he has blindly accepted, without any corroboration by another witness or any material evidence, wild allegations made by police officials Vijay Thakur and Sher Singh Bande, officer in charge of Konta and Chhuria police stations respectively that Binayak Sen, his wife Ilina Sen and other PUCL members and human rights activists attended the meetings of Maoists in their respective areas. These officials have gone well beyond their Section 161 statements introducing documents not earlier annexed with the charge sheet, and all defence objections in this regard were overruled by the Judge.

Not to question why by Ramachandra Guha The author is a writer and political historian

In the eyes of the government of Chhattisgarh, the crime of Binayak Sen is that he dared question the corrupt and brutal methods used to tackle the Maoist upsurge. In 2005, the state government promoted a vigilante army that spread terror through the districts of Dantewada, Bijapur and Bastar. In the name of combating Naxalism, it burned homes (and occasionally, whole villages), violated tribal women, and attacked (and sometimes killed) tribal men who refused to join its ranks. As a result of its depredations almost a hundred thousand adivasis with no connection at all to Maoism were rendered homeless.

Sen was one of the first to document the excesses of the vigilante army, and to expose the hand of the state government in promoting it. That his charges were true I can confirm, for I visited the region shortly afterwards, in the company of a group of independent citizens, who included the respected editors BG Verghese and Harivansh, and the distinguished anthropologist Nandini Sundar, winner of the Infosys Prize. Our report, War in the Heart of India, provides a sober, non-ideological account of the crimes of the state and Union governments in this regard.

Sen’s conviction happened in a court subject to intimidation by a government run by (and I use the word advisedly) paranoid politicians (helped by sometimes paranoid police officers). His conviction will and should be challenged. As it stands, however, it is a disgrace to democracy. His brave wife commented on the verdict that if “one who has worked for the poor of the country for 30 years, if that person is found guilty of sedition activities and conspiracy, when gangsters and scamsters are walking free, I think it’s a scandalous situation”. Any reasonable Indian would concur.

A more or less Neutral article with some good questions:
The case of Dr. Sen By Mr. Arnab Author and Technology consultant.

One’s opinions then should be formed by considering two things—-the case against Dr. Sen and whether what he is being accused of should get the life sentence? From a general look at documents available on the Net, one can conclude that there is little credible evidence to establish that Dr. Sen was involved in the operational details of Maoist terrorist activities. The prosecution’s attempts to link him to ISI have been farcical.

However what is pretty clear, and that has not even been denied much also, is that Dr. Sen is a strong Maoist sympathizer.
He and his wife had been instrumental in getting jobs for people accused of being Naxalites but then again considering the kind of company the Sens kept, being Maoist sympathizers themselves, that is but natural.

According to the Chattisgarh Special Public Security Act (CSPSA), any kind of facilitation for members of unlawful organizations is a crime and by that token the case against Dr. Sen is strong.

Taking a step back, the larger issue is “Is it a democratic right to believe in “banned” philosophies and to facilitate the nominally non-violent activities (like passing their propaganda around or helping in their legal defense) of those who plan and engage in violence against the State”? Or in other words, is CSPSA by definition anti-democratic?
Dr. Sen’s case is a case which sits right in this twilight zone. Working tirelessly all his life for the uplift of the dispossessed, Dr. Sen has frequently found common cause with Naxalites and even if we accept his contention that he does not support their methods of violence, their goals and his overall philosophy has been congruent. Given this, it is only natural that the lines of cooperation between them would become blurred over the years and what the State considers active facilitation he would put down to legitimate political activity in support of people whose goals he supports.

Now for a post favoring the judgment, one of the very few that are intelligent and make any sense at all. Most of the Anti-Sen writing on the web is vitriolic rantings against Maoism and epistles of murderous rage by armchair philosophers about Dr. Sen’s “ideological war on the state of India”
Spurious protests over Binayak Sen By Kanchan Gupta editor of the Pioneer newspaper

A less charitable, and possibly unfair, explanation for Sen’s seemingly innocuous query to the judge — “What is Section 124A?” — is the contempt with which self-appointed civil liberties and human rights activists in this country hold the law of the land. Any law that seeks to impose the writ of the state and uphold the Constitution of the Republic of India, and hence, by definition, outlaws anarchy and subversion, apart from other crimes, is anathema to these champions of civil liberties and human rights as it militates against their libertarian agenda. “What law?” a civil rights activists mocked at me during a television debate on Sen’s conviction, “A law passed by Parliament of India? We refuse to accept its legitimacy.”

A fair assessment of the curious case of Binayak Sen would be incomplete without mentioning his admirable efforts to take healthcare to the poor, impoverished tribals of Chhattisgarh. Undoubtedly, Rupantar, set up by him and his wife Elina, has done remarkable work. Not many alumni of Christian Medical College in Vellore would give up lucrative careers at home and abroad to tend to the sick and the suffering in the interiors of Bastar. But somewhere along the line, the healer became an ideologue and a partisan in Chhattisgarh’s war against Maoists, choosing to align with Left extremism over apolitical humanism.

Sen was tried in an open court under laws that are equally applicable to all citizens of India; it was a fair trial, he had access to the best lawyers and at no stage was he starved of either legal advice or funds. This is in sharp contrast to the kangaroo courts where those who refuse to obey the Maoists’ diktat are summarily tried and executed. Those held ‘guilty’ by these ‘people’s courts’ are poor Adivasis and Dalits who are denied the right to appeal, a right Sen can exercise under the very laws which his supporters are now vociferously denouncing. If the higher judiciary finds the trial court has erred, Sen’s conviction will be set aside.

Worse, implicit in this threat of retribution is the mistaken belief that some are more equal than others and hence above the law. Or that courts must make a distinction between those deemed to be ideologically ‘correct’ and those who are ideologically ‘incorrect’, the prerogative to decide the correctness or incorrectness being that of the Lib-left intelligentsia.

Third, it’s a war being waged by the democratic Republic of India against those who want a totalitarian People’s Republic of Maoistan. In the first 10 months of this year alone Maoists have killed 577 civilians and 260 security forces personnel; they have lost 137 cadre in encounters. In this war, we can choose to be either with the state or the Maoists; there’s no halfway house because the future of our freedom, our liberty, our open society and our democracy is at stake. Binayak Sen exercised his choice.