A Mango Republic

With the heat waves and rising mercury, the season of mango is here. But this season, mango is not just a fruit, it also seems to be a key conspirator in the plot to get Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal out of Tihar Jail. The chargesheet is still awaited in the case, but its good name has been dragged through the mud. What’s a mango supposed to do?

Behind this comedy of errors lies the horror of dismantling of Indian democracy.   

Kejriwal’s arrest and incarceration is a watershed moment marking the crisis of democracy and free and fair elections in the country. But this moment has long been in the making and all those who want to fight for a democratic future must confront this history. That is the history of arresting citizens of this country who the ruling dispensation doesn’t like, sees as threat to its power or those who happen to be the ‘other’ against whom the edifice of nationalism is sought to be consolidated. This history includes the use of draconian laws like the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), National Security Act (NSA), and several such ‘extraordinary’ laws which give unbridled power to the state against citizens. While all governments in power have done this in one form or the other, it has intensified over the last decade, enabling the state to re-script protests against oppression and state violence as terrorism or anti-national activities. 

While such arbitrary arrests are not restricted to these laws, they allow the state to keep people in long periods of incarceration even without any credible evidence as they severely curtail the right to bail while the trials take years, sometimes decades, to conclude.

Many a lives of those fighting against injustice and oppression, of those dreaming of making a more just and democratic world, continue to be lost to such long periods of incarceration. Remember Father Stan Swamy, an 84-year-old Jesuit priest, fighting against the exploitation and oppression of Adivasis, who lost his life in custody, accused of being a ‘terrorist’; professor G.N Saibaba, a 90% disabled Delhi University professor who, after losing a decade of his life in incarceration under UAPA, has been recently acquitted of all charges; Hidme Markam, an Adivasi forest rights activist arrested for being an alleged ‘naxal’, spent two years in prison and faced custodial torture; the 17 Muslim men and two minors in Madhya Pradesh who spent six years in custody, accused of celebrating Pakistan’s victory in a cricket match in 2017, acquitted last year by the high court as the evidence against them was found to be fabricated. One of the accused, broken by this ordeal, died by suicide in 2019; the thousands filling jails in Kashmir to the brim that there no space is left to keep them anymore. The list is endless. 

Still, many more continue to endure long periods of incarceration, away from the warmth of loved ones, deprived of living their lives, of their futures, for daring to struggle for a better world.  The chief minister might meet encounter some of them in his stay at Tihar. Will he recognize them as comrades or will they still be shunned as the ‘anti-nationals’? Will he see the marks of all these years, of pain and resilience, on their faces?

He will also encounter thousands of ‘ordinary’ prisoners, caught in the web of our criminal justice system, most of them undertrials who have not been even deemed guilty by the courts (around 75% of prisoners in India are undertrials according to NCRB data). They continue to be confined in inhuman conditions – overcrowding, lack of medical facilities and hygiene. Most of these prisoners come from sections which have already been marginalised by our socio-political structures, unable to access the means and language of justice. Will he wonder why so many people continue to be indiscriminately incarcerated by the state so easily deprived of their liberty and right to a dignified life? 

In the criminal justice system, a citizen is most exposed and vulnerable to the state’s might with all its punitive infrastructure. ‘Extraordinary’ laws like the UAPA, NSA and Public Safety Act (PSA) tilt this balance further in the state’s favour, rendering citizens even more vulnerable. Protecting and enabling people against the state’s might has to be an essential feature of a democratic society. It has to be built into the core of our politics and democratic agenda. Focusing on the arrest of only certain leaders will keep our democracy and its edifice weak and susceptible to being overpowered by ruling parties. The arrest and incarceration of the multitude of people languishing in our prisons is as political as that of Kejriwal. How many mangoes will it take to get them out?