Op-ed: Political vindictiveness

M V Ramana

Mallika Sarabhai is not the only victim of such political vindictiveness. Earlier this year Nafisa Ali, a social worker, had cases slapped on her for her remarks during a press conference where she pointed out parallels between Narinder Modi, and Adolf Hitler and Osama

In her essay The End of Imagination, which expresses her strong opposition to the Indian nuclear tests of May 1998, Arundhati Roy says, “When I told my friends that I was writing this piece, they cautioned me. ‘Go ahead,’ they said, ‘but first make sure you’re not vulnerable. Make sure your papers are in order. Make sure your taxes are paid.’

My papers are in order. My taxes are paid. But how can one not be vulnerable in a climate like this? Everyone is vulnerable.”

A recent illustration of such vulnerability is Mallika Sarabhai. A celebrated danseuse and social activist, Mallika has been accused of cheating and running an immigration racket by a student, Manushi Shah. According to the accuser, she and a number of other students had paid Rs 330,000 for a six month training period and a subsequent tour of the US and Brazil. The tour had to be cancelled because the US consulate denied them visas. Manushi Shah’s claim is that she was refunded only Rs 310,000 and is owed Rs 20,000.

Mallika does not disagree. Only she points out that the original contract stipulated that participants in the tour would have to pay Rs 20,000 for the intensive six month training that was imparted to the students. All this seems fairly straightforward and can presumably be easily checked and settled. Nevertheless, there is now a criminal case against Mallika Sarabhai. She has had to take anticipatory bail; the court has seized her passport and ordered her not to leave the country.

To make sense of all this, one has to look at the larger context. Mallika Sarabhai lives and works in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. In April 2002, she and others petitioned the Indian Supreme Court to make the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and other organisations belonging to the Sangh Parivar liable for the 2002 riots (i.e., the pogrom that killed over 2000 people, mostly Muslims) in Gujarat. What is happening to Mallika now does suggest vindictiveness on the part of the BJP and the Sangh Parivar.

One front organisation for the Sangh Parivar, the National Council of Civil Liberties (NCCL), is reported to be involved in the case against Mallika. Its president, VK Saxena, is said to have accompanied the accuser to the police station when the case was lodged. Manushi’s father even told the Hindustan Times that “Saxena was the leader of the movement (against Sarabhai).”

NCCL has a history of harassing other groups that oppose the Sangh Parivar and its activities. In November 2000 NCCL published a series of advertisements defaming the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), later calling on the government to ban the organisation. The NBA has been spearheading opposition to the series of large dams being built on the Narmada River.

Mallika Sarabhai also represents the kind of person that the Sangh Parivar loves to hate. A highly educated and talented artiste, Mallika has been an outspoken feminist and committed to various progressive causes. In her own words, “For me a feminist is somebody who fights for the rights and equal opportunities for women and everybody else around. It’s just that 55 per cent of the people who are exploited happen to be women.” Even in her dance and theatrical work, she has sought to interject political content. Her justification: “Performance art is the only thing today that does not turn people off. How else do you get people to re-evaluate fundamental issues? We can’t separate politics from life.”

During last year’s pogrom, Mallika was involved in various efforts to stop the violence. Along with others like Medha Patkar, she had organised a meeting at the Sabarmati Ashram built by Mahatma Gandhi, which ended up being violently disrupted by a contingent of lumpen elements associated with the Sangh Parivar. Later she was part of a Concerned Citizens Tribunal that investigated the violence in Gujarat. More recently she compiled a music album entitled Peace Works; money from the sales of this album are to go to rehabilitation of the victims of the pogrom. None of these endeared her to the ruling BJP government, giving one a basis to suspect foul play in the recent cases against her.

Mallika Sarabhai is not the only victim of such political vindictiveness. Earlier this year Nafisa Ali, a social worker, had cases slapped on her for her remarks during a press conference where she pointed out parallels between Gujarat’s chief minister Narinder Modi, and Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden. Two newspapers, Indian Express and the Gujarati newspaper Divya Bhaskar, were charged with reporting her remarks.

This adds to the BJP government’s earlier record of harassing the press. The most relentless harassment has been that of Tehelka.com, which was responsible for the notorious sting operation that revealed massive corruption in the Indian defence and political establishment. For this outstanding piece of public service, the government and its lawyers have deliberately gone into ‘all aspects relating to the making and publication of the allegations’, essentially forcing Tehelka and its owners into bankruptcy by trying to deal with this. (Details of this witch-hunt are at http://www.tehelka.com) It is to the credit of the core Tehelka team that it is restarting as a weekly newspaper.

Other newspapers and journalists have been attacked or otherwise harassed by the BJP government. Examples of such actions are: income tax raids on Outlook magazine; the imprisonment of Iftikhar Gilani of Kashmir Times; threatening to deport Time magazine’s Alex Perry for painting an unflattering picture of Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee and his ill-health; and asking Naseer Shadeed, a correspondent for Al Jazeera channel, to leave India because of his critical reports on the violence in Gujarat.

If there is one thing that is fairly common to the many victims of the varieties of political vindictiveness and vendetta described here, it is that they are not likely to cow down and give up. For this and for the larger cause that they serve, they deserve our support.

M V Ramana is a physicist and research staff member at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security and co-editor of Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream

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