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AN array of political leaders, intellectuals, activists and artists assembled at the HKS Surjeet Bhavan on April 6, 2024 to express solidarity with Prabir Purkayastha who has already served six months jail term over trumped up charges under UAPA. The solidarity programme was organised in three sessions. The first session had the performance of artists from Ahvaan and the release of Prabir’s book ‘Keeping up the Good Fight’.
The second session was addressed by intellectuals, activists and journalists. Eminent historian Romila Thapar in her read-out address posed the question that why is it that the rights of the citizens put forth in the anti-colonial movement and enshrined in our constitution are so distant even now. Romila questioned the incarceration without trial / silencing of the intellectuals who in turn are unable to publicly discuss their visions of society and called the youngsters to insist on open debates. More than 15 distinguished academicians mainly established in US released a statement over the ‘undermining of elementary freedom in India’. The statement said ‘any abridgement of democracy is tragic for not only for the people of India’ which is ‘admired internationally as an exemplary democracy in the world, but all of humanity’. Prof. Amartya Sen in a separate statement endorsed the view and recalled the colonial past in which leaders of the freedom movement were kept in jail without trial and hoped that the judicial system in India will have the good sense to eliminate the barbarities of this kind.
Prof. Prabhat Patnaik explained how two year long searches by various investigative agencies couldn’t bring out any incriminating evidence against Prabir and a duplicitous piece in NYT which didn’t get any assent from the US attorney was used here to imprison him. Prof. Patnaik concluded that such ‘strengthening of the deep state has sinister implications and a prescription for a permanent age of fascism’. D Raghunandan underlined the role of Prabir, DSF and Newsclick in keeping up scientific temper amidst a conscious retreat led by the government from evidence based policies. He said Prabir had profusely criticised governmental intervention during Covid-19 and farm bills so much so that it had figured in the FIR against him. P Sainath explained Prabir’s role as an unrelenting rationalist against obscurantism / fundamentalism. He said the criminalisation of dissent is fast spreading like a pandemic along with inequality, which has crossed even its high of the last decade of the British rule in India. Former IAS officer and activist Harsh Mander chaired the session.
Initiating the third session CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury said that his friendship with Purkayastha goes back to his days in JNU and recalled his jail term during emergency. He said this meeting is not just a solidarity with Prabir as a person but for his lasting role in people's movements. Sitaram said Newsclick and Prabir were targeted for saying truth against an authoritarian government. He said the present government wants to change the secular democratic republic into an authoritarian fascist Hindutva rashtra and Prabir remained as a soldier of modern India who wanted to take the secular democratic republic into a socialist society free from exploitation. AAP leader Gopal Rai said the authoritarian regime at the centre wanted first to silence the alternate media including Newsclick since it propagated the truth to the people. Their target is the whole opposition now and, Modi and ED actions under him have become difficult to differentiate. The elected Delhi CM is in jail, without a shred of evidence against him. Modi says he wants to end corruption but if anyone is saving the corrupt in this country it's the BJP, he added.
Brinda Karat listed the two main demands of the solidarity meeting. The first being release of Prabir and withdrawal of the wrong charges. The second being the defreezing of the accounts of Newsclick. She said all central government agencies have failed to produce any incriminating evidence against Prabir and after the court gave protection, the government made fresh charges under UAPA to jail him. The chargesheet which is leaked out by the same agencies, it seems, have criminalised the solidarity of Newsclick with anti-CAA, farmer and other working class struggles. The fabricated charge of Chinese funding is also to tarnish the image of a person who have always stood defiantly for truth and sided with the working people. Brinda said Prabir at 75, has asthma and suffered lung-infection four times in the last six months and is in a precarious health condition. D Raja (CPI), Sucheta De (CPI-ML), and G Devarajan (AIFB) also spoke at the session.
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