“I am off to NIA custody and do not know when I shall be able to talk to you again. However, I earnestly hope that you will speak out before your turn comes.”
Two years ago, I read these stinging lines from Professor Anand Teltumbde’s letter(on The Wire’s website) on the eve of his arrest. Prof. Anand is a scholar, writer, civil rights activist and management professor. He is also the grandson-in-law of Dr B. R. Ambedkar. I had never known about Prof. Anand or his history of struggle for the marginalized before reading his letter.
It was quite possibly because of the privilege that I have of being born into an oppressive community and the casteist traits in me that I was ignorant of such a tall figure in the intellectual circle. That week, I bought ‘Republic of Caste’ a book written by him that details Dalit history along with unsparing and fact-based criticism of our country’s savarna ruling class.
It is a rare book that combines criticism of political parties irrespective of their leanings with an analysis of a society itself that is indifferent to the grave atrocities that happen in their own neighbourhood. The picture he paints is of a dystopian nation with a majority that has not just forgotten humanity but revels in the pain inflicted on the minorities by an increasingly authoritarian state.
He, along with many other civil rights activists and scholars, was arrested in the Bhima Koregaon case under frivolous charges (US-based security experts have found proof of planting of evidence as per a recent news report in The Indian Express).
Professor Anand was arrested on April 14 2020, the birthday of Babasaheb Ambedkar. An act quite symbolic of the establishment and its hate for constitutional values and the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity which Babasaheb advocated. His arrest led to protests across universities and among the intellectual & activist circles. The question though is that why was it limited to that?
An Indifferent Society
The arrest of Professor Anand should have rung the alarm bells for a country that prides itself on being the world’s largest democracy. But India’s democracy has always been a property of the elites, a property that is sometimes lent out to the poor, mostly during election periods.
The lack of any voice from the opposition parties for Prof. Anand was not surprising considering the fact that he has been critical of these parties for their roles in laying down the path for the Hindutva regime. Nor was it surprising that the mainstream media chose not just to ignore but vilify him and other activists and played an active role in their character assassination going as far as calling them “Urban Naxals”. But can we stop our fingers there and absolve ourselves of any responsibility for such apathy.
After all, politicians are not planted into the world by some divine figure but are the end product of society. A society and a majority that has not just ignored the plight of the underprivileged but has been complicit in the atrocities that have been committed. But it really fails to surprise me in any manner. After all, this is the same society in which Rohit Vemula’s suicide, or rather institutional murder, resulted in many people trying to paint him in a negative light and a prime-time “journalist” discussing his caste just so that they can defend the people that they worship.
It is the same society in which a family was massacred to death by a whole village because of their caste (“Khairlanji: A Strange and Bitter Crop” is another book by Prof. Anand on the massacre).
So, the indifference from the masses is in fact not an aberration but a trait. A trait that is sadly a metaphor for the kind of society that we have become.
I have never met Anand Sir, yet his one book alone imparted way more knowledge and reality checks than any of my academic books.
He has never taught me but he will always be a teacher for anyone who reads him.
His life and his struggles will be remembered by those who know him in person or otherwise. And his fight will be taken forward by those who understand the importance of what he was trying to say. July 15 is his birthday, his 3rd one in prison. It’s difficult to wish someone a happy birthday when they are kept away from their loved ones and from doing works that they are passionate about. Yet, I hope that he finds the strength to muster on from behind the bars, like how the late Father Stan Swamy said:
We 16 co-accused have not been able to meet each other, despite being in the same jail. But we will still sing in chorus. A caged bird can still sing.
Happy Birthday, Professor Anand.