SHOWCASE: Sketches from my Jail Diary (2005-07)

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Showcase: Two Songs from Behind the Walls

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Anuj Sharma and I recently spent an evening at Akhil's churning out tunes for some of the poems I had written during the time I was in jail. We intend releasing an audio-CD to accompany the book. In this clip, you can see the lyricist and the composer at work!



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This is probably what a "finished product" of my collaboration with the hugely talented Anuj Sharma would sound like. Anuj's voice- and music- have the effect of transporting me back through space-time: to a cold and lonely cell in Raipur Central Jail where I feel once again the night-wind's eerily comforting embrace.

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ESSAY: SITUATING NEHRU

Note: I had written this essay more than two years ago in the confines of Raipur Central Jail: all I can now remember of that August-monsoon is that the surfaces- walls, ceiling- of my cell leaked profusely, especially after the PWD's efforts to repair them; and ravaging my ration of one (heavily-censored) newspaper per day, and writing about what I had read after lockup, became my only real contact with the world beyond the walls. Not surprisingly, I would sometimes drift into a world inhabited almost exclusively by ideas and imaginings; a world into which I now offer to take the Reader.

In a way, this is also my tribute to the Nation's Founder on his 118th birth anniversary: after all, it was in his peculiar world of ideas and imaginings that India, as we know her now, was born.

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From today’s newspaper, it appears that Pandit Shyama Charan Shukla, a three-time former chief minister of Madhya Pradesh and the doyen of Chhattisgarh’s lone dynasty, has inadvertedly stepped into a political-quagmire: his utterance that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s ‘western’ upbringing is to be held responsible for India’s many problems is bound to inflame Congresspersons, most of who see India’s first Prime Minister as the nation’s architect-in-chief. Arguably this is not the first time Nehru’s ‘western ideas’ have been criticized : the Mahatma himself was not very pleased when his favorite disciple- along with a certain Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose- labored to incorporate the socialist objective in the ‘Purna Swaraj’ Resolution of the AICC session at Lahore (1929).

For the next two decades, the Congress continued to be influenced by an ongoing conflict between the socialists led by Nehru and the conservatives represented by Sardar Vallabhai Patel. The Mahatma’s conservatism, if anything, became even more reactionary as his anti-imperialist crusade evolved into an all-encompassing ‘critique of the Civil Society’ (Partha Chhatterjee): the railways came to be seen as ‘drain-pipes’, which rob the wealth of self-sufficient villages to enrich cities [it is another matter that the Mahatma first became familiar with the immensity of British India traveling by third class railway coach]; even the corporatisation of khadi under the auspices of ‘Khadi Gram Udyog’ was viewed as subversive to the ideals of the Gandhian ‘Ram Rajya.’

Before proceeding any further, it becomes imperative to make certain observations: first, before and even after Gandhi’s epiphany at Peitermaritzburg, where the young attorney was rather unceremoniously thrown off a first class railway coach, he continued to be ‘a faithful servant of the Empire’ believing in its inherent goodness, and even working on the frontlines as a Red Gross Volunteer during the Boer’s War; like him, both Nehru and Patel had been called to the Bar at the Inner Temple at London. Indeed the Empire at its Victorian Zenith had sown the seeds of its own destruction. To put the blame, as it were, on Westernization is to reverse the argument: the nationalist discourse of the Third World, as Edward Said points out in his monumental ‘Orientalism’, is post and not anti-colonial: Churchill’s ‘half clad naked fakir’ was not too long ago a distinguished gentleman at Madam Blavatsky’s Theosophical soirees. The ‘turning point’- even catharsis- came on a cold wintry day in 1919 with General Dyer’s massacre at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar: henceforth it became obvious that the well being of the Empire was in fundamental contradiction of the interests of the Indian people; for Macaulay’s Anglicized Indians, it was a rude Ending of Illusion.

Secondly, Gandhi & Patel’s embracing of conservatism has to be understood in the context of their anti-imperialistic politics: much of the leadership of the Congress, as the historian Judith Brown explains, was based after all on a rather intricate ‘patron-client’ model. The support base of the Congress was provided chiefly by ‘native’ agrarian and commercial ‘interest groups’: zamindars, petty-traders and even industrialists, all of who felt as unduly bearing the economic burden of Empire. For them Independence- with its promises of cessation of taxation on agricultural income and protectionist fiscal policies, both of which were implicit in Gandhi’s construction of ‘Ram Rajya’- thus became a cherished, much sought-after objective, and Congress under the Mahatma was obviously the best agency to deliver it. It was only natural then that the Congress in the person of Mahatma Gandhi should emerge as the principal ‘patron’, promising his ‘clients’ Independence in return for their support. The ‘falsifiability’ of Prof. Brown’s thesis can be effectively tested at Champaran, where the Father of the would-be Nation launched a satyagraha against the exploitation of British indigo-planters. It would not be far-fetched to assume that peasant cultivators all over India were equally- if not more- exploited and yet no such Satyagraha was initiated against the chief cause of this injustice: the antiquated Zamindari System crystallized under Cornwallis. In retrospect, it becomes clear that Champaran was chosen as the site for Gandhi’s first rural ‘satyagraha’ specifically because here the ‘Zamindars’ were British; there was never any intention to launch a nationwide struggle against the universal practice of Zamindari, simply because it would mean an alienation of a very important ‘client’- something which the Congress could not risk at the time. The entire surmise of this disquisition is not to show an overlooking of the peasant condition by the Congress leadership of the time, but merely to reveal the fact that despite their espousing of different- even vastly divergent- ideas, the founders of modern India remained remarkably pragmatic in their approach to Independence.

Thirdly the ‘catharsis’ of the ongoing conflict between socialism and conservatism- what are now known as the ‘left’ and ‘right’ wings of the ideological spectrum- occurred during the debate on the abolition of Zamindari, land-ceiling and the constitutional status of property rights in general. In the aftermath of Gandhi’s assassination by a Hindu fanatic- who felt that the Mahatma’s policy of minority appeasement led to the Partition, something that he could have prevented- the socialist agenda came to dominate the proceedings of the Constituent Assembly, as discussed by Prof. Granville Austin in his book, ‘Working a Democratic Constitution’: the Constitution adopted by the Republic of India on January 26, 1950 resolved the first two aspects largely in favor of the socialists but left the status of property rights ambiguous, mainly due to President Rajendra Prasad’s (himself a landlord from Bihar) fierce opposition. Ultimately, it may be argued that socialism prevailed- although the words ‘socialist’ and secular’ found their way into the Preamble much later, vide an Amendment in 1973 when the Parliament’s power to amend under Article 368 itself had been severely contained by the Supreme Court- in the formulation of the nationalist discourse and identity, and Congress itself became something of a paradox: a party of mostly right-wingers led by an aggressively socialistic leadership, which under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi would become even more assertive by enforcing the nationalization of banks, abolition of the Privy Purse given to erstwhile princes of Empire, the 42nd Amendment- all of which came together to give birth to a hugely populist creed called ‘Garibi Hatao’. As the discussion below will show, these three precepts- Westernization as intrinsic to nationalism, Pragmatism of the nationalist leadership, and the growing sway of Socialist ideology over the Congress and the country- illuminate an assessment of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s role in the shaping of modern India.

As with most other leaders of the ‘Gandhian phase’ of the nationalist struggle, Nehru’s formative socio-economic-political ideas were shaped in the crucible of Victorian-Edwardian England: infact so caught up was he in the ‘esprit’ of the Age that he wrote his father, the eminent lawyer Motilal Nehru, expressing a wish to join the Irish Republican Army (IRA); not surprisingly, he was asked to return. His initial forays into the legal profession didn’t meet with the success his father might have expected: at his first appearance before the High Court at Allahabad, rather than plead his client’s case, he wept. However under Bapu’s tutelage, it became clear that politics came easily to Nehru. Broadly speaking, his role in the politics of pre-Independent India can be categorized as follows: as a ‘socialist-satyagrahi’; as Gandhi’s de facto ambassador abroad; and as the imprisoned-author of ‘Discovery of India’. Infact, the Nehruvian impact on Independent India is a direct outcome of this three fold categorization: the ‘socialist-satyagrahi’, in a typical response against the Totalitarianism and the Depression of the late 1920s-1930s, became a firm believer in the efficacy of top-down, centralized economic planning; Gandhi’s ambassador to Europe realized the value of non-alignment in the bipolar world of the Cold War; and the author of ‘Discovery of India’ set about the business of forging a nationalist identity for the new nation based on the notion of ‘unity in diversity’.

There is a tendency, widespread among contemporary historians and political commentators, to view each of these three outcomes as a product of Nehru’s ‘utopian idealism’, largely a product of his Anglicized upbringing, which they naturally conclude was anomalistic to Indian realities. In making his controversial observation, S.C. Shukla was subscribing predominantly to this view. Needless to say, such a view has only been reinforced by the subsequent juxtaposing of ‘Nehruvian Idealism’ with the ‘realpolitik’ espoused by his daughter, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (1967-77, 80-84). In the subsequent section, I shall endeavor to test this hypothesis against the background provided above.

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In may be argued that there is a dominance of the ‘Hero archetype’- to use Carl Gustav Jung’s term- in the collective unconscious of the Indian civilization: put simply, this means that Indians have time and again exhibited an almost chronic need for heroes, powerful personalities that they can look upto, and worship; more often than not, such heroes- and heroines- become something of living gods. At the same time, the overpowering influence of Upanishadic (or post-Vedic) thought makes them skeptics, given to excessive criticism. For leaders destined to rule India, this means exposure to both an abundance of adulation but also badgering of prolific-criticisms. Nehru, as the last of ‘the Giants’ - people who won India her freedom- naturally became deified: he himself realized this when, writing under a nom de plume, he warned his countrymen against letting ‘Nehru become a dictator’; even his style of working was more consensual than autocratic as shown in the importance he gave to Parliamentary debates and the frequent letters he wrote to Chief Ministers, soliciting their advice on everything including even foreign policy. Although he inevitably tended to side with the Government (Legislature) when it came into conflict with the Party to the extent of admonishing partymen to keep away from the business of governance, the fact that such conflicts were not infrequent meant that Party bosses (like Puroshottam Das Tandon et al) weren’t exactly docile: infact, Tandon ensured that Nehru, even as India’s Sole Leader, failed to have his nominee appointed as President of the District Congress Committee (DCC) at Allahabad, his (Nehru’s) hometown. The ‘turning point’ for ‘Pandit ji’ came in the aftermath of the debacle of Sino-Indian War when suddenly murmurs of criticism became increasingly audible: here too Krishna Menon, his pro-Soviet, anti-American Defense Minister, took most of the flak, and justly so.

It was much later that Nehru came to be criticized, almost retrospectively, for all of India’s problems, most notably:

(a) Partition (Maulana Azad, a contemporary, in a posthumously published autobiography, described Nehru and Patel as ‘old men in a hurry’ to get power even at the cost of accepting the divisive Mountbatten Plan);
(b) Kashmir (again, Nehru’s eagerness to call back Indian troops from Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) in 1948, and his subsequent granting of special status to the state are held responsible for the present militancy in the valley);
(c) the Sino-Indian debacle of 1962 (despite portentous border disputes over Sikkim, Arunachal, the MacMohan line and the status of Tibet, he let himself be deluded by Menon & the Panchsheel Pact with China);
(d) the ‘Mixed Economy’ (which as one cynic remarked ‘has neither the merits of socialism nor capitalism while having both their disadvantages’);
(e) Nonalignment (all sound and no substance, which made India something of an international untouchable);
(f) the Famine of 1966-7 (Nehru’s prioritization of heavy industry, which he described as ‘Temples of Modern India’, over agriculture in the first two Five Year Plans);
(g) the growth of ‘Hindutva’/Communalism (his socialism, as reflected in ceiling and the abolition of Zamindari, alienated the traditional ‘client’ support base of the Congress, causing them to shift to the Jan Sangh, the precursor of BJP);
(h) Vietnam (B.K. Nehru, his Ambassador to the U.S., laments in his memoir ‘Nice Guys finish Second’ that when President Kennedy sought his advice on the subject, Nehru simply dozed off); and most recently,
(i) Failure to ‘Go Nuclear’ (despite overtures from America before but especially in the aftermath of China’s nuclearization). Indeed the list is hopelessly long.

One way of responding to these allegations would be to provide a comprehensive rebuttal to each of the charges but that will have the inevitable effect of reducing the entire analysis to a ‘for & against’ polemic, much in the fashion of the Dutch historian Pieter Geyl’s brilliant study of Napoleon, also written when he was in prison. For the moment, I shall resist the temptation. Instead, it is better to focus on what can broadly be called ‘Nehruvianism’: a single point of view that explains all of Nehru’s political & socio-economic thoughts and action. That, as will become apparent subsequently, was surprisingly pragmatic. In outlining the course the new nation would take, India’s first Prime Minister categorically laid out what he termed as ‘the Four Non-negotiables’: anti- imperialism; democracy; socialism (‘equal opportunity for all’); secularism (sarva dharma sambhava or equal respect for all religions). ‘Everything else,’ he said, ‘is negotiable’.

For an incredibly diverse country like India, this left a lot of room for ‘maneuver’- in terms of policies it could pursue, institution it could build and its relationship with the world- but equally significantly it identified precisely the Four Pillars on which a common unifying national identity could be built. In retrospect none of this seems particularly innovative: the fact that Indians, or atleast a vast majority of them, have come to accept their ‘Indianness’ as a fiat accompli, even as ‘Non-negotiable’, overlooks the equally pertinent fact of History that prior to Queen Victoria’s Proclamation as ‘Kaiser-é-Hind’ & Mallika-é-Hindostan’ in 1861, India, as we now know it, had never really existed as a single, consolidated politico-administrative entity; prior to this, India was an idea but even after the British left, the possibilities of about five hundred principalities choosing autonomy over accession were pregnant in the Mountbatten Plan for Transfer of Power. Infact the tide of history had actually been on the side of further Balkanization following Partition with ancient differences of caste, creed and community threatening once again to erupt: now that the British had gone, what, if anything, could keep the infantile nation from falling apart; from collapsing under the surmounting weight of its intrinsic disparities?

Under the circumstances, Nehru’s role wasn’t so much as discovering an India but something infinitely more arduous and audacious than even he could have imagined: ‘the Invention of India’. It is in this context that Nehru should rightfully be assessed: the point is not whether he is to be held responsible for India’s banes but whether there could have been an India without him? It is fashionable now to exclusively credit Sardar Vallabhai Patel as the moving force in securing the instruments of accession: ‘Nehru’s Kashmir’ is compared with ‘Patel’s Hyderabad’. This depiction of the Sardar as ‘India’s Iron Man’ is done to show Nehru as something of a ‘sissy’, a man of words, not actions: no doubt, the not-so-invisible hand of the RSS- which, as India’s most persistent right-wing outfit, has paradoxically ‘hijacked’ both the Sardar and the Mahatma as its role-models- can be seen behind this lop-sided portrayal. (It is another matter altogether that it was the RSS that masterminded the cold-blooded assassination of a defenseless Mahatma and that it was Patel who banned the outfit even though later Nehru, as a true democrat in the fashion of Rousseau, lifted that ban.) While Sardar Patel’s single-minded determination in the consolidation of Princely India cannot be underestimated, it is also true that Pandit Nehru’s conciliatory policy created the conditions which enabled the peaceful accession of an overwhelming majority of principalities littered all across the subcontinent thereby making, in these cases, the confrontationist stance of the Sardar unnecessary: that force or threat to use force was a last and not first resort is proof of the commonality of interests- identified by Nehru- which cumulatively brought disparate, often conflicting, entities into the emerging-nation’s fold.

In this, Westernization was not a detriment; infact it may even have been the sine qua non. Writing in a wholly different context- his own rather grim version of Discovery of India- the Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul makes an observation, which might be said to apply to Nehru as well: as a species, persons born- or brought up- outside of their home lands look upon themselves as belonging first and foremost to those ancestral lands from where they originated and not in terms of affiliations to any particular region, caste, creed or language. To put it differently, their primary identity is national and all other identities are relegated; become secondary. Thus it was that the Kashmiri Pandit came to see himself firstly as an Indian; and not surprisingly, he went about the business of casting India ‘in his image’, to paraphrase the author of Genesis.

From the above, it is clear that the ‘Indian national identity’ (INI hereafter) is a composite construction: those who think of it as ethereal- something that was always there since times immemorial, unchanging and immutable- abrogate history. Indeed in our own times, less than four decades after Nehru, that identity- of course, he would have preferred the word ‘concept’- has- and is- undergoing cataclysmic transformations: older loyalties and affiliations that had sought to have been relegated have become almost suddenly, resurgent. Is this Nehru’s failure- or the failure of the ‘concept’? The answer is: neither.

The problem lies elsewhere, in the very nature of contemporary- ‘post-modern’- Knowledge, or what Prof. C.P. Snow called ‘The Two Cultures’: the fundamental dichotomies between Science and non-Science (philosophy). It is a long and complex debate, and I shall refer to it here only in context of Nehruvianism. The inventor/creator of the modern Indian National Identity (INI) had very clearly expressed the hope that its continued longevity would depend, more than anything else, on Cosmopolitanism: the techno-sociological growth of urbanization. Cities, he felt, would automatically mutate affiliations to caste, region, language and religion into a composite amalgam of ‘class’ identified exclusively in terms of economic function and bound together by the Four precepts of the INI. It is therefore in the prescriptive (normative) rather than the analytical (positivist) aspects that Nehru is revealed most obviously as a ‘neo-Marxist’. Here, he seems to have grossly underestimated the socio-cultural inertia of an ancient civilization. Nehru’s ‘Temples of Modern India’- heavy industrial townships and mammoth dams like Bhakra Nangal- simply couldn’t- can’t- replace the immense multiplicity of temples and beliefs, based as they are in a space-less, timeless warp of antiquity. However the fault for this does not lie with Nehru but in the very nature of knowledge, where philosophy or wisdom has failed miserably to keep pace with the meteoric advancements in science & technology: the ‘cosmopolitanism’ that he had prophesied has done very little to engulf casteism, communalism, regionalism et al.

Perhaps it’s too early to judge Nehru: awakened, the ‘Elephant’ is marching but slowly; civilizational metamorphoses, more often than not, is spread out over several decades, if not centuries. A better appraisal of the functionality of the INI concept in contemporary India comes from employing Prof. Arnold Toynbee’s “challenge-response” model for historical evolution: every civilization, wrote the great historian, is confronted with challenges and it is the manner in which it responds to these that determines its fate; the process is vicious, unending for each response produces in its wake yet another challenge. Likewise concepts, like civilizations, are constantly challenged by the ever changing ‘force of circumstance’ (to use Somerset Maugham’s phrase): they are adapted and transformed, at times even distorted ad corrupted. This should account for the failure of totalitarian and dogmatic concepts- more commonly known as ‘ideologies’- to become universal. As discussed earlier, taken holistically as an amalgam of the necessary non-negotiables and the mutable negotiables, Nehruvianism, despite the suffix of ‘ism’, is neither totalitarian nor dogmatic: its ‘Gospel’- the Constitution of the Republic of India- is a surprisingly practical Document, which as Prof. Austin has shown can ‘work’ in extremely different ways, determined principally by the machinations & the mood of the times in which it is evoked. To put it differently, there are no fixed answers and no fixed questions. It remains as workable in the liberalized/reformist era as it did during the protectionist regime, and under the Centre Leftists as also the rightists. What the ‘Four Non-negotiables’- inbuilt into the spirit of that majestic, almost magical, Document do- is restrain India’s rulers and her citizens from overstepping the line which once crossed would surely result in the disintegration of the nation while also safeguarding the interests of one against the other. In its sheer workability- admirers call it ‘pragmatic’ while cynics refer to it as ‘ambiguous’- the Constitution- and by implication Nehruvianism- are incomparable.

Ultimately the success or failure of Nehru becomes irrelevant; the only relevant fact- or if one has to be epistemological, ‘truth’- is how leaders choose to interpret him and his ‘concept’ to meet the exigencies of the time when they are called upon to serve the people of India. For better or worse, it is the one mirror that allows Indians- and India- to see themselves as a unified whole; there is no other.

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In this final section, I undertake to examine the workability of Nehruvianism in India, and the various transformations it has undergone. To begin with, I look at the evolution of the mind in whose interstices the identity was incubated; a mind that prefaced the million mutinies. It would not be wrong to say that at a very generic level the Nationalist Mind, during the zenith of the freedom struggle, came to view the world in black & white: Imperialism was evil; Independence good. Despite the numerous differences and divergences prevalent among leaders- disparities that resulted in Partition, for instance- there existed a broad unanimity on this bipolar schemata. With the passage of time however things weren’t- couldn’t be- that simple: a lot of it has become Grey, cloudy. The Rationalism that germinated Nehruvianism too was a creature of this simplicity: it subscribed to a view that linked economic development, social equality and democracy with the notion of ‘Progress’. For most part, that view still prevails. Neither the means prescribed nor the end desired are questioned: the ‘linkage’, as it were, is intact. It is simply that the meaning of these ‘means’- economic development, social equality, democracy- isn’t so clear anymore; and the notion of ‘Progress,’ as understood by Nehru, seems rather ambiguous. What has happened ?

Put simply, the rationalist idea of progress is no longer held to be valid: to be progressive no longer implies a movement against the dependencies of nature or the opposition- even if it is in the form of evolution- to the currents of history; neither does it signify a revolt against the intuitive grain of passion. The efficacy of equating economic development with state- planning, construction of Temples of Modern India, and a protectionist self-sufficiency- is unsustainable in the light of radicalized environmentalism and globalization; social equality does not mean a syncretic class-based cosmopolitanism but an increasingly assertive role for traditionally peripheralized castes and communities; the idea of democracy itself has become confused with majoritarianism that is closer to the classical (Platonic) definitions of ‘mobocracy’, which prioritizes, as Sunil Khilnani observes, the pageantry of elections over institution building. Everywhere passions hitherto repressed have returned, with a terrifying vengeance.

What concerns me here is whether Nehruvianism contributed to this repression; or did it simply, like Victorian London at its zenith, sow the seeds of its own revision? The answer is: both. To be sure, Nehruvianism- as a child of obsessive Rationalism- sought to supplant the bedlam of history and tradition in the sense that it envisaged ‘taking India forward’, away from not merely the imperialist experience but also the deeper asymmetries of Dumont’s “homo hierarchicus” society, but in seeking to do so, it brought forth a whole new awareness that made the acceptance of its prescriptions difficult: the primordial instinct for self-survival having been aroused, castes refused to disintegrate and reorganize themselves around the alien concept of class; and the infusion of caste and communal politics metamorphosed democracy into something of a battleground. Not surprisingly, the Prophet has foreseen this: long years ago, Nehru had warned of the dangers of majority-communalism masquerading as democracy; to him, there could be no greater threat than this. Almost six decades before, this threat had resulted in the three fold ‘amputation’ of the Indian subcontinent (the phrase is Salman Rushdie’s); it has never quite left.

The ‘cataclysms’ described above point to a very veritable Insurrection; just as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre had announced the End of the Age of Illusion (see section 1) for Gandhian nationalists, one now witnesses an Ending of the Age of Reason as embodied in Nehruvianism; but it is difficult to put a precise date- or even a phenomenon- to it. In many ways, the politics of Nehru’s daughter and eventual successor Prime Minister Indira Gandhi reflects this ending: with the possible exception of the Mahatma, modern India is yet to see a leader more attuned to the primordial sensibilities and ethos underlying this ancient civilization, as reflected in her studied as well as intuitive grasp of its several and severed sensibilities, myths, idioms & legends. Yet unlike her father, she didn’t endeavor to transplant them with a new Rationalism; instead they became a source of unbridled strength, enabling her to establish direct and personal communication with each individual member of a vast and marginalized majority: women, dalits and tribals. The crucial point however is that she did not deviate from the fundamentals of Nehruvianism, its non-negotiables; au contraire, they were radicalized and strengthened by her. More than anything else, this signifies the remarkably enduring adaptability of Nehruvianism: its phenomenal capacity to imbibe the insurrection of passions, and channelize their energies to bring forth a further consolidation of the INI.

What Nehru gave India was an ‘ideal’ that would preserve the independence & integrity of India by identifying a universal commonality built around the lowest common denominator of the four non-negotiables; for better and worse, that ‘ideal’ is the product of an Anglicized (Westernized) mind and Rationalist thought; to subtract from the ‘ideal’ necessarily implies the disintegration of India; thus as long as India is to remain, so must the ideal. The ideal gave rise to an awakening and has and continues to survive the resultant Insurrection of Passion; constantly adapting to it. Any failure, with due apologies to S.C. Shukla, lies not with Nehruvianism but with those entrusted with its legacy- which must necessarily include men such as himself.


Amit Aishwarya Jogi
August 3-6, 2005
Raipur Central Jail
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NOTICE: The Week's story on my "Life in Jail"

This week's THE WEEK magazine has done a feature on my "Life in Jail". There is only one clarification I wish to make to what Mr. Murali Eadezhath, the state correspondent, has written: I was not acquitted due to 'benefit of doubt'; for the record, there was no doubt whatsoever about my non-complicity, and the acquittal was honorable.
AJ
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Life in jail
- Murali Eadezhath
Chhattisgarh


Amit Jogi managed elections, wrote play
The acquittal of former Chhattisgarh chief minister Ajit Jogi's son Amit Jogi in a murder case has come as a big relief for the Jogi family and the state unit of the Congress, especially the Jogi camp.

"The judgment was keenly awaited. For four years this case has been the central point of my life, to prove my innocence," Amit told THE WEEK, after a special court [gave him the benefit of the doubt- see above] and acquitted him on May 31.

The CBI arrested Amit in June 2005 for allegedly masterminding the murder of former Nationalist Congress Party treasurer Ramavatar Jaggi in June 2003. He spent around a year in Raipur Central Jail. Though the Bilaspur-based Chhattisgarh High Court granted him bail earlier this year, he was re-arrested on May 2 after the Supreme Court overruled the decision.

Ajit relied on his son's political abilities even while in jail. Amit is believed to be the key strategist in the Congress victory in the Assembly by-election from Kota last December and the Lok Sabha by-election from Rajnandgaon this year. A Congress worker said Amit was significantly involved in assigning work to each party worker during the elections.

So what are Amit's plans post-acquittal? "I like to meet people and want to help them. But that doesn't mean I have immediate plans to enter politics," he said. Apparently, life in jail has brought Amit closer to God, and the poor. "I came face to face with the sad and dark side of life while in jail. Now I yearn to be with the poor and the needy to give them as much as I can," he said. Amit said he met people in jail whose biggest crime was their poverty and he learned from the inmates lessons of life that he did not get from his public school education.

The incarceration brought the Jogis closer to each other. Amit said that while his father suffered the most in his absence, his mother, Renu Jogi, remained strong. She kept reminding her son that he need not worry as long as his conscience was clear, and that justice could be delayed but not denied. "My parents, well-wishers and friends knew I was innocent and that truth would prevail. This gave me the strength to face the sufferings," Amit said.

His jail diary features poems and a play, titled Chal Be Kapada Uthar (Hey You, Remove Your Clothes), which speaks of the plight of jail inmates who get stripped by the guard at the gate upon entering jail. According to Amit, as long as a convict stays in jail, he is under surveillance, and his soul remains naked.

Now, for the next few months, Amit will be working on the poems in the diary and get them ready for publishing.
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Journey's End

the end back to its beginning
the beginning back to its end...

Anusha Jogi, Aitia


Dear Reader,

This will be my last post as an Undertrial: tomorrow, I return to judicial custody by an order of the Hon’ble Supreme Court, exactly one day short of my one year of ‘half-freedoms’, the twilight existence of a bailed-out undertrial; on the 7th of May, Final Arguments commence on my behalf; and judgement is due to be delivered by month’s end. The Order itself is an unanticipated setback: being behind bars at this critical juncture and thereby without access to legal counsel, I will not be able to effectively participate in my own defence. Under the circumstances, it is only natural to be disappointed, even sad.

Despite this, I continue to have full and unadulterated faith in our nation’s judicial process. It may well be that the cancelled-order of the hon’ble High Court had gone beyond the scope of section 439 of the Criminal Procedure Code (dealing with the Powers of the High Court to grant Bail) in commenting on the quality of the evidence- the principal consideration for their Lordships’ decision- but it is also true that certain submissions made by the Central Bureau of Investigation and the complainant’s counsels before the Apex Court were incorrect: for instance, it was insinuated that ‘27 prosecution witnesses (PWs) have turned hostile since I was enlarged on bail.’


The fact, however, is that of the fourteen PWs examined consequent to my coming out on bail, i.e., on 5th May 2006, two were Metropolitan Magistrates, another a scientific officer with the Central Forensic and Scientific Laboratory (CFSL) while the remainder were investigating officers of the C.B.I. To presume that any one of them can become hostile at my behest is not only improbable but also, outrightly laughable. This ‘defect’, I am informed, might be sufficient cause to file a review petition, but by the time it is disposed off, the Trial would have ended. I can only hope that this judgment of the hon'ble Apex court does not have an adverse impact on the Trial’s outcome. Incidentally, this exact apprehension, I'm told, has been specifically dealt with in a last-line rider of that Order.

The bottom-line, however, is that we were caught unawares: although the matter had been shown as listed, the Bench that had previously been hearing the case for the past 10 months was on vacation, and consequently the matter came up before another Bench. Consequently, my lawyers presumed that it would be adjourned. In fact, the senior counsel who had been appearing in the matter was on leave that day. As subsequent events revealed, it was a fatal mistake on our part; and one for which I now pay the penalty. Still, I prefer to see all this as Destiny's- God's- Plan for my Life.

I have always felt that this is as much a legal battle as it is a moral one. “You know that you haven’t done any wrong,” my mother never fails to comfort me, “so God will not let any wrong come to you.” I believe her. But I also worry about her- and about Papa. As an only son, I know only too well the pain of being separated from my parents, my lifeblood. And from my friends and wellwishers- those tens of thousands of people who have stood by my family through thick and thin.

Indeed, I am both gratified and strengthened by so much Love.

The last entry of my Jail Diary was dated 3rd May 2006. Its next entry will be exactly one year later: on 3rd May 2007. I can only hope- and pray- that this next section will be a short epilogue; and that we will meet again, soon.

Please pray for me.

Good bye.

AJ

Note: No part of this post shall be published, or quoted wholly or in part, without prior consent of the author and/or his representatives as directed by him. This is a personal message and as such, does not have any bearing or reflection whatsoever on the judicial proceedings related to the author's case. The views expressed herein are being published in absentia by his representatives, and the author can not be held in any manner liable for these.

Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......

SHOWCASE: FOUR SELF-PORTRAITS

Title: Self in Technicolor
Date: November 11, 2005
Place: High Security Cell, Raipur Central Jail
Artist: Amit Aishwarya Jogi



Title: Self in Technicolor- Sepia imprint
Date: October 29, 2006
Place: Anugrah, Raipur
Artist: Amit Aishwarya Jogi



Title: Trial- At the Court of III ASJ Mr. Shiv Mangal Pandey
Date: November, 2005
Place: High Security Cell, Raipur Central Jail
Artist: Amit Aishwarya Jogi


Title: Cellular
Date: November 11, 2005
Place: High Security Cell, Raipur Central Jail
Artist: Amit Aishwarya Jogi Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......

POETRY: (A) Liable (translated from Hindi)

Note: In the translation, I have put the poem’s context in a distant past. The reason is simple: verses for the Hindi came to me while I- the man ‘in a box of wood’- stood in the courtroom. The English translation was done when those verses, once alive, had become stilled, in the solitude of my cell. [Photograph below shows 'a poet in court', courtesy The Hindu Newspaper]

Caught in a web of words
A worried man once stood
In a box of wood:
Martyr
Drunk in Silence’s Embrace.

If he heard something, he nothing said
If he said, nobody anything heard:
The why O why
Did that Man’s shadow-
Like Moon fallen from the Sky
Upon a River of Tears- by itself flow
Through terrified vales
Of terrible tales?

As if he had known
From Centuries before
Destiny’s Destination.

Raipur Central Gaol,
March 3, 2006 Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......

Jail Diary: (C) On Independence Day: An Undertrial’s Thoughts

Jail Diary Entry of 15th August 2005
It has been a week since I turned 28: flowerbeds we planted a month ago alongside the two-feet wide pathway, which circumbulates this ‘high security complex’, are resplendent with riotous blossoms, the transience of which is not entirely lost on me. This forenoon, the recently appointed Minister (Home & Jail) has been invited to preside over some sort of a ‘cultural program’ at the Prisoners’ Club in the Old Octagon, where he is expected to distribute carpenter’s tool-kits and sewing machines to life-termers who have served out their fourteen-year sentences, and will be set free today. Visitors not being permitted on holidays, I expect to meet no one- Papa, Mummy, SNT et al- today, and perhaps also tomorrow.

Another week of waiting begins.
*
Possibly for the first time in my relatively short life, I begin to understand the fuller significance of Independence Day (ID), paradoxically while I’m locked-up in prison: it is not Pandit Nehru’s ‘tryst with destiny’ speech, with its beautiful metaphors and an unfortunate horological error (‘when the world sleeps, India awakes…’- as a matter of fact, more than half the world was wide awake), that comes to mind but a far more universal truth- episteme- articulated by the legendary South African cardiac surgeon, Dr Christian Barnard: recounting his experience with the first ever human heart transplant in history, he writes that ‘one who has not experienced darkness cannot see light.’ The plain truth is that up until forty-five days ago, I had taken my freedom for granted: it was a condition I was born into, and very frankly I knew of no other; the notion that it could as easily be taken away did not cross my mind, and in that sense at least Mr Sood (see entry of 13/8) is right: opposing my bail before the Hon’ble Chief Justice, the flamboyant lawyer proclaimed that I ‘exercised my freedom with impunity’. But I find it rather difficult to believe that a majority of my fellow citizens don’t, including Mr Sood himself. In fact, the phrase ‘freedom is my birth right’ implies a certain level of irrevocable impunity: that the exercise of freedom should necessarily be done without constraint, or fear of consequences. However the ‘exercise of freedom’ cannot be given to mean that one can take another’s freedom with impunity; to think that freedom as a right can be divorced from freedom as a duty defeats its very function. The question then is: at what point does Society acquire the right to take away a person’s freedom? The theoretical answer is clear: at the precise point when that person’s freedom becomes incompatible with its own. In praxis however, this clarity gets lost in the various interpretative traditions this question evokes.

Admittedly, from my peculiar point of view, the issue of freedom cannot remain a matter of academic curiosity but instead enlarges itself into a subject of existential concern; in fact, at the risk of sounding melodramatic, it has become ‘a matter of life and death’. Broadly speaking, there are three alternative paradigms- legal philosophies- out of which I’ve already expounded, very briefly, on two (see entry of 9/7). First, a person is guilty- i.e., deprived of his freedom- till he establishes his innocence. Secondly, he is to be presumed innocent- and hence a free man- until his guilt can be proven by persons- or agencies- that accuse him. There is a third also, which brings into play the greatest possible measure of discretion on part of society- and state’s- judicial apparatus: ‘the Principle of Graded Complicity’, in which a person’s guilt (translated as deprivation of personal freedom) is in direct proportion to the level of ‘suspicion’ the prosecution’s investigation (collection of evidence) of the offence gives rise to: is the presented evidence sufficient to establish complicity even before the commencement of trial? On an intellectual spectrum, this third paradigm is in remarkable proximity to the first since it accepts the possibility of a person’s guilt till he can otherwise prove himself innocent, thus sanctioning his ‘lawful enslavement’- the condition of every undertrial prisoner- on as flimsy a ground that the novice Superintendent of Police supervising the investigation, as is my case, found the accused rather ‘arrogant’ (this is what he told his superiors anyway). What the officer doesn’t realize it that ‘impunity’, as he sees it, comes not only from a sense of immunity- something I couldn’t possibly have deluded myself into accepting, since I did go for questioning of my own accord, and with a packed suitcase- but also because the person believes firmly in his own innocence. Why then go with a suitcase? Simply because while I am convinced of my innocence, I am also equally- if not more- certain of the absurd extents to which my Prosecutors had gone to ‘frame me’, a fact that can be evidenced from day before yesterday’s proceedings: the legal has unfortunately become viciously personal.

The fact is that most prisoners are here due to two reasons: one, personal rivalries not only between parties to the alleged offence but also more significantly, between the prosecuted and the prosecution itself; two, the fact of material expendability of the prisoner, indicated most often by his poverty (broadly defined here as the paucity of wherewithal to advance one’s interests vis-à-vis the Establishment). In the first category are ‘prisoners of personality-politics’ and the second is constituted of ‘prisoners of poverty’. Between them, precious little space is left for ‘prisoners of penalty’: people who have actually committed the offence they are charged with. While I would most obviously put myself in the first bracket- perhaps more a prisoner of politics than personality- the question of freedom becomes more pertinent to the ‘prisoners of poverty’- those unfortunate souls who form my present and immediate society. On the eve of India’s 58th Independence Day, I choose to speak out for these silenced creatures, the singularly most ‘banal’ victims of the contemporary state and its rationally devised system of ‘norms’, which as this analysis will reveal, has become the most oppressive technology responsible for their condition: the application of Foucaldian archaeologies in the context of the Indian Penal System yields an equally elaborate- but not as ‘discreet’- use of Power.
*

The technology for the systemic use of power operates at two levels: one, the performance of policing expressed both as reduction in reported crimes and increase in the number of convictions secured against them; two, the valuation of lower-judiciary (below the level of High Court) in terms of the proportion of convictions in relation to acquittals awarded by a presiding officer. Not surprisingly, both these levels justify- and propagate- each other. The practical impact of this dual technology invested in India’s juridico-penal apparatus is as follows: under-reportage of crimes that can be overlooked- such as white-collar crimes, domestic abuse, and non-homicidal crimes involving the silenced poor and the marginalized- in order to reduce the number of offences that are registered in each thana (police station). This means that only crimes of a severe nature- mostly homicides in which a mutilated corpse is produced- are recorded, the punishment for which is life-sentence or death at the scaffold. Then, once such a crime has been registered, there exists a further compulsion to ‘close the file’: an act that must necessarily result in arrests. Under the circumstances, the temptation to solve the case by ‘framing’ persons considered undesirable (anti-social) or expendable (marginalized) or both. Promptly, a confessional u/s 164- or if that’s too much trouble, then a police statement u/s 161- of the Cr.P.C. is beaten out of them, with the reassurance that the ‘evidence’ is so flimsy that they will most certainly be acquitted by the court. This explains why it is often the ‘history-sheeters’- those who have been convicted previously- that are sent back to jail in what becomes a self-fulfilling vicious cycle. Once the police procedure is completed, the judicial procedure takes over. Here too, since the performance of the trial court is evaluated internally based on the number of convictions- with the kind of pock-faced investigation done by the police, it shouldn’t in the least bit surprise anyone that our nation’s conviction-rate is abysmally low- it is a foregone conclusion that those persons who cannot afford a proper legal defense- which in any case is becoming increasingly expensive- or, to put it differently, cannot make it excessively difficult for the presiding officer to convict, end up in jail, more often than not in total disregard of the evidence brought against them by an equally incompetent prosecution. The reason is simple: a conviction removes all doubts of external influence and bias.

In most cases, the appellate courts usually overturn such systemic-convictions. At this point of time, it is safe to say that the proportion of ‘non-poor’ prison-population is less than 1% (myself included). The ‘System’ thus operates as a ‘filtration-plant’, systematically weeding out the impoverished, the marginalized and the delinquents (‘history-sheeters’), who can collectively be termed ‘prisoners of poverty’. As described above, at the core of this problem- if one chooses to see it as such- lies the technology that seeks to define ‘norms’- reduction in the number of FIRs registered and increased arrests (Police); higher conviction rate (Judiciary)- in apparently altruistic ways.

What this description reveals is that altruism- good intentions- does not necessarily result in beneficial- good- outcomes; they may just as easily be perverted. If anything, this altruism reflects, and is a product of, the narrow interests of a particular section- I refuse to use the word ‘class’ in the Indian context- that can broadly be categorized as ‘the haves and the have-mores’, and to that extent, it can be said to fulfill its purpose: they- the elite- are automatically de-criminalized at the expense of the ‘have-nots’; a fact that breeds a further mythology that ‘poverty breeds criminality’ whereas it is really the System of perverted norms that breeds this notion and provides credence to it, in form of demographical data related to the sociology of crime and indeed whole of the discipline of criminology itself. In fact, it is this attribution, at once systemic and scientific, of criminal behavior to the ‘prisoners of poverty’, which authorizes and justifies the deprivation of their freedoms, both at personal and social levels, where it serves to sanction a more invasive and oppressive system of Surveillance in those localities where they live under the pretext of crime-containment, the philosophy being that ‘prevention is better than cure’. In India, where housing is not merely based on economic criteria (HIGs, MIGs and LIGs- referring respectively to higher, middle and lower income group residents- is part of the official nomenclature of state-run housing board corporations) but also communal (Muslim areas, Brahman-paara etc.), this implies that the technology of surveillance is not restricted to the poor but also sui generis targeted against certain communities as a whole. Yet again, a vicious cycle finds completion, with surveillance feeding on sociological, stereotypical and statistical suspicions of criminality and also giving rise to them: a snake devouring its own tail.

In the final analysis, this carefully constructed linkage between criminality and poverty- a linkage I’ve endeavored today to deconstruct by deciphering the manner in which state and society use Power with respect to its often altruistic norms- becomes both the cause and effect of the deprivation of absolute freedom. To recognize this reality is to accept the fuller meaning of freedom and guarantee its uncompromising universality, thus removing the anomaly that ‘some are more free than the rest’.

I can think of no better way to celebrate- and ‘cerebrate’- this Independence Day.

Jai Hind.
*
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NOTICE: THREE CARCERAL PLAYS

Apart from "Interrogation", I wrote three other plays in jail. One of them entitled "Chal bé kapadé utar" runs into several pages. It is under production. The other two, "An Interview with the Whore" & "One-night stands", appear elsewhere.

Given the somewhat controversial nature of the latter two's content, it was felt that they be posted separately.

AJ Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......

PLAY: (A) Interrogation

Dedicated to AGL Kaul, DySP/SCB/CBI

Interrogation: A one-act, two-character sketch.

Scene: A table, with two chairs facing each other. Hanging from above the center of this table, a bulb with a string switch to turn it on and off.

Curtains open.

The bulb is turned on.

Q- The Light?
K- Have you seen it?
Q- What?
K- The Light.
Q- Not the Light. A light, yes.
K- Any sort of light
Q- Flickering: I was far, it was drizzling. I couldn’t see clearly.
K- Well, did you or did you not see it? The Light?
Q- You mean: a light.
K- Damn it! A light, the Light! What difference does it make?
Q- Speaking from an epistemological perspective, yes: it does make one helluva difference. One might even go so far as to say: all the difference there is between omniscience and blindness.
K- Oh, shut up! You know as well as I do that this isn’t one of your sessions or sermons or seminars or soliloquies or whatever it is you call ’em.
Q- Pray tell, then, what exactly “this” is?
K- A bloody Interrogation. That’s what this is. And you bloody well know it. Now, don’t try acting smart with me.
Q- Do I need to act?
K- Act?
Q- Smart. I was under the impression that the reason why you’ve called me here, to this “Interrogation”, is precisely because you know it for a fact that I AM SMART. Perhaps a bit too smart for your palate.

K slaps Q.
Q wipes blood off the corner of his upper lip with a finger.

Q- Violence is the weapon of the weak. Who said that? Ah, you haven’t the faintest clue. Well, in that case: let it be I. Yes, I said that. You will remember it, won’t you? Violence is the weapon of the weak. Not Luther or Gandhi but I. I.

K leaves room.

Q- (looks lovingly at the blood on his finger, sucks it) Yummy. “The blood of Christ shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this as often as ye shall drink it, in remembrance of me.” O, sweet, sweet Sacrilege. Behold, the Seduction of Sinners!

K returns. Sits down.

K- Like the sound of your own voice, eh? Now, let’s hear you sing.
Q- Care for a lullaby?
K- Only the truth.
Q- Truth is blind men looking at shadows dancing on the walls of a cave. Wait a minute. Blind men don’t see. Can’t see. Perhaps they weren’t blind after all. (screams) No! The Advent of Amnesia!
K- O what a drama-queen! Look we can go on all night like this. But it will be a whole lot easier for the both of us if you…
Q- Is it night already? So soon?
K- Does it matter? In here, it’s always night. One long unending night.
Q- Bravo! Could this really be…the Birth of a Poet? Come to think of it, I tend to have that affect on people: impregnating everyone with poetry.
K- You give yourself too much credit.
Q- Not enough for you, apparently. Admit it. Wouldn’t you be happier if I gave myself unadulterated credit for this…Crime? You know, took the entire blame on my head. Confessed. Isn’t that what this “Interrogation” is about?
K- All we want to know is what really happened.
Q- Oh! Is that all? A moment ago, you wanted to know ‘the Truth’. The point, which I’m glad you’re beginning to belatedly appreciate, is that you’ve got to be specific about things: what, when, where, how. Those are the easy questions. It’s the WHY that’s the Real McCoy!
K- So tell me: what, when, where, how?
Q- Turn off the light. Will you? I can see much better that way.
K- As you say. You can’t possibly run. There’s nowhere to run to.

K pulls the bulb’s string switch. Lights off.

K- There! Now tell me, very slowly, what do you see. Tell me everything.
Q- Oh, but I am not here. See for yourself.

K turns on bulb.

Q isn’t there.

End.

Raipur Gaol,
January 14, 2006.
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JAIL DIARY: Part Three: The Ballad of Raipur Gaol

July 8, 2005
From PC to JC
*

July 9, 2005
I am perhaps the only real prisoner in Raipur Gaol: all others, except those on death row (there aren’t any here), are allowed to roam the immense campus with only a nominal presence of unarmed ‘warders’ assigned to keep watch; they are free to mingle with each other, forge associations and bonds, which I’m told more often than not endure entire life-spans. I, on the other hand, am condemned to share my cell- a 7’ by 9’ (feet) structure that includes a toilet (the flush doesn’t work and I’m rationed two buckets of water daily)- with a variety of creatures, most notably flies, who I’ve long given-up shooing, but also an emerging colony of red ants and ofcourse the famous full-blooded Raipuriya mosquitoes. [There are others whose zoological nomenclature escapes me now.] Prisoners too bear the brunt of the change of government: for all of today- infact from the time of my internment- there has been no evidence of electricity, not that I mind terribly. Thankfully there is enough daylight for me to read the few periodicals and also finish the book (Keegan’s anthology: The Book of War) that my jailors have very kindly permitted me. After much persuasion, I have also been allowed the luxury of writing paper and a solitary ballpoint pen, with which I am now able to scribble this.


Any possibility of getting my trusty laptop, to which I’ve confined the over fifty-thousand words I’ve written on the history of Chhattisgarh, has been ruled out although my lawyer informs me that there is judicial precedence of prisoners being allowed the use of computers. [Charles Sobraj is a case in point.] It’s not as if the machination- the contemporary computer- is outlawed from jail premises: the hon’ble Jail Superintendent only this morning boasted of a computer-training program for convicts, but ‘security concerns’ prevent my enrolling in that commendable effort. Home-food is also quite out of the question for fear that I might be poisoned. Mummy’s request to personally deliver a lunch-tiffin was met with a curt ‘No’- and she had no option but to take it back. I am also free to walk about but the two feet path between my cell and its enclosure affords a somewhat dismal view of whitewashed walls topped with menacing iron spikes, which serves to make me even more acutely aware of my status as an undertrial prisoner, who in the prison’s somewhat skewed social-hierarchy are somewhat akin to second-rate citizens, the crème-de-la-crème comprised of ‘numberdars’ (Convict Overseers or COs) chosen from convicts sentenced for life. The latter incidentally are the fuel of the burgeoning prison-economy, where I’m told (most recently by K before he finally said goodbye) everything- animal, mineral and vegetable- is available but any many times the market cost. Since I’ve not brought anything with me that might be construed as ‘valuable’ in the remote, I am summarily excluded from the operation of this prodigious economy. The food given to me is adequate, I suppose, from a nutritional viewpoint although this morning’s loose-stool does seems symptomatic of impending diarrhea. I also fear an imminent onslaught of ulcer, given the prison-chef’s fascination with red-chilly powder, which is available in abundance since the prison has its own masala factory, of which my numberdar-designate Dilip Chhatri, a jovial enough character in for a murder he professes not having committed, is incharge.

With the exception of Mummy, Rahul and SNT, I’ve had no visitors today. Again: not that I mind since the presence of a visitor entails the rather loud- if not outrightly scornful- announcement of a prisoner’s- and his father’s- name on the public address system, which in the mornings and evenings is used to play devotional music, a highly effective therapy, to quote the Jail Superintendent, for prisoners of unsound mind, and also the unkindly prospect of walking a kilometer- my cell number eight, also called the Mahatma Gandhi Barrack, in the New Octagon is situated at an extreme corner of the prison complex- to the visitors’ room where prisoners are kept separated from their callers-on by a meshed screen. The absence- or paucity- of visitors should ordinarily contribute to my sense of solitude, but it doesn’t. Adequate security also means that I must remain visible, even while taking a bath: the prison warders, numberdars and even their assistants- always polite- are duty-bound to watch me, my every move. Infact this notion of shifting prisoners from the dark confines of a dungeon, which is where they have remained for much of history, to open cells where they may be watched from a central watchtower, as described in the elaborate architecture of the Panopticon by Bentham, governs much of the contemporary world’s fascination with prison reform. All modern ‘humane’ prisons therefore owe more than they care to realize to English Utilitarianism.

But the influence of Utilitarianism, indeed the entire corpus of western philosophy, on Indian mentalité specifically with respect to the concept of justice has not significantly progressed beyond linguistic and architectural manifestations; infact its ethos has been summarily overlooked. It has been, since times immemorial, been turned on its head. Lopsided. ‘A person is to be presumed innocent until proven guilty’- the a priori principle from which arise all laws governing civilized societies- does not seem to apply to our ancient ‘kultur’, which presumes a person’s guilt until he is able to establish his innocence, and even then he might never be accepted as absolutely absolved. In India, justice is not only delayed and denied but also distorted and deflected. In my case too, the media- the word does seem under the present circumstances something of an anachronism; Paparazzi seems more descriptive- has not only reported, as it ought to, but it has gone a step further, and undertaken to be both judge and executioner. They are not on unfamiliar ground: the ‘Manavdharmasastra’ (Manusmriti) arguably the single most influential religious-legal treatise to shape India’s approaches to jurisprudence, is full of instances where say if a man from the lower caste is accused of a particular crime such as defiling a Brahmin’s sanctity by letting his shadow fall on the latter’s personage, the prescribed penalty is for him to be tied to a stone and hurled into a water-body. If the body does surface eventually, he is presumed innocent; otherwise he is pronounced guilty as charged. In so many ways, I too feel a bit like that unfortunate soul, drowning with the weight of a hundred stones tied to me. When justice does come- and I’m sure it will be years, possibly decades, before that happens, if it happens- it won’t matter one way or the other, not to me anyway. To cite a recent example, the acquittal of late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in the Bofor’s case just a couple of months ago will have absolutely no effect, retrogressive or otherwise, on him. Fifteen years ago, while campaigning in an effort to clear his name and return to power, his body was blown to bits by a depraved human bomb. I cannot help thinking that a similar fate awaits me.

The citation of the above illustration from Manusmriti (repeated also in later texts such as the Naradsmriti) is not intended to give the issue of my alleged complicity a caste-color. Frankly, the matter has been- and will be- politicized enough. Yet it would be equally farfetched to absolve people of their ‘caste-biases’ anymore than to attribute these as the sole determinants of their behavior: neutrality in emotive issues such as this is simply not an option, and Reason is often the first casualty. As a matter of socio-historical construction, the media and the so-called Intelligentsia, those people who by virtue of their peculiar societal roles and functions, are dominated by certain castes, and these, as it happens, are not my own. The dichotomy exists: there is no way around this conundrum but to admit to, and recognize this fact of existence. At a more immediate level, it was only after the summary removal- ouster, really- of the SP formerly entrusted with this case’s investigation that the Agency- the Kauls, Mishras, Sharmas and Pachauris- began its high-handed persecution leading to my arrest despite the fact that Papa belongs to the UPA, the incumbent Government at the Centre. Once again, I’m not alleging the direct interplay of caste-bias- I’m sure that, in the words of Marc Anthony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, ‘they are all hon’ble men’- but it would be hard for the astute observer to overlook entirely the aforementioned fact as happenstance or coincidence. Further proof, if needed, comes from the discussion I had with another prisoner jailed for the same case. This fortuitous meeting was an accident, whose repetition the authorities have taken extra-precautions to prevent. If what he has told me is true, then my investigators- from the highest level- have gone to great lengths to ensure that the actual perpetrators of this ghastly crime go scot-free, and that their false-testimonies, already recorded, become the principal instrument to condemn me. What saddens and shocks me is the growing realization that these one-time friends and well-wishers have done so for no particular reason but to save their own skins by feeding me to the lions, knowing full well that I’m innocent. My ‘guilt’, as they might see it in order to ease their own pitiless consciences, is not having done enough to thwart the course of this investigation, which might have been attempted had we been convinced even in the remote of our complicity. Knowing Papa, he would not have done so- at any cost. Now, I am made to pay the price of others’ misdeeds. At a more literary level- I am after all a creature of literature (more specifically: fiction)- I can’t help but see my peculiar predicament- the irony of it- in terms of Tolstoy’s classic tale ‘God Sees the Truth But Waits’.

[I offer this revelation only as part of my narrative, and not with the intention of arousing the anonymous Reader’s sympathy at any particular injustice resultant from a conspiracy. Admittedly, conspiracies- which in any case are organic to ‘realpolitik’- must be judged not on their morality but also less poignantly, on the basis of the ends they eventually seek to serve.]

[Tarun C. shows his influence by walking into my cell. If only he were sober-]
*
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NAXALISM: (B) DARBAGUDA: Prison Dairy Entry of 28.02.2006

The killing fields of Darbaguda are about a thousand kilometers away, lying further south of the Bastar hills: another country altogether, but I cannot help feeling as if a part of me was also blown to bits yesterday, along with a hundred or so of my unarmed tribal brethren. [The official figure is understandably a fifth of this number: part of the bureaucratic devaluation of tribal life.] Frankly I have no means of really knowing what happened except the little I read in the lone newspaper I’m allowed : with the recent passage of the Chhattisgarh Public Safety Special Act, even that must necessarily be remarkably sanitized. Babudom speaks almost in one voice but everyone else has been conspicuously silenced.

For whatever it is worth, Papa’s is the lone voice of dissent: from its inception he has opposed Salwa Judum, the state’s ultra-militarized response to People’s War. Not surprisingly, the germinator of this counter-offensive is an ex-Communist: a garden variety Revisionist. And the other is an officer returned belatedly from Bosnia, and the UNPKF’s pyrrhic “victories” at Kosovo. This makes the whole ‘movement’ all the more pathetic : both Mr. Karma and Mr. Rathore, it seems to me, not only believe genuinely in the efficacy of their method but go a lot farther than that : for them, there can be no alternative to it, and anyone who dares to think things differently is condemned summarily as a heretic. What they fail to realize is that Totalitarianism (reflected in ideologies that deny all other possibilities other than their own) is infact the world’s greatest heresy, and cause of so much wasteful & senseless bloodshed. Be that as it may, Mr. Karma has had his way: he’s got the entire state machinery, from the CM downwards, singing to his tune. To me, that is as much proof of Mr. Karma’s Zealotry as it is of this state government’s absolute intellectual bankruptcy: Dr Raman Singh, our CM No. 1, dutifully follows Mr. Karma, the Leader of opposition. It therefore came as a pleasant surprise when the Chief Minister, caught unawares by the terrible news while he was in the Vidhan Sabha, announced that his government would have to‘re-think’. Unfortunately that re-thinking has so far meant more guns, more helicopters, more bombs, more aircrafts, more troops and possibly even bringing in the military. Sadly the mindset in the Union Home Ministry has been only more than happy to oblige, principally because all this serves to increase its own influence: the proverbial Faustian bargain.


One gets the impression that Papa’s criticism hasn’t been taken too seriously. I won’t be in the least bit surprised if decision-makers at Delhi view it as just another instance of his “Cry Wolf” attitude. The fact is that he is unabashedly Churchillian in role as an opposition leader: the Opposition’s duty is quite simply ‘to oppose, to expose and to depose.’ Even before the Government announces its policy, there’s a statement from his very capable Political secretary (also a Churchillian) denouncing it as ‘anti-people’. Without going into the merits of specific instances, I would say that that’s slightly unfair. Alright the BJP, when they were in opposition, had crossed all limits of public decency, hurling the most bizarre abuses- allegations is too mild a term- against not only the CM but also his wife, his son, his dogs and his servants. But that does not justify stooping to their level. Criticism, in order to be sound, constructive & valid, must be based on hard facts: what a policy-decision actually does for its intended beneficiary. For example, in the various paddy purchase scams that have come to light, the vast sums of money paid by the Government to purchase paddy at what can only be euphemistically labeled ‘minimum support price’ (far in excess of market prices) never really reached farmers, siphoned en route by payments made for jute ‘gunny-bags’ that were never manufactured containing ‘paddy’ that was never produced and transported in ‘trucks’ that never reached ‘millers’ who were given cash- receipts for de-husking that non-existent paddy into equally non-existent ‘rice’, which was again transported in those non-existent ‘trucks’ to be stored in- unfortunately- very real but consequently empty Godowns and then quickly redistributed among rural laborers through equally non-existent ‘food-for-work’ relief programs.

Not surprisingly most of these societies, suppliers, transporters and millers happen to be very close to, and in some cases blood relatives of, the powers-that-be. However much one may try, such scams tend to leave a ghastly paper trial and almost certainly a good many cases of gross indigestion & flatulence. Pure, unadulterated stink.

Salwa Judum is an infinitely more sinister ‘scam’: rather than a paper trail, it’s left behind a gruesome blood trail. Human blood. Tribal blood. No ‘inquiry’ can do justice to that. What is needed is a total overhauling- possibly even scraping- of the ‘movement’. From what I hear, the reaction in Raipur- indeed in most of the cities- has been one of ‘pity’, not alarm. The killing fields of Darbaguda are still very distant and those massacred & abducted tribals aren’t exactly flesh and blood. But Violence especially the sort ingrained in ideology- any ideology- isn’t static or isolated: like HIV, it doesn’t remain content with mere habitation; it methodically destroys the immune system and eventually annihilates its host. Civilization, despite its ceaseless and persistent march of several millennia, hasn’t discovered its cure for the sole reason that it doesn’t think like us. Its primary objective is to seek and destroy- even if that means destroying itself in the process. Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species’ does not account for the evolution of viruses. With due respect to Sorel, Violence for its own sake is pure madness. And ‘Salwa Judum’ has decisively committed the entire state, all of its twenty million inhabitants, and most of its resources to this madness: how else does one explain forcing defenseless, unarmed tribals, through propaganda and often at gunpoint, to engage in fourth-generation guerilla warfare against an invisible foe ? How else does one account for the uprooting of tens of thousands of tribal families from lands they have lived on for tens of thousands of years and herding them into tens of thousands of makeshift road side canvas tents? How else does one justify converting India’s richest forests abounding in its richest mineral deposits into a bloody Bosnian Battlefield?

What’s truly frightening is that all of it has happened so fast, almost in the blink of an eye. Could it be that we have already crossed the ‘brink’: the point of no return. It is accepted wisdom that Left Wing Extremism (LWE) can be bisected: one part considers its causes; the other is a response to its methods (or symptoms). Let us not fool ourselves: no other explanation apart from the state’s abject apathy for the tribes’ welfare can justify the proliferation of ‘dalams’ in tribal homelands. Draconian environmentalism has made them exiles in their own homes and barred them from fruits of developments; evangelism (of the sort practiced both by Christian missionaries and Swayamsevaks) has led to widespread cultural displacement, a total loss of identity by breeding in them a false sense of shame about a proud & ancient heritage [how else does one explain the rapid death of Gotuls?]; political parties have patronized oppressive middlemen- former feudal lords and traders- to secure tribal vote banks; and most tribal-targeted welfare schemes are thwarted by an absentee or apathetic babudom. Not surprisingly, tribals, especially the youth, have become easy receptacles of the anarchist & revolutionary methods, espoused by Naxalites. It is only in respect of their ‘methodology’ that LWE is a ‘law & order’ problem. Remove the cause and the anarchism will automatically disappear. Enact the Tribal Bill pending now before Parliament and remove anachronistic legal and administrative barriers to development (FCA & WPA, 1980); pump funds into roads, hospitals, industry and colleges rather than bombs and bullets; stop imposing Orientalist Value-judgments & cosmetic leadership; and allow instead their own diverge cultures to blossom, their own leaders to speak – and by God we won’t need the military.

The good news, if one can call it that, is this: the Cause that LWE once espoused has itself become suspect. A parallel industry of Pretenders and conmen posing as ideologues and revolutionaries is indulging in rampant extortion and sexual abuse. Tribals are now as disillusioned if not more with this corrupted form of LWE than they are with the ‘welfare state’. In the three years that Papa was chief minister, we had very good reasons to believe that the ‘People’s War’ (then still comprising of two principal competing outfits PWG & MCC and a host of other splinter groups, all of which were more busy fighting each other than waging a united, centrally coordinated, full-fledged war against the state) were well behind their planned schedule, according to which- if intelligence reports are to be believed- the PWG moving northwards from Telengana via Bastar, and the MCC coming through Jharkhand into Ambikapur were to ‘merge’ in the industrial heartland of the state at Korba by 2002. Infact the PWG had been pushed back beyond Konta and into Abujhmar and our forces had regained total control over the Sukama-Konta segment of the National Highway and the adjoining habitations within a radius of seventeen kilometers atleast. The most tangible proof of this came in the form fully functional Panchayat offices I visited unannounced as far off as Muraliglida, where I was offered mangoes the size of watermelons and possibly the sweetest prawns I have ever eaten. I have no shame in admitting that ‘cooption’ rather than ‘competition’ saved those panchayat schools and primary health care center (PHC) buildings not only from being blown to bits but also ensured that persons posted there actually showed up for work. Infact I would go even further to advocate that cooption–involving LWE and LWE-sympathizers in the developmental process- is probably the only way out. I remember three particular instances when development wouldn’t have been possible at all without co-opting the Naxalites.

First: relief works in Dantewada. I had taken an Indian Express journalist friend from Delhi to do a story. This is what he discovered (much to my annoyance): the number of relief works completed by the so-called Naxalite- controlled panchayats in remote areas far exceeded those directly done by the district administration by a ratio of 3:1. Second: tendu-patta collection, which the state government privatized only in Dantewada district since the forest department had shamelessly raised its hands and said ‘No’. Not only did Dantewada top the district-wise table for minor forest produce collection that year but the tribals of Dantewada ended up picking a huge windfall in the form of bonuses over and above their daily wages. Third, and in my opinion, perhaps the most significant: a local MLA informed me that while a sum of Rs. 16 crores had been allotted for construction & repair of roadways, it had been lying unused because of two reasons: one, the Border Road Organization (BRO) wasn’t too keen on taking up new projects since they were already running a couple of years behind schedule on already existing projects and two, much of the areas where these roads were supposed to be built, connecting remote villages to the highway, fell under the category of ‘forest land’ where getting environmental clearance from MoEF was next to impossible. I asked him how he intended to overcome these two hurdles. His answer: cooption. I am happy to say that not one paisa of that road budget lapsed, and three months later I was with the Hon’ble MLA as he inaugurated a 7 kilometer road to loud cheers, including from certain members of the local ‘dalam’.

I am not saying that cooption is a perfect solution. Infact I am quite certain that in atleast one case, some of the monies allocated were sought to be used for arms purchases needed badly at that time to fight Mr. Naidu’s STF in Andhra Pradesh. Actually this is what happened. The poor private contractor had paid the ‘commission’ to one faction and when the other factions come to know of it they quite literally fought each other to the death. In any event not only was the project completed to the exacting standards that revolutionaries so often demand in others but even (the contractor confided to my informant that) the commission paid by him was less than half of what would otherwise have been extracted by our babudom.

I believe there are important lessons to be learnt here. Salwa Judum can’t be only about waging a war against a bunch of armed revolutionaries (most of whom curiously belong to the trader communities: for confirmation one need only look at the caste composition of the interim Politburo of the recently merged People’s War); the full potential of any state-sponsored People’s Movement, call it what you will, can only be realized by waging a full scale war on Poverty, Apathy, Corruption and Oppression that have given rise to those armed revolutionaries in the first place. So long as these remain, the echoes of mines blasting, mothers wailing and guns splattering will forever resonate in our forests and among the tribes, and in the not too distant future, in our own homes.

I am not against forcing anyone but they must be forced to do the right things, to fight the right kind of battles. Use force to get the tribals to go to schools & college and get degrees. Use force to build industries (NAGARNAR steel plant) and rail roads (Dondilohara-Jagdalpur Railway line) and power projects (Bodhghat Hydel Power Project) and mines (Raoghat Iron Mines) and hospitals (Apollo) so that they can put those damned degrees to use. Use force to make them the sole owners of the land on which they live (Tribal Bill). But for heaven’s sake don’t use force to herd them into lorries like cattle to attend staged rallies to listen to meaningless diatribes of a bunch of air-dropped Z-plus politicians urging them to wage a war they have not been equipped to fight against a lethal enemy who might just be a next-door neighbor: you might as well preach ‘euthanasia’ and get it over and done with.

AJ
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Return of the Prodigal: Villain or Victim?

Note: This article was first posted as an informal response to an ongoing discussion in the webforum chhattisgarh-net. It was later translated into Hindi and published by the Raipur-based newspaper "Chhattisgarh".

Frankly, I am surprised at the number of comments posted consequent to my arrest about ten months ago: the topic, which posits a linkage between my Papa’s ‘pro-poor’ stance and my incarceration, is itself somewhat fascinating insofar as it encourages a rigorous contextual ‘rereading’- or what the post-modernist might call ‘deconstruction’- of what has been published in mainstream media. Allow me then to contribute, albeit belatedly, my own version to that now-forgotten debate.

Upon my release a few days ago, I was asked ‘how I felt?’ It is impossible for me describe ‘the agony and the ecstasy’ of ten unending months in ten quick seconds, which is the about the time the electronic-media is likely to allot to a ‘jail-bird’ like me. Yet, ten months is a long time- almost an eternity- to put things into perspective: the sad solitude of the seven by ten feet high-security prison-cell allowed- perhaps even compelled- me to indulge in philosophical introspection as well as analytical observations of the Carceral life, both of which have found their way into a four-part Jail Dairy, four plays, quite a few poems and drawings. Someday, they will be published and the reader will gain an insight into the ‘punctuated transformations’- the waltz between nature and nurture- that have molded me.

Whether I am a victim of high political conspiracy, or whether Justice has finally caught-up with me is not for me to say, atleast not right now when the matter is subjudice. What I do know for certain is this: I am being tried for the murder of a person whose name I hadn’t heard before; and the consequences of whose death have been equally if not more tragic for my family as for his. Despite assertions to the contrary, however, the fact remains that in India, we still uphold the view that ‘a person is guilty until he establishes his innocence’ when infact the opposite- ‘a person is innocent until he is proved guilty’- constitutes the bedrock of civilized jurisprudence.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has chargesheeted me for plotting the murder of Mr. Ram Avtar Jaggi, the then state-treasurer of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), in an unspecified room at the Hotel Green Park, Raipur, on the night of 21st May, 2003, before atleast fourteen other persons, including the bureau-chief of the Times of India. The details of this meeting, as stated in his courtroom evidence given by Mr. Reginald Jeremiah, who has been my friend for over a decade, is as follows:
(a) Between 10:30-11 p.m., I telephoned him and asked him to bring Mr. Law Kumar Mishra, state correspondent of the Times of India newspaper, to Hotel Green Park. He then called Mr. Mishra, picked him up from the Times of India office, and duly drove him to the hotel situated on the Raipur-Mahasamund highway.
(b) Upon arriving at the said hotel, they (Reginald and Mr. Mishra) found me in a room, engaged in discussion with twelve persons (who he can identify) as well as others (who he does not remember). Mr. Michael William and Mr. Mr. Arjun Bhagat, of Akash Channel, suggested that news coverage of an NCP rally, scheduled for 10th June 2003, be curtailed; Mr. Raj Awasthi, also of Akash Channel, recommended that buses, taxis, jeeps etc. be blocked from being hired for the said rally.
(c) During the course of this discussion, I advocated the murder of Shri Ram Avtar Jaggi in order to foil a forthcoming NCP rally scheduled for 10th June 2003. To this end, I asked Reginald to call one Mr. Chiman Singh, who was already present in Raipur. Accordingly, Reginald telephoned Mr. Chiman Singh on his mobile phone, and asked him to come to Hotel Green Park.
(d) After Mr. Chiman Singh arrived, I asked everybody else present to leave the room. Only Mr. Rohit Prasad, Chiman Singh and I remained inside. When we came out of the room, Mr. Singh had a bag in his hand.
Apart from the above-mentioned statement, the CBI has no other evidence, direct or indirect, to establish my alleged complicity in the murder of Shri Jaggi. As far as Reginald’s statement is concerned, the following facts need to be noted:
(a) Reginald did indeed telephone Mr. Mishra at around 10:30 p.m. on the night of 21st May 2003, as has been proven by the call details of his mobile number submitted by the CBI; however the agency has failed to supply the cell-site plans of that mobile number, which would provide the exact cell-tower locations (within a radius of 1-2 kilometers) of not only the number from which the call was made but also, more significantly, the number to which that call was made. In this case, the cell-cite plan categorically shows that Reginald called Mr. Mishra at the date and time specified in the CBI chargesheet, but Mr. Mishra was not at the Times of India office at Raipur; infact he was in Patna. It follows from this that Reginald couldn’t have possibly picked him up and brought him to the Hotel Green Park, Raipur, in compliance with my alleged request.
(b) The General Manager of this hotel- who, it needs to be emphasized, has not been declared hostile by the CBI- has stated in his deposition that the first time I went inside the hotel building was after 15th July 2003, when a floor had been rented by the Congress Campaign Committee for electioneering. Reginald also doesn’t seem to recall the room number, or the floor on which it was situated, or even its size. Furthermore, both Mr. Williams and Mr. Bhagat, who allegedly suggested that news-coverage of the rally be curtailed, were not in Raipur from March-July, 2003; and infact on this date, i.e., 21st May 2003, they were in the United Kingdom, as can be verified from their passports, immigration seals issued by the Government of India as well as Her Majesty’s Government of Great Britain & the U.K., passenger-manifests, credit card transactions, hotel reservations etc.
(c) Reginald has stated on oath that after deciding that Shri Jaggi should be murdered, I asked him to call Mr. Chiman Singh. Accordingly, he called Chiman Singh’s mobile from his mobile. The call details submitted by the CBI do infact show one single call between them on this date, but on closer scrutiny, it has been proven that this call was made by Mr. Singh to Reginald, and not vice-versa, at 9:37 p.m., i.e., before the so-called meeting had even started.
(d) The meeting reached its culmination allegedly when I asked everyone present- except Chiman Singh and Rohit Prasad- to leave the room. However, even Mr. Rohit Prasad was not present in India on this date. Like Mr. Williams and Mr. Bhagat, he too was in London. As in their case, this can be verified from his passport, immigration seal issued by the Government of India as well as Her Majesty’s Government of Great Britain & the U.K., passenger-manifests, credit card transactions, hotel reservations etc.

Accordingly, the Hon’ble Chief Justice of the Chhattisgarh High Court, while granting me bail, has observed that Reginald’s statement is ‘too tenuous and unreliable’. Likewise, his Lordship has also pointed out that Reginald had a ‘motive in implicating the applicant (me) falsely since he was fired from Akash Channel by Rohit Prasad and expected applicant to intervene, which he did not…’ Furthermore, while examining the other evidence on record, the following finding was also pronounced: ‘from the evidence adduced, it cannot be proven that Ram Avtar Jaggi was murdered by Chiman Singh and therefore the story of the prosecution that the applicant conspired with Chiman Singh to murder Ram Avtar Jaggi presently stands shattered…’

Be that as it may, two questions still remain unanswered: first, how could these gross discrepancies in Reginald’s statement be overlooked by the nation’s premier investigative agency; and secondly, why did Reginald tell such ‘white lies’ in Court, making himself liable for perjury?
I shall answer the second one first. Reginald has stated that he came to court on 16th March 2006 by the Delhi-Raipur flight (IC 869) of his own accord while categorically asserting that he was not brought in CBI custody (which under section 171 of Cr.P.C. is illegal); he has also stated that the CBI Special Prosecutor and inspector were sitting on the two seats adjacent to his but curiously enough, he discovered that they were working for the CBI only when he entered the courtroom. The passenger-manifest of the aforementioned flight does not bear Mr. Reginald Jeremiah’s name. The seat on which he sat was booked on the non-transferable ticket of Mr. M. Narayan, DIG (CBI), who was already present in Raipur from before. Then, there is video-footage of Reginald being escorted out of the Raipur airport surrounded by CBI personnel; subsequently he was taken to the CBI camp office, where he was detained till 4 p.m.; afterwards, he was produced in court accompanied not only by CBI officers but also armed personnel of the Raipur Crime Squad, who formed a cordon around the witness-box even as he testified. Also, barely three weeks after he had recorded his judicial statement in May 2005, Reginald moved into a new apartment costing approximately rupees 25,00,000. Not surprisingly, he refused to furnish details of his source of income citing ‘security reasons’.
Now, as far as the first question is concerned, the answer will be given in the course of my defence in court. Suffice it to say that several factors were at work, which together give credence to the topic that was debated in this forum: “Jogi’s son arrested because of his father’s ‘pro-poor’ stance”. Whether my father was pro-poor or not is a matter of historical debate, but what is certain is this: his detractors, some of them from within his own party, saw in me the ‘soft-target’ they could attack to destroy him by proxy. Two significant proofs have already been produced to support this thesis: one, an audio recording of a candid conversation between Mr. A.G.L. Kaul, the Investigating Officer of CBI, and one Mr. Raees Siddiqui, the brother of an accused. In this conversation, Mr. Kaul does the following:
(a) He confesses to having fictionalized the chargesheet on paper;
(b) He alleges that the court works under his directions atleast with respect to granting pardon in return for becoming approvers;
(c) He admits to having send an unspecified amount in cash to Raees’ house; and
(d) He offers ‘4-5-10’ Innovas to his interlocutor in order to entice his brother to turn approver for the prosecution.

Two: the close relationship between two IPS officers vis-à-vis Mr. Geelani, who took over as SP (CBI) incharge of this investigation in April of 2005, and Mr. Sabu, who was then posted in Bhind district of Madhya Pradesh. During that month, seventeen persons, including Mr. Chiman Singh, were arrested from Bhind for allegedly having murdered Shri Jaggi, almost two years after the CBI had commenced its reinvestigation. Infact this breakthrough had been achieved in December of 2000- more than three years before Shri Jaggi’s murder- at a quaint little forest rest house at Achanakmar on the Bilaspur-Amarkantak road where Mr. Sabu, who was then a probationer posted at Bilaspur, was honeymooning with his newly-wed wife. After suspecting that they were being spied upon, he personally flogged the chowkidar and his entire family with his belt. My father, as Chief Minister, had ordered a judicial inquiry into this incident; and Mr. Sabu was found guilty. Now, as it turns out, Mr. Sabu and Mr. Geelani not only hail from the same place (Kashmir), practice the same faith (Islam), went to the same schools but also that they were in the IPS Academy at Hyderabad at the same time. Not only that, they have kept in regular telephonic touch since then, especially during and preceding the arrests of these seventeen persons- most of whom are boys in their early 20s- in April 2005. There are simply too many ‘coincidences’ to ignore the fact that I am a victim of their collective vendetta.
Other documentary and digitalized evidences, painstakingly collected over the past ten months, will also be presented during the Defence to demonstrate the working of certain officers of India’s premier investigative agency, their extra-legal influence on other branches of government and administration, political directives, and continuous nexus with certain other persons in high places. It should be worth noting that subsequent to the release of the audio recording, Mr. Kaul has been removed from his assignment as IO of this case although as of date, no investigation has been ordered into the contents of that recording even though he has not denied that the voice on that tape is not his.
It would not be proper for me to reveal anything more at this juncture.

I know that the battle is far from over. But I am now of the firm belief that this suffering has saved me: without living in prison, I might never have experienced life in black & white, stripped of all its colors. Without doubt, it has made me realize my own role in this world: it is futile to live for myself. Indeed, there can be no greater service to Man and to God than living for others, especially those who are not as fortunate as I am. How this learning will manifest itself in my life, I cannot say. Only time will tell. Yet, this is the goal towards which I shall continually endeavor for the rest of my days.

Amit Aishwarya Jogi
May 16, 2006

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