RAJDEEP SARDESAI
Father Stan Swamy suffers from another form of terrifying demonization in today’s India. He’s a Catholic priest from the Jesuit order. Now in the toxic, divisive universe of name-calling that we live in, a Jesuit priest working among tribals is not just Maoist, he’s also guilty and must be punished for alleged conversion of tribal communities.
For the Hindutva ideologues and their stormtroopers, in particular, a Catholic priest today is an enemy. He is seen as someone who must be taught a lesson for religious or alleged religious conversion. Remember Graham Staines (Australian missionary) and how he along with his two sons were burnt to death (1999 Orissa)? The convict was a Bajrang Dal activist Dara Singh. Today my friends, the Dara Singh’s of the world have a license to kill because they get the power from the political system.
Now, if you can’t burn someone to death, then the next best thing is to brand them anti-national and throw them in jail.
I want to make one thing clear, I don’t know Father Stan personally but I do know a number of people who know him well. Like many urban educated elite Indians, I too went to a Jesuit school. Some of the finest institutions in this country have been built by Jesuits and I was privileged to be taught by them. They have known Father Stan and his work, this scholarly work that he has done before he went to the forest to work for the tribal people and fight for their land rights in a non-violent manner – and I emphasise the words, in a non-violent constitutional manner. As one of them told me Rajdeep you will never meet a soft-spoken man, someone who doesn’t have a violent bone in his body. Is someone like this to be treated as a terrorist?
I had no immediate answer. We live in a world where truth is a casualty. Where a propaganda machine is created that brands people that question the State as enemies and antinational.
Some of India’s finest citizens have come out of Jesuit schools. They include IPS officers, they include politicians including ministers in the current government. But none of them will speak up for Father Stan Swamy perhaps because of fear or perhaps because it is inconvenient to speak the truth in the times which we live in.
This is why all one can do today is to appeal to the conscience of every right-thinking citizen out there. Please ask yourself. Is an 84-year-old who has spent a lifetime working among the Adivasis to be treated as a terrorist and thrown in jail and be denied bail and now be put in a hospital because he is also COVID positive? Does he not deserve better?
This is why Father Stan Swamy’s case is important. Because if someone like him is going to be branded as a terrorist, or Sudha Bharadwaj for that matter, why will anyone in future stand up for the Adivasis and their land and for forest rights.
I want to leave you with a poem written by Father Stan Swamy while in prison:
‘Light overpowering darkness, hope replacing despair,
Love winning over hate is the message of Jesus Risen.
But fight we will till the end not so much to save our skin,
but to speak the truth to power..
Counting all the while you all are with us, In mind and in Heart. Amen.’
I want to leave you then with the thoughts of Father Stan Swamy and ask the question I asked at the very outset.
IS THIS MAN A TERRORIST?
This story was first appeared on heraldgoa.in