| Published on 27-09-2007 In General | | Viewed 1838 times | | A flower for Arundhati Roy and the women of Narmada |
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| Written by
Amit Sengupta | 
When they packed her off to Tihar Jail for a night some years back, it was a tense affair outside the Supreme Court, moving between songs and slogans. Arundhati Roy was inside the court, but hundreds of academics, writers, editors, environmentalists, human rights activists – they were all there in solidarity.
Women have mostly consolidated the scaffolding of this two-decade plus movement -- the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) -- scattered in the pristine Narmada Valley . The Narmada river unfolds the daily narrative in sunshine and moonlight, with its magical folk stories, life-affirming qualities, great mythologies; from Amar Kantak to Amar Kantak, in the long annual trek through its waters, cleansed with the greatness of the river running through their bodies, their blood-streams, the darkened skin of the hard-working people who live and love this river like a daughter loves her mother and her child, like the adivasis love their indigenous essence.
So the women from the valley came to this big, impersonal capital yet again, in non-violent but vibrant protests, unafraid of the police, amazed at the sheer injustice of it all, amazed at the brutality of mass displacement of tens of thousands from their homes, cultures, ecologies, forests, land, narratives. They came, reasserting their politics of satyagraha, because this movement is strictly peaceful -- despite the relentless violence of the State and its miscellaneous instruments: builders, contractors, agents, middle-men, cops, and powerful political lobbyists. They came in solidarity, and when they sent Arundhati Roy to jail, they too courted arrest outside the Supreme Court, carted off in police trucks, reminding the world that Gandhi was right: breaking unjust laws is a quest for justice.
Arundhati Roy, next day, was released. And the women were there too. Roy, with flowers in her hair, a smile on her face, gave a flower each to the women. There were songs and slogans and the great joy of being unafraid, of fighting for legitimate dissent, to say no, to accept prison because the truth is on your side.
That was the incredible message of this 'one night of contempt' which Roy sent across the world. The same questions were asked: Why is the judiciary, especially the higher judiciary, so sensitive? Why is the contempt syndrome operating like hangman's noose? Why can't it be flexible, humane, rationale, more open-ended, open to dissections, dissent and disbelief? Why can't it go lock, stock and barrel? If all institutions in this country can be accountable and brought under public scrutiny, including Parliament and the Constitution of India, why not the Supreme Court? Why is the media so shy and afraid to enter this debate?
Indeed, if everything can be open under the right to information law, why not the higher judiciary?
That is precisely where the debate has shifted yet again with the YK Sabharwal controversy moving into the public domain even while Mid-Day journalists are yet again facing the Roy contempt syndrome – for four months! Former chief justices, judges, Union law ministers, senior lawyers, editors, journalists, civil society groups – they have all argued: why not a judicial inquiry to prove or disprove the allegations? Why gag the media? Why not file a defamation case if the evidence is faulty or fabricated? Why send journalists to jail for writing an investigative report in public interest?
Last year, the Narmada women yet again arrived seeking justice in Delhi.
They said only one thing to journalists: the Supreme Court has said full rehabilitation before you raise the height of the big dam and submerge thousands -- so fulfil the apex court order. Medha Patkar sat on a long and critical fast. The NBA said 37,000 families will be directly affected, facing exile and condemnation, ousted from their ancestral homeland. The Centre's high-level ministerial team led by Water Resources Minister Saiffuddin Soz went to the Narmada valley and found this to be the truth. The media reported it: claims of official rehabilitation in village after village were fake, fraudulent and fabricated.
After almost a month of fasting and satryagrah in the scorching streets of Delhi, under the open sky, the Narmada women returned back, defeated but still ready to fight. Defeated, because the Left-backed UPA government betrayed them. And whatever hope they had from the Supreme Court under Chief Justice YK Sabharwal -- were crushed: the apex court said the dam work can continue, of course, with full rehabilitation.
Go to ground zero, this doesn't work. Ask the people, they will tell you, this is no justice. That's why they almost cried outside the Supreme Court, the displaced women satyagrahis of Narmada valley, that summer day last year. Because: they still believed in the judiciary.
The uncanny question is: do they continue to believe in the higest court and its process of justice? And will it be contempt if they say, loud and clear: NO! And will they be sent to jail for this, like Arundhati Roy? |
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