An ongoing exhibition in Berlin on the Nazi
“People’s Court” (1934- 1945) to try ‘enemies of the state’, looks eerily
familiar from an Indian perspective; not because our existing judicial system
has been replaced (at least as of yet), but because of the nature of the
charges. A mineworker who distributed communist leaflets to policemen in his
area, a banker who made jokes about prominent Nazis, a sound technician who
distributed satirical poems about Hitler and a real estate agent who sent
postcards calling Hitler names – were all sentenced to death, accused of “high
treason”, “destroying the loyalty of a national authority essential for the war
effort” (in this case the post office where the undelivered postcards were
found), and “aiding the enemy”. In one case involving a 22-year-old Swiss
missionary, who was initially arrested only for ticketless travel and then
under interrogation confessed to his plan to kill Hitler because he was ‘the
enemy of Christianity and of humankind”, the grounds for the death sentence
were that: “The defendant had resolved to deprive the German nation of its
savior, the man for whom the hearts of 80 million Germans beat with infinite
love, reverence and gratitude, and who need his strength and firm leadership
now more than ever.”
An earlier exhibition had dealt with the
role of the press in Nazi times: while the oppositional press was destroyed,
the vast majority “came to terms with the regime through anticipatory
obedience”. After the war, some journalists who had been active Nazi supporters
tried to rehabilitate themselves by changing their identity, but were
eventually found out.
The current spectre being created of a vast
and ever-expanding ‘urban Maoist’ network, through an active collaboration
between the police and some television channels, feels like being ‘fast forward’
to fascism. “Explosive” letters plotting to kill the PM, the savior of the
nation, appear mysteriously first in the hands of Times Now; while purported letters from advocate Sudha Bhardwaj to
some Comrade Prakash are breathlessly exposed on The Republic. The illiteracy and improbability of such letters –
which clearly take names, talk about money flows, connect Kashmiri separatists,
stone pelters, human rights lawyers, JNU and TISS students, protests against
UAPA, even the Congress party and everything else the police and BJP dislike –
really doesn’t matter. The purpose is to defame, to intimidate, to polarize and
to create hatred against democrats, as well as to give the very concept of
human rights a bad name.
So far, it was activists, journalists,
researchers and others who were being framed and lawyers who came to their
rescue. It is not coincidental that it
is lawyers who are now being arrested, people like Surendra Gadling known for
his defense of adivasis, dalits and political prisoners, S. Vanchinathan who
was helping the Sterlite victims in Tuticorin, or Chikkudu Prabhakar, a
Hyderabad human rights advocate who spent six months in Sukma jail in
Chhattisgarh on absurd charges. The “Comrade Sudha” being vilified on Republic
TV, is a hugely respected trade unionist, human rights lawyer, National
Secretary of the PUCL and currently a Visiting Professor at the National Law
University Delhi.
The rules
on professional standards laid down by the Bar Council note that lawyers “shall defend a
person accused of a crime regardless of his personal opinion as to the guilt of
the accused. An advocate should always remember that his loyalty is to the law,
which requires that no man should be punished without adequate evidence.”
By targeting lawyers who take this seriously, the police are
effectively saying that they do not recognize lawyers who fight cases against
them as professionals but as fair game. The aim is to intimidate other lawyers
so that they will be reluctant to take up sensitive or controversial cases. The
law, we are being told, will be available only to those who defend sympathisers
of the ruling party, whether they are accused of rape, lynching or communal violence;
and those like the Patiala House lawyers who attacked student leader Kanhaiya Kumar
on court premises will
face no consequences. Lawyers need to wake up and take a collective stand
defending their profession before it is too late.
The June 6th arrest of the ‘Maharashtra
five’– advocate Surendra Gadling, English professor Shoma Sen, writer Sudhir
Dhawale, forest rights activist Mahesh Raut and prisoners rights activist Rona
Wilson – is equally designed to send out a message. The fact that the police
quickly moved from accusing them of instigating the Bhima Koregaon violence on
behalf of the Maoists, to implicating them in an absurd plot to carry out a
‘Rajiv Gandhi style “ assassination of Modi, suggests that they know and they
want us all to know that “minor” things like evidence, probability and the rule
of law do not matter. This is not about violence at all, or else the real
culprits of the Bhima Koregaon violence, Milind Ekbote and Sambhaji Bhide,
would not go unpunished. This is really about signaling that a ‘People’s Police’
is fully behind their master, and will do whatever it takes to keep him in
power.
