On August 3, 2026, the Rouse Avenue Court in Delhi acquitted Brij Bhushan Singh and former WFI assistant secretary Vinod Tomar in the sexual harassment case filed by six women wrestlers, holding that the prosecution had failed to establish the charges beyond reasonable doubt.

Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate (ACJM) Ashwini Panwar delivered the verdict after more than two years of trial proceedings, including in-camera hearings, reported LiveLaw. The court had earlier framed charges against Singh under provisions relating to sexual harassment, assault with intent to outrage the modesty of a woman and criminal intimidation.

While the court’s decision establishes that the prosecution could not meet the criminal standard required for conviction, the verdict has left India’s leading women wrestlers, who had risked their careers, reputations and public standing to speak out, expressing deep disappointment and announcing that their legal battle will continue.

For the wrestlers, the case the legal battle was only one part of a much more varied and substantive struggle. It has been about whether institutions meant to protect athletes would stand with them when allegations were raised against the person controlling one of India’s most important sporting federations.

Olympic medallist Vinesh Phogat, one of the complainants, reacting to Bhushan’s acquittal said that the verdict had caused immense pain but would not end their fight. In a statement posted on X, Phogat said the wrestlers had gathered extraordinary courage to come forward against a politically powerful figure.

“We had to gather a lot of courage to take to the streets and get an FIR registered against a powerful leader of the ruling party.”

She alleged that Singh had used his influence and power to intimidate women wrestlers and force some complainants to withdraw.

“Using power and muscle power, Brij Bhushan intimidated several girls and forced them to withdraw their names.”

Phogat said that despite the pressure, several women wrestlers continued to stand firm throughout the legal process.

“Several women wrestlers stood firm and fought the legal battle against Brij Bhushan in court.”

However, she alleged that the institutional response from the beginning had been tilted in favour of the accused.

“From the very beginning, the entire system, the government and the administration have been engaged in protecting Brij Bhushan.”

However, she emphasised that all the women wrestlers would challenge the verdict before a higher court.

“We have not lost hope, and the wrestlers will continue their fight.”

pic.twitter.com/iDnAdceZa3

— Vinesh Phogat (@Phogat_Vinesh) August 3, 2026

Olympic bronze medallist Bajrang Punia also described the verdict as deeply disappointing, while recalling the struggle the wrestlers faced simply to have their allegations formally registered.

As reported by Hindustan Times, Punia said that the wrestlers had been forced to take to the streets because institutional mechanisms had failed to respond to their complaints.

“We had to fight a long battle, take to the streets and get an FIR registered against a powerful leader of the ruling party.”

He alleged that Singh’s position and influence created fear among complainants but said the women wrestlers who continued with the case demonstrated extraordinary courage.

The reactions from the wrestlers underline a central tension surrounding the case: a criminal court decides guilt based on whether evidence meets the legal threshold beyond reasonable doubt, but survivors often experience the justice process as a much longer struggle involving social pressure, institutional resistance and unequal power structures.

A protest born out of institutional silence

The allegations against Brij Bhushan Singh first came into public focus in January 2023, when some of India’s most decorated wrestlers gathered at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar demanding action against the then WFI president. The protestors included Olympic medallists Vinesh Phogat, Bajrang Punia and Sakshi Malik, along with other national and international-level wrestlers. They alleged that Singh had sexually harassed and intimidated women wrestlers over several years, including during training camps, tournaments and official interactions.

The allegations were particularly significant because Singh was not merely a sports administrator. He was a six-time Member of Parliament, a senior political figure of the Narendra Modi-led government and the head of the national federation responsible for governing wrestling in India.

The wrestlers demanded:

• Singh’s removal from the WFI;
• an independent investigation;
• dissolution of the federation’s existing leadership structure;
• protection for athletes who came forward with complaints.

However, the initial institutional response became one of the biggest points of contention. The wrestlers approached sports authorities, including the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) and the Union Sports Ministry, seeking intervention. Following their complaints, the IOA constituted an oversight committee headed by prominent sportspersons, including boxer Mary Kom and wrestler Yogeshwar Dutt. However, the wrestlers later expressed dissatisfaction with the process, alleging that their concerns were not adequately addressed and that instead of accountability, they faced delays and uncertainty.

The controversy highlighted a long-standing problem in Indian sport — athletes often depend on administrators for selections, training opportunities and career progression, creating a significant power imbalance when allegations are made against those very administrators.

Detailed reports may be read here, here, here, here and here.

The Supreme Court Intervention: When the FIR was finally registered

One of the most critical aspects of the case was the delay in registration of the FIR. The wrestlers eventually approached the Supreme Court, seeking directions to register a criminal case against Singh. In April 2023, the Supreme Court took note of the allegations and observed that they were serious in nature. Following the court’s intervention, Delhi Police registered two FIRs against Singh.

The development was significant because, according to the wrestlers and their supporters, it demonstrated the difficulties survivors often face in getting their complaints formally recognised when the accused occupies a position of power. The Supreme Court proceedings also brought attention to concerns regarding the safety of one of the complainants, who was a minor at the time of the allegations. The police later filed a chargesheet against Singh and Vinod Tomar in June 2023 under:

• Section 354 IPC — assault or criminal force against a woman with intent to outrage her modesty;
• Section 354A IPC — sexual harassment;
• Section 354D IPC — stalking;
• Section 506 IPC — criminal intimidation.

The chargesheet alleged that incidents took place between 2016 and 2019 at locations including the WFI office, Singh’s official residence and during international tournaments.

From charges to trial

Following the registration of the FIRs, the case moved into the criminal justice system, where the central question became whether the prosecution could establish the allegations against Brij Bhushan Singh beyond reasonable doubt.

In June 2023, Delhi Police filed a chargesheet against Singh and Vinod Tomar, the former assistant secretary of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI). The chargesheet invoked provisions of the Indian Penal Code relating to sexual harassment, assault with intent to outrage the modesty of a woman, stalking and criminal intimidation.

The allegations made by the women wrestlers were not limited to a single incident. The complaints referred to a pattern of alleged misconduct between 2016 and 2019, including incidents at the WFI office, Singh’s official residence and during overseas competitions.

The prosecution case was built around the statements of six women wrestlers who accused Singh of inappropriate behaviour, unwanted physical contact, harassment and intimidation. Singh denied the allegations from the beginning, claiming that the accusations were politically motivated and part of a conspiracy against him.

In July 2023, the Rouse Avenue Court granted bail to Singh and Vinod Tomar while imposing conditions restricting them from influencing witnesses or leaving the country without permission. The trial, however, became a prolonged legal battle for the complainants. For women athletes who had already challenged one of the most powerful figures in Indian sport publicly, the courtroom became another arena where they had to repeatedly defend their allegations.

Charges Framed: Court finds material to proceed against Brij Bhushan Singh

In May 2024, the trial court found sufficient material to proceed against Brij Bhushan Singh. The court framed charges against him under Sections 354 and 354A of the Indian Penal Code for allegations involving sexual harassment and outraging the modesty of women. Charges of criminal intimidation were also framed in relation to allegations made by some complainants.

The court, however, discharged Singh in relation to one of the complaints, observing that there was insufficient material to proceed on that particular allegation. For the remaining allegations, the court held that a trial was necessary. The framing of charges was significant because it meant the court found a prima facie case requiring examination through evidence.

It did not determine guilt, but it rejected the argument that the allegations were entirely without basis. The trial formally commenced thereafter, with proceedings conducted in-camera due to the sensitive nature of the allegations.

Detailed report may be read here.

The Minor Wrestler’s Complaint: Allegations, withdrawal and pressure

One of the most sensitive aspects of the Brij Bhushan Singh case was the complaint filed by a minor wrestler, which initially led to the registration of a separate FIR under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. The minor wrestler had accused Singh of sexual harassment, following which the Delhi Police registered a case under the stringent child protection law after the intervention of the Supreme Court in April 2023. The allegation added another layer of seriousness.

However, the case later took a different course. During the investigation, the minor wrestler and her father changed their position, following which Delhi Police filed a cancellation report in the POCSO case, stating that the allegations could not be substantiated. In May 2025, the Patiala House Court accepted the cancellation report and closed the proceedings.

While the police treated the development as a reason to close the case, supporters of the wrestlers pointed to the larger concerns surrounding complaints made against powerful individuals — particularly by young survivors who may face immense social, institutional and personal pressure. The minor wrestler’s father had earlier alleged that the family faced pressure and intimidation after the complaint was filed, raising questions about the circumstances under which the statement was changed. The allegations of pressure were strongly denied by Singh and his supporters.

Detailed report may be read here and here.

A federation, a powerful president and questions of accountability

At the heart of the allegations raised was not only the criminal case against Singh but also the functioning of the Wrestling Federation of India.

The WFI president controlled one of India’s most important sporting institutions — an organisation responsible for selecting athletes, conducting tournaments and shaping the careers of wrestlers. The allegations therefore raised a fundamental question: What protection exists for athletes when the person accused of misconduct is also the person exercising institutional authority over their careers?

The wrestlers argued that their struggle was not merely against one individual but against a culture within sports administration where athletes often lack independent mechanisms to report abuse. Women’s rights groups repeatedly pointed to the need for stronger implementation of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 (POSH Act) within sports bodies. They argued that national sports federations cannot remain outside effective accountability mechanisms and that athletes must have access to independent committees free from political and administrative influence.

Detailed reports may be read here, here

The Verdict: Acquittal, but not the end of the battle

On August 3, 2026, after hearing arguments from the prosecution, defence and complainants, ACJM Ashwini Panwar of the Rouse Avenue Court acquitted Brij Bhushan Singh and Vinod Tomar. The court held that the prosecution had failed to establish the charges beyond reasonable doubt.

This standard is fundamental to criminal law. An acquittal means the prosecution was unable to prove guilt to the legally required degree. It does not automatically mean that the allegations were fabricated or that the complainants acted dishonestly. In our judicial system, sexual harassment cases are often difficult to prove because they frequently occur in private spaces, without independent witnesses or immediate reporting. To the same, one can add the issue of survivors delaying reporting because of fear, professional consequences, social stigma or the power imbalance between the complainant and accused.

At the same time, criminal courts are bound by evidentiary standards and cannot convict unless the prosecution proves the charges beyond reasonable doubt. One cannot turn blind to the reality that the same system that had dragged the protesting wrestlers from Jantar Mantar had the responsibility of collecting evidence against the accused.  For the wrestlers, however, the issue goes beyond the courtroom outcome. Their central allegation is that the system failed them long before the judgment was delivered.

Women’s Rights Groups: “The fight for safe sporting spaces continues”

The acquittal triggered strong reactions from women’s organisations, activists and members of civil society. More than 250 feminists, women’s rights advocates and members of women’s organisations issued a joint statement expressing solidarity with the wrestlers and condemning what they described as the continued failure to create safe sporting environments.

The signatories include senior lawyer Indira Jaising, academician Uma Chakravarti, social activist Aruna Roy, PUCL India President Kavita Srivastava, Kalyani Menon Sen, publisher Urvashi Butalia, danseuse Mallika Sarabhai, author and activist, Teesta Setalvad, activists Sujata Gothaskar and Shabnam Hashmi, women’s leaders  Jagmati Sangwan and Annie Raja and Nisha Sidhu of National Federation of Indian Women, Maimoona Mollah of the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), Lalita Ramdas, Syeeda Hameed, Meena Saraswati Seshu, transparency activist Anjali Bharadwaj, lawyer Lara Jesani, Govind Kelkar, academic Shilpa Phadke and journalists Rituparna Chatterjee and Laxmi Murthy.

The signatories described the wrestlers’ struggle as a fight against powerful structures within Indian sport where money, political influence and institutional control often determine whose voices are heard. They said the acquittal would not end the movement for accountability. The statement recalled that the FIRs against Singh were registered only after Supreme Court intervention and argued that the wrestlers had repeatedly attempted to seek institutional remedies before approaching the courts.

It also criticised the treatment of the wrestlers during their protests in 2023, including the police action against them when they attempted to march towards the new Parliament building on May 28, 2023.

The organisations demanded:

• implementation of POSH mechanisms across all sports institutions;
• independent complaint mechanisms for athletes;
• protection for whistleblowers and survivors;
• sporting institutions free from political interference.

Senior advocate Rebecca John, who represented four of the complainants, described the acquittal as “deeply disturbing”. She maintained that the verdict would be challenged before a higher court.

Political Reactions: Opposition questions government’s claims on women empowerment

The acquittal triggered sharp criticism from opposition parties, who questioned the government’s response to the allegations and accused it of failing to stand with women athletes.

Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra criticised what she described as a contradiction between political messaging on women’s empowerment and the treatment of the wrestlers. “On one hand they say they are with the young generation, they talk about women empowerment and women reservation, and on the other hand this,” she said, reported Times of India.

Maharashtra Congress chief Harshvardhan Sapkal said the verdict reflected a failure to protect women athletes who had brought international recognition to India. As per the report of The Telegraph, he accused the government of ignoring the allegations made by the wrestlers and alleged that political power had shielded Singh.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation criticised the acquittal, stating that the case exposed the persistence of political patronage and institutional protection enjoyed by powerful individuals. The party argued that the case had been weakened from the beginning due to delayed FIR registration, the composition of inquiry mechanisms and the treatment of protesting wrestlers.

Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Arvind Sawant questioned why BJP leaders had not supported the wrestlers when they were protesting publicly at Jantar Mantar. Jharkhand Mukti Morcha MP Mahua Maji said that while judicial decisions must be respected, many women were disappointed by the verdict and feared that such outcomes could discourage survivors from reporting harassment. Congress MP Shashi Tharoor adopted a more cautious position, stating that judicial processes must be allowed to continue and that courts’ decisions should not be prejudged.

Brij Bhushan’s Defence: “Truth Has Prevailed”

Following the verdict, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh welcomed the court’s decision and maintained that the allegations against him were false and politically motivated. Speaking after the judgment, Singh claimed that he had never considered himself guilty and that the court’s decision had vindicated his stand. He said that from the beginning he had maintained that if even one allegation against him was proved, he would accept punishment.

Singh described the acquittal as an “honourable” clearance and alleged that the protests by the wrestlers had later turned into a political campaign against him. He claimed that the case was not a genuine movement by athletes but had become an effort by opposition parties to target him politically.

The current Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) leadership also welcomed the judgment. WFI president Sanjay Singh said the allegations had caused significant damage to Indian wrestling and described them as politically motivated. He said the acquittal was a victory for the sport and a rejection of what he called false accusations.

Did the system fail women wrestlers before the court did?

The Brij Bhushan Singh case now enters its next phase with the wrestlers preparing to challenge the acquittal. But beyond the legal appeal lies a larger unresolved question: Why did some of India’s most celebrated athletes have to fight for months on the streets before their allegations even reached a courtroom? The controversy exposed deep structural problems within Indian sports governance. The wrestlers were not ordinary complainants approaching an unfamiliar system. They were Olympic medallists and international champions who had represented India on the world stage. Yet, according to them, even their public stature did not shield them from institutional resistance.

The wrestlers’ struggle was never limited to one criminal case; it exposed deeper structural problems within Indian sports governance. At the centre of their concerns was the difficulty of challenging powerful administrators who control athletes’ careers, opportunities and futures. Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh was not only the president of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) but also a politically influential figure. For athletes dependent on federations for selection, training facilities and international opportunities, raising allegations against the person at the top carries enormous personal and professional risks. The wrestlers alleged that this unequal power dynamic enabled intimidation and discouraged some women from pursuing complaints, highlighting the vulnerability of athletes within institutions where authority and accountability often remain concentrated in the same hands.

The controversy also brought renewed scrutiny on the lack of effective accountability mechanisms within sports bodies. Although the POSH Act requires workplaces to establish Internal Complaints Committees to address complaints of sexual harassment, women’s rights groups have long argued that sporting institutions require stronger and more independent systems. Athletes often have direct professional dependence on coaches, administrators and federation officials, making internal mechanisms controlled by the same institutions inadequate. The wrestlers’ protest therefore became a larger demand for independent grievance redressal bodies, transparent investigations and protection for athletes who speak against misconduct.

Detailed piece may be read here.

The movement also exposed the immense personal cost of speaking out against powerful individuals. The wrestlers, who had been celebrated as national sporting icons for winning medals for India, found themselves on the streets at Jantar Mantar demanding that their allegations even be heard. They faced public scrutiny, political attacks and questions about their motives, while supporters argued that instead of receiving institutional protection, they were forced to fight for recognition and accountability. Their protest became symbolic of a larger struggle faced by survivors — where seeking justice often requires confronting not only the accused but also the systems that are expected to provide protection.

For Vinesh Phogat, Bajrang Punia and the other wrestlers, the acquittal is not the end of their fight. They have announced plans to challenge the verdict before a higher court, while continuing to demand broader reforms in Indian sport — including independent sexual harassment committees, effective implementation of POSH provisions, protection for athletes who report misconduct and greater transparency in sports administration. The case has already changed the conversation around women athletes in India. The medals won by these wrestlers brought national pride, but their protest tested whether the same institutions that celebrated their victories would stand with them when they challenged authority. The court has delivered its verdict in the criminal case, but the larger question raised by the wrestlers remains: when a woman athlete challenges the most powerful person in her sporting institution, does the system protect her — or does she have to fight the system itself?

Related:

Women Wrestlers & Lawyers’ battle for justice: Feminists, women leaders in support

Clear case of re-victimisation: Former SC judge Madan B Lokur on Delhi Police’s handling of women wrestlers case

“I changed my statement because I was scared, my family is living under constant threat”: father of the minor wrestlers’ complainant

Mumbai: Silent protest organised to condemn the injustice meted out to women wrestlers

FIRs suggest wrestlers had informed PM about their repeated sexual trauma in 2021

#STOPKILLINGUS Protest at Jantar Mantar on August 4 against GOI’s “cover-up” of Manual Scavenging deaths

The post Brij Bhushan Acquittal: The system vs the wrestlers appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Writer and researcher Anu Jain revisits Mahatma Gandhi’s closest political and personal bonds in this series, offering a timely reminder that transformative movements are built not merely on charismatic leadership, but on the unyielding sentinels of conscience who surround it.

For Gandhi, leadership was never a solitary endeavour. It was a collaborative, often demanding dialogue with a close circle of confidants who possessed the moral courage to hold up a mirror to him.

This exclusive five-part series explores Gandhi’s deeply complex relationships with five of his remarkable contemporaries. Together, these five bonds did more than just steer the course of the independence movement; they directly shaped the deeply personal, moral, and political choices of the Mahatma himself.

Read on the unique bond that Gandhi shared with Chakravarti Rajagopalachari here.

In mid-June 1920, a letter arrived at the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad that would make the most powerful moral leader in India stop and think.

The sender was neither a British Viceroy threatening imprisonment, nor a political rival launching a public attack. It was Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, affectionately known as Rajaji, a brilliant lawyer from Madras with a razor-sharp intellect and a quiet, unassuming demeanour. At a time when millions across the subcontinent were beginning to view Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi as an infallible saint whose every word was law, Rajaji dared to do the unthinkable. He held up a mirror to his Master’s soul and told him he was on the brink of ruin.

Gandhi was entangled in a deeply intense, emotionally charged relationship with Saraladevi Chaudhurani, a brilliant and charismatic nationalist writer. He had begun to call her his “spiritual wife” and was privately contemplating a public declaration of their unique bond. To the outer world, Gandhi seemed unstoppable, reshaping the Indian National Congress into a thunderous mass movement. But in the quiet corners of his private life, he was navigating a profound emotional labyrinth.

Question of Accountability

Rajaji refused to remain silent while other members of Gandhi’s inner circle, such as his loyal secretary Mahadev Desai, watched in nervous silence and submitted to the Mahatma’s whims. He realised that Gandhi’s unwavering moral purity, rather than political strategy, was his greatest weapon against the British Empire. To jeopardise that purity would be to capsize the ship that held the hopes of a whole country.

This is the story of an extraordinary bond, what Mahadev Desai called an “intellectual wedding.” It is the chronicle of a friendship that proved the Gandhian movement was never a cult of blind obedience, but a crucible of fierce moral accountability.

Born into a traditional Iyengar Brahmin family in the Madras Presidency, Rajaji was a man built on classical learning, strict ethical reasoning, and the analytical precision of a seasoned legal mind. When he answered Gandhi’s call to join the nationalist struggle, he left behind a highly lucrative law practise. But he did not leave behind his critical faculties. To Rajaji, loyalty did not mean the suspension of judgement. He loved Gandhi, but he loved the moral clarity of the cause more.

When Gandhi wrote to his Tamil protégé hinting at a deeper, public acknowledgement of his relationship with Saraladevi, Rajaji’s response was immediate, urgent, and fiercely protective. Though Gandhi’s original letter to Rajaji has been lost to time, fragments of Rajaji’s reply from June 16, 1920, survive as a testament to ultimate moral courage.

Rajaji did not mince words. He warned Gandhi that any public step toward validating this “spiritual marriage” would bring “unutterable shame and ruin,” effectively destroying “all saintliness, all purity, all asceticism, all India’s hope.” To drive his point home, Rajaji invoked a magnificent and terrifying metaphor:

“How could you venture out… when in your boat was the faith and fate of millions of simple souls who, if the boat had capsized, would have seen neither beauty nor love nor grandeur, but unspeakable shame and death.”

Rajaji had briefly met Saraladevi, and his legal mind was entirely unimpressed by her charms. In an unusually harsh and candid assessment, he wrote to Gandhi:

“I fail to see any ‘greatness’ in the lady. She is like a hundred other women, whom a little education makes very attractive. I have seen scores of bigger-minded and better-souled women.”

Then, turning his gaze toward Gandhi’s steadfast wife, Kasturba, he drew a stinging contrast. To compare Saraladevi to Kasturba, Rajaji noted, was like “comparing a kerosene oil lamp to the morning sun.”

Rajaji did not spare Saraladevi further, criticising her “reckless indifference to consequences.” His final directive to his Master was absolute: “Pray disengage yourself at once completely. No delay is allowable when you hold such great trusts.”

This letter was a magnificent act of bravery. In 1920, Gandhi was fast becoming a deity in the Indian imagination. To challenge him on his private affections was highly dangerous. But Rajaji understood a fundamental truth about Indian society. Gandhi’s public authority rested squarely on his ascetic image. While old Hindu traditions technically permitted polygamy, the heartbeat of Indian social practise fiercely favoured monogamy. Had Gandhi publicly embraced another partner, even under the lofty banner of a “spiritual union“, he would have fractured his credibility among ordinary citizens, crippling the moral foundation of the freedom struggle.

Gandhi was visibly shaken by the raw frankness of Rajaji’s intervention. Though the emotional disentanglement was slow, agonising, and complex, the warning worked. The grand idaea of a public declaration was dropped. By December 1920, Gandhi took the definitive step to close that chapter of his life.

Writing back to Rajaji, Gandhi quietly confirmed the victory of his friend’s counsel:

“Yes, your guess is correct. The fair friend is Saraladevi. She wants to bombard me with more stuff but I have refused to give further accommodation.”

The Mahatma had been saved from his own vulnerability by his conscience keeper.

Public Triumph

While this private storm was being weathered, the year 1920 saw Gandhi achieve unprecedented heights on the public stage. The contrast between his private crisis and his public triumph was breathtaking.

Gandhi threw himself into a massive tour of the Madras Presidency, travelling alongside the flamboyant Muslim leader Shaukat Ali. They were an unlikely pair, Shaukat Ali, loud, booming, and dressed in striking, theatrical outfits. Gandhi, soft-spoken, slender, and wrapped in simple homespun cloth. Yet, Gandhi deeply admired Ali, describing him to the English missionary C.F. Andrews was “one of the most sincere of men I have met… generous, frank, brave and gentle.”

As they moved through towns like Kumbakonam, Madurai, Trichy, Calicut, Kasargod, and Mangalore, giant crowds gathered. Crucially, women poured out to join these meetings, signalling a massive shift in the social fabric of Indian politics. Standing right beside Gandhi throughout this gruelling tour was Rajaji, acting as his voice, translating his complex ethical ideas into fluent, evocative Tamil, and seamlessly connecting the Mahatma to the masses.

That same year, at the historic Nagpur session of the Indian National Congress, Gandhi completely revolutionised the party’s architecture. He dissolved the old British administrative divisions and reorganised the Congress along linguistic lines, ensuring people could participate in their own mother tongues. He established a beautifully organised hierarchy of elected committees stretching from remote rural taluks and districts all the way up to the All India Congress Committee (AICC) and the executive Congress Working Committee (CWC).

Most importantly, he opened the doors to the poor. For a tiny, nominal fee of just four annas, any adult could join. Within a single year, the Congress transformed from an elitist, English-speaking debating club into a roaring mass movement of nearly two million members. Gandhi was building a nation, even as he was correcting a personal misjudgement.

By 1921, the political landscape grew heavy with tension. The movement was fracturing under the weight of the violent Moplah rebellion and a general sluggishness in the adoption of Khadi. During this dark period, Gandhi’s appreciation for Rajaji deepened immensely. He saw in the Tamil leader a rare combination of “wisdom, integrity and ability,” noting with relief that Rajaji was one of the very few who “fully understood the meaning of our struggle.”

It was during this southern tour, in the historic city of Madurai, that Gandhi made a decision that would forever define his visual legacy. For years, since his days in Barisal, Bengal, he had contemplated shedding his traditional clothes to fully identify with the poorest of the poor. Everywhere he went, poor labourers told him they simply could not afford khadi. It was too expensive compared to cheap, imported British mill cloth.

In a moment of profound empathy, Gandhi decided to discard his shirt and cap, adopting the simple, humble loincloth for the rest of his life. It was a radical, embodied identification with India’s destitute.

When he broke the news to his inner circle, a fierce debate erupted. Maulana Azad understood the brilliant moral logic immediately. But Rajaji, ever the cautious pragmatist, was deeply unsettled. He worried that such a drastic, sudden transformation would alienate the public, making Gandhi look eccentric, erratic, or as Gandhi himself later recalled, a “lunatic.” Rajaji’s criticism was grounded in political prudence. He looked at symbolic acts through the cold lens of social intelligibility and political fallout.

Conversely, C.F. Andrews embraced the move with deep sympathy, seeing it as an authentic, beautiful act of solidarity. This friction perfectly highlighted the unique ecosystem around Gandhi. Rajaji’s practical scepticism and Andrews’ moral idealism acted as vital guardrails, shaping the conversational, evolving nature of Gandhian leadership.

Yerwada Jail

The ultimate test of this intellectual intimacy came in March 1922, when the British colonial state finally arrested Gandhi. The great Non-Cooperation experiment was paused, and Gandhi was escorted under heavy guard from Ahmedabad to Poona, passing through the iron gates of Yerwada Jail on the evening of March 21.

The prison bureaucracy attempted to strip the Mahatma of his historical magnitude, entering him into the ledger as routine text: Inmate No. 827, charged under Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code for exciting disaffection towards the government.

But walls could not contain the movement. On April 1, 1922, during his very first permitted visitor window, Rajaji arrived at the prison gates alongside Gandhi’s son, Devadas, and the social reformer A.V. Thakkar.

Rajaji carefully observed his Master’s life behind bars and penned a vivid, moving account for Young India. He described a leader living under relentless surveillance, locked away in solitary conditions, yet maintaining an iron-clad, joyful routine of prayer, reading, and spinning. These written dispatches were crucial. They kept the flame of Gandhi’s moral authority burning bright in the hearts of the public, proving that the Mahatma remained unbroken even in captivity.

Their conversations in jail were a continuation of a profound intellectual dialogue that had begun years earlier in 1919. Back then, Gandhi had shared his deep anxieties with Rajaji regarding rising Hindu-Muslim tensions and the terrifying prospect of a militarised India, warning that normalising armed forces would turn the liberated nation into nothing more than “an armed camp.”

Medical Crisis

In January 1924, this bond of trust faced a sudden physical crisis. Still a prisoner, Gandhi developed acute appendicitis. In the dead of night, during a raging thunderstorm, he underwent emergency surgery at Sassoon Hospital in Poona. Facing extreme physical vulnerability, Gandhi’s immediate instinct was to surround himself with his trusted circle, summoning V.S. Srinivasa Sastri and Dr. V.D. Phatak to his bedside before the scalpel touched his skin.

Throughout these dark intervals of imprisonment and near-fatal illness, Rajaji remained the unshakable interpretive bridge between the secluded leader and a waiting nation. Following his subsequent release, Gandhi moved to a beachfront bungalow in Juhu to recover.

Once he was out of jail, Gandhi’s daily schedule was modified. He still woke up at 4:30 a.m. and said his prayers. At six he had a light breakfast, then took a short walk within the compound of the cottage. From then until midday he attended to his correspondence in English and in Gujarati, dictating letters and articles to a shorthand typist. He rested in the afternoon, saw visitors, and then took a forty-minute walk on the seashore. On his doctor’s advice, he had not yet resumed spinning.

Juhu, the suburb where Gandhi was recovering, was easily accessible from the city by rail and road. A stream of visitors, mostly uninvited and unannounced, descended daily from Bombay. Gandhi was finally forced to issue a public appeal, asking people to come see him between five and six in the evening only.

“The capital of energy at my disposal is very small, and I want to utilise it only in service. I wish to resume editorship of Navajivan and Young India from next week. And I need absolute quiet for that work. If all my time and energy are taken up in seeing and entertaining you, it will not be possible for me to edit the weeklies in the way I desire.”

Among those keen to see Gandhi was M.A. Jinnah’s young wife, Ruttie. She sent a basket of strawberries, with a note saying she wanted to come too, but was nervous lest it interfere with his health.

“I should hate to think that what to me is a source of pleasure must inevitably prolong the struggle for recovery. But you must know, that like the rest of the world, I too am dying to see you, so when I can legitimately do so, I shall expect a line or a word of permission.”

It is not clear whether Mrs. Jinnah in fact visited Gandhi. But plenty of other admirers descended on the cottage in Juhu. Almost immediately, Juhu became what Rajaji described with characteristic irony as a “general ward” of visitors. Writing to Mahadev Desai, Rajaji sarcastically complained:

“I understand that Juhu has become another general hospital. At Poona it was a special ward. but it is now a general ward of all consumptives and melancholics, and a ward without divisions for sexes.”

Rajaji’s remark was not merely administrative irritation. It reflected his consistent, protective concern that Gandhi’s physical body was being overexposed to the relentless demands of political devotion, treating his critical convalescence as public access.

Logistical Custodianship

This tension between intimacy and overload reappeared repeatedly over the following decade. In 1927, when Gandhi fell seriously ill again while touring Nandidurg, it was Rajaji who ensured not only medical care but also continuity of comfort and routine. He went so far as to meticulously arrange for fresh goat’s milk to be sent daily from Madras via train to Bangalore, collected at Tumkur, and carried up to the hill station so it was available for Gandhi during his health recovery stay. The detail is small, but revealing: Rajaji was not only a political interpreter of Gandhi, but also a literal logistical custodian of his fragile body.

The intimacy of this care sat alongside Rajaji’s growing unease with Gandhi’s relentless pace. In private correspondence, he increasingly expressed anxiety about overwork, overexposure, and the structural exhaustion of the movement itself. Yet this concern never became withdrawal. Instead, it deepened his function as Gandhi’s stabilising interlocutor, someone who absorbed strain so that Gandhi could continue outward expansion.

By the late 1920s and early 1930s, this relationship had become completely central to the functioning of the Congress movement itself. During Gandhi’s Tamil Nadu tour in 1927, it was Rajaji who designed the entire itinerary, coordinated meetings, and shaped the organisational logistics of mass mobilisation. The spinning campaigns that followed, where donation boxes moved through crowds after each meeting, depended heavily on Rajaji’s unique ability to translate high Gandhian ethics into airtight administrative practise.

Following the Poona Pact of September 1932, Mahatma Gandhi renamed his weekly Harijan, reflecting his conviction that the abolition of untouchability was as vital to India’s future as political independence. The term soon gained widespread acceptance among the Hindu middle classes and the nationalist press, although Dr. B.R. Ambedkar firmly rejected it and never used it for the community he represented.

The Anti-Untouchability League, established after Gandhi’s fast, was also renamed the Harijan Sevak Sangh (Servants of the Harijans). The change was intended both to popularise Gandhi’s preferred term “Harijan” and to distinguish the organisation from the Anti-Untouchability League already run by social reformer V.R. Shinde.

Rajaji, however, strongly objected to the new name. He argued that calling the organisation the Harijan Sevak Sangh implicitly accepted the continued existence of “untouchables” as a separate group. Instead, he proposed the name Untouchability Abolition League, emphasising that the real objective was not merely to serve a community but to eradicate the social evil itself. As Rajaji explained, they were striving for “the abolition of a slave status,” and the word “abolition” conveyed the purpose far more clearly than “service.”

Gandhi did not consider the issue decisive, remarking, “the Sangh will not succeed or fail because of the name. It will be judged by its work.” Nevertheless, because the suggestion came from Rajaji, whom he deeply respected, Gandhi asked G.D. Birla and A.V. Thakkar to examine the proposal.

Although Thakkar acknowledged that Rajaji’s reasoning had “much logic,” the proposal was rejected on practical grounds. The organisation’s name had only recently been changed from the Anti-Untouchability League to the Harijan Sevak Sangh, the Board had approved it, the press had announced it, and official stationery had already been printed. Thakkar argued that proposing another change so soon would invite ridicule from both the Board and the public. Consequently, despite admitting that Rajaji’s suggestion was reasonable, the Board considered it inexpedient.

The episode illustrates the tension between principle and administrative convenience. While Rajaji’s proposed name more directly expressed the mission of eliminating untouchability and avoided the paternalistic overtones of “Harijan Sevak Sangh,” bureaucratic inertia and concern over public perception ensured that the existing name remained unchanged.

Social Challenge

Gandhi’s son Devadas, still unmarried and a brahmachari, was deeply loved by his mother and also by his father. Indeed, it was only with his youngest son that Gandhi shared something like a normal relationship. However, Devadas had fallen in love with Lakshmi, the daughter of C. Rajagopalachari (Rajaji). While Gandhi and Kasturba were in Ceylon, they received a letter from a family friend describing how Devadas was wishing for Lakshmi and was determined to marry her. Gandhi replied that Devadas’ condition was pitiable and Rajaji was unlikely to permit the marriage and Lakshmi would not act without her father’s consent. While she remained cheerful, Devadas, Gandhi wrote, had “gone mad” in love, suffering deeply. He added that if such devotion were directed towards God, he might have become a saint. Yet Gandhi also acknowledged that Devadas was torn between obedience and inner rebellion, even resenting his father as an obstacle. Unsure of how to resolve this, Gandhi urged that he be guided towards peace and dharma, admitting he himself might be misunderstanding him.

The situation was further complicated by social realities. Rajaji was a Tamil Brahmin, Gandhi a Gujarati Bania, making this an inter-caste and inter-regional union. Gandhi worried that orthodoxy might seize upon such a marriage to portray him as a dangerous radical, undermining his campaign against untouchability. However, he was mistaken in one respect, Lakshmi’s love was fully reciprocated. The two had first met in June 1924 in Bangalore, where Devadas reportedly declared his love. He later formally approached Rajaji for permission. Rajaji, though fond of Devadas and familiar with him since 1918, remained hesitant.

After consulting Gandhi, the two fathers placed the couple on probation, no meetings or correspondence, to test the durability of their love. If, after some years, their feelings endured, the marriage would be allowed. This arrangement, later recalled by Rajmohan Gandhi, required the couple to wait five years without contact, after which they married with parental approval.

On 16 June 1933, Devadas married Lakshmi in Poona. At the ceremony, Gandhi remarked that Devadas had “robbed Rajagopalachari of a cherished gem” and must prove worthy of it, while praising Lakshmi as true to her name. He expressed hope that the marriage would deepen his bond with Rajaji. Significantly, Gandhi prefaced his remarks by stating that nothing had been done against dharma, an implicit acknowledgement of the inter-caste nature of the union, one typically disapproved by orthodox authorities. Gandhi had by this time come to argue more explicitly that inter-caste marriages were not only permissible but socially desirable, as they could help break down caste barriers and advance the moral regeneration of Hindu society.

This marriage also concretely bound the two families. Lakshmi, Rajaji’s daughter, became Gandhi’s daughter-in-law, further deepening the personal and political relationship between the two leaders.

The Ultimate Testimony

The profound depth of this lifelong bond reached its historical crescendo in the bloody twilight of British rule. When India gained independence amid the horrors of partition in 1947, Gandhi was fasting in Calcutta and Noakhali to stem the tide of communal madness.

The newly appointed Governor of West Bengal, C. Rajagopalachari, looked at his old friend’s fragile body and tried hard to persuade Gandhi not to go on a fast. If he died, warned Rajaji, “the conflagration would be worse.”

Gandhi calmly and beautifully answered: “At least I won’t be there to witness it. I shall have done my bit. More is not given to a man to do.”

Realising the Mahatma’s unyielding resolve, Rajaji then turned around and made a passionate, public appeal to the people of Calcutta. He urged that they must, as soon as possible, restore communal peace and goodwill in the city, as “Mahatma Gandhi had hard work before him in the Punjab, for which he must be spared.”

The city listened, and the miracle of Calcutta was achieved. Reflecting on this monumental triumph, Rajaji told the city’s Rotary Club:

“Mahatma Gandhi has achieved many things in his lifetime, but I do not think he has achieved anything so great, so grand, as he has achieved in Calcutta.”

Architecture of Freedom

The extraordinary relationship between Mahatma Gandhi and C. Rajagopalachari, perfected across the turbulent decades following the early 1920s, reveals a foundational truth about the internal engine of the Indian national movement. Gandhi was a visionary, but he was also human, prone to errors of the heart and miscalculations of the mind. His greatness lay not in a lack of flaws, but in his deliberate choice to surround himself with individuals who possessed the supreme moral courage to stand up and correct him.

Rajaji was never a passive disciple basking in the reflected glory of a saint. He was an independent, brilliant intellectual force who stabilised Gandhi’s image during moments of profound personal and political vulnerability. He translated the Mahatma’s speeches for the masses, but more importantly, he translated Gandhi’s ethical responsibilities back to Gandhi himself.

In the grand design of ‘Lesser Known Gandhi,’ this chapter reminds us that true leadership does not survive on blind adulation or the silent acquiescence of yes-men. The unyielding strength of the Gandhian struggle did not rely on the exercise of absolute, uncritical authority. It thrived because of independent sentinels of conscience like Rajaji, men who stood firmly at the threshold of power and ensured that absolute moral accountability was never sacrificed on the altar of political destiny.

Make sure to check back tomorrow for next part of the series as we explore how financial support, morality, and industrial resources forged an unlikely bond between Gandhi and G. D. Birla.

Read the previous article in the series here.

Courtesy: The AIDEM

The post Gandhi’s Conscience Keeper appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Today, a day after reports of the death of Justice MS Liberhan at the age of 87, Sabrangindia is reproducing this article for the benefits of two or three generations of younger readers who did not have the benefit of these insights available herein. Besides Communalism Combat, where the article may be still read, it has also been re-published on Sabrangindia and may be read here.

We are also re-publishing this here again today, August 4, 2026.

Rath Yatra Retraced

First published in Communalism Combat in April 2001

Unless he, too, prefers to suffer from ‘memory failure’ before the Liberhan 
Commission as Uma Bharati did, Union home minister LK Advani would benefit from a quick survey of news reports that recorded his words and deed for posterity – during the bloody rath yatra in 1990, till the demolition of the Babri masjid in 1992 and subsequently

After eight years of procrastination, the proceedings of the Justice MS Liberhan Commission investigating the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992 have reached the conclusive stage. Evidence of the key accused in the entire episode, however, still requires to be led, before arguments from either side can begin. This includes the evidence of former BJP president, best remembered for his bloody rathyatra to Ayodhya in 1990, Lal Krishna Advani. Today he is India’s home minister. Others to depose are another former BJP president and presently Union HRD minister, Murli Manohar Joshi, and former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Kalyan Singh.

Through rather dubious claims in a writ petition filed before the Delhi High Court, Singh has sought to avoid appearing before Justice Liberhan altogether. It is to be hoped that the Delhi HC judge in question will call Singh’s bluff and compel him to appear in this significant investigation.

Advani, too, has been avoiding appearance before the Commission, pleading “other pressing commitments” as an excuse for some time now. He is scheduled to appear before Justice Liberhan on April 10 and 11. Further cross-examination of former Prime Minister, Narasimha Rao and some other witnesses are also due.

Only after these depositions and cross-examination will the arguments begin and the key issues under investigation be raised. The issue being probed relates to the crucial question of rule of law under the Indian Constitution. A place of worship and a historical site was destroyed in broad daylight with no resistance from the police and the paramilitary deployed. Equally important is the instigation to violence that resulted in systematic and violent attacks on the lives and properties of Muslims, before and after the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

For the first time in the half-a-century old history of the Indian republic, a mass movement was orchestrated and thereafter blatantly used to subvert the law and defy basic norms of equal and fair protection of all sections of the population by the law and order machinery. The purpose of the investigation, however delayed (as unfortunately all such public investigations have been in the past) and subverted, too, by key witnesses accused of criminal conspiracy yet holding positions of power today is to nail and punish those guilty.

As Advani’s date with the Liberhan Commission draws close, CC proposes to recall — through documents and press clippings — the events that led to the demolition. This will remind our readers of the issues raised by the movement that resulted in the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the widespread violence it brought in it’s wake. A reminder of the past words and deeds of the key leaders of the sangh parivar, something they would like us all to forget today.

In this issue, CC looks back for answers to the questions:

Ø What was Advani’s role in leading the rath yatra in 1990 and again in 1992? Through public speeches and silent mobilisation, in the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992? In inciting crowds and thus triggering rounds of communal riots countrywide through his rath yatra?

Ø  What did large sections of the mass media report and record about the trail of blood that the rath yatra left behind in its wake?

Ø  How did Advani and the BJP react to the demolition soon after it took place?

Ø  What has Advani said on the issue, from the time the BJP adopted the Ramjanmabhoomi programme initiated by the VHP in 1986, until the demolition, and since, even as Union home minister?

Ø  Which is Advani’s realspeak and which his doublespeak?

1993

A month after the demolition of the Babri Masjid, on January 25, 1993, Advani expressed “no regrets over the demolition” adding, “it was the hand of providence that willed the fall of the Babri Masjid”.

The Indian Express dated January 26, 1993 reported on his public meeting in Ahmedabad under the headline: ‘No regrets over demolition, says Advani’. The text of the report read — “Ahmedabad: Bharatiya Janata Party leader LK Advani told a largely attended public meeting at Narangpura in Ahmedabad at the end of his three-day visit to the state on Sunday that what happened at Ayodhya on December 6 would change the course of Indian history. Mr. Advani said he did not regret the demolition of the mosque though he was sad that day because his fervent pleas to kar sevaks not to damage the monument had been ignored. Reciting a couplet from Tulsi Ramayan, ‘Hoi So Soyi Jo Ram Lekhi Rakha’, he said the disputed structure was destined to fall because Providence had ordained it so.”

Another report of the same event in The Economic Times dated January 26, 1993 had the headline ‘Providence willed fall of Masjid, Advani’.

Soon after the demolition, despite occasional outbursts of remorse at the event, LK Advani was unequivocal in his assessment that the political gain to the BJP from the demolition far outweighed outpourings of secular remorse. December 6, 1992 meant increased voter support for the BJP, or so Advani felt. At no place is this more clearly evident than in the foreword to the BJP’s white-paper on Ayodhya, authored by Advani and triumphantly released by him at the party office in New Delhi in April 1993.

The Frontline dated May 21, 1993 carries a report on the event titled, ‘Black, and White’. “The feeling in the rank and file that after December 6, 1992, the BJP has come into its own was corroborated by its leader, LK Advani at a press conference in New Delhi on April 18 to release the document, when he claimed: “It was because of Ayodhya and the people’s perception of it that the BJP increased its voter support.”

In the foreword to the paper, Advani amplifies his claim.  “…But the kar sevaks did more. They did not just erase a symbol of our subjugation. They did not just begin building a symbol of resurgence. They showed us as if in a flash, how far we have to travel. For the country reacted in two diametrically opposite ways, as virtually two different peoples. For a handful — those in government, in political parties, and in large sections of the English press, for instance — what happened were a ‘national shame’, it was ‘madness’, and it was ‘barbaric’. For the rest of the county it was a liberation — a sweeping away of cobwebs. The depth of anger at the recent policies, surprised me, as I said; the depth of the chasm between these two nations — the microscopic minority and the people — did not.”

The Blitz of May 1, 1993 in an article under the heading, ‘I Accuse…’, quotes Advani in the foreword: “Sri Rama is the unique symbol, the unequalled symbol of our oneness, of our integration, as well as of our aspiration to live the higher values. As Maryada Purushottam, Sri Rama has represented for thousands of years the ideal of conduct, just as Ram Rajya has always represented the ideal of governance. And one saint of our land after another, one saintly tradition after another has immersed itself in devotion to Him: the sacred Sri Guru Sahib celebrates and invokes Sri Rama about two thousand four hundred times, Gandhiji died with His name on his lips.

“It is natural, therefore, that the place of His birth has been an object of the deepest devotion for Hindus through the millennia — the inscription which has been found at the site and which speaks of a magnificent temple with a pinnacle of gold, dedicated to Lord Vishnu Hari who had humbled King Bali and defeated the wicked Dashanana, that is, Ravana; the record of the unremitting struggle of the Hindus to regain the site; the pathetic history of their worshipping the spot from a distance when they were denied access to it, of their circumbulating it — all these bear testimony to their deep and abiding, and indeed stirring, devotion to Sri Rama.

“On the other hand, the structure which Mir Baqi put up on the orders of Babur never had any special significance from a religious point of view. It was purely and simply a symbol not of devotion and of religion but of conquest. Correspondingly, quite apart from its being an obstacle, preventing Hindus from worshipping the birthplace of their idol, Sri Rama, it was for the country the symbol of its subjugation. This is how in 1989 the Bharatiya Janata Party formally decided to lend its shoulder to the cause — the party was responding to the deepest urges of our people.”

1990

To go back three years, when Advani led his rath yatra from Somnath through Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, and Purulia in West Bengal until it’s culmination, news reports portray the then BJP president in a defiant and angry mode, as he challenges the law and order machinery to dare act against him or his rath initiative. Incidentally, news reports of the period warn of the fast-deteriorating ground reality around the trail of the rath yatra that caused deep polarisation and brutal and violent communal outbursts.

The Telegraph dated October 16, 1990 records the defiant mood of Advani as he dares the government to arrest him. A report titled, ‘Advani defies govt to stop rathyatra, arrest him’, reads:

“New Delhi, Oct. 15: The BJP president, Mr LK Advani, today warned the government not to “stand in the way” of building the Ram Janmabhoomi temple and said any obstruction on its part would prove costly… Speaking from atop his rath, Mr Advani challenged the government to arrest him and his associates and impound the rath.
He warned: ‘If the government stops us, it should be ready to face the consequences.’”

The Sunday Times of October 14, 1990 similarly records Advani in a defiant mood. ‘No one will stop this rath yatra’, is the headline of the interview he gave to Swapan Dasgupta.

“Q. Now that the rath yatra has taken off, there is a demand that it be banned on the grounds that it is inflaming communal passions. You have said it will provide a healing touch. Is there some failure in communicating this view to those who demand a ban?

Advani: No, I do not attribute it to any such failure to understand the message of the rath yatra. I am sure that everyone knows that it has provided a healing touch; it has not caused any tensions or has not inflamed passions. These demands are being made by people who felt that they could ride roughshod over the sentiments of the Hindus. But now the sentiments of the Hindus have been manifested and articulated in such a powerful fashion without arousing any communal passion that their case has become indefensible. It is the indefensibility of their own case which makes them react with such vehemence.

“I am pained by the casual comments being made here and there about the rath yatra leaving behind trails of blood and communal passions. Actually, these have nothing to do with ground reality; I can admit that I was very apprehensive when it started. As everyone knows, Gujarat and particularly certain places such as Baroda, Ahmedabad, Surat and Bharuch have become very susceptible to riots over the slightest provocation.
Therefore, I was particularly keen to ensure that nothing happened. You may have noticed that as the first reaction of the rath yatra, there was the blood tilak, vessels of blood and the collection of shastras. All this is symbolic, they don’t mean anything. Even then they saw that I didn’t approve of the slogans that are being raised. Babri Masjid todo, jo hum say takrayega sidha upar jayega’ and I think this disapproval had a very salutary effect on them”.

A spate of news reports, analyses and editorials around this period warn of the grave consequences to harmony and unity caused by the divisive politics of Advani’s rath. This editorial in The Times of India, dated October 5, 1990 called ‘Playing With Fire’ really sums it up:

“If the BJP president is congratulating himself on the success of his Rath Yatra – and going by his recent utterances in Maharashtra he seems to be doing just that — the rest of the country has reason to be greatly worried. For, with the conclusion of the Gujarat chapter of the programme, it should be plain that Mr Advani’s campaign is leaving a trail of destruction in it’s wake. Communal riots have already broken out in Baroda and Banaskantha. It is difficult not to see the connection between the Rath Yatra and the Ram Jyoti campaigns on the one hand and the heightening of communal tensions in different parts of the country on the other… Indeed the collection of lethal weapons, particularly of trishuls, gory ceremonies and performance of other rituals designed to create a spirit of militancy… it would be something of a surprise if violence did not follow it.

“By taking the lead in the campaign whose divisive and destructive potential is just going to unfold …he has considerably lowered his political stature. His inflammatory speeches, his indulgent wielding of glittering Sudarshan Chakras in public and his endorsement of the most bigoted among the militants threaten to identify him with the likes of Acharya Giriraj Kishore of the VHP… If Mr Advani is concerned about the unity and integrity of the country and stands for the defence of law and order, he should reconsider his course.”

Advani paid no heed as a succession of news reports from different newspapers show. ‘Stop Rath Yatra, government told, read a headline in The Hindustan Times, October 7, 1990. An article in The Sunday Observer, dated October 14, 1990 titled, ‘The Communal Flare-up’ was authored by none less than Sudheendra Kulkarni, then assistant editor with the paper and today officer on special duty to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. The article read:

“Tumkur, Mandya, Kodagu or Coorg, Chitradurga, Mysore, Mangalore, Shimoga, parts of Bangalore city itself and even Dharwar in North Karnataka, have all reported instances of mounting tensions and even minor clashes. What is new to this present round of communal violence in this state, is the extent to which it has succeeded in penetrating the villages. The burning down of an entire hamlet of Muslim farmers near Chennapatna is only the most shocking among the cases reported so far. In Kolar district, too, Muslim houses in several villages have been reported to have been attacked by unknown outsiders.

“Even as the state was reeling under the sudden spurt of religious strife, yet another piece of inhumanity was committed in Bah Malkheda, a village in the north-eastern district of Bidar (which borders Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh). Seven persons, including a woman and a child, were roasted alive, in a clash that was set off by nothing more than a minor altercation between two drunken youths… There is no doubt whatsoever, that the Muslim community (which constitutes about 35 per cent of the town’s population) bore the brunt of the rioting, both in terms of lives lost and property damaged — of the 17 dead, 13 were Muslims. Muslim hoodlums, in turn, attacked a colony of Tamil speaking Adi Dravidas (adivasis) and set ablaze 15 houses. ‘They asked us angrily why we received the Ram Jyoti at our colony on Dussera,’ recounted Venkatayya, who was one of few old men present when the attack occurred.

“But what Hindu lumpens wreaked on the Muslims was on a far larger scale. Yaarab Nagar, a colony of poor Muslims, engaged in beedi-rolling, toy-making and other low-paying forms of self-employment, was attacked by a mob 500 men wearing ‘khaki shorts’ (as Saab Jaan Saab, a local resident described them). A Muslim watchman of a nearby plastic factory was roasted alive when it was set ablaze. Sikandar Pasha, a lottery ticket seller, was burnt alive in front of his house. Amir Jaan, a beedi roller, was axed to death while Khairun Bi, an elderly deaf woman, was knifed and killed inside her little hut”.

Other news reports of the period published by the national press record with chilling similarity the trail of violence that Advani’s rath yatra inspired. ‘Fears of another round of communal frenzy dog Gonda’, read a headline in the Blitz dated October 14, 1990.

In a long report, The Telegraph (Insight) dated October 14, 1990, was scathing in its comment. The newspaper has likened Advani’s rath with ‘Chariots of Fire.’

“…The extent to which communal passions have been heightened is evident simply by taking a look at what is happening in UP today: even before Mr Advani’s rath has entered the state, the death toll in communal clashes has gone up to 44. And with the BJP chief about to enter UP, there is apprehension that this figure might shoot up…When the rath moved into Maharashtra from Surat, the armed Bajrang Dal activists were less prominent — but the speeches of the BJP leaders were as full of venom…

“It was not just coincidence that communal riots should break out in Karnataka, within days of Mr Advani and his Ram rath passing through Solapur, near Maharashtra’s border with Karnataka. On October 3, communal clashes claimed nearly 20 lives in Kolar, Chennapatna and Ramanagaram towns and another 12 a few days later in Davangere. At least in Davangere, the instigation once again was VHP volunteers, who insisted on taking the Ram Jyoti procession through the heavily Muslim populated areas of Davangere town.

“In neighbouring Mandya and Hasan districts miscreants desecrated places of worship, set fire to houses and vehicles and assaulted women. But what needs to be pointed is the failure of the Veerendra Patil government.

“In Madhya Pradesh, where Mr. LK Advani’s rath wound its way through 13 of the state’s 45 districts, the BJP message was clear: the Muslims in India had to choose between Maryada Purshottam Lord Ram and lootera Babar. This was repeatedly stressed by BJP leaders in the course of Mr Advani’s whistle stop tour from October 6 to 10. In fact, at Mandsaur, from where chief minister Sunderlal Patwa hails, Mr Pramod Mahajan, the BJP leader in the course of a fiery speech asked the Muslims to either have faith in Lord Ram or else leave the country. Mr Advani all the while nodded in acquiescence and the hundreds of youths who surrounded the podium brandished their swords and trishuls and hailed the speech. The result, of course, was inevitable: communal clashes broke out in Raipur.”

‘When the Pink City ran red with blood’, The Sunday Observer, by Nirupama Subramanian, dated October 28, 1990, reads: “Death arrived at Mohalla Koliyan and Rishi Ghalib Nagar in the congested Ramganj area this week with a savageness that has few parallels in this part of the country. The Pink City acquired several shades to turn a crimson red, the colour of blood and mindless violence.”

Similarly, The Telegraph report on October 28, 1990 in ‘Purulia violence after Yatra’ by  Barun Ghosh says: “The communal flare-up that rocked Jhalda in Purulia district on Thursday claiming 9 lives, is a direct fall-out of the rathyatra of Mr. LK Advani which passed through the town on October 20.”

The Independent, dated November 2, 1990 in a story titled, ‘Communal riots take a new turn in Indore’, depicts the grisly violence in that town. “Communal Frenzy and out-bursts are nothing new to Indore. These are like festering sores and this sprawling industrial town, over the years, has learnt to live with them. What is remarkably different in the on-going clashes is that rampaging mobs armed to the teeth have clashed with the police attacking them with firearms and, of all things, tear gas grenades. Curfew orders have been violated with impunity and families of policemen have been attacked and their houses damaged. That the riots were pre-planned is evident from the large haul of stored arms and weapons from several houses — petrol bombs, country made pistols, guns, Molotov cocktails, swords, spears, knives, tear gas grenades, glass shards and soda water bottles.

The events in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992 and countrywide in the dark month that followed are testimony that the assessments of scribes were proved woefully correct.

1992

After the demolition, here are some of the newspaper headlines. ‘Over 200 killed in nationwide frenzy’, reads The Indian Express, December 8, 1992; ‘Anarchic situation in Ayodhya,’ is the headline of The Hindu, December 8, 1992; ‘SC hints at trial of BJP leaders,’ said The Pioneer of December 8, 1992; ‘Violence toll crosses 500,” was the headline in The Indian Express, December 9, 1992; “Violence Unabated, toll mounts to 700”, The Economic Times, December 10, 1992; and, “Shoot at sight in Calcutta: Toll mounts to 950, TheEconomic Times, December 11, 1992.

The Frontline on January 1, 1993 in it’s story headlined ‘Wounds all over — The violent aftermath’ said: “It may well go down in history as the worst round of widespread violence the country has seen since Partition: over a thousand people were killed in the week following the Black Sunday. The states of Maharashtra and Gujarat were burning and bleeding with more than 200 of their people consumed by the communal fury in less than a week. Anarchy reigned in Bombay and Surat where the tolls were as high as 191 and 155 respectively five days after the vandalism in Ayodhya. Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Assam and Karnataka were also reeling under the impact of riots. Surprisingly, while West Bengal remained by and large peaceful initially, a belated bout of violence broke out in Calcutta and adjoining districts.”

1994

Two years later, this report in The Independent dated July 25, 1994 is a sombre reminder of just what the Ayodhya movement was really all about. “Fears of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Ayodhya; ‘Shuddhikaran’ programme includes fight against ‘Islamikaran’ of holy city by Janardan Thakur. “Behind the surface calm of this besieged town, a sinister plot is being executed. Its goal: to scare away the Muslim population, take over their land and property — and their holy places. Leaders of the community wake up to threatening calls by unidentified callers demanding that they ‘quit Ayodhya or die’. Muslim shops are ransacked and burgled at night and the police refuse to register their cases lest the shopkeepers claim compensation from insurance companies to keep their establishments going.”

Clearly, Advani, the man who played a pivotal role in the movement that led to the demolition of the Babri masjid, with callous disregard to its implications for the rule of law, or its human consequences, will have a lot to answer before the Liberhan Commission.

Related:

Ram Rajya Rath Yatra: The road to Power

How it Took CBI 24 Years & Still Conspiracy Charges were Not Pressed: Advani & Others

The making of “Ram Ke Naam”: a Hinduism that is the mirror opposite of Hindutva

The post Rath Yatra retraced: Evidence presented to the Liberhan Commission appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The signatories include senior lawyer Indira Jaising, academician Uma Chakravarti, social activist Aruna Roy, PUCL India President Kavita Srivastava, Kalyani Menon Sen, publisher Urvashi Butalia, danseuse Mallika Sarabhai, author and activist, Teesta Setalvad, activists Sujata Gothaskar and Shabnam Hashmi, women’s leaders  Jagmati Sangwan and Annie Raja and Nisha Sidhu of National Federation of Indian Women, Maimoona Mollah of the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), Lalita Ramdas, Syeeda Hameed, Meena Saraswati Seshu, transparency activist Anjali Bharadwaj, lawyer Lara Jesani, Govind Kelkar, academic Shilpa Phadke and journalists Rituparna Chatterjee and Laxmi Murthy.

In their statement, they observed that the legal struggle was not easy from day one. The filing of the FIR after a public protest by the wrestlers that turned violent and the entire period of trial which lasted more than two years saw a legal team led by Sr. Adv Rebecca John who left no stone unturned in eliciting sound testimonies from the violated wrestlers and presenting powerful arguments to the court.

The statement said that “the judgement has acquitted the accused but the fight will continue for justice.” The womens’ organisations and individual feminists have demanded the implementation of POSH in the sports arena, a safe playing field be created for all, free of political interference and the crass use of money and muscle power said that they will continue to support the wrestlers in the struggle for creating a sexual harassment free wrestling arena and its spin off in other sports fields.

Womens’ groups and Feminists Hail Our Wrestlers and Their Lawyers Fighting for Justice 

In the statement, the signatories who include members of women’s’ organisations and independent feminists in India stated that “they are are shocked at the acquittal of Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, former MP (BJP) and the erstwhile President of the Wrestlers Federation of India by the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Ashwini Panwar of the Rouse Avenue Court in New Delhi.”

Further, the statement said that, “While the full order is yet to be shared in the public domain, our detailed comments on its merits, or demerits as the case may be, will follow. However, at this point, we stand in solidarity with our courageous wrestlers who never said die. We hail the fight for justice against seemingly impossible odds, as they waged an inspiring battle against the highly politicised power structures of sports associations in India, where money and muscle power rule the arena.

Tracing the timeline of the case, the statement reads,

“The FIRs were lodged in April 2023 on the intervention of the Supreme Court of India, due to the public pressure created by the dharna of wrestlers, who left their training and other commitments, jeopardising their careers as they took on Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh and his supporters on the streets. Of the two FIRs lodged against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, one was from a minor and the second was by five wrestlers.

“Prior to this, the wrestlers were forced to make numerous representations before a series of committees, held meetings with the Union Sports Minister, the Chairperson of the Indian Olympic Association and other officers but all these efforts, instead of responding to their genuine grievances, resulted in attempts to silence the complainants.

“We recall the manner in which the wrestlers had to struggle for over six months for just the right to wage a legal battle on their sexual harassment charge against Singh in April 2023.

“The effective struggle in the month of April – May 2023, led by the wrestlers in Jantar Mantar, demanding the resignation of Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, the alleged harasser, brought people from all over India, including senior sports persons, farmers, students, women and human rights groups, was met with a violent backlash by the Delhi police, who used excessive force to stop the marchers to march to the new Parliament, on May 28, 2023. This crackdown was followed by mass scale detention of the marchers and the wrestlers.

“Undeterred the wrestlers did not give up and tried to come back to Jantar Mantar to continue their protest. The state fear of these women was such that huge barricades were erected to stop any further agitation.

“Nevertheless the focus of the Wrestlers became the legal battle, with the Chargesheet being filed on June 15, 2023.

“The struggle and public pressure also forced an otherwise intransigent Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh to refrain from standing for the next elections of WFI. He, however, ensured that his supporter would be elected. The BJP dropped him from the 2024 Lok Sabha election in Kaiserganj in Uttar Pradesh but his son was fielded in his stead and won the seat.

“From day one, the legal struggle was not easy. In the month of May 2023 itself, the minor who was also a complainant, of sexual harassment by BBSS changed her statement, news reports of that period claimed that the family was brought under a lot of pressure. And could not withstand the consequences of taking on Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh.

“The entire period of trial which lasted more than two years, from May 2024 when charges against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh were framed to date, saw three of the witnesses present robust statements and courageously take on the cross examination, although two of the five complainants changed their statements.

Specifically , the statement makes mention of and congratulates the legal team led by senior advocate Rebecca John who left no stone unturned in eliciting sound testimonies from the violated wrestlers and presenting powerful arguments to the court.

While, today the judgement has acquitted the accused but the fight will continue for justice. The wrestlers who spoke out and struggled, despite being victimised in their careers by the federation, still have a large support of the people. We stand by them in their challenge to this judgement in the higher court.

The struggle of the last three and a half years, has also initiated an awareness within the sports arena, where POSH and its predecessor Vishakha Guidelines which had remain un-implemented, were brought in under Supreme Court directives. As women’s organisations and members of the women’s movement in India, the women signatories have stated that they will continue to support the wrestlers in the struggle for creating a sexual harassment free wrestling arena and its spin off in other sports fields. They have also demanded that POSH be implemented in the sports arena and that sportspeople who raise complaints are protected, instead of being penalised and silenced. Further they have demanded that “a safe playing field be created for all, free of political interference and the crass use of money and muscle power.”

List of Signatories

1. Kavita Srivastava
2. Navsharan Singh
3. Geeta Seshu
4. Amita sheereen
5. Mamta Jaitly
6. Padma Singh
7. Annie Raja
8. Sankalpa Satapathy
9. Smitha kumar
10. Nandini Rao
11. Amrita
12. Ladkumari jain
13. Purwa Kushwaha
14. Abhilash Durugkar
15. Smita Gupta
16. Nivedita Menon
17. Koel Chatterji
18. Nisha Biswas
19. Avanti Deshpande
20. Lara Jesani
21. Feminists in Resistance
22. Joycia
23. K. Sreemathy
24. Shabnam
25. Seema jain
26. Pamela Philippse
27. Shalini Gera
28. Manju Lata Sanhghatan (मंजू लता संगठन)
29. Madhusree Dutta
30. Chanda Asani
31. Nymphea Reddy
32. Shobhita
33. Laxmi Murthy

30. Anuradha Kapoor
31. Muskan Tibrewala
32. Adv Dr Shalu Nigam
33. Kalpana Chakravarthy
34. Shilpa Phadke
35. Radha Kumar
36. Runu
37. Anwiti
38. Priyakshi Agarwal
39. Rituparna Chatterjee
40. Kritika S
41. Lalita
42. Anita bhartiya
43. Vanita Mukherjee
44. sheba chhachhi
45. Rakhi Sehgal
46. Sharanya
47. Avisikta Aditya
48. Sharanya Nayak
49. Sujata Patel
50. Arundhati Dhuru
51. Kumudini Pati
52. Manisha Chaudhry
53. Ramlath Kavil
54. Jahan Ara
55. Vanita Mukherjee
56. Uma Shankari
57. Monisha Behal
58. Sagari Ramdas
59. Dr dyuti A
60. Seethalakshmi
61. Jagmati Sangwan
62. Suvidha
63. Meena Saraswathi Seshu
64. Sajaya
65. Sanju Sadaneera

70. Meenakshi Sethi Zaidi
71. Mitra Mukherjee Parikh
72. Vidhi Churiwala
73. Archana Srivastava
74. Shabnam Hashmi
75. Cynthia Stephen
76. Priscilla Rawade
77. Nisha Siddhu
78. Jashodhara Dasgupta
79. B
80. Mudit Singhal
81. Chaitanya Reddy
82. Manisha Banerjee
83. Alaka Basu
84. Varsha
85. Sanjeev Chandan
86. Kavitha Muralidharan
87. Mona Mishra
88. Varna Sri Raman
89. Sanjay Madhav
90. Adv Vertika Mani
91. Nandini N
92. Vishal Solanki
93. Rachel A J
94. Sushma Varma
95. Rishika Agarwal
96. Aruna Gnanadason
97. Shikha bhardwaj
98. Vijay Rukmini Rao
99. Anurita
100. Sujata Gothoskar
101. Suneeta Dhar
102. Ammu Joseph
103. Norat Mal
104. Teesta Setalvad
105. Sohini Bhattacharya
106. Amit Ambedkar
107. Kiran Moghe
108. Virginia Saldanha
109. Indira C

110. Subramanian
111. Soudhari varalaxmi
112. Anjali
113. Geetha Nambisan
114. Elina Horo
115. Dev Desai
116. Leena Dabiru
117. Lakshmi Lingam
118. Dr RuShashi Puri
119. AS Vasanta
120. Yamini Dikshit
121. Mary E John
122. Anjali Bhardwaj
123. Shashi Puri
124. Amrita Johri
125. Rati Rao E
126. Anwesha Banerjee
127. Parvathi Nair
128. Prof F Minusia
129. Malavika
130. Nandini Manjrekar
131. Shweta Raj
132. D
133. Roger Samuel
134. Biraj
135. Rinchin
136. Vani Subramanian
137. Inee koshi
138. Sehjo singh
139. Harish Pejavar
140. Anuvinda
141. Anita Mathur
142. Devyani bhardwaj
143. Indira Jaising
144. Malik
145. Bindhulakshmi Pattadath
146. Ritambhara
147. Mrs Kamlesh Dagar
148. Mridula Mukherjee
149. Bhavna Sharma

150. Sudha Shankar
151. Kamal
152. Sejal Joshi
153. Sirimane Nagaraj
154. Veena Shatrugna
155. Riddhima Sharma
156. Beena Pallical
157. Geetha
158. Purwa Bharadwaj
159. Hemalatha Shenoy
160. Maya Chilwal
161. Sudha Goparaju
162. Renu Khanna
163. Sadhna
164. Deepa Bhushan
165. Mallige Sirimane
166. Hemalatha
167. Anuradha GR
168. Sunita Lakra
169. sandhya Phadke
170. Alka
171. Urvashi Butalia
172. Alka Ranjan
173. Sarika Sinha
174. Vijayakumar
175. Sumana Ray
176. Ranjani
177. Clifton D’ Rozario
178. Jyothi
179. Rita Chadha
180. Kalyani Menon Sen
181. Rajiv Lochan Sah
182. Lata Bhise Sonawane
183. Meghna Nair
184. Nonibala Narengbam
185. Deepti Mary Minj
186. Kiran
187. Koninika Ray
188. Palashka
189. Yashodhara

190. Ritash
191. Anuja
192. Deepa
193. Kamini Tankha
194. Sandeep
195. Poonam Kaushik
196. Minakshi Singh
197. singh
198. Ammu Abraham
199. Madhuri
200. Swarnamala Sirsi
201. Deepa
202. Seema e
203. Nalini Nayak
204. Sudhir Vombatkere
205. Savita
206. Maimoona Mollah
207. Ramya
208. Asha V.
209. Gouthami
210. Kavitha Gajendran
211. Raynah Marise
212. Susheela K
213. Prasad Chacko
214. Nivedita jha
215. Sanyogita Dhamdhere
216. Manjeet Rathee
217. Komal Srivastava
218. Shakeel
219. Mallika Sarabhai
220. Aruna Roy
221. Tanuja Sharma
222. Satish Kumar Singh
223. Madhuri
224. Anupama
225. Prasanna Moses
226. Karuna DW
227. Syeda hameed
228. Kaninika Ghosh
229. Sathya

230. Ritika
231. Reena Mohan
232. Shilpi Gulati
233. Archana
234. Roselle Solomon
235. Natasha Badhwar
236. Davy Tim
237. Komal saigal
238. Indira Jaising
239. Ramnarayan
240. Leila Passah
241. Uma Chakravarti
242. Alaka Basu
243. Ritu Menon
244. Pyoli Swatija
245. Sandhya Phadke
246. Renu Khanna
247. Govind Kelkar
248. ri@gmail.com
249. Varsha Sharma
250. Fatema C
251. Shampa Sengupta
252. Rangoli Agarwal
253. Sehba
254. Pranav Kumar Das
255. Hemalatha M
256. Aruna
257. Amitabha Basu
258. Zeenat Niazi
259. सहमत SAHMAT
260. Radhika Desai
261. Renuka Kad
262. Rajshri
263. Nandini Sundar
264. Sandhya gokhale
265. Raja Chandra
266. Batul Mukhtiar
267. Libania
268. Lalita Ramdas
269. Na Divakara

270. Bittu K R
271. Swarna Rajagopalan
272. Mariam Dhawale

Related:

Delhi Court frames charges against BJP MP Brij Bhushan Singh, says it found sufficient material on record to charge with sexual harassment of 5 wrestlers

Bajrang Punia returns Padma Shri, in open letter to PM Modi states “My fellow women wrestlers gave up sports for safety, that’s why I am returning this “honour” to you”

Clear case of re-victimisation: Former SC judge Madan B Lokur on Delhi Police’s handling of women wrestlers case

The post Women Wrestlers & Lawyers’ battle for justice: Feminists, women leaders in support appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In a press release issued today, August 3, the SKA has raised the following key issues:

A staggering 593 persons have been killed in sewer and septic tanks, from January 2021 to date (July 2026) but Government has reported only 332 such deaths to the parliament. The SKA has demanded to know

• Why the remaining 261 deaths are being concealed.
• SKA data shows 47 deaths in 2021, 93 in 2022, 102 in 2023, 117 in 2024 and 121 sewer and septic tank deaths in 2025.
• This year alone, 2026, in just 7 months from January to July 2026, 113 persons have been killed in sewer and septic tanks all over the country.
• In the month of July 2026 itself, 15 persons were killed.

Strongly criticising the dismissive and arrogant attitude of the government that, the SKA alleges is “concealing figures”, the SKA also states that this attitude extends to labelling these figures of lives lost as “mere workplace accidents.” Instead of taking policy decisions outlines clearly in the 2013 law to abolish the abhorrent practice, the SKA states that “the government is only focussed on obscuring the truth.”

Hence, women, youth, workers engaged in cleaning sewer and septic tanks and families of those who were killed, will gather at Jantar Mantar on August 4, 2026 at 3 p.m. to demand that the Prime Minister should accept full responsibility for “these deaths and to constitute a Parliamentary Standing Committee inquiry into these killings. Government should present a timebound national plan for the immediate stop to sewer and septic tank deaths.”

Read Citizens for Justice   & Peace’s legal primer on the laws periodically passed to abolish this abhorrent practice –that remain grossly unimplemented—here and here. More on the efficacy of a law to ban a practice where, tragically, local government bodies remain the main practioneers/ offencers may be read here.

The post #STOPKILLINGUS Protest at Jantar Mantar on August 4 against GOI’s “cover-up” of Manual Scavenging deaths appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Police recruitment

In 2025 alone, 60,242 candidates were appointed in the State police. Appointments to 32,679 posts of police constable and equivalent positions are ongoing in 2026. The Opposition states that such a large number of appointments signal that UP is moving towards a police state reports The Hindu.

Vibhuti Narain Rai, a retired Director General of Police-rank officer from the Uttar Pradesh cadre and a 1975-batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer, said: “In nine years, the State under the governance of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has utilised encounters as a means of crime control. It is limiting personal freedoms, uses extra-judicial methods of crime control like encounters and bulldozer actions; these trends of heavy policing and surveillance, with strict regulatory mechanisms, are indicators of a police state and hard state. The government is making the police uncivilised.”

“Such use of brute force will have long-term adverse consequences for the society at large. It is not that the previous government [before BJP came to power] was clean. They also used police force in a brute manner to target marginalised sections, but present circumstances have hardly had any parallel in recent history. The prevalence of encounters is rendering our society increasingly barbaric, which negatively impacts the development of our democratic system,” he further said.

Circumventing due process

Sulkhan Singh, a former DGP, said what U.P. is witnessing today is beyond the concept of a police state, adding that the State is normalising violence. “Uttar Pradesh is witnessing something beyond the concept of a police state, in a police state or security state. A kind of merit-based action may be harsh or regressive. But in U.P., presently we are seeing lawlessness and anarchy, where the police takes selective bulldozer-centric action or conduct encounters.”

The 1980-batch IPS officer, who also headed the State police force, added: “Encounters and bulldozer actions fundamentally undermine the criminal justice system by circumventing due process, cultivating a culture of impunity, and diminishing trust in law enforcement or police. These actions transform police officers into judges and executioners, infringing upon essential human rights and converting democratic accountability into autocracy. The State is normalising violence, ultimately fostering an environment where society accepts such violent actions as encounters and bulldozer justice as a form of ‘instant justice’. These actions infringe upon the right to life and security.”

The Congress has alleged that U.P. has been converted into a police state by using the pretext of law and order to unleash repressive actions impacting the policies and recruitment of officials in key sectors like education and health, which are prime movers of a civilised society.

Related:

Hashimpura a Blot and Shame, The Importance of Memory: Vibhuti Narain Rai

The Lemmings of Hashimpura – Vibhuti Narain Rai, retired officer of the Indian Police Force (IPS)

Hashimpura Aquittal, Tragic but not Unexpected : Vibhuti Narain Rai, IPS (retired)

The post Violence being normalised, U.P. moving towards police state, say retired cops appeared first on SabrangIndia.

This shift is exhilarating and energising for those who have long felt some quiet desperation that things may not change. The easy camaraderie across class, caste, gender, sexual orientation, language, geography, physical ability had people observing, struck in awe.  What many of us articulated from podiums, through media and books is now being demonstrated in the streets. This is not to say that all that ground work is irrelevant. It probably provided a backdrop for the scale of the current movement. The fact that the Union and state governments have been forced onto the back foot is impressive. This is especially because these same bodies, along with their supporting structures – the governors, judiciary, media and bureaucrats have been largely tone deaf. Their disproportionate abuse of power had the chilling effect of silencing many voices – individuals who had too much to lose when the full strength of the state power was turned upon them.

The honourable chief Justice of India would probably for the first time have felt that words have consequences. When one thinks about the number of people in power who have used inflammatory casteist, sexist and anti-minority language without any fear of consequences, one feels that this is exactly the kind of movement that the country needed – irreverential, inordinately humorous and witty and refusing to back down. In spite of the unacceptable level of violence against the students, their spirits shone through and that is what makes this movement exactly what the country needed.

The movement was sparked by allegations of irregularities in the NEET-UG 2024 examination, which led students across the country to demand transparency, accountability, and reforms in the examination process. The controversy eventually reached the Supreme Court, which heard multiple petitions challenging the conduct of the examination while directing investigations into allegations of malpractice. The Union Government subsequently entrusted the investigation into the paper leak allegations to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), underscoring the seriousness of the controversy.

Students demonstrated across numerous states, with protests organised both on university campuses and in major cities, amplified through social media and supported by parents, teachers, and sections of civil society.

Perhaps the movement’s greatest lesson was its clarity of purpose. The students remained overwhelmingly non-violent despite facing lathi charges, water cannons, tear gas, and allegations of sexual assault. Their discipline became one of the movement’s greatest strengths. They refused to be distracted by peripheral issues, remaining focused on a limited set of clear and achievable demands.

No popular movement is beyond criticism, and this one is no exception. Every mass mobilisation carries risks: co-option by political interests, internal divisions, misinformation, or the influence of powerful corporate and political actors. Those dangers must always be recognised. Yet one of this movement’s greatest strengths was that it drew support from many quarters without becoming the project of any single political party. That independence gave it both legitimacy and resilience.

The movement also built upon earlier struggles. The farmers’ protests demonstrated that sustained, peaceful resistance could withstand enormous political pressure. That legacy provided confidence to a new generation of protesters and reminded those in power that coercion does not always produce submission. Each successful act of peaceful resistance strengthens democratic culture and encourages others to participate in public life. Six months before that, youth and women across generations, all hailing from India’s largest minority group had stunned us with their peaceful sit-ins and protests challenging the anti-constitutional amendments to Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 and the impending National Register of Citizens (NRC). Analyses and reports of both these historic mobilisations may be read, here, here, here and here.

There are some lessons from this movement that needs to be recognised.

The students continued to remain largely non-violent in spite of lathi charges, water cannons, tear gas, and sexual assaults. Their equanimity is commendable.

They had select demands and they stuck to these doggedly. There was no back and forth negotiating and nit picking. The focus on doable demands which were completely rational to anyone was important. Rather than one insensitive minister being replaced by possibly another, the movement created accountability mechanisms that have long been forgotten in the country irrespective of the party in power. This movement for accountability will raise the bar not only the current government but also the Opposition and anyone considering a political career. That, in itself, is a huge victory for the country. The message is that serious violations will face consequences.

The farmers, to their credit, had paved the way and their presence, along with other movements, lent an air of impenetrability to the movement. It said that violence against the students would bring more, not less resistance. The memory of the farmers protests would still linger in the memory of the current political dispensation and each movement that they fail to disrupt with their usual cheap tactics is like disciplining a recalcitrant child.

This movement gives enormous sense of hope to the apparently depressed civil society organisations.

One is that there is always a need for a vibrant civil society who hold power. Depending on the nature of autocracy of the government, the losses and struggles are more, but in the absence of that struggle, there is zero hope.

A senior doctor told me at the peak of government flexing its strong arm against citizens, that some of us have to hold the fort. Now those few people – the small media houses, the YouTubers, the pockets of resistance will have the army of youth asking questions. It is good lesson when one is feeling hopeless about the way forward.

We need to consider this as a very positive and hopeful beginning. The context will not be drastically changed by the resignation of education minister. There are many more systemic changes needed in our democratic country. But the underlying message is change is possible!

As Dr. BR Ambedkar said “Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy.”

The author is Secretary, Social Justice and Ecology Secretariat, New Delhi.

Related:

The Supreme Court’s Uneasy Middle Path on Protest Policing

The Republic Speaks Back: How Student Power Reminded Authority of Its Limits

The Revolution has begun….!

The post When students demonstrated what democracy stands for appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Justice Madhav J. Jamdar delivered the ruling while dismissing a writ petition filed by Vignesh Ramesh Kamble challenging an externment order passed by the Deputy Commissioner of Police, Mumbai, and its affirmation by the Divisional Commissioner, Konkan Division. The Court found that the statutory requirements under Section 55 had been duly satisfied in light of the petitioner’s alleged membership of a gang facing numerous criminal prosecutions and the material placed before the externing authority.

Background

The petitioner challenged the legality of the externment order dated January 21, 2026, passed under the Maharashtra Police Act, as well as the appellate order dated July 3, 2026, contending that the authorities had failed to satisfy the statutory prerequisites for invoking their externment powers. It was argued that only four criminal cases had been registered against him, three of which had ended in acquittal, and that the authorities had mechanically relied upon the criminal history of the gang without independently examining his own conduct. The petitioner also relied on the Bombay High Court’s earlier decision in Jabbar Razzak Shaikh v. Divisional Commissioner to contend that the externment proceedings suffered from legal infirmities.

The State, however, defended the externment by pointing out that the petitioner was alleged to be a member of a gang headed by one Sunil alias Sunny Balaram Patil, against whom and whose associates 31 criminal cases had been registered. The prosecution further highlighted that one criminal case against the petitioner, involving offences under Sections 302 and 307 of the Indian Penal Code along with provisions of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, 1999, remained pending for trial. According to the State, the action had rightly been taken under Section 55, which is specifically designed to deal with gangs and bodies of persons whose collective activities pose a threat to public order.

Court’s Analysis: Two distinct statutory regimes

The judgment turns on a detailed interpretation of Sections 55 and 56 of the Maharashtra Police Act, with the Court emphasising that although both provisions confer powers of externment, they are triggered by entirely different factual considerations.

Justice Jamdar observed that Section 55 authorises the competent authority to extern a gang or body of persons where it is satisfied that the movement or encampment of such gang is causing, or is calculated to cause, danger, alarm, or reasonable suspicion that unlawful designs are being entertained. Consequently, the “subjective satisfaction” contemplated by Section 55 is directed towards the collective conduct, movement and activities of the gang itself. The enquiry is not confined to evaluating the individual criminal history of every member; rather, it is the overall conduct and impact of the group that forms the basis of the authority’s satisfaction.

“The subjective satisfaction contemplated under Section 55 of the Maharashtra Police Act, 1951, where the externment action is contemplated against the gangs and bodies of persons and under Section 56 of the Maharashtra Police Act, 1951, where the externment action is proposed against a person are totally different. As far as Section 55 of the Maharashtra Police Act, 1951 is concerned, the authorities can pass order of externment if the movement or encampment of any gang or body of persons in the area in his charge is causing or is calculated to cause danger or alarm or reasonable suspicion that unlawful designs are entertained by such gang or body of persons thereof. Thus, the subjective satisfaction is required to be recorded about the activities of gang or bodies of persons.” (Para 9)

The Court contrasted this with Section 56, which deals with externment of an individual person. Under that provision, the competent authority must independently satisfy itself that the individual’s own movements or acts are causing danger, alarm or harm to persons or property, or that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the person is engaged, or is about to engage, in offences involving force or violence or other specified offences under the Indian Penal Code. The statutory focus under Section 56, therefore, is squarely on the conduct of the individual proposed to be externed.

“As far as the subjective satisfaction required under Section 56 where the action is contemplated against the person is if the movements or acts of any person are causing or calculated to cause alarm, danger or harm to person or property or (b) that there are reasonable grounds for believing that such person is engaged or is about to be engaged in the commission of an offence involving force or violence or an offence punishable under Chapter XII, XVI or XVII of the Indian Penal Code (XLV of 1860), or in the abatement of any such offence.” (Para 10)

The Court categorically held that the two standards of satisfaction are “totally different” and cannot be treated as interchangeable. While Section 55 is concerned with the collective threat posed by a gang, Section 56 requires a personal assessment of the individual’s conduct and criminal activities. Conflating the two provisions, the Court observed, would effectively defeat the distinct legislative framework consciously adopted by the Maharashtra Legislature.

“Thus, the subjective satisfaction required to be recorded under Section 55 and under Section 56 is totally different.” (Para 11)

Application of the law to the present case

Applying this interpretation, the Court noted that the petitioner was admittedly alleged to be a member of a gang against which 31 criminal cases had been registered. It further observed that, even independently, the petitioner continued to face trial in a serious criminal case alleging offences under Sections 302 and 307 IPC read with the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act.

“In this case, the Petitioner is alleged to be a member of the gang. There are 31 cases registered against the gang of which the Petitioner is a member and the offences alleged inter alia lodged even against the Petitioner including under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code.” (Para 12)

While the petitioner emphasised that he had secured acquittals in three out of the four criminal cases registered against him, the Court held that this argument overlooked the very nature of proceedings under Section 55. Since the provision is concerned with the activities of the gang or body of persons, the relevant enquiry was whether there was sufficient material demonstrating that the gang’s activities justified externment and whether the petitioner formed part of that body. The Court found ample material supporting the authorities’ satisfaction on both counts and held that the statutory requirement under Section 55 had been properly fulfilled.

“Although learned Counsel appearing for the Petitioner contended that as far as the Petitioner is concerned, there are only 4 cases registered against him and he has been acquitted in three out of four cases, C.R. No.544 of 2023 was registered with the Chunabhatti Police Station, Mumbai, inter alia concerning offence under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code and wherein the provisions of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, 1999 have also been invoked. The said case is pending trial. The subjective satisfaction which is required to be recorded is about the activities of gang or bodies of persons of which the Petitioner is member. There is adequate material on record including against the Petitioner which demonstrate that subjective satisfaction recorded under Section 55 of the Maharashtra Police Act, 1951 is properly recorded in the facts and circumstances of this case.” (Para 13)

The Bench also rejected the petitioner’s reliance on Jabbar Razzak Shaikh, holding that the factual matrix of that decision was materially different and therefore incapable of governing the present case. Finding no perversity, procedural irregularity or legal infirmity in either the externment order or the appellate order, the Court declined to exercise its writ jurisdiction and dismissed the petition.

Why the judgment matters

The decision is significant because it clarifies an issue that frequently arises in challenges to externment orders—whether the authority must establish individual culpability to the same extent in proceedings against members of a gang. By holding that Section 55 and Section 56 embody two distinct standards of “subjective satisfaction,” the Bombay High Court has reaffirmed that gang-based externment is premised upon the collective activities and threat posed by the group, whereas individual externment requires an independent assessment of the person’s own conduct. The ruling is likely to serve as an important precedent in future challenges involving preventive action against organised gangs under the Maharashtra Police Act.

The complete order may be read here.

Detailed report on Bombay HC quashing of externment of SDPI leader Saeed Ahmad Abdul Wahid Chaudhary may be read here.

Related:

Khargone riots case collapses: Four years after Ram Navami violence, MP court acquits 11 accused, finds prosecution failed to establish guilt

The Supreme Court’s Uneasy Middle Path on Protest Policing

Reforming policing beyond force

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Writer and researcher Anu Jain revisits Mahatma Gandhi’s closest political and personal bonds in this series which offers a timely reminder that transformative movements are built not only on charismatic leadership, but on the communities of conviction that grow around it.

For Gandhi, leadership was never a solitary endeavour. It was a collaborative, often demanding dialogue with a close circle of confidants who held up a mirror to him. 

This exclusive five-part series explores Gandhi’s deeply complex relationships with five remarkable contemporaries. Three visionary captains of industry who funded and anchored his radical socio-economic experiments, and two towering intellectual peers who served as his ultimate conscience keepers , who were willing to challenge his decisions when no one else dared. 

Together, these five bonds did more than just steer the course of the independence movement; they directly shaped the deeply personal, moral, and political choices of the Mahatma himself.

Read on the unique bond that Gandhi shared with Rabindranath Tagore here.

When the French philosopher Romain Rolland looked across the global landscape of the early twentieth century, he observed a magnificent, unprecedented spectacle unfolding on the Indian subcontinent. He described it as the simultaneous gathering of “two great rivers”, towering, majestic currents of human thought flowing from vastly different geographical and spiritual sources. Yet, rushing forward to nourish the very same civilisational soil. One river was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the other was Rabindranath Tagore.

Theirs was a relationship that defied the ordinary grammar of political alliances or personal friendships. It stands as one of the most remarkable intellectual and moral engagements in human history, a thirty-year “noble debate” that fundamentally expanded the moral vocabulary of freedom.

They did not always walk in lockstep, in fact, they disagreed on almost everything from the economy of the spinning wheel to the very meaning of a nation. Yet, their relationship was defined by a rare, luminous intellectual companionship where dissent itself became an act of profound love. They did not argue to defeat one another, but to refine one another.

In an era where differences so often degenerate into hatred, the story of Gandhi and Tagore reminds us that a nation’s soul is not built on a fragile, forced consensus, but on the capacity of its greatest minds to disagree with absolute dignity.

“Mahatma” and “Gurudev”

The very names by which history remembers these two titans are beautiful, poetic gifts they bestowed upon each other. To the world, Gandhi became the Mahatma (The Great Soul), and Tagore became Gurudev (The Divine Teacher). Yet, the historical roots of these titles reveal a far more fascinating, layered evolution than popular memory suggests.

The sacred title of “Mahatma” was not suddenly invented by Tagore in a vacuum. Long before it became a household word, Gandhi’s closest confidant and financial supporter, Dr. Pranjivan Mehta, had quietly used the term in private correspondence, most notably in a deeply perceptive letter to the moderate leader Gopal Krishna Gokhale, recognising the saintly quality of the lawyer returning from South Africa.

But it was Tagore who took this private whisper and transformed it into a thunderous national reality. Using the immense weight of his global literary authority, Tagore publicly crowned Gandhi with the title, giving the illiterate millions of India a vocabulary of reverence for the man in the loincloth.

Gandhi, in turn, bowed before the poet’s towering cultural and philosophical mastery, christening him Gurudev. This exchange of titles was a beautiful, public contract of mutual recognition: an acknowledgement that while one was the undisputed master of political action, the other was the sovereign ruler of the human mind.

Capital and Culture

Nowhere did this hidden current of solidarity manifest more beautifully than in the physical sanctuary of Santiniketan, Tagore’s legendary open-air educational experiment in Bengal. Founded on the romantic ideals of intellectual freedom, artistic expression, and global humanism, Santiniketan was a paradise of the soul but a recurring nightmare for the checkbook. The ashram-school was chronically broke, permanently burdened by debt, and dependant entirely on personal donations and the fading physical energy of its ageing founder.

By the mid-1930s, the crisis had reached a breaking point. Tagore, already in his frail seventies, felt compelled to pack his bags and travel across the country with a student performance troupe, staging plays in cities like Delhi just to collect a few scattered rupees to keep his school alive. Hearing of this, Gandhi was deeply shaken.

Though Gandhi had spent decades publicly criticising elite, literary, and urban-centred education, advocating instead for basic manual training (Nai Talim), he refused to let his ideological disagreements blind him to Santiniketan’s civilisational value. He recognised that if Tagore’s school died, a vital lung of the Indian spirit would stop breathing.

Gandhi immediately dipped his pen in ink and sent a deeply emotional letter to the poet, telling him that it broke his heart to see the great Seer of India begging for funds on the public stage. Gandhi vowed to strain “every nerve” to lift this financial anvil from the poet’s shoulders.

True to his word, Gandhi deployed his silent network of wealthy industrialists. Within a matter of months, he slipped a Rs. 60,000 bank draft, an astronomical fortune at the time, into an envelope and sent it to Bengal with a triumphant message:

“God has blessed my poor effort. And here is the money. Now you will relieve the public mind by announcing the cancellation of the rest of the programme.”

With characteristic moral delicacy, Gandhi never told Tagore where the money came from. He purposefully concealed the fact that the entire sum had been cut from the checkbook of his close supporter, the industrialist Ghanshyam Das Birla.

This single episode completely dismantles any simplistic caricature of Gandhi and Tagore as bitter ideological enemies. Here was Gandhi acting as the silent, invisible bridge between industrial capital and artistic culture, using the wealth of a billionaire to protect the independence of a poet who regularly criticised his political movements. Santiniketan was no longer just Tagore’s dream, it had become a shared moral investment for the entire nation.

Fault Lines of Two Minds

The grand public debates between Gandhi and Tagore were carried out in the pages of journals like Young India and The Modern Review. They were watched with bated breath by millions of citizens, offering a masterclass in intellectual integrity. Their arguments were not petty squabbles, they were foundational clashes between two completely different visions of human liberation.

For Gandhi, Satyagraha was the ultimate weapon of human liberation, a “soul-force” or “love-force” rooted in absolute truth and self-suffering. Gandhi believed that by fasting and absorbing suffering without retaliation, an individual could melt the heart of the most brutal oppressor.

Tagore, however, watched this with deep intellectual scepticism. While he marvelled at Gandhi’s personal purity, he terrified himself with the thought of what happens when Satyagraha is mass-produced for millions of uneducated followers. He feared that for the masses, Satyagraha would cease to be an active moral choice and would instead become a form of blind, hypnotic obedience, a mechanical ritual that substituted one form of conformity for another. Tagore argued that India’s deep disease was a “slave mentality,” and the cure was a sharp, intellectual awakening of the individual mind, not the emotional intoxication of mass rallies.

Gandhi defined Swaraj (Self-rule) as something far deeper than merely replacing a British governor with an Indian prime minister. He defined it as not by the acquisition of authority by a few, but by the acquisition of the capacity of all to resist authority when it is abused.

For Gandhi, Swaraj was an exercise in rigorous self-restraint, localised governance, and decentralised village power. Tagore, conversely, was deeply suspicious of the very machinery of the modern political state. In his seminal essay The Call of Truth, he warned that an indigenous government could be just as cold, cruel, and oppressive as a foreign one if the minds of the people remained chained to dogma and superstition. To Tagore, true Swaraj was not a political flag flying over a parliament building, it was the total liberation of the human spirit, a mind that was completely fearless, creative, and open to the cosmos.

The Charkha

Perhaps no object symbolised their deep divide more dramatically than the Charkha, the wooden spinning wheel. Gandhi elevated the Charkha into a holy sacrament. He demanded that every Indian, whether doctor, lawyer, or peasant, spend at least half an hour every single day spinning cotton. For Gandhi, the Charkha was a brilliant economic weapon against British textiles, a direct link to the suffering of the starving millions, and a beautiful lesson in physical labour.

Tagore openly revolted against this directive in his provocative 1925 essay, The Cult of the Charkha. He argued that forcing a brilliant scientist, an artist, or an intellectual to spin a wheel for thirty minutes a day was an insult to human intelligence. He called it a monotonous, mind-numbing exercise that deadened creativity, pointing out that India’s crippling poverty could only be solved through modern science, agricultural machinery, and creative engineering, not by turning the entire population into uniform, spinning automatons.

Gandhi hit back with fierce, poetic passion, writing that to a starving man, God can only appear in the form of bread, and that spinning was a beautiful form of collective prayer for a broken country.

Clash of Reason

The most explosive and revealing confrontation between the two men occurred in the early months of 1934, following a monstrous, cataclysmic earthquake that ripped through the province of Bihar, flattening cities and killing thousands.

Gandhi, travelling through South India at the time, made a public announcement that stunned the intellectual elite. He declared that the devastating earthquake was not a random geological accident, but a direct, divine punishment sent by God to avenge the ancient sin of untouchability. He argued that the earth had literally fractured because high-caste Hindus had spent centuries fracturing the dignity of their Dalit brothers and sisters.

Tagore was profoundly appalled by this statement. He immediately published a blistering, public rebuke, accusing Gandhi of spreading dangerous, unscientific irrationalism. Tagore argued that physical laws operate blindly across the universe, entirely independent of human ethics. To tell uneducated villagers that a physical earthquake was caused by moral sins, Tagore warned, was to reinforce the very forces of blind superstition and fatalism that kept India backward.

Yet, even in this moment of raw, public collision, the exquisite tone of their engagement remained intact. Gandhi did not attack Tagore’s character, nor did his followers burn the poet’s books. Gandhi published his defence in Harijan, calmly stating that while he bowed to the poet’s superior scientific knowledge, he possessed an unshakeable faith in the mysterious connection between cosmic events and human morality.

Their public letters became a legendary historical archive: an unforgettable proof that two human beings could fiercely debate the laws of physics and God without losing a single ounce of mutual love.

Conversions at the Horizon

For all their spectacular public battles, if one travels down these two great rivers to their ultimate destination, they converge on the exact same moral horizon. Beneath the surface noise of their debates lay an absolute, unbreakable unity of purpose: a shared, uncompromising devotion to human dignity.

Tagore spent his entire life warning the world against the horrific, mechanical monster of aggressive nationalism, describing it as a soul-crushing apparatus that destroys human freedom. Gandhi, though the commander-in-chief of a massive nationalist movement, arrived at the exact same conclusion. He repeatedly stated that his vision of nationalism was completely inclusive, and that he supported independence only so that a free India could voluntarily surrender its sovereignty to a democratic world federation grounded in non-violence.

This deep spiritual convergence was recognised by Tagore himself during a quiet visit to the Sabarmati Ashram. Standing before the community, the poet remarked that the true meaning of the “Mahatma” was a man who had successfully realised his own inner self within the heartbeat of all humanity, completely melting away the artificial walls of nation, caste, and identity.

The Modern Verdict

The long, brilliant dialogue between Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore was never resolved. When Tagore drew his last breath in 1941, followed a few years later by Gandhi’s martyrdom in 1948, they left behind two completely distinct, unmerged blueprints for the liberation of the human race. Tagore passed away still sceptical of mass politics, Gandhi died still committed to it. Tagore remained the champion of intellectual cosmopolitanism, Gandhi remained the high priest of localised ethical discipline.

Yet, the ultimate significance of their relationship lies precisely within that unresolved tension. They proved to the world that harmony does not mean uniformity. In our modern twenty-first-century landscape, a fractured world deeply polluted by tribalism, echo chambers, cancel culture, and instant polarisation, their “noble debate” shines across the decades like a burning beacon of hope.

They leave behind an immortal, luminous standard for the intellectual life of global democracy. A lesson that true respect does not mean silent acquiescence, and that critique is the highest form of solidarity. Gandhi and Tagore remind us until the end of time that we can hold completely different versions of the truth, we can fight fiercely over the pathways of freedom, and yet we can still march hand-in-hand toward the liberation of the human soul.

Courtesy: The AIDEM

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The poem opens with a startling metaphor that establishes its fundamental concern: “In my hands / there was a poem, and in my mind / an X-ray of the intestines.” Here, poetry becomes not aesthetic pleasure but clinical examination, exposing the biological reality of hunger that political rhetoric so often obscures. Language itself has fallen under the grip of market and power, transformed into “the trademark on a medicine bottle circulating in the bloodstream.” Words no longer root themselves in lived experience but have become commodities for consumption, a condition that Dhoomil exposes throughout the poem. When the poet steps outside and utters the word “freedom,” even his own voice sounds unfamiliar—an estrangement that reveals how the idea of freedom exists within consciousness while its social reality remains unfulfilled.

The poem traces the journey from post-Independence hope through disillusionment to the search for resistance. Dhoomil captures the initial euphoria when “new shoots in the fields resemble children exercising their limbs,” but gradually measures the distance between promise and reality. The repeated refrain “I kept waiting” exhausts hope itself as words like democracy, freedom, culture, and peace—initially radiant promises—are reduced to hollow incantations. The tragedy lies precisely in the growing gulf between language and lived reality, a gap that becomes the poem’s central concern.

Read through Raymond Williams’s concept of “structure of feeling,” “Patakatha” reconstructs the emotional world of a historical moment when the nation dreamed of reinventing itself, only to encounter the persistence of hunger, inequality, and political deception. Williams’s framework of dominant, residual, and emergent cultures illuminates the poem’s layers: the dominant culture of official democratic vocabulary, the residual culture of freedom struggle memories and moral values, and the emergent culture embodied in the restless spirit of the poet’s alter ego who urges him to “Rise and give shape to your boredom.”

Stuart Hall’s theories of representation and ideological construction further deepen our understanding of how Dhoomil exposes the machinery of power. Hall argues that language does not merely reflect reality but actively constructs it, and Dhoomil demonstrates how words employed by those in power become the terms through which society understands itself. Democracy, socialism, national interest—these terms gradually lose ethical significance and become ideological instruments serving power’s interests. When the people are persuaded they live in a democracy “where horses and grass enjoy the same freedom,” Dhoomil exposes the ideological construction that makes citizens accept their own subordination as natural.

Michel Foucault’s conception of power as productive rather than merely repressive proves exceptionally illuminating. Dhoomil refuses to confine power to government or state institutions, instead showing how it extends through Parliament, elections, administration, media, nationalism, development, education, and language itself. Every society constructs its own “regime of truth,” and post-Independence India appears engaged in manufacturing its own truth—that democracy has arrived, development progresses, elections celebrate the people’s will. Through constant repetition, these assertions acquire the status of social truth, but Dhoomil subjects this manufactured truth to the test of lived experience, dismantling the official regime of truth created by power. The celebrated line “For a hungry man, bread is the greatest argument” represents from a Foucauldian perspective not merely a social reality but a confrontation between fundamentally opposed discourses—the language of power speaking of development and nationhood, and the discourse of the hungry citizen speaking only of bread.

The Marxist reading of the poem reveals that Dhoomil analyses a society that attained formal independence while leaving fundamental social and economic relations largely unchanged. Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony becomes particularly relevant as Dhoomil repeatedly shows that the people do not support power solely through fear but because they have been persuaded this is democracy and national interest. The popular leader becomes not simply an individual but a political myth, and the people follow him because their hopes have become invested in him. Elections, generally celebrated as democracy’s greatest achievement, reveal instead the consciousness within which they operate—the people repeatedly restore the very system that fails to transform their lives. Louis Althusser’s concept of interpellation illuminates how the citizen is hailed as patriot, responsible voter, and nation-builder, gradually understanding himself through these prescribed identities, voting and trusting the system responsible for his own exploitation.

The deconstructive reading of “Patakatha” reveals its profound distrust of political language. Dhoomil demonstrates how words such as democracy, freedom, peace, and socialism, through endless repetition, lose ethical credibility. The apparent stability of these terms dissolves as the poem exposes the widening gap between words and the social realities they claim to represent. Democracy initially signifies hope, later becomes associated with electoral process, then the language of power, and finally the symbol of irony where people appear present while remaining absent. Freedom transforms from celebration into uncertainty and waiting. Socialism becomes not a political programme but a slogan, reduced to “buckets labelled ‘Fire’ but filled only with sand and water.” Dhoomil does not reject these concepts but demonstrates that their public meanings and lived social realities no longer correspond, exposing the internal contradictions through which political language performs the opposite of its claimed function.

The critique of nationalism in the poem redefines the nation not as abstract ideal or political symbol but as the lived experience of the ordinary citizen. Benedict Anderson’s “imagined community” is tested against Indian social experience, asking where within that community the hungry, unemployed, and humiliated citizen resides. Dhoomil approaches the nation not from pride but responsibility, recognising that nationalism cannot be merely celebratory but must acknowledge shared suffering. The nation is no longer Parliament or government policy but becomes a wounded body—the alter ego who declares “I am Hindustan,” relocating the idea of nation from state authority to the body and experience of the citizen.

The psychoanalytic dimension reveals that political crisis ultimately becomes psychological crisis. The poem’s structure reflects a mind incapable of stable conclusion, unfolding through memories, inner monologues, symbols, and unexpected shifts. The alter ego embodies the poet’s divided self, his repressed political consciousness, his moral conscience—that living presence within his unconscious compelling him to confront truth. The appearance of this figure follows the logic of dreams more than external reality, suggesting that resistance must first be born within consciousness itself.

In the context of contemporary “post-truth” politics, “Patakatha” appears remarkably prescient. Dhoomil had already anticipated a political culture where language’s purpose is no longer to express truth but to conceal it, replace it with politically manufactured reality. The poem establishes hunger as the most reliable form of truth precisely because it cannot lie while political words can. Throughout the poem, a continual conflict persists between political proclamations and the lived experiences of ordinary citizens, elevating the work beyond satire and transforming it into a poem in search of truth.

When situated within world political poetry, “Patakatha” stands alongside the works of Muktibodh, Faiz, Brecht, Neruda, Hikmet, and Darwish. Like Brecht, Dhoomil creates a critical language compelling readers to reconsider democracy, Parliament, and development. Like Neruda, he stands on the side of human dignity. Like Darwish, he defines the nation through human experience rather than state power. Yet Dhoomil’s voice remains distinctive—harsher, more sceptical, yet never abandoning democratic values even while criticising democracy, never losing faith in the language of humanity even while deconstructing the language of power.

Ultimately, “Patakatha” offers what is essentially a cultural biography of post-Independence India’s collective consciousness. Its enduring relevance lies in reminding us that democracy is protected not merely through institutions and elections but through preserving a truthful relationship between language and life, between power and the ordinary citizen, between the nation as proclaimed and the nation as lived. In the final analysis, Dhoomil’s poem is neither rejection of democracy nor celebration of it, but its most profound moral examination—a testament that the true test of democracy lies not in parliamentary proceedings but in the life of the hungry, fearful, and humiliated citizen who remains the measure of everything.

*Professor and former Head (Retd.), Department of Hindi, University of Hyderabad. This is the abridged version of the author’s original paper

Courtesy: CounterView

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