Solidarity – Page 3 – free them all

BJP’s Binary Lens On Nationalism / Politics Of Division: Why Autocrats Foster Binary Thinking

21/02/2025 Asha

BJP’s Binary Lens On Nationalism

24/02/2025

Outlook India / by Shweta Desai

BJP’s ultranationalism is a strategy to make up for its absence during the freedom struggle, but the binary discourse on nationalism is being weaponised to make detractors fall in line
… Six months after Modi’s government took office, the term ‘anti-national’ emerged as a popular slur. Often used by BJP leaders and supporters, the phrase wields a strong rhetorical power in shaping the ‘nationalist’ public discourse. The binary label has since served as a weapon to silence critics, discredit dissent and marginalise opposition, reinforcing a divisive political narrative.
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Politics Of Division: Why Autocrats Foster Binary Thinking

21/02/2025

Outlook India / by Anand Teltumbde

Autocratic and fascist regimes consolidate power by reducing complex socio-political realities into rigid binary oppositions. Instead of addressing systemic economic inequalities, they redirect public anger toward scapegoats – immigrants, minorities and dissenting voices.
… A deadly consequence of this binary-driven autocratic politics is the erosion of democratic institutions. The judiciary, independent media and civil society organisations are labelled as enemies of the state if they challenge the ruling regime.
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Also read:
▪ India: Submission to the UN Human Rights Committee on the deterioration of civic space (CIVICUS / Jul 2024)
▪ To Think of Modi 3.0 as Less Dangerous Would Be a Misreading (The Wire | Anand Teltumbde | June 12, 2024)
▪ Police Linked to Hacking Campaign to Frame Indian Activists (Wired.com / June 2022)
▪ Narendra Modi’s Government Is Using False Charges of Terrorism to Repress Its Opponents (Jacobinmag / April 2022)

Who Is a ‘Political Prisoner’? Rona Wilson Says Caste and Religion Are Key to the Answer

17/02/2025 Asha

The Wire / by Sukanya Shantha

Having spent six and a half years in jail, the Elgar Parishad accused also said that prisons in India are in a ‘state of emergency’.
Rona Wilson has long been an advocate for prisoners’ rights and a staunch proponent of the term “political prisoner”. However, during his prolonged incarceration in the Elgar Parishad case, Rona found himself grappling with a “moral quandary”.
With new firsthand experiences, observations from his six-and-a-half-year stay in two central prisons in Maharashtra – Yerwada in Pune and Taloja in Navi Mumbai – his activism while incarcerated, and research conducted within the confines of prison, 53-year-old Rona now views the term from a different perspective. He now approaches the subject with a deliberate focus on caste and religious dimensions.
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Also read:
▪ Many Prisoners at Taloja Jail Not Produced Before Court For Years, Reveals Survey by Surendra Gadling and Sagar Gorkhe (The Wire / Feb 2025)
▪ Punished without trial: How India’s political prisoners are being denied basic rights in jail (Scroll.in / Aug 2022)

▪ From Phansi Yard: My Year with the Women of Yerawada
Author: Sudha Bhardwaj
Publishing Date: Oct 2023
Publisher: Juggernaut
Pages: 216
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▪ How Long Can the Moon Be Caged? Voices of Indian Political Prisoners
Authors: Suchitra Vijayan and Francesca Recchia
Publishing Date: Aug 2023
Publisher: Pluto Press
Pages: 247
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Why Double Standards of Justice in India?

15/02/2025 Asha

Mainstream Weekly / by Sumeet Singh

According to the Indian Constitution, both Central and State governments have a constitutional duty to guarantee the democratic rights of citizens, including their Freedom, Equality, Security, Prosperity, Development, Social justice, and Social protection. Although India claims to be the world’s largest democracy, recent actions by the Central government have raised concerns.
… Numerous Intellectuals, Lawyers, and Social activists have been detained for years on unproven charges of sedition, often without trial, indicating a failure to uphold constitutional rights to liberty. For the past six years, many prominent Intellectuals, Lawyers, and Social activists in the country have been languishing in jail without trial, under false charges of sedition in the alleged Bhima Koregaon violence case. No charges of sedition have been proven against them to date, yet the Judiciary, under pressure from the Central government, has repeatedly denied them bail.
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Also read:
▪ ‘Provincial Convention against Repression’ in Barnala, Punjab (Countercurrents / Jan 2025)
▪ Fadnavis’ obsession with ‘urban naxals’, and a lawless Beed (National Herald / Dec 2024)
▪ The SC Is Making Bail Easier In Terrorism, Money Laundering Cases – Except When It Ignores Itself (article 14 / Sep 2024)
▪ Maharashtra: Activists, Lawyers Added to ‘Union War Book’, Listed as ‘Enemies of the State’ (The Wire / Jul 2021)

Sudhir Dhawale interview: ‘The law remains blind to injustice even with the blindfold gone’

05/02/2025 Asha

Credits: Tabassum Barnagarwala/Scroll.in

Scroll.in / by Tabassum Barnagarwala

The writer spent six years and seven months in jail before receiving bail in the Bhima Koregaon case.
On January 24, when Sudhir Dhawale walked back into the narrow lane in the Mumbai neighbourhood of Govandi where he lived until he was arrested in June, 2018, young men welcomed him with the beat of the dhol.
His neighbours then marched in a celebratory procession to a statue of BR Ambedkar 100 metres away. Dhawale garlanded the statue and gave a short speech about the importance of safeguarding Dalit rights. And just like that, he said, his life returned to normal.
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Also read:
▪ Interview | Sudhir Dhawale’s Work Will Go on (The Wire / Feb 2025)
▪ Rona Wilson interview: ‘My arrest was a warning to others who stand against the abuse of power’ (Scroll.in / Feb 2025)
▪ Rona Wilson and Sudhir Dhawale released: Seven years of injustice by a state that punishes dissent [read order] (Sabrangindia / Jan 2025)
▪ Let’s Remember the Lesson of Bhima Koregaon: Down with the New Peshwai (Sanhati │ by Sudhir Dhawale │ March 2018)

Interview | Sudhir Dhawale’s Work Will Go on

04/02/2025 Asha

The Wire / by Sukanya Shantha

The lifelong activist spent 2,422 days in jail. But through personal loss, injustice and 23 months of solitary confinement, the activist has fought for what he has believed to be right.
A day after Father Stan Swamy passed away, Sudhir Dhawale, overcome with emotion, sat down in his barrack and wrote a long poem. “Words just flowed,” he says.
Dhawale, a prolific writer, author of several books, and editor of the radical anti-caste bi-monthly magazine Vidrohi, had never before written poetry. This was his first. But in the three-and-a-half years since Swamy’s death, Dhawale has written at least a hundred more – on issues that directly impact him, on news that stirs his emotions, on politics that kept him awake in prison, on Modi, on the “Manuwaadi” government, and even on society’s apathy towards “corroding democracy.”
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Also read:
▪ Rona Wilson and Sudhir Dhawale released: Seven years of injustice by a state that punishes dissent [read order] (Sabrangindia / Jan 2025)
▪ Rona Wilson, Sudhir Dhawale Get Bail After 6.5 Years of Jail in Elgar Parishad Case (The Wire / Jan 2025)

Rona Wilson interview: ‘My arrest was a warning to others who stand against the abuse of power’

01/02/2025 Asha

Credits: Scroll.in / Tabassum Barnagarwala

Scroll.in / by Tabassum Barnagarwala

The activist and researcher was released on bail on January 8 after spending more than six years in jail without trial in the Bhima Koregaon case.
At 53, researcher Rona Wilson is trying to pick up the pieces of the life he was forced to leave behind when he was arrested in the contentious Bhima Koregaon case six years and seven months ago.
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Rona Wilson and Sudhir Dhawale released: Seven years of injustice [read order] / Extraordinary delay in trial

27/01/2025 Asha

Rona Wilson and Sudhir Dhawale released: Seven years of injustice by a state that punishes dissent [read order]

29/01/2025

Sabrangindia / by Sabrangindia

Their freedom comes after years of judicial neglect and the systemic abuse of laws to silence opposition; highlights the weaponisation of anti-terror laws to crush dissent and derail justice.
After spending nearly seven years in jail, activists Rona Wilson and Sudhir Dhawale were finally released from Taloja Jail in Navi Mumbai on January 24, 2025. Their release came over two weeks after the Bombay High Court granted them bail in the controversial Bhima Koregaon case on January 8. The court noted the activists had been incarcerated since 2018, with no realistic hope of their trial concluding anytime soon—a grim reflection of India’s justice system and its treatment of dissenters.
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Bail for Bhima Koregaon accused highlights extraordinary delay in trial

28/01/2025

Scroll.in / by Vineet Bhalla

The snail’s pace at which the Bhima Koregaon case has proceeded through the criminal justice system is due to delays attributable to the prosecution.
Activists Rona Wilson and Sudhir Dhawale walked out of prison on Friday after being under incarceration for six and a half years in the Bhima Koregaon case.
The Bombay High Court granted them bail on January 8 on grounds that they had spent a long period in jail without trial or even charges being framed against them.
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Also read:
▪ Rona Wilson, Sudhir Dhawale Get Bail After 6.5 Years of Jail in Elgar Parishad Case (The Wire / Jan 2025)
▪ Year after being granted bail, Mahesh Raut remains in jail as stay extended (The Indian Express / Sep 2024)

Convention demands protection of adivasi rights, repeal of repressive laws

22/01/2025 Asha

‘Provincial Convention against Repression’ in Barnala, Punjab

22/01/2025

Countercurrents / by Harsh Thakor

The Democratic Front against Operation Green Hunt, Punjab, organised a ‘Provincial Convention against Repression’ at Tarksheel Bhawan in Barnala on January 19th. The convention, convened by Buta Sing, Parminder Singh and AK Maleri and by prominent tribal rights activist and researcher Bela Bhattia, as well as Narvsharan Kaur; garnered leaders, intellectuals, and activists of diverse spheres discuss issues concerning tribal rights and state repression and unite at a common platform.
…
Narvsharan … also delved into the conspiracy launched by the pro-Hindutva state, in the Bhima Koregaon case. She addressed how the Hindutva brigade plagued the rights of all sections of society, and stripped civilians of basic human rights in Manipur and Kashmir.
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Convention demands protection of tribal rights, repeal of repressive laws

22/01/2025

The Tribune / by Tribune Correspondent

The Democratic Front against Operation Green Hunt, Punjab, organised a ‘Provincial Convention against Repression’ at Tarksheel Bhawan in Barnala recently. The convention, presided over by prominent tribal rights activist and researcher Bela Bhattia, brought together various leaders, intellectuals, and activists.
The Democratic Front against Operation Green Hunt, Punjab, organised a ‘Provincial Convention against Repression’ at Tarksheel Bhawan in Barnala recently. The convention, presided over by prominent tribal rights activist and researcher Bela Bhattia, brought together various leaders, intellectuals, and activists to discuss issues concerning tribal rights and state repression.
Read more

Also read:
▪ Himanshu Kumar’s cycle march and advocacy against opression (The Polis Project / Dec 2025)
▪ Statement against the drone bomb attacks in Chhattisgarh, India (India Matters / April 2023)

Murder and Terrorism are Different, Says SC Lawyer

30/12/2024 Asha

Deccan Chronicle / by Shrimansi Kaushik

Senior Supreme Court advocate Colin Gonsalves on Monday highlighted the need to understand the interpretation of murder and terrorism. Speaking on ‘The Rise of Fascism and Question of Law and Judiciary’ at the second day of the International Seminar on Fascism organised by Arvind Memorial Trust at Bagh Lingampally, Gonsalves highlighted various examples of resistance emerging from courts when fascist power rules supreme.
… “Activists like Sudha Bharadwaj, imprisoned for an unverified letter written by some mysterious third party linking her to Naxalites, and tribal advocate Soni Sori, who exposed atrocities against Adivasis, embody resistance against state overreach,” he said.
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The steady immiseration of labour

25/12/2024 Asha

Frontline / by Sudha Bharadwaj

By the end of the 1990s, both capital and a willing state had eviscerated the labour movement. The death blow will be dealt in the 2020s.
The 1990s marked a watershed in the attitude of the Indian state towards labour, with the ushering in of “liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation” (LPG) policies.
The early years of the LPG era saw sensational murders of trade unionists. The theatre activist Safdar Hashmi and members of his troupe, Jan Natya Manch, were brutally attacked with iron rods by the henchmen of a Congress corporator as they performed a street play that campaigned for minimum wages in Jhandapur village in Sahibabad Industrial Area on January 1, 1989.
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Also watch/read:
▪ Video: Human Rights Day Special: Sudha Bharadwaj on activism, human rights in India (Dec 2024): Watch video Part 1 / Watch video Part 2
▪ How 5 Reliance Workers Fighting For A Better Deal Found Themselves In Jail On Terrorism Charges (Article 14 / July 2021)
▪ Bail After 3 Years for the Incarcerated Mumbai Electric Employees Union Workers (groundxero, June 2021)