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

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

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

Interview | Sudhir Dhawale’s Work Will Go on

Credits: Sukanya Shantha/The Wire

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’

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

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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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)
Five Years of Incarceration – and the Audacity of Hope (The Wire | Rona Wilson | Jul 2023)

Rona Wilson and Sudhir Dhawale released: Seven years of injustice [read order] / Extraordinary delay in trial

Rona Wilson and Sudhir Dhawale released: Seven years of injustice [read order] / Extraordinary delay in trial

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.
Read more


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

Convention demands protection of adivasi rights, repeal of repressive laws

Pic credit: countercurrents.org

‘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

Murder and Terrorism are Different, Says SC Lawyer

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

The steady immiseration of labour

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)

For my birthday, you are organising in my name, INVITE as Chief Guest…!

For my birthday, you are organising in my name, INVITE as Chief Guest…!


▪ Politics Of Hate

Countercurrents.org / by Cedric Prakash

Dear Leaders of the Christian Community in India,
Greetings of peace, love, joy and hope- to each one of you, as you prepare to celebrate my birth once again!
I have just come across an invitation, that some of you are planning to celebrate my birthday on 23 December 2024, in Delhi. A great idea indeed – congrats!! My birth as the Saviour of the world must be celebrated!

For my birthday, you are organising in my name, INVITE as Chief Guest…the Human Rights Defender/ s. Umar Khalid, Sudha Bharadwaj, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira and others. 

Read more


Also read:
Activists Criticise Modi’s Presence in Christmas Programmes Amidst Rising Persecution of Christians (The Wire / Dec 2024)
Christian persecution on the rise in India: report (UCA News / Dec 2024)
India Country Update (UNITED STATES COMMISSION on INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM / Oct 2024)
Indian court again refuses to hear Stan Swamy case (UCA News / Sep 2024)

Why There Is No Better Person to Translate Kazi Nazrul Islam Than Varavara Rao

Why There Is No Better Person to Translate Kazi Nazrul Islam Than Varavara Rao

The Wire / by Moumita Alam

This is not a mere work of translation; this is the confluence of two great poets who defied the oppressive states of their respective times.

The following is the foreword to Varavara Rao’s translation of Kazi Nazrul Islam’s Bengali poems into Telugu, Vidrohi. It has been edited for style, grammar and clarity. The volume is being published by the Hyderabad Book Trust.

In what is called the second freedom movement in Bangladesh against the autocratic Sheikh Hasina government, the state police’s guns aiming at the students and the students singing the poem and songs of Kazi Nazrul Islam is the hair-raising moment for all people who aspire for and dream of freedom.
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Aslo read:
BK-16 Prison Diaries: Varavara Rao on prisons as institutions of corruption, sadism and dehumanisation (The Polis Project / Oct 2024)
At UN Human Rights Review, PEN International Questions Crackdown on Dissent in India (The Wire / July 2024)
Read PEN International’s full report here
Tomorrow there won’t be any classes’: Activist Varavara Rao’s poems get an English translation (Scroll.in / by Varavara Rao, N Venugopal & Rohith / Jul 2023)
Supreme Court grants permanent medical bail to P. Varavara Rao in Bhima Koregaon case (The Leaflet / Aug 2022)

India: Death of human rights defender and continued repression of dissent highlights risks facing activists

India: Death of human rights defender and continued repression of dissent highlights risks facing activists

CIVICUS / by CIVICUS

India’s civil space is rated as ‘repressed’ by the CIVICUS Monitor. In recent years, the government has misused the draconian anti-terror Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and other laws to keep activists behind bars and fabricate cases against activists and journalists for undertaking their work. The authorities have blocked access to foreign funding for NGOs and human rights defenders, using the restrictive Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA).
… There are other human rights defenders who have remained in jail for years under the draconian UAPA and also died in custody.
They include those implicated on baseless charges linked to the Bhima Koraegon violence in 2018 including Surendra Gadling, Hany Babu, Rona Wilson, Sagar Gorkhe, Ramesh Gaichor, Sudhir Dhawale, Mahesh Raut and Jyoti Jagtap.
Read more


Also read:
India: Submission to the UN Human Rights Committee on the deterioration of civic space (CIVICUS / Jul 2024)
Civic Freedoms in India ‘Repressed’: Global Monitor Civicus (The Wire / Oct 2023)