South Asia Citizens Web

In my capacity of Mohammad Afzal Guru’s lawyer and as a member of the People’s Union of Civil Liberties I am enclosing the statement of Afzal Guru.

A writ petition 196/2001 (PUCL Vs UOI and Others) was filed in Supreme Court of India. The petition was filed after two kinds of news emerged from across the country: overwhelming pilferage and wastage of grain, on one hand, and so many citizens continuing to live with hunger, on the other.

The agitation for the Jan Lokpal Bill (JLB) is being hailed as ‘unprecedented’ and as a ‘second freedom struggle’. More grounded analysts have likened it to the Navanirman movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan in the 1970s. However, a more apt comparison lies closer at hand.

Less than six years ago, Parliament enacted a national Right to Information Act. This was a major victory for the RTI campaign which aimed to empower people to fight corruption and malgovernance.

Mr. Kunjam has now been in detention for more than 20 months and is reported to have faced physical abuse inside the prison. His application for bail has been rejected by the trial court and the Chhattisgarh High Court and is now pending before the Supreme Court. Mr. Kunjam is only one among many social workers and human rights activists who have helped make human rights abuses in Chhattisgarh public only to face imprisonment on false charges.

THE passing away of Professor Ram Sharan Sharma on August 20 is an irreparable loss, not only for the world of history scholarship but for all those who envision and hope for a secular, rational and equitable India. There is hardly any aspect of early Indian history that has not been enriched by this renowned Marxist historian’s penetrating analysis reinforced by a wealth of data. R.S. Sharma (1920-2011) looked upon the discipline of history as a vehicle for combating obscurantism and evolving a scientific temper.