I am happy also for the present dispensation, for I am a patriot.
Fr. Stan Swamy is no more. I feel awkward about mourning his death. Instead, I feel a strange sort of happiness. An eerie sort of relief.
Who are we to mourn his death? We, who dare not utter a word, fearing for our skin?
Who are we to feel sorry for the loss of this noble soul, when our concerns rarely go beyond the stomach?
Surely, Fr. Stan must have been somebody! At 84, and unsteady on his feet with the Parkinson’s, he was such a threat to national security that he had to be shut up in a prison.
What was the threat he posed?
Well, very grave indeed, if you think of it. He sympathised with those who were struggling for their basic rights and dignity. Can there be anything more subversive?
I feel sorry for those of us who are left behind. We may not be shut up in prisons. There is no need to. We are our own prisons.
So, we survive like scarecrows. But prisons too have their days; and then they will be no more. A new sun will arise, and mock its debris.
There is only one practical problem left now. How will they dispose of the body of Fr. Stan?
He is still an accused under the UAPA. He is not entitled to bail. Unless the court grants bail to his dead body, how will he be buried or cremated? Only one thing is lawful; his body has to be despatched to the prison, under armed escort.
Let a speedy trial begin over the dead body, for God’s sake. Let the truth about Fr. Stan be brought to light. Let the whole world know what the crime was for which Stan was shut up.
There is a compelling reason for saying so. Under the UAPA, the accused is GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT. So, Fr. Stan has died guilty. That is to say, he died condemned without a trial: an injustice not done to any accused, under any law anywhere in the world, or in any period of the human history of rule of law.
The State has a duty, besides, to prove the merit of its stand. Though, it is in the nature of the idea of the State itself that it is not accountable to anyone. All the more so, when it is patronised by a committed judiciary. That notion is of the very essence of the UAPA act and all other draconian laws.
If UAPA is to make chilling sense, it should also be prescribed under its rubrics that an accused under its provisions should not be granted burial or cremation, unless his innocence is established. The bodies of the accused, when dead, should be preserved in a UAPA mausoleum under heavy guard. Just in case, the corpses escape and express solidarity with the poor and the powerless.
Well, there is this other humanitarian thing, you know. The hospital, treating Fr. Stan, was ordered to ‘do all it can’ to save Fr. Stan, when he was critically ill. The thought of his soul flying away from the prison was unbearable, perhaps?
But there is a humiliating truth in this. The State may have a seeming authority over the life of its citizens. It has no authority over death. What has no authority over death, cannot have any authority over life too; for life is primary, and death is merely complementary.
The truth is that the State has absolutely no authority over life and death. It merely pretends to have, till truth comes with its bodkin and pricks the bubbles of mundane pretensions.
Sleep well, Fr. Stan. Your struggle is over. Ours remains; except that we are unequal to it. Our struggle now is only with ourselves; or what is left of us.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: Readers interested in this piece, will be interested also in an earlier article by Dr Thampu: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/psychologys-distorting-mirror-drives-hindutvas-hatred-of-christians/
