COMMENTARY

An Arrested Story
P K Vijayan

A Delhi University teacher, forced

into solitary confinement in an
unda cell (egg cell), has been
charged with conspiring to wage
war on the state. Incredible, but
there seems to be no limit to which
the powers that be can stoop
accusing a wheelchair-bound man
of seeking to bring down the
great Indian state!

P K Vijayan (pk.vijayan@gmail.com) teaches

English literature at Hindu College, University
of Delhi.
Economic & Political Weekly

EPW

june 7, 2014

want to tell you a story, of a little man,

if I can; his name was well, his
name we will come to it shortly.
This little man was born into a wretchedly poor peasant family that lived on
the outskirts of a little known village,
with the out-castes and untouchables.
This little mans father had chosen to
live with the marginal and the excluded,
as a mark of solidarity with them and
this was motivated simply by an instinctive sense of justice, since the little
mans father was not even literate, let
alone politically educated.
So the little man grew up amongst the
sweepers and the scavengers, with hunger
and deprivation as bosom companions
to him and his siblings. Then, when he was
barely five years old, he was afflicted with
polio in both his legs, as a result of which
he almost died from lack of medical facilities. But the little mans father managed to
stave off his death, by running from pillar
to post, from every doctor to every dispensary that held out hope, till the fastspreading disease was finally checked;
nevertheless, the little man lost the use of
both his legs completely from the disease.

vol xlIX no 23

This did not deter the little man or his

father. He was enrolled in a mission
school, where he learned to read and
write and consumed everything he read
with rapacious delight. Reading by the
light of street lamps, dragging himself on
his elbows and hands on the dirt roads
of his village, from home to school, eating
one meal in two days sometimes, the little
man delighted in the world of books,
and forgot about his own deprived and
depraved one, for the hours that he was
lost in them. The father meanwhile, took
the little man wherever he could, showing him as much of the world as he could
from the handlebars of his bicycle, obdurately refusing to accept that his sons
condition would limit his mobility. The
little man thus grew up with a deep
wanderlust and an indomitable will to
overcome the limitations of his condition.
Which is how the little man, who was
now no longer little but a full-grown,
popular and well-liked young man, despite
his 90% disability, went on to complete his
school, pre-university and undergraduate
degrees with flying colours, largely on
the dint of scholarships and fellowships
earned through sheer academic excellence. And as this young man grew into
maturity, he also saw the colours and
prejudices of the world around him, and
learnt of its profound inequalities and
injustices, and of the many, many crores of
27

COMMENTARY

people who were systemically and systematically disadvantaged from birth if not
in medical terms like him, then in social
and economic terms, very much like him,
and in fact, much worse off than him.
So it was that when he moved to the
big city of Hyderabad for his Masters
degree, he was already filled with a
steely resolve to fight these injustices
with the same never-say-never spirit with
which he had fought, and continued to
fight, his own debilitating circumstances.
This is how the young man, by the time he
completed his Masters degree, had become an accomplished, respected and
hugely popular scholar and political
activist. But the young man wanted to see
more, to learn more, to do more so he
gave up the familiar terrain and people
and tongues of Hyderabad, and moved
to Delhi, with his newly married wife.
Struggling to battle the harsh and callous conditions of the bigger city, coping
with unfamiliarity and unemployment
and prejudice and loneliness, this man,
against his better instincts, against the
enormous demands placed on him mentally and physically and financially, nevertheless stayed on and moved from job
to job till he was finally appointed as a
lecturer in a Delhi University college.
This man is now a scholar and teacher
of international standing and repute.
He completed his doctoral degree, and
has travelled extensively, nationally and
internationally, presenting papers and
giving lectures. And he has spoken out
strongly, consistently and irrepressibly
against the injustices and inequalities that
he grew up with, and others that he has
learned about, and yet others that are
evolving around us, in ever-multiplying
forms, as the welfare state bids farewell
and exits the political stage. The polymorphous perversity that has pushed
out and replaced the welfare state however, is profoundly invested in retaining,
maintaining, sustaining and indeed further entrenching precisely those and
other injustices and inequalities, because
that is precisely what it feeds on, and
thrives on, and cannot bear to have
challenged, least of all by the likes of
this man, who epitomises and embodies
everything that it wants to crush and
destroy indomitable spirit, fearless
28

resistance, and the will to overcome the

cruelest of odds.
Little wonder then, that the perverse
drones of this polymorphous perversity
sought to arrest a man already in a permanent state of arrest, thanks to his disability. Little wonder that they did so
Mafioso style, by blindfolding and abducting him from his car on a university street
in broad daylight in full public view, and
swiftly bundling him by air to another
city. Little wonder that they brought case
after fabricated case against him, starting with the charge that he was holding
stolen property at his house (can there be
anything more absurd than accusing a
wheelchair bound man of running around
stealing property?), and leading up to
charging him with conspiring to wage
war on the state (in answer to the previous
parenthetical question yes, incredibly,
our polymorphous perversity can go,
and has gone, to the even more absurd
lengths of accusing a wheelchair bound
man of seeking to bring down the great
Indian state!). Little wonder then, that
they chose to do so in the peak period of
a general election, so that the absurdity
of their actions would simply disappear
into the still greater absurdities of the
great Indian circus of the elections that
are farcically celebrated as the greatest
festival of democratic participation in the
world. And what greater comment on the
farcicality of that vaunted democracy

can there be than this arrest, and its

timing, and its rationale, and its method?
And what greater ironical comment can
there be on the story of this man, if, after
all the odds he has overcome, after all
the disabilities he has brushed aside,
after all the deprivations and handicaps
he has forged through, after all his
achievements and accomplishments, he
should be silenced and immobilised
through the sheer brute force of the very
polymorphous perversity that he has
spent his life battling and overcoming?
As we now know, this man is now in
solitary confinement, in an unda cell
(egg cell), without light or ventilation,
deprived of medication, unable to use even
the toilet without severe pain and discomfort, crawling on hands and elbows
wherever he is made to go all in a desperate attempt to destroy his dignity,
break his spirit and get him to confess to
crimes he neither committed nor of which
they have any proof of his committing.
G N Saibaba is not just another good
doctor. He has become the biggest
little man in the country today. His
voice is the voice of the marginal and excluded that he grew up with, in that village in his youth of every marginal and
excluded voice in every village in the
country. His story is their story, and
must not be muzzled, and cannot be
silenced. Saibaba must be freed for that
story to be freed. Immediately.

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june 7, 2014

vol xlIX no 23

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