India’s oldest Socialist Weekly!
Editor: Dr. G.G. Parikh | Associate Editor: Neeraj Jain | Managing Editor: Guddi
In this open letter written in August 2018 after he was charged with sedition, Fr Stan Swamy listed all the activities that have made him a ‘Desh Drohi’: “During the past two decades, I have identified myself with the Adivasi people and their struggle for a life of dignity and self-respect….”
His death is institutional murder by the Indian criminal justice system.
One can find hundreds of committed and fearless activists, scholars and lawyers in the state who drew their inspiration from him.
Fr Stan Swamy, the Jesuit, has now become part of the Adivasi folklore of resistance. He is also a martyr to their cause of protecting their heritage, their ‘Jal, Jangal, Zameen’ from the lusting eyes of the men in political power and their crony corporate friends.
The entire episode leaves behind a feeling that Stan Swamy was virtually thrust a sentence of death without charges being framed against him and without a trial.
Father Stan Swamy; Swamy and Friends: A Poem.
In their open letter, they condemn the ‘complete breakdown’ of governance and blatant violation of the rule of law in Uttar Pradesh, and say that the Yogi Adityanath government has “ushered in a model of governance which swerves further and further away from the values of the Constitution”.
Rajinder Singh Deepsinghwala, the vice president of the Kirti Kisan Union, says that despite their core demands not being met, the past seven months of protests had won a major victory in how they had democratised politics in northern India.
Freedom of opinion and freedom of association are ‘the two lungs that are absolutely necessary for a man to breathe the oxygen of liberty’, he wrote.
Adivasi communities continue heroically to fight to protect their lands. In doing so, they’re protecting all our futures. Because, more than anyone, activists like Hidme Markam are keeping the forests standing and the coal in the ground.
Janata Weekly is India’s oldest independent socialist weekly.
Ever since its founding in 1946, Janata has voiced its principled dissent against all conduct and practice that is detrimental to the cherished values of nationalism, democracy, secularism and socialism, while upholding the integrity and the ethical norms of healthy journalism. For more than seventy years now, week after week, it has continued to analyse the changes taking place in the country and the world from a socialist standpoint, and thus promote the spread of socialist ideology in the country.
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