Anitta Anna Moncy
“Our motto is still alive and to the point: pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will”, says Antonio Gramsci in his Prison Notebooks. Alpa Shah, the author of ‘Nightmarch: Among India’s Revolutionary Guerrillas’ in her new book ‘The Incarcerations: Bhima Koregaon and the Search for Democracy in India’ actualizes this motto by unveiling the horrors a repressive state can cause its people in the 21st century, while at the same time tributing the indomitable spirits of people who stood against the regime.
Battle of Bhima Koregaon (Jan 1818), part of the Anglo-Maratha Wars, was fought between the Peshwa empire and the British East India Company in which Dalits were part of a Mahar Regiment in the British Army. Under the direct rule of the Brahmin Peshwas, the untouchables had to face extreme atrocities. They had to hang spittoons around their necks to spit, and tie a broom at the waist, so that their footprints on the ground could be erased as they walked. Once the British won the battle and erected a victory pillar at the spot of the battleground, the Dalits began to look at it as a pillar of their victory over the internal colonization or caste oppression.
In Jan 2018, the 200th anniversary commemoration of the battle of Koregaon by the Dalits was disrupted by communal riots triggered by hindutva activists. One person, Rahul Fatangale, died as a result. By May, the police were linking the incident to an anti-caste interfaith public meeting that took place 20 miles away a day before and claiming that the organisers were part of a “chilling Maoist conspiracy” to assassinate the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi. The book delineates the incarcerations of 16 unconnected people from different parts of India- activists, lawyers, professors, journalists and artists; following the riots; namely, Sudhir Dhawale, Mahesh Raut, Shoma Sen, Rona Wilson, Surendra Gadling, Arun Ferreira, Sudha Bharadwaj, Vernon Gonsalves, Varavara Rao, Gautam Navlakha, Anand Teltumbde, Hany Babu, Sagar Gorkhe, Ramesh Gaichor, Jyoti Jagtap and Stan Swamy.
The methods and laws used to incarcerate the BK-16 – such as hacking of the computers and the use of the draconian UAPA are explained in detail in the book. The author calls the Bhima Koregaon case “a targeted state-driven attempt to silence the BK-16” and explains the reasons for each one of the BK-16 being targeted by the state in detail. She also brings out how shrewdly each evidence used for the arrest was fabricated. Shah reveals that the U.S.-based experts who took an interest in the cyber-data related to the BK case showed there was “a link between the police who made the arrests and those who hacked the computers”. The evidence was planted remotely through a hacker-on-hire mercenary gang infrastructure.
Shah says that the mainstream media allied with the lies of the hindutva activists- that of “urban naxals” trying to assassinate Modi with the help of a fabricated plot letter spread all over the country. Shah summarises the events as showcasing how a probable alliance of people who stood up against the state -the ones who stood for adivasi, dalit and Muslim rights- was nipped in the bud by a combined and heinous effort of different organs of the state to threaten anyone who dares to stand against power.
The most interesting part of this painstakingly researched book is how it brings together several seemingly unconnected events, historicizes them and brings out the trajectory of violence rightly, for the public to see. How the ideologues of hindutva, from Hedgewar to Modi, complied with Italian fascism in theory and practice can also be read from the narrative. The book is a timely and a chilling account of state violence and of the cost of justice in Modi’s India.
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Anitta Anna Moncy is a student at the Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies, University of Bonn, Germany.
