“Struggle will go on. Repression is doomed!”: On Fr. Stan Swamy’s fourth martyrdom day, a declaration of a hunger strike

ON JULY 5, 2021, FR. STAN SWAMY left us, succumbing to failing health aggravated by the deliberate denial of medical care by a repressive State as part of its devious strategy in the Bhima Koregaon - Elgar Parishad case. Four years have passed since this institutional murder of Fr. Stan. We seethe in indignation on the very memory of this day, when the real violent blood thirsty face of the State unravelled to one and all. 

The fourth anniversary of Fr. Stan's martyrdom is significant to keep alive certain memories: the memory of how this repressive State targeted an octogenarian Jesuit priest by twice conducting raid and search at his residence cum research and resource centre in Ranchi, called Bagaicha, the memory of how he was made charged in trumped up cases, culminating in his arrest in the Bhima Koregaon - Elgar Parishad case. Finally he was put in confinement in a faraway place like Taloja Central Prison in Maharashtra where despite his ill health and growing ailments, he was deliberately kept away from timely medical care until his body finally gave away during the peak of the pandemic. 

Behind the facade of violence, the powers that be feared the fearlessness of Stan. He dared the State by calling out all injustices inflicted on the people, especially the Adivasis, by organising and being part of struggles against their eroding rights over the resource-rich land of Central and Eastern India. Against the terror of Adivasis being displaced from their natural homeland, against their Jal, Jungle and Jameen being irreversibly destroyed due to mining of precious minerals, raising of big dams and the interests of big industries, Stan had strived to bring together vast sections of the people's movements under the banner of upsurge against the catastrophic consequences of the State’s policies on the people. 

He had written extensively against such policies while exhorting for united resistance of the masses. Joining hands with the Pathalgadi resistance, he strongly argued and accorded the right to self-rule of the Gram Sabhas. The Adivasi-Dalit-Working youth of the region who had embraced the path of struggles in this context were being criminalised through false cases slapped on them, most of them branded as Maoists put behind bars in hundreds and thousands. 

Stan embarked on a rigorous documentation of all such arrests and unmasked the real repressive nature of these arrests--that the ruling establishment despised these youth exercising their democratic right to protest against state policies that would destroy their lives and livelihoods. Against such arrests Stan had moved a PIL at the Jharkhand High Court exposing the real nature of the government policies. He had voiced with great concern the plight of the Adivasi community who were forced to abandon their land in search of livelihood, and the ravages caused by the intrusion of capital in the social and cultural fabric of Adivasi life. He was one with the everyday life of the Adivasis, in their ups and downs, in their struggles for a better future.