Daily Times

Pakistan has Asma Jahangir and I A Rehman. They are indomitable of spirit, fearless in action, forever battling the state to provide a voice to the helpless and marginal. In India too, there are many such bravehearts, who don’t subscribe to the dubious dictum that the state can do no wrong. Among them is Gautam Navlakha, who is present at most barricades, protesting the state’s violation of the rights of people, challenging its development paradigm, and questioning the very process of melding a people into a nation. For the record, he is an activist of the People’s Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR), a voluntary civil liberties group in India.

Navlakha is in the news for writing a letter to the American judge hearing the case of Ghulam Nabi Fai, who has been berated in the Indian media for his links to the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). A Kashmiri Indian, Fai went into exile in 1981, and subsequently established the Kashmir American Council (KAC) for lobbying on Kashmir in the US. Last year in July, the American authorities arrested Fai for not disclosing, as mandated under US law, that he had received $ 3.5 million from the ISI over 20 years. The money, it was alleged, bankrolled the activities of the KAC, including convening conferences, which several Indian intellectuals attended.

At the arrest of Fai, the Indian media went ballistic, mocking the Indian liberals for participating in the KAC conferences behind which had loomed the ISI. Snide remarks were made about how in their misguided enthusiasm for human rights as well as free foreign trips, they had become the handmaidens of the ISI, accused of fomenting terrorism in India’s Kashmir. Shouldn’t the liberals be a tad more circumspect about where they articulate views inimical to India’s interests, it was asked? Reeling under such insinuations, the Indian liberals ducked for cover. A few, in fact, even expressed their revulsion at the thought that they had partaken of the lavish generosity of a man who was an ISI agent.

But Navlakha was not among the repentant. As Fai was arraigned in court, where he pleaded guilty, Navlakha was one of the three Indians — the other two were Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, Rajmohan Gandhi, and Ved Bhasin, editor of The Kashmir Times — among the 53 people who wrote to the judge requesting him to award a lighter sentence to Fai. His letter is remarkable for its candour, as also for his refusal to criticise Fai, other than what he said in one anodyne sentence, “I thought it was politically unwise to allow the cause we hold dear to come under shadow because of doubts about our autonomy.”

Navlakha praised Fai’s work on behalf of Kashmiris, and vouched for his democratic credentials. To bolster his argument, he narrated his experience of the KAC conference in 2006. Then a resolution had bitterly divided the participants, but Fai insisted on adhering to the democratic procedure, hoping a consensus could be reached, failing which he wanted the resolution to be put to vote and was willing to accept the majority view, despite strong opposition from some official Pakistani delegates. Navlakha pointed out to the judge: “Fai was not just sincere and committed to the cause of Kashmiri freedom but even more he was wedded to the democratic process to resolve matters.”

Kashmir is a thorn deeply embedded in India’s flesh, and though it does not bleed as it once used to, the wound is still too raw for anyone to press it without turning people apoplectic. Writing in the Firstpost.com, N Jagannathan declared, rather haughtily, that Navlakha was “wedded to the mob financed by the ISI.” Many of the 48 readers who responded to Jagannathan’s piece said they believed Navlakha and his ilk ought to be sentenced to prison for two years, the quantum of punishment ultimately awarded to Fai. Reading such venomous outpourings, I could not but marvel at Navlakha’s sublime indifference to it. Really, what makes Navlakha — or Jahangir and Rehman in Pakistan — plough such a remarkably different furrow in a society in which the best interest a person can pursue is often considered his or her own?

To find the answer, I go down a flight of stairs to enter the basement of a house tucked inside a colony in posh South Delhi. Across the table is Navlakha, dressed in Bermudas and a T-shirt, bespectacled, lean, sipping coffee and clicking the computer mouse as we discuss the Fai episode, into which, inevitably, creeps Kashmir. In a raised voice, he says, “I find illiteracy among the literates shocking. I believe in the right to self-determination. I don’t believe in an India created through military coercion. As soon as you talk of the right to self-determination, it makes them conceive nightmarish situations.”

About his critics, he says pithily, “They are entitled to their opinion as I am to my own.” He passionately talks of the travails of Kashmiris living under a veritable police raj, the draconian laws in force there, and severe restrictions on the freedom of expression. “Unless you are blind and want to acquiesce in brutalities, you cannot but feel dishonoured by what is being committed there — the killings, the rapes, the disappearances. It is a military-held territory. What Kashmir needs is a political solution. India and Pakistan can’t decide the fate of Kashmir over the heads of its people.”

From Navlakha’s perspective, the state has become the enemy of the people, not only in India, but also in Pakistan. Pointing to reports of rampant human rights violations in the province of Balochistan, he says, “The problem in Balochistan has risen because of the legitimate aspirations of its people. Instead of suppressing them through military operations, the Pakistan government should address their aspirations,” he says, commending the work of activists in Pakistan, particularly Rehman’s.

As we fleet from one topic to another, I pop the question to him: what keeps activists going? Pat comes Navlakha’s response, “It is the love and affection of people, who see us as a voice for their struggles, for themselves. What we cherish is the organic unity thus forged between us and the people.” He says it was during his college days he acquired an alternative perspective to understand people’s problems, an understanding which spawned in him the desire to oppose the state’s policies that ultimately serve the interests of big corporations.

But an inherently unjust state is, usually, also brutal. So doesn’t he fear a blowback from the state? “We derive our legitimacy from the fact that though we are partisans, we are also truthful; we do not conceal what is uncomfortable. We don’t claim to know the truth, we only say this is what we saw or this was what we were told.” Moments later, though, he smiles and says, “We are not from the working class. Had we been from the working class, we would have been shot dead for our activities. What protects us is that we belong to the middle class, the class from which the elite comes, the bureaucrats and policy-makers.”

We blithely ignore one trait common to India and Pakistan — both have an insensitive, brutal state; both also have a few privileged individuals, people like you and I, who turn against their own class to underscore our moral debasement. More power to the elbows of the Navlakhas, the Asmas, and the Rehmans.

The writer is a Delhi-based journalist