Four months after the shocking news convicting Dr. Binayak Sen, a public health & human rights activist, to life imprisonment on charges of Sedition by the Chhattisgarh court on such baseless charge of possessing a book by Karl Marx (meaning he was a Maoist/ Naxalite sympathizer) & a highly fabricated story, the Supreme Court (SC) has at last proved that there is some sanity left in judiciary by releasing Binayak Sen on bail for now. In a style highly reminiscent of a kangaroo court, the court in Chhattisgarh acted as if it were handpicked by the right wing communal BJP ruled state govt. there to perform the role of a butcher as against following the due process of law as laid down by the bourgeois constitution.
Such was the outrage across the spectrum that a BJP party member & a former law minister in the BJP NDA govt. (1998 – 2004) Ram Jethmalani came out openly in support of Binayak Sen & took up his case. And let us not forget the role of Congress govt. in the center which was trying to play the role of an innocent bystander all along by issuing such ridiculous statement that it will not comment on the court judgment but will respect it (!). But in reality it had actually managed to keep Binayak in jail for over 2 years (2007 – 09) with many of its top echelons hell bent against his release.
While welcoming the verdict of the Supreme Court, let us not be taken in by the euphoria of the holy grail of judiciary coming to the rescue once again by upholding the law of the land. Let us remember that judiciary is another arm of the capitalist – landlordist state machinery & the Supreme Court was only trying to undo the damage on its credibility as a state institution & stave off a potentially highly explosive situation in the future as a result of people’s loss of faith in the system as a whole.
If anything, this verdict is loss of face, if not directly implicating Congress central govt., but loss nevertheless for the system as a whole, as it had to give in some concessions whether in the form of a bail or more recently concede to the popular demand of anti-corruption Lokpal bill since it is much easier to buy people (at least the leadership of such so called movements!) this way by concession & talks without actually having conceded very much (!) than to clamp down on protesters & dissenters, which will only pave way for revolutions. But either way (reform or no reform), the system will have to follow the path laid down by Capital which will inevitably gives rise to winners (MNC’s – landlords – politicians – bureaucrats etc) & losers (majority of the populace). And so while …..
today we celebrate today we sing
today we dance today we win
but save some till we depose the king (quote from Saptarshi Banerjee)