Guilty because the police think so...

In the first week of May, Arun Ferreira was arrested in Nagpur on the charge that he handled the communications of Naxal groups in the state. The torture that he and others who were arrested along with him has left him physically debilitated. Apparently, Murali, one of the men arrested along with Arun was bleeding from the anus for days because the police forcefully ingested petrol into his system.

Ferreira is an educated man living in Bandra who has been involved in social activities for some time now. That doesn't mean that he is not guilty...BUT THAT DOES NOT PROVE HIS GUILT EITHER!

It's hard to trust that Ferriera would've been so deeply involved in Naxal activities as the police would like us to believe. And this is not because I'm generally against everything the 'corrupt system' does or because the newspaper reports about him being a family man are very convincing.

The reason is this:

In September last year, a hindi play Cotton 56 Polyester 84, written by Ramu Ramanathan, translated by Chetan Datar and directed by Sunil Shanbagh, all known names in the Mumbai theatre circle, was denied permission for performance at Nagpur because the police officials believed that the play propogated Naxal-agenda. Now I've seen one of the first performances of this play in Mumbai. I can't say I liked it much but yes I can vouch for the fact that there is nothing even remotely Naxalite in the play. As far as I can summarise it's about the transition that the Girni Kamgaars went through after the textile mills were shut down and Bhiwandi's powerlooms became textile hubs rather than the dadar-parel stretch. There's even a reference to the rise of underworld as one of the fallouts..etc etc..

There were about four performances scheduled in Nagpur and a small town nearby. Only the first performance took place at the small town where according to the director plainclothes policemen were part of the audience judging whether the play had any Naxalite undertones. Well, they must've seen something i didn't because the next day there were a truckload of police officials surrounding the Nagpur auditorium where the rest of the performances were to take place. The show was cancelled because the commissioner of police refused to meet the organisers to grant them permission and instead sent out a letter saying permission was not being granted.

A few days after this incident a book exhibition in Chandrapur was vandalised by police officials because the books were seen propogating, u guessed it, Naxalite agenda. The exhibition was organised by a delhi-based publishing house on the occassion of Ambedkar Jayanti and had nothing to do with Naxalites...considering that Ambedkar was apparently anti-communism!!!

Fact is these incidents, put together with Ferreira's arrest, only make it obvious that the police officials in 'Naxal-affected' areas are trying everything they can to suppress the freedom of expression...and unfortunately, despite efforts by a few media houses, to present the other side of the picture, the police is succeeding in squashing every voice of protest...

From the Lord of the Rings...

"I can't do this Sam.";

I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.";

What are we holding on to Sam?";

That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for."

- Sam to Frodo, at Osgiliath

(I think this is from the movie the conversation in the book happens in the chapter the stairs of cirith ungol...the words here are a bit twisted but mean more or less the same...)