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St. Xavier’s College was privileged to have Dr. Binayak Sen once again as a speaker, this time at the Conclave, a part of Malhar - 2011, our Inter-collegiate Cultural Festival. He had earlier been convicted of Sedition by a Raipur Sessions Court and imprisoned. We are happy that he has now been granted bail by the Supreme Court of India.
All of us can reel off a list of names of those who should be in jail and are not. The latter know how to manipulate the system in order to shamelessly run free. Dr. Binayak Sen, who has spent long years of his life serving the poorest of India’s poor, in one of the poorest areas of our rich country, hardly deserves such treatment. Dozens of Nobel Prize winners across the world had appealed for his release pending a fair trial in the Supreme Court.

Dr. Sen exposed how the objective of the State-sponsored Salwa Judum was to uproot the tribal population, so that their villages could be handed over to industrialists for the vulgar profit of a few that we sometimes call ‘development’. That made him the enemy of the local Government which till then had made him a member of the Advisory Committee of the State’s Health Ministry for his pioneering role in developing a model for its Rural Health Mission. His work in the area of community health has been nationally and internationally recognised and awarded. How can such a man be accused, much less convicted, of sedition? But perhaps it is because he was a member of the Peoples’ Union for Civil Liberties - PUCL, an organisation devoted to the preservation of constitutional civil liberties and human rights, that he has been targeted.

It is a matter of grave concern that human rights activists across the country are increasingly being targeted for being the voice of the vulnerable. RTI activists, people siding with adivasis, dalits and the urban poor, those expressing dissent peacefully, are being treated harshly, violently and even having to pay the ultimate price.

The Management and Students of St. Xavier’s College plead for a space to debate, discuss, protest and dissent – because this is the guarantee of justice in a democracy. We are grateful that the Supreme Court of India has ordered the release of Dr. Binayak Sen pending his Appeal and has used very clear language in saying that the evidence produced by the Government is weak for such a serious charge.
We exhort the Government of India to reconsider the sedition laws which were appropriate under colonial rule but are contradictory to the concept of a Government of the people, for the people and by the people.
We appeal to the Police to grant protection to those who work for the human rights of the disadvantaged and to those who have the courage to peacefully protest.
And we cherish the hope that Dr. Binayak Sen, after all charges are dropped, will soon be able to once again serve the people – the tribals of Chattisgarh - he has self-sacrificially lived for during these last 30 years.

Dr. Frazer Mascarenhas S.J.
Principal

St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai