The arrest and incarceration for more than a
month, of Dr Binayak Sen, a doctor who has worked
in Chattisgarh for nearly 3 decades with the
poor, the workers and the deprived - all of them
from the tribes - bothers me like a little ulcer
on the middle of my back would. The awareness of
Sen’s continuing imprisonment flares up from time
to time, even as one goes about attending to
other matters like the fate of the DV Act, or the
fate of the Women’s Centre where I spend a good
part of every day, even as my thoughts keep
turning to my father in Kerala who has cancer.

Its not just an itch in the middle of one’s
back; during the passage of a whole month, the
itch has become a little ulcer. One can’t see it,
because its on the middle of one’s back. One
cannot scratch it, because it is no longer an
itch, it is a little ulcer. Its not worth a visit
to a hospital, its not that serious, like fake
encounter deaths.

They say that he is not being tortured. He is in
judicial custody; not in police custody. (How
judicious).

That is because Dr. Sen is only ’under
suspicion’. He has attracted the Suspicion of the
State of Chattisgarh. ’Its no one’s case that Dr
Sen is a Naxalite’, wrote a journalist -
activist- long time friend, in defence of Dr Sen.
But the Government of Chattisgarh is not so sure
of that; and it has charged Dr Sen with ’waging
war’ against it.

Still, the judiciary of Chattisgarh keeps Dr Sen
under its judicious custody, while the
investigators of the State of Chattisgarh
investigate a PC in Dr Sen’s office that he
shares with his social scientist and women’s
rights activist spouse, Ilena. So the charge of
waging war against the state is a bit of
Phishing. If any proof turns up, then he has
indeed waged war, despite his gentle looks and
speech, his non-violent appearance & words, his
being a doctor quite unlike Pravin Togadia of the
VHP.

I remember Snehalata Reddy in Bangalore suddenly,
during the Emergency. Whose prison diary I
informally edited for Dr U.R. Ananthamurthy. She
was ’under suspicion’, of having waged war
against the State, the State of India, and was
incarcerated without proof. She was an asthmatic,
and a person for whom any confinement would
be spiritual strangling. They said that she was
not tortured. She tried to overcome her gloom in
prison by taking up literacy classes for women
prisoners; she wrote a diary. They finally set
her free, when she had not many days left to
live. She died soon after release.

The memory brings back the awareness of that
little almost-ulcer on my mental backside.

What if Dr Sen is neither tortured nor released.

What if they keep him in a 10’x5’ prison room with 10 other souls.

What if they just slowly cause a spiritual bleeding to death?

Might it have been better for him if he had
indeed been a ’Naxalite’; had shot, and been shot
dead?

Maybe. Its Sen’s life. He is and was, what he is and was.

Cheer up, its no one’s case that Dr Binayak Sen
is an asthmatic, I think. Surely he is more
solid, even, more stolid hopefully, than a dancer
with a poetic orientation to life, for whom
confinement meant death?

Dr Sen & Ilena’s friends all wait anxiously for
tomorrow, when he is to be produced in court
again.