On Christmas day, thoughts turn to a good Christian who was snatched away from us on July 5 this year.
Father Stanislaus Lourduswamy, or Stan Swamy, had dedicated his life to serving Adivasis in Central India, after having been director of the Indian Social Institute, Bengaluru, from 1975 to 1986.
He was implicated and jailed — falsely, in the opinion of a large number of human rights activists and even noted jurists — in the infamous Bhima-Koregaon case. The case was filed during the former BJP rule in Maharashtra, bizarrely leading to the arrest of many respected intellectuals; and once the BJP lost power in the state, it was transferred overnight to the National Investigation Agency.
Many human rights groups and esteemed publications deem Stan Swamy’s death to have been “institutional murder” by cynical agents of the Indian State.
Justice Madan Lokur, retired Supreme Court judge, wrote in The Wire: “The entire episode leaves behind a feeling that Stan Swamy was virtually thrust a sentence of death without charges being framed against him and without a trial. I wonder if his soul will be able to rest in peace, but I hope it does. I suppose all that can be said is ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’.”
Justice Lokur went on: “Soon after his arrest and given his health status (Parkinson’s and age), Stan Swamy applied for interim bail on health grounds. The application was unfortunately rejected on October 22, 2020. Soon after, since Stan Swamy suffered from Parkinson’s, he found it convenient to use and also required a sipper or a straw to consume liquids, including water. He moved an application for being provided with a sipper and a straw. This application was dealt with great insensitivity. First, the prosecution sought time to file a reply. Was it necessary? Could a straw and sipper not have been provided to Stan Swamy? Then, even more surprisingly, the learned judge granted 20 days to the prosecution to file a reply! This was simply amazing.”
Professor Mary Lawlor, the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, said: “There is no excuse, ever, for a human rights defender to be smeared as a terrorist, and no reason they should ever die the way Father Swamy died, accused and detained, and denied his rights.”
Cardinal Oswald Gracias, Archbishop of Mumbai and President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India said: “Under Indian criminal law, one is innocent until proven guilty. Fr Stan’s case did not even come up for hearing. We were eagerly waiting for the case to be taken up and the truth to come out. I do hope that the truth will come out soon and his name will be cleared of all criminal conspiracy.”
Veteran journalist and human rights activist John Dayal poignantly noted: “Our hearts had foretold his death. It was clear that the State had, in cold blood, decided to wreak on him and others the full might of its vengeance for daring to speak for the poor and deprived.”
Some people have called for the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Stan Swamy. That will not happen: The Nobel Foundation decided in 1974 not to award any posthumously.
A realistic possibility would be the start of the years/decades-long process leading to the Vatican proclaiming Father Stan a saint who’d walked amidst us, having dedicated his life to serving the Adivasis.
Those of us non-Christians might at first glance have little right to suggest what the Catholic Church should do.
Yet we do: The Vatican is a member-state of the United Nations, its actions and policies open for public comment.
The Pope influences policies adopted around the world: rightly, as in many human rights activists’ views with the current Pope’s powerful denunciation of the death penalty, or wrongly, in the opinion of feminists who resent the Vatican’s opposition to their rights over their bodies. That said, Pope Francis seems to have distanced himself from fanatical US-based anti-abortion activists.
One of his immediate predecessors, Pope John Paul II, Polish-born, played not an insignificant part in precipitating the collapse of the ‘Eastern Bloc’, i.e., the vast Soviet Union and its allies.
The Second Vatican Council of the mid-1960s contributed to promoting the concept of universal human rights.
In 2013, when the Argentinian Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a Jesuit, i.e., a member of the Society of Jesus, as Father Stan was, got elected as Pope, he named himself after Saint Francis of Assisi, the 13th century Patron Saint of Animals.
It would be good if, during his Papacy, the process of proclaiming Father Stan as, perhaps, the ‘Patron Saint of Human Rights Defenders’ could begin.
Just so a ringing message goes out to India’s Hindutva supremacist establishment.
(The writer is a Bengaluru-based senior journalist)