The Miracle of Stan Swamy

Fr Stanislaus Lourduswamy did perform a miracle in death. Short-lived, perhaps, but as much a miracle as is possible in these hard, cynical times. And in the Bombay High court precincts at that which over their hoary history must have seen so much.

In the high court for some days had been an application by an 84-year-old Jesuit priest and social activist who wanted to be let off on medical bail as he was suffering from advanced Parkinson’s disease and Covid, and the special court of the National Investigation Agency had heartlessly thrown out his petition.

The High court had yet to take up the application. It was scheduled for a day later despite its urgency. When it did come up on 5 July 2021, the lawyer for Fr Stan, to use his popular name, told the bench the plaintiff had passed away a few hours earlier. The bench was speechless. The courtroom dead silent.

Days later, Stan’s counsel again approached the bench of Justices SS Shinde and NJ Jamadar that though the prisoner of the government was dead, his kin wanted his innocence to be recognized by the law of the land, the guilt heaped by the state on his reputation in their allegations of conspiracy in the Elgar Parishad removed so that the world could again see him for his hard work among the people.

Justice Shinde had said, “(We) cannot keep aside humane considerations while deciding medical bail applications. We have respect for his work. Legally, whatever was there against him is a different matter. He was wonderful, the kind of service he rendered to society.” The judge added that though he usually had no time to watch TV, he saw the online funeral service for Stan Swamy. “It was very dignified and graceful. Such graciously and honourably they performed it.”

These words would not go kindly with the government. The National Investigation Agency filed its objections. For them, not only had the Catholic priest exposed their callousness and cruelty to prisoners, the judiciary was praising the dead prisoner they wanted to show as a hardened criminal who had been party to a conspiracy on the life of the prime minister of the country. If there was a law, they would have demanded a posthumous life term for the man who was no longer in their cage.

Justice Shinde had no option but to fall in line, and withdraw his words.

But for those interim moments, the Indian court presented to the world a very human face, which could recognise the innate greatness of a person even as it adjudicated on some point of law.

We had then noted that if the unsolicited, absolutely spontaneous - miraculous - expression of regard for Stan was unprecedented as court procedures go, the whiting out of those precious sentences was no less resounding. The judge can honourably live with the fact that it was he who had on 28 May directed that the ailing Fr Stan be shifted immediately to a private hospital in Bandra from the prison infirmary. The erasing of those sentences would forever be an exposure of the pressure a political state can bring on a court of law.

On his 85th birth anniversary just over (April 26), there is renewed demand - more from secular society and activists than perhaps from within the church - that Pope Francis launch the process to beatify Fr Stan, make him a Saint of the Catholic church for his lifelong work in the empowerment of Adivasis, Dalits and the poorest of the poor that he made his family.

It would be appropriate too on several counts. The Pope has spoken of the poor, the indigenous, and the outcaste. He has also spoken powerfully of the earth, our home, of its treasures of water, forests, and resources. These were, in brief, the ambit of Fr Stan’s work among the people of central India, fighting political power’s close relationship with a corporatized world in stealing earth’s resources while also displacing the people who called the region their homes for an uncounted millennium.

But the ecclesiastical procedures and canonical processes of the Vatican in such matters are complex. Personally, I have no doubt that sooner than later, the process will start, but it requires a seamless cooperation between the Society of Jesus, which was Stan’s home and family, the local hierarchy in the Catholic Bishops Conference of India, and the common Catholic Laity whose pressure from the grassroots will be the defining force.

The short period that has passed since his death last year as a prisoner of the state has already seen him a people’s saint in the hearts and minds of his beloved Adivasis. They dispersed his ashes upon the land he had made his karma bhoomi, and on his birthday today, they will unveil his bust at Bagaicha on the outskirts of Ranchi where he lived, and from where he did his tireless work on teaching, training, researching, documenting, and writing about the issues and crisis the Adivasis face.

That documentation, and that training he gave several activists in his earlier years at the Indian Social Institute in Bangalore, have also cemented his place in the hearts and minds of two generations of civil society.

In his controversial incarceration and death in the clumsily formulated Elgar Parishad case, Stan got the international community to focus the spotlight on a matrix of issues which ordinarily do not get such attention. From world governments to international human rights organisations and even special rapporteurs of the United Nations, attention was drawn on the plight of undertrials in India’s teeming prisons, the special issue of those arrested under politically motivated cases, and finally those suffering grievous ailments or age-related issues while in prison.

Stan, the caged bird who sang in chorus with other comrades in prison, is beyond pain and hardship. But many others are in prison on trumped up cases and far-fetched charges. They are heart patients, paraplegics and just plain old people who want nothing more than a pair of spectacles. Or perhaps books by PG Wodehouse. Indian jail authorities do not like humour. They may suffer the singing of birds. But perhaps they cannot countenance people smiling.