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- INDIA
The ‘aam aadmi’ making so much noise in Delhi today is from Uttar Pradesh (UP). Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) strategist and lead orator Sanjay Singh is a UP boy from Sultanpur. He believes now is the time for ‘jung’ (struggle) and not ‘jashan’ (celebration). Born in a family of teachers he learnt his first lesson in social justice at home when he saw his parents focused on educating children of the poorest of the poor.
Singh was three years old when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had declared a state of national Emergency in 1975, suspending civil liberties. Singh grew up listening to stories of the time when life was dark and dangerous for citizens. Those days when PM Gandhi had invoked Articles 352 and 356 of the Indian Constitution to grant herself extraordinary powers.
Civil rights and political Opposition was silenced and the government had used police force across the country to put thousands of protestors and political leaders under preventive detention. Repression by the state had continued unabated till 1977 when the state of Emergency was mercifully ended, and national elections were announced.
However, once elections were finally announced, all political prisoners were released from prison and allowed to canvas and contest the elections in a free and fair way.
During the Emergency all elections had been postponed and thousands of political activists were arrested along with ordinary criminals. There was a crackdown on trade unions and on strikes. Worker’s bonus and wages were frozen.
Coal miners received irregular salaries and complaints by workers and unions about dangerous working conditions were met with more repression.
Memories of the government’s compulsory sterilisation program to limit the population, continue to chill the bones to the marrow. Under an urban renewable program, and in an attempt to beautify cities, dwellings of the poorest of the poor were bulldozed without care for the homeless.
In Delhi alone some 700,000 people were displaced due to the demolition drive of those draconian days when no alternative housing was provided to the homeless.
Singh grew up despising dictatorial tendencies in politics, he cherished democracy. When Singh came of age, he founded the Sultanpur Samaj Sewa Sangathan in 1994. He lived and worked with the poor, organising blood donation camps and street fighting for the rights of people.
He supported a movement to clean the River Gomti, and protested against the corruption within the river cleaning project of the UP government. He worked for hawker’s rights for 16 years where he met socialists Raghu Thakur and Sandeep Pandey.
Who Caused Communal Polarisation?
Raghu Thakur is a socialist who blames the Congress party for the communal polarisation that the country’s politics suffers today. Sanjay Singh felt the same way.
Thakur says that after independence of the country in 1947, the Congress had turned a blind eye to the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) that was strengthening itself as a political party.
The Congress did this in order to weaken the socialist movement in the country. It is the Congress that encouraged the country to go on the religious path. The Congress had naively believed that not many Indians would ever support the right wing Hindutva of the BJS that was founded in 1951 and had merged with the Janata Party in 1977, giving birth later to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Socialists continue to believe that the Congress took the Muslim voter for granted and wrongly thought that Muslims would continue to support the Congress forever. The result is that over half a century, the BJP has succeeded in uniting many more Hindu voters than anyone could have ever imagined, while the socialist movement is almost dead in the country.
The Socialists who neither follow the Hindu nor Muslim religionists don’t know which side to take in the deeply polarised politics of the day. The losers, unfortunately, are the large majority of citizens who do not believe in messing with the lethal cocktail of one sip of politics with two sips of religion.
Although socialism is what the country perhaps needs most today, the socialists are convinced that it is not in the interest of either the BJP or the Congress to share power with any other political party. The Socialist movement may be powerless today but socialist ideas are alive and kicking and wait, to be addressed.
Meet Sandeep Pandey
Sandeep Pandey runs the Asha Trust in Lucknow which imparts free education to children in many districts of UP. The social activist also campaigns for peace and disarmament across the world.
He returned the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award given to him in 2002 as a protest against America’s blatant support to Israel on Gaza. Pandey also returned his dual Master of Science degrees earned from American universities.
Pandey said that the Magsaysay Award is primarily funded by Rockefeller Foundation and the category in which he had received the award is funded by the Ford Foundation, both American foundations. Pandey apologised to the people of the Philippines as the award is named after a former president Ramon Magsaysay of the country.
A Socialist At Heart
Despite a diploma in mining engineering, Sanjay Singh chose a career in politics. A socialist at heart, it is not surprising that the first political party Singh joined was the Samajwadi Party.
He was at the forefront of the anti-corruption movement that featured Anna Hazare, and later became one of the founders of the Aam Aadmi Party in 2012. The social activist turned politician is a Rajya Sabha member who feels that the people are fed up with the working style of traditional political parties and want to change the political system.
Singh’s biggest challenge is to prevent the AAP from becoming and functioning exactly like the traditional political parties he is so critical of.
The grassroots activist was arrested six months ago and released on bail earlier this week. Welcomed by his supporters as he stepped out of jail, Singh said not to celebrate but to continue the struggle for lasting justice. He would rather die than fear his political opponents, he said.
His father Dinesh Singh greeted his son when he came out of jail and said that it was a special moment for him, his family, party workers and the party. His mother Radhika Singh cried on hearing that her son was granted bail by the Supreme Court after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had arrested him in the Delhi liquor policy case.
Singh was arrested on money laundering charges and was in Delhi's Tihar Jail since October last year in the alleged excise policy scam. His colleagues arrested Manish Sisodia and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal weeks before a crucial general election. The AAP leader's previous bail pleas were turned down, with the High Court saying in February that "no ground" for relief had been made.
Singh was arrested from his home in the national capital and before the ED officials took him away, Singh had walked to his mother's room and touched her feet. He sought her blessings and walked out before she could react.
The news of her son's bail early this week has made her very happy. Singh is the first top AAP leader to get bail in the case.
The Supreme Court, however, posed several questions to the ED and asked why he was jailed for over six months without a trial or recovery of the alleged bribe of two crore. "Nothing has been recovered... there is no trace (of the 100 crore the AAP allegedly received as bribes for allotting liquor licences to the 'South Group')..." the top court told the ED.
