As the indefinite strike by workers at Samsung’s Sriperumbudur plant entered its second month, labour law and industrial disputes expert and retired High Court judge K Chandru questioned why the Tamil Nadu government’s Labour Department was dragging its feet over the matter, stating that the responsibility of registering the union was not on Samsung

Retired HC Judge K Chandru
Written by:TNM Staff
Published on:
13 Oct 2024, 4:23 pm
As the indefinite strike by workers at Samsung’s Sriperumbudur plant entered its second month, labour law and industrial disputes expert and retired High Court judge K Chandru questioned why the Tamil Nadu government’s Labour Department was dragging its feet over the matter, stating that the responsibility of registering the union was not on Samsung.

The registration of Samsung India Workers Union (SIWU) is the main demand of hundreds of Samsung workers who have been protesting since September 9. They submitted the paperwork online with the state Labour Department on July 25. According to the law, the union must be registered within 45 days of sending the application to the Department. But the workers received no word from the government for much longer than the stipulated time, triggering the protests.

he company opposes the move due to the use of “Samsung” in the union’s name and political backing from the CPI(M)-linked Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU).

In an interview to TNM’s Shabbir Ahmed, Justice Chandru remarked that foreign companies establishing their plants in India usually demand that the government should not allow any unions.

“It is the fundamental right of workers to form an association as per the Constitution. This includes trade unions, which was accepted by the Supreme Court in 1965. Even though there is no compulsory recognition, there is no discretion vest with the labour court to refuse the registration of a union. Under the Trade Unions Act, 1926, the workers must represent 10% of the total workforce. The labour commissioner can even recommend for the recognition of the union. It is the first time in Tamil Nadu that the department is dragging its feet on three grounds — not being able to handle the issue, not being able to reveal the secret understanding of this investment, and using the police to weaken the bargaining power of protesters,” he said.

He further said that when it comes to labour rights and issues, there is not much difference between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the national level and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) at the state level. “The governments do not have well laid out policies to deal with labour issues. The only way to secure the conditions of workers is to recognise collective bargaining. While former chief minister CN Annadurai attempted to solve the problems and maintained absolute neutrality, we now have stereotyped answers. Ministers say that they are doing everything but still the union has not been recognised,” he said. He added that the workers do not go to court as they believe that justice will be given to them.

In the evening of October 10, Tamil Nadu police detained around 300 workers despite the Madras High Court permitting the employees to carry out a peaceful protest. CITU filed a contempt petition against the Sriperumbudur police for illegally detaining around 300 workers. A special application was also filed at the Sriperumbudur judicial magistrate to ensure that the workers are released immediately.

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A stolen life: Remembering GN Saibaba, who the State kept imprisoned over a decade
For those who knew him, GN Saibaba was a staunch human rights activist, a beloved professor and comrade, and a doting husband. He breathed his last on October 12.
Illustration by Bhuvan Malik
Illustration by Bhuvan Malik
Written by:Anjana Meenakshi
Edited by:Maria Teresa Raju
Published on:
13 Oct 2024, 6:22 pm
No matter how grave a crime, or how big a gangster, they aren’t placed in the anda (egg-shaped) cell in Nagpur Central Prison. In the prison’s 90-year-old history, I think I was the only one who was put there — Dr GN Saibaba.

On a dull day in May 2014, a posse of policemen stopped a car to drag out a wheel-chair bound Literature professor. The events that followed hardly merit the term dull. What former Delhi University professor Dr GN Saibaba went through for 10 years since that May 9, till March this year, was aptly described by him as an agni pariksha (trial by fire), stoked by the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).

Saibaba was arrested, along with five others, under the draconian UAPA for alleged association with the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist). It didn’t matter that the evidence was flimsy — the prosecution named bananas, umbrellas, and newspapers as items used by Naxalites to identify each other and cited the presence of Naxalite literature as “proof of terrorist activity”.

The accused were charged under five sections of the UAPA, read alongside Section 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Each time the accused were acquitted by a lower court, the state appealed to the Supreme Court to ensure that the acquittal was stayed.

In March 2024, Saibaba was released along with four other co-accused (the fifth, Pandu Narote, died in prison). From then on until his death, Saibaba, who had been paralysed by polio, underwent several health crises.

He drew his last breath on Saturday, October 12, at Hyderabad’s Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) surrounded by doctors attempting to resuscitate his collapsing heart. At 8.36 pm, the professor was declared dead. He was 58.

His death warrants that we return to a simple yet essential question — who is GN Saibaba? Those unfamiliar with his case can easily dub him a ‘Naxal’. But for those who knew him and for the civil society and journalists who followed the case, many glorious splinters stand out and pierce. A staunch human rights activist of the Left, a beloved professor and comrade, and a doting husband form the parts that encapsulate his personhood.

A staunch human rights activist

For Saibaba, the dream of being a teacher and fighting for social causes was first realised during his Master’s at the University of Hyderabad (UoH). Up until then, his life had been confined to Amalapuram, a town in the former East Godavari district.

Their idealism led Saibaba and his wife Vasantha, who eventually joined him in Hyderabad, to participate in several mass movements as he pursued his PhD, and even after that. Saibaba toured several villages across India and until 2008 did so with crutches and the physical assistance of co-activists and villagers who showed him around.

In 1997, he participated in a seminar at the All India People’s Resistance Forum to shed light on how the achievements of post Independence India was nothing more than a “mere transfer of power”. He spoke at length about the need for agrarian movements like those in Chhattisgarh’s Dandakaranya, and in Bihar and Andhra Pradesh.

As the deputy secretary of the now banned Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF), Saibaba spearheaded the All India People’s Resistance Forum against state repression in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar in 1999. A total of 50 solidarity programmes were held for this campaign in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Punjab, Delhi, Assam, West Bengal, Maharashtra, and Gujarat.

While a part of the academia, Saibaba slammed any state offensive against Adivasis. His critique of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s Operation Green Hunt was scathing. A paramilitary offensive carried out in 2009, the operation made no distinction between arms-carrying militants and Adivasis residing in what was dubbed the red corridor, that is, certain districts between Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal. Saibaba criticised the burning of Adivasi huts, the murder of men at random, and rapes.

“I gathered enough evidence that suggested that the ruling class wanted access to [Adivasi] resources, no matter what. Operation Green Hunt was launched to kill, maim, and dislodge them,” Saibaba told The Hindu in 2012.

He played a key role in propelling the resistance launched by the RDF to stop investors from taking over tribal land for mining. He was also one among the many who pushed for the release of political prisoners like Afzal Guru. He protested in favour of SC, ST, and OBC students for the proper implementation of the reservation policy at Delhi University.

In 2021, Delhi University terminated his employment following the UAPA case against him. However, he was not reinstated after his acquittal.

Post his release, Saibaba wanted to work on education for the marginalised.

“If you look at the current state of the education system, you will see that government schools and colleges are being left for the SC, ST, and OBC students. All the private and central educational institutions are for the elite populations of the country. Dalit and Adivasi students don’t have access to these institutions, these liberal universities, and they are constantly discriminated against in these spaces. This needs to change. The Dalit and Adivasi students are being pushed into government schools. The shiny corporate universities and central universities are for the rich. As a result, students from the marginalised communities are suffering,” he told the Supreme Court Observer in March 2024.

In August 2024, Saibaba told media persons in Hyderabad that if there was one wish he wanted to fulfil, it was to teach again in a classroom. Sadly, that dream perished with him.

Assaulted by the State

For Saibaba’s supporters, it is beyond question that it was his decade-long incarceration that led to his deteriorating health and painful death. At a cultural event held in Hyderabad last month, Saibaba spoke about how the prison authorities would take him to the hospital for appearances sake, only to bring him right back to the anda cell without proper medical attention. “They didn’t give me the medicines I needed. They gave me sleeping pills, drugged me continuously, and gave me Diclofenac for pain. My left arm was broken in the rough handling during my arrest, and that affected my spine and nervous system,” he said.

His wife Vasantha had spoken at length about how his health was disregarded and how he possibly contracted COVID-19 while in prison and was still denied treatment. Slowly, his paralysis worsened, he underwent a gallbladder surgery a week ago, and his kidney stopped functioning a day before his demise.

Saibaba’s isn’t the first account of the state’s assault on a human body. In fact, the physiological torture of political prisoners jailed under UAPA is hardly news. In November 2020, tribal rights activist Stan Swamy was denied a sipper and straw despite the fact that he was coping with Parkinson’s disease, which causes involuntary muscle spasms. Swamy passed away in jail after his bail was denied on several counts.

Following Swamy’s demise, Saibaba wrote to Vasantha, “You might hear of another Stan Swamy if no treatment is provided [to me].”

A political separation

The story of Saibaba’s incarceration is also the story of Vasantha’s ordeals.

“Sai, do you remember?” she once wrote to him in jail, “When we met for the first time in class 10, you were having trouble solving a few questions in Maths. I was the one who taught you how to solve them. In turn, you taught me English grammar. It was very difficult for us in our adolescence to stay apart without seeing each other for even four days! Look at how things are now — we have to stay apart from each other, with countless obstacles and hundreds of miles blocking our meetings, for who knows how long.”

Vasantha told me in 2021 that meeting Saibaba in jail was always tricky. “I can’t speak English well. They didn’t allow us to speak in Telugu. So several meetings passed without much being said.” She was quick to add, “But no matter what, I refuse to cry. Even a single tear will be all the testimony the authorities need to flaunt their victory. I don’t want that.”

In several interviews, Vasantha has spoken about their all-encompassing love for each other. A partnership in equal measure, she was and still remains committed to social justice, keeping a part of Saibaba still alive.

His collection of prison poems and essays begins with Vasantha’s ‘Introduction: Letter to Sai’. She recounted how they read Tagore, Premchand, Periyar, Ranganayakkam, and several other revolutionaries together, strengthened by the confidence that “a new society would certainly emerge, where caste divisions, religious differences, and gender discrimination would perish.”

A literary man, in his own words

In multiple speeches since his release, Saibaba emphasised on how literature, specifically poetry, is the only medium to resist pain. “At first, I felt anger at how unjustly I was treated in prison. But then I met others — people who were incarcerated for stealing food, a man dying in front of me, people who were charged for crimes of necessity. To translate all that and to explain it, only poetry sufficed as a medium,” he remarked.

Saibaba spoke of a certain poetic empathy that replaced his anger, or rather made it universal. As Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o wrote of Saibaba in the essay ‘A continuous ode to life’, “His personal anguish at being uprooted from his family and community becomes also that of the farmers and Adivasi people uprooted from their land to give way to mining corporations.”

This rings true as the deceased professor informed grievers:

The world of love takes shape

in your acts of struggle for it

or when he makes a case for verse:

It’s poetry, stupid

It’s stupendous poetry

It doesn’t need weapons

To smelt break the iron heels of history.

GN Saibaba’s love, struggle, and literature trifecta is summarised in his letter to Anjum, the Muslim trans woman character from Arundhati Roy’s novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, whom he wrote to from prison.

“You are a unique human being in the history of human society. That is the reason why I ask you to work for my freedom. Who else can be the befitting person to campaign for my release? I am sure that you will definitely take up my cause.”

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A IPS officer investigating an illegal mining case against Kumaraswamy has filed a complaint alleging that the Union minister is threatening him .
File Photo of HD Kumaraswamy
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Written by:TNM Staff
Published on:
13 Oct 2024, 5:51 pm
An IPS officer has alleged that Union Minister HD Kumaraswamy is hindering a probe pertaining to illegal mining cases in which he is an accused and has filed a complaint in this regard at the Sanjaynagar Police Station in Bengaluru.

IPS officer M Chandrasekhar, who is in charge of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of Karnataka Lokayukta which is investigating illegal mining cases, has alleged that Kumaraswamy and his son Nikhil Kumaraswamy were trying to obstruct the ongoing investigation in a 2007 case in which the minister is an accused.

In his letter to the police, Chandrasekhar has alleged that Kumaraswamy held press meets in September and made “false & malicious allegations” against him, and threatened to transfer him to another state. “The accused Sh.H.D.Kumaraswamy, who is incidentally a Union Cabinet Minister, has misused his official position and is using all his MIGHT to illegally obtain documents and to scuttle the investigation in these cases,” he said.

In his letter to the police, Chandrasekhar has alleged that Kumaraswamy held press meets in September and made “false & malicious allegations” against him, and threatened to transfer him to another state. “The accused Sh.H.D.Kumaraswamy, who is incidentally a Union Cabinet Minister, has misused his official position and is using all his MIGHT to illegally obtain documents and to scuttle the investigation in these cases,” he said.

The SIT is investigating Kumaraswamy for granting mining licences to Sri Venkateshwara Minerals and had sought the governor’s sanction to prosecute Kumaraswamy, who obtained bail in the August 2015 case.

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‘Institutional murder’: Activists, politicians mourn GN Saibaba’s death
He was 58 when he breathed his last at Hyderabad’s Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) after reportedly suffering a cardiac arrest.
Professor GN Saibaba
Professor GN SaibabaTwitter/Nalin Verma
Written by:TNM Staff
Published on:
13 Oct 2024, 5:00 pm
Professor and activist Gokarakonda Naga Saibaba passed away on October 12, just seven months after his acquittal in a case in which he was alleged to have links with the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist). He was arrested and incarcerated under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) for the past 10 years. During the period of his 10-year incarceration, he had complained of harrowing ill-treatment and torture meted out by jail authorities. Though he had permanent polio-paralysis, jail authorities had even refused to hand over his medication. He was 58 when he breathed his last at Hyderabad’s Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) after reportedly suffering a cardiac arrest.

“Prof. G.N. Saibaba’s passing away is a profound loss for the human rights community. A tireless advocate for the oppressed, he fearlessly fought against injustice, even when his own freedom and health were at risk. His courage in defending civil liberties, despite many challenges, will be remembered as an enduring example of integrity. My sincere condolences to his family and loved ones during this difficult time,” Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin said.

Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi also held the government responsible for his death: “His death was also partly a result of the UAPA that allows cops to keep you in prison for lengthy periods without any evidence.”

Former Kerala finance minister Thomas Isaac said, “PM Modi and HM Amit Shah, the blood of Prof. G.N. Saibaba is in your hands. He was murdered by your incarceration and torture. Whom are you trying to teach a lesson? More people will be emboldened to come out to resist your fascistic regime.”

MP Saket Gokhale called his death a “murder” and added, “This murder was perpetrated by the govt which framed him in a false case & then the judicial system which denied him personal liberty for over 10 years & even went to the shocking extent of “staying” his acquittal.”

“Incarcerated by the Indian state on charges of being a Maoist sympathizer, Prof Saibaba, with 90 percent disabilities, spent close to a decade in prison, and was often kept under the harshest solitary confinement. Housed in prison, his radical poetry addressed the colonial nature of the Indian legal system even as it addressed the many social evils that plague us as a nation,” writer and activist Meena Kandasamy said.

Actor Swara Bhaskar said that it was “criminal” that the Union government gets away with institutional murders, referring to the deaths of Fr Stan Swamy and Saibaba. Jesuit priest and human rights activist Stan Swamy was arrested in connection with the Bhima Koregaon-Elgar Parishad case

“The passing of G N Saibaba is reminder that preventive detention has no place in a true democracy. For decades, every government has introduced draconian laws that allow the state to keep a person in custody for extended periods, all in the name of preventive-ness. He lost a decade of his life,” musician TM Krishna said.

The CPI(M) alleged that the Narendra Modi-led Union government was responsible for his demise, while mourning his death. “He was denied bail for years. He was denied medical treatment urgently required for a person with such acute disabilities. His was a life dedicated to fighting for justice, facing torture with courage. The responsibility for his death lies with the Modi govt. In sorrow and anger at the injustice he suffered we salute this brave fighter for justice. We express deep condolences to his wife, Vasantha, and daughter, Manjeera,” the party said.

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VIDEO
Justice Chandru on Samsung Protest: DMK, BJP policies on Labour Issues are identical | MK Stalin
The ongoing protest by Samsung employees in Tamil Nadu has intensified as the police have begun a crackdown on striking workers, detaining several of them. The Tamil Nadu government’s handling of the protest has drawn widespread criticism. At the heart of the dispute is the registration of the CITU-affiliated Samsung India Workers Union (SIWU), which the company opposes due to the use of the patented “Samsung” name and the union’s political backing from the CPI(M). Efforts by the state government ministers T.M Anbarasan, TRB Raaja, CV Ganesan to mediate between the management and the majority of the striking workers have failed, leading to a deadlock. TNM’s Shabbir Ahmed speaks to Former Madras High Court Justice K Chandru, a labor law expert, about the employees’ right to form a union and the ongoing protest.
Written by:
Shabbir Ahmed
Published on:
13 Oct 2024, 4:25 pm
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