Civil society pushes on, holds Stan Swamy lecture

Irfan Engineer condemned the suppression of free expression at the Stan Swamy Memorial Lecture, highlighting resistance against political intimidation and rights violations.

MUMBAI: “This lecture is an act of resistance; resistance to suppression of freedom of expression, resistance to bulldozing our democracy and constitution, resistance to an attempt to intimidate marginalised sections of society and educational institutions, in what can be taught, what lectures are arranged, and what cannot, and their being dictated by Hindu nationalist organisations, which have a political agenda and muscle power to exercise it,” said Irfan Engineer, director of the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism (CSSS).

Civil society pushes on, holds Stan Swamy lecture

Engineer was introducing ‘Migration for Livelihood, Hope Amidst Miseries’, the annual Stan Swamy Memorial Lecture hosted by 58 civil society groups, at the Yashwantrao Chavan Centre, at Nariman Point, on Saturday.

If Engineer appeared to be off-topic, he wasn’t. Through his diatribe, he was referencing the cancellation of the previous edition of the lecture scheduled for August 9 at St Xavier’s College. The lecture series will be held every year in memory of Jesuit priest Father Stan Swamy, who died in custody during his trial in the Bhima Koregaon-Elgar Parishad case in 2021.

The previous edition of the lecture was cancelled due to opposition from the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the students’ wing of the right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

“In his death,” said Mihir Desai, Father Stan Swamy’s lawyer in the case, “he has become a martyr, and has become a force of inspiration for many.”

Chair of the lecture, advocate Indira Jaising, said a few words on Father Swamy’s work. “He was enforcing the rights of the adivasis as enshrined in the Forest Rights Act, which had been snatched away starting with the British, who did not recognise the tillers’ right to the land they cultivate,” she said. Swamy, she underscored, was fighting to empower the adivasis from a life without dignity.

Father Prem Xalxo, SJ, an associate lecturer at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, said the slow erosion of forest rights and scarcity of resources have made the lives of many tribals unlivable. Once dependent on forest produce, they have since been forced to migrate to metropolitan cities as unskilled labour, he said.

“Teenage tribal girls from many states are forced to migrate to cities and work as cheap domestic labour, where they are vulnerable to physical, sexual and psychological abuse,” said Father Xalxo, with accompanying case studies of such abuse.

The lecture received overwhelming support. While the auditorium was packed to capacity, online channels brought in additional participants. As the lecture ended and the hall emptied, Father Stan Swamy’s spirit lingered in the silence, as if to say, “As long as the struggle for justice endures, he lives on.”