Human Rights Day parade held in Dadar

Sixty odd activists chose the dreaded evening peak hour at Dadar station on Thursday to bring out a procession to mark Human Rights Day.

Sixty odd activists chose the dreaded evening peak hour at Dadar station on Thursday to bring out a procession to mark Human Rights Day.

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The activists deliberately chose to negotiate an impossible route to alert Mumbaiites about the denial of human rights to certain marginalised groups in the country. “We live in times where demonstrative action has become non-existent. Such processions are necessary to highlight the indiscriminate attacks against tribals. There is no transparency about what’s going on in the Chattisgarh forests and this should not be allowed in a democracy,” said activist and documentary filmmaker, Anand Patwardhan.

Dressed in black, with ‘Defend the right to dissent’ inscribed on their t-shirts, the parade snaked through busy streets chanting slogans — ‘Ek do Ek do privatisation ko phek do (one two, one two, get rid of privatisation)’, ‘bhooka nanga Hindustan kahan hai mera Bharat Mahan (hungry, naked Hindustan, where is my great Bharat)’.

“As part of our course we are encouraged to align with a cause. Tribals need our support because they are being deprived of most basic rights,” said Vijay Dahiya (23), a student of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.