From Indias largest newsroom, I'm Arun George and this is the
Times of India podcast. Mana Ki abhi tere mere armano Ki
Ki mat kuch bhi nahi mitti ka bhi hai.
Kuch mol Magar in Sano Ki Ki mat Kuch bhi nahi in Sano Ki E Jate.
Jab Jisdin Jute si ko ma toli na Jaye Ki Bo suba kabhi tohi.
That's trade unionist and human rights lawyer Sudha Bhardwaj
singing her favorite song pinned by Sahir Ludhianvi.
Sudha Bhardwaj has been out of the headlines for a while, so
let's refresh your memory. Sudha Bhardwaj is one of the 17
people arrested in what is called the Elgar Parishad case.
One of those accused and arrested in the case was Jesuit
priest Tan Swami, who died in custody in 2021.
The 17 people arrested in the case are accused of delivering
inflammatory speeches at the Elgar Parishad conclave in Pune
on the 31st of December in 2017. The Maharashtra police claimed
that the speeches triggered violence at the Bhima Koregaon
War Memorial, which is a significant place for the Dalit
community. The police claimed that the
Elgar Parishad event was backed by Maoist and the probe was
later taken up by the National Investigation Agency. 2 Hindutva
group leaders accused of making hate speeches before the Elgar
Parishad event never faced any serious charges.
Sudha Bharadwaj was granted bail in 2021.
She can't talk about the specifics of the case yet, but
she can talk about her new book titled From Fasi Yad, My Year
with the Women of Yerwada, which has just been released.
The book is an account of the world of women prisoners in
Yerwada jail in Pune, where Bhardwaj was launched for two
years in the high security wing that is called Fasi Yard.
My colleague Alka Dukar caught up with her at the house in
Mumbai that she's required to stay in as part of the
conditions for her being granted bail.
Among other things. Alka spoke with Sudha Bhardwaj
about her time in prison, what her book documents, why she's
still an optimist and the importance of dissidents in a
democracy. I don't know if we should
congratulate you on this book because, as you have named it,
Pasi Yard dedicated this book to all who are unjusticely
incarcerated. Do you count yourself in one of
those? Yes, I think I do.
But I think I'm one of many. Many people have been in Justly
Incarcerated. And yeah, that is why the book
is dedicated to them. One of your bail conditions says
that you must not leave Mumbai. You have described this
situation previously as you're in exile.
So would you like to elaborate on this?
How badly do you miss Chhattisgarh?
Actually at a very young age, at the age of 25 itself, I got
involved with the trade union. Of late, Comrade Shankar
Guhaniyogi and ever since then I have been in Chhattisgarh
working with the 1st in Delhi Rajara, then in Bhilai.
Then it was the trade union movement itself which made me a
lawyer. And then I shifted to Bilaspur
where we had a group of lawyers called Janhit.
So my entire life has been there and my friends, my colleagues,
my comrades, my young associates.
Everybody out there. So it is really exiled for me.
I miss everything about Chhattisgarh.
Are you a true Mumbaikar now? To be fried.
Oh yes, I find Mumbai still a very much working class city
even though all the mills have closed down.
It still has a very working class flavor about it, and now
that I've got used to travelling in the local trains and all that
one thing, I find that it's a very it's a very alive city.
It's a very, you know, all the time bustling, moving, and of
course, rents are prohibitively expensive.
I'm just very lucky that I have friends who were willing to
allow me to live in their houses, otherwise I couldn't
have afforded it. But yes, food.
Maybe you can purchase for ₹5 a meal and ₹5000 a meal.
Also, all kinds of people are here, and the city, in a sense,
embraces all of them. So I am also one in the crowd.
I feel embraced by this city. One of the things Sudha Bhardwaj
documents in her book is being forced to trade in her sarees
for the Salwar kurta in jail. When Alka spoke with her, she
was dressed in a blue kurta in Salwar.
She explains to Alka how the sari became a part of her life
and why she had to change what she wore in jail.
I used to wear Salwar Kutta in my early union days during the
Bhilai movement, which was the major movement of the contract
workers of Bhilai. So that time, during that
railroad Co agitation, there was a police firing, 17 people had
died, many people were in jail, some people were wounded, they
were in the hospital. And at that time I used to be
rushing around from place to place, sometimes to the
hospital, sometimes to the court, sometimes to the union
office. And I became very conspicuous
because of my Salwar Kurta, which is not a very normal race
in Chhattisgarh. Mostly grown up women wear
Saudi. I think just to, you know, be
normal like everybody else. In 1992, I just took a decision.
I'll only wear Saudi. And that continued till I was
arrested. I was surprised by the the jail
not permitting T-shirts and pants and so on.
And later on I realized that that is because the jail has a
concept of being feminine. And it is very concerned about
women who dress like men, because I think it also has that
typical stigma about lesbianism. So that is the real reason.
And that is why they insist that either you wear Salwar Kutta or
you wear Saadi. And because we have to wash all
our clothes and Saadi is too difficult to do so much of
washing, there's no space to dry it.
So yeah, so I shifted to Salwar Kurta, and I've continued with
that. Otherwise, for many, many years,
I had been wearing Saudi. Why would you name the book the
the name you have? Given from fancy yard, This was
me looking out from fancy yard it one.
When we went to Baikala we were in the barracks and it was
probably we had much more opportunity to talk and discuss
with other prisoners. But because there I'm more or
less became a lawyer. I was writing applications and
all that. So there's a certain ethics of
being a lawyer. You don't talk about your cases
to people. So that that's when my writing,
the stories about the women stopped and my notebooks were
only filled with you know, CR number, police station sections
and what is to be written in the application and all that because
we were in the in the in that single cell.
It would be surprising. How did I get to know these
stories at all? And that is what I've tried to
explain in in the section about how this book came to be
written. Which when we went for Mulaka,
or when we went to the courts, or when we went for canteen or
to the hospital or when we were queuing up to get the water or,
you know, these were the occasions on which we would bump
into these women and talk to them.
So actually the sketches were written when I felt that I knew
enough about a person, but it would happen over.
Many encounters with that person and that's where there's no date
or it's not really a diary, its gathering that and then when I
felt I knew a woman well enough then I would write about her.
How did you keep your connection with the outside world when you
were in? Prison As a prisoner under the
UAPA, we have restrictions on who can come and meet us, so it
is only either our lawyers or blood relatives.
They are very. Strict about that.
For example, people from my union could not come, so it
would be just lawyers and my daughter, basically, because I
don't have nobody else in my family really.
But yeah, when we went to the court.
Many people would come to the court to meet us, but they would
be restricted. They would not be allowed to
talk to us. They were kept at a distance.
We actually got a remarkable number of letters and postcards
in solidarity from all over the world.
But we were not given most of them because all letters which
go to the jail are censored. So actually it takes about a
week within the jail for those letters to be read and then
passed on to us. And most of these because they'd
say, who are these people? Unknown people are writing to
them. In Yedvada, I hear that many
people wrote to me on my birthday, but I never got those
letters. But in Baikala we were given
those letters and that was a beautiful thing.
And otherwise of course newspapers.
When we were in Yedvada, between Professor Sen and myself, we
would take The Indian Express and The Hindu and in Baikala we
would also take Mumbai Mirror. We really missed it when it
went. That was one of our favorite
newspapers of course in Baikala when we were in the barrack Then
there was the television also but you know how it is the
remote of the of the TV is with the Kambali.
So she is the one who decides which nagin serial we have to
see and which SAS bow serial we have to see.
Sometimes you know when there will be tea time.
Please, please, please 500 CDTV Dekhna dhna and then put on for
the to see what is the. The use of the farmer's
agitation or whatever it is. So that's how we we kept
ourselves in touch with the world.
True stories. You have portrayed life inside
the prison and the harsh realities which we are aware of.
But more details. But tell me about yourself.
How was your journey and how were your days inside prison?
Did you ever lose hope? How did you manage your stress
when bail was rejected? I think that is just, that is me
as a personality, that right from my young days and from the
age of 25 or so, I've always worked in collectives.
So I I worked with the trade union and in a collective of
lawyers in the UCL, always with groups and always with with a
lot of people. So it was very it was a very
isolating experience to be in the cell and I think.
Actually, my way of getting over what you're saying that, you
know, how did you feel my way of getting over was writing these
stories. I mean, this was really
cathartic for me that I was trying to make sense.
I was trying to reach out to these women without being able
to really reach out to them. It is not that it was an
unthinkable thing that happened to me, but of course when it
happens, it is shocking initially.
But I think the positive thing about me is that I am.
Very conscious that even in that situation we were still much
more privileged than most of the women around us.
Many of them were very poor, a lot of them were uneducated,
some of them were completely illiterate.
Many of them had been abandoned by their families.
They didn't have proper lawyers. They didn't know what was the
condition of their case. And in Baikala, I had no time.
Once they got to know that, you know, Aunty is a lawyer and
Aunty is ready to help and ready to write the applications in
triplicate in Hindi. I didn't know that much.
I didn't know Marathi, so I'd write it in Hindi for them.
And also that Auntie doesn't tell stories.
But Ted doesn't tell tales. She doesn't gossip about the
case. She doesn't talk about 1
prisoner to another prisoner. So when they got this idea about
me, they started lining up Auntie Mello.
Please charge sheet Pardo you know please write this
application for me. I would be busy sometime till
12:00 at night. I was writing the applications,
of course. The disappointment about bail
and all that in a way. When I came into jail, I told
myself, look, one has to just trust on friends outside that
they will get get me the best possible legal defense and one
just has to wait. So in that sense, I sort of
steeled myself for a long stay and that is why I didn't have to
suffer so much when bail was rejected so many times.
And that was deliberate. But yes, I really missed my
daughter. And I think my daughter really
missed me. I had come to Delhi thinking I
need to give time and place to my daughter.
It's a critical time in her career.
She needs some support. I need to earn something also to
put her through college. So it's ironical that that was
the time I was picked up. So at a time when I was acutely
aware that I need to give her time.
That is exactly the time when I was taken away from her, so this
is a bad time for her. When Sudha Bhardwad was released
on bail, one of the photos released by a friend on social
media showed her inside a car, smiling broadly at the camera.
It's a smile that pops up often during the interview as well.
Alka asked her about why even photos taken of her while she
was being arrested captured her smiling.
When the situation is very bizarre, when you don't even
understand, you know, why are you being picked up?
What is happening with you? Why is this happening with you?
As in, my reaction is to laugh. What else can you do?
So even just as to smile and bear it, and that is what I did.
There were very rare occasions when I would feel very bad most
of the time when I got. Letters from my daughter.
I would feel very bad because the letters were full of her
sadness or loneliness, difficulties that she was
having, and I knew that by the time I write the reply to her,
that moment will have come and gone.
I'm not able to comfort her. It was only on very few
occasions that that would happen, and otherwise I would
keep myself busy. We're back in conversation with
trade unionist and human rights lawyer Sudha Bhardwaj, who has
just released a book called From FASI Yard.
In this segment, Alka speaks to Sudha Bhardwaj about her entry
into trade unionism, what drives her activism, and what fuels her
hope that she will get justice one day.
So you were born in USA, you spent your primary school days
in England, grown up in JNU campus and then studied at IIT
Kanpur before pursuing law degree.
How did your educational journey impacted your?
Apart from mathematics, I also loved history.
I loved literature, particularly History of the Freedom struggle
I'm extremely interested in. And that passion remains with
me. The rigorous science background,
which I the study, which I did in IIT Kanpur for the
mathematics degree, I think helped me in a way logic and law
go well together. I became a lawyer only much
later, at the age of 40 or so, and that was because my union
needed a lawyer and. It's difficult for workers to
afford a lawyer, but what helped me the most was being with
people. What you learn from being there,
from living with people, from struggling with people.
It is when you try to change something that you understand
most about it, that's when you you really understand how things
work. The theory was important, but
the practice was far more important.
Highly educated person like you could have got into any foreign
university and focused on personal financial growth.
Why did you become a human rights activist or trade
unionist? You are mentioned in the book
that your parents return to India in response to the appeals
made for nation building efforts.
Do you have the satisfaction of continuing their legacy?
How did I come to those choices? I mean, it happened so gradually
and naturally that I it's difficult for me to really point
out exactly how and when. My parents also took choices of
this guy and my mother chose to return from Cambridge.
Chose to come and set up a centre for Economic Studies and
Planning. It was a centre of excellence
within the the JNU. It became one of the most
celebrated departments of economics in history in in in
political science and economics. They were really very original
minds working there in in that university.
So I think all that definitely had an impact when I started
interacting with the working class.
That is where I think what the whole shift.
From an academic or intellectual profession to deciding to go
with the Peoples movement, go with the union, that I think
that decision came to me pretty early.
It came to me during my my period in of study in IIT Kanpur
around the end of that. 8384 was the time when the Asiad was
happening and all those construction work was happening
in Delhi. And all these labourers were
being brought from Rajasthan, from Chhattisgarh, from the poor
rural areas, from the hinterland and being brought to construct
all these stadia and flyovers and all that.
There's a transformation in in. Delhi because of the virtually
bonded labor conditions of those workers.
And I think that was when I decided that, you know, I have
to pick my lot in win them and and it has to be a whole time
thing. It can't be a part time thing.
It has to be whole time. And then I was lucky enough that
we got introduced to Shankar Guhan Yogi.
And then when I went to Delhi Rajaratu, I was completely
floored by it and that that Union, it was such a experience
being part of it. It was like sitting in the lap
of the people. It was a bustling place and so
many experiments were being carried out and people were so
enthusiastic about it. And there there was a hospital,
there was schools being run by the union, there was the anti
alcohol movement and all that. And then gradually, when it came
to the Bhilai movement, then Neogi suggested that we should
get involved in the trade union itself.
Initially I thought that I will go and teach in the school there
and so on. But then I became part of the
union and then later the union workers told me to become a
lawyer. So I became a lawyer.
Did. You ever regret renouncing
American citizenship? Never.
Not for a moment. Never.
See, I am very much, very much an Indian.
My parents were Indian. Very much an Indian.
And from becoming an urban Indian, I wouldn't say I've
become a rural Indian. I've become very much a part of
Chhattisgarh and of that community of workers, and I've
interacted with workers and farmers and Adivasis from that
area. I consider myself completely
Chhattisgarhi. So what is the need to go to
America or anywhere else? Do you hold any passport now?
No. Ever since I renounced my
citizenship, I never got a passport made.
I didn't bother to get a passport made?
I asked this question because we know that the numbers of people
renouncing Indian citizenship is only growing every year today.
Be part of nation building efforts or not?
I don't know. It's difficult for me.
I mean, these are personal choices, but.
I believe that building the nation is not just the growth
concept, which is given that you know, the corporates are making
a lot of money, but the actual living conditions of people is
getting more and more miserable. That is not my idea of
development or my idea of growth.
My idea of growth and development is when peoples
lives become better. When they have a secure
livelihood, when they have a decent house to live in, when
the children can go to school, they have decent medical
facilities. When we are able to protect the
environment, we we at least have clean water and clean air.
So I think those things are worth fighting for and working
for. And and this is my country, I I
have to work and fight here. So you started your first formal
job at the age of 58. It went on for a couple of years
and then three years in prison. Did you try to get employment
after you released on bail? Well, it was at the age of 58
and I was only lucky enough to teach for a year.
I love teaching in the National Law University.
I was fortunate enough to teach there.
And I had some marvellous students and I thoroughly
enjoyed teaching there. In fact, I had been given an
extension, so I would have probably taught for another year
at least, had I not been arrested after coming out.
I have really not tried for a formal employment because I am
quite aware that it will be very difficult for any university,
Oregon, any institution to take me up as an employee because of
this case and so on. I'm very lucky that I'm a lawyer
and Lloyd is an independent intellectual in that sense, and
they're sort of self-employed at the moment.
Basically it is unions which are supporting me.
I do legal cases for them and I'm lucky enough to be
associated with the senior advocate for whom I'm able to
draft cases and so on. So basically it is my legal work
which sustains me. A person like you has social
capital, but general assumptions or biases are that human
activists like. You get a lot of foreign
funding. Well, I think somebody just
needs to look at my bank account and they'll get to know that the
only regular money which came in was when I taught for that one
year. And no, I have never been funded
by anybody before. It was my union which supported
me throughout my years in Chhattisgarh.
Later on, to some extent, yes. My legal work, I never earned
money. I earned a lot of friends.
I think that is what I really earned, and that is what has
helped me instead. I mean, that is why I'm
surviving today. I think again, not because of
money, but because of friends. You were saying that when you
walked out of jail you had nothing in your bank account.
I had nothing. That's absolutely correct.
You have called yourself a constitution abiding person, but
do you feel that people like you were looked up as dissidents in
current time? See, being a dissident is not
being anti democratic. A democracy demands dissidents
of certain kind. For example, a democracy
requires a Free Press, and the Free Press is a critical press.
Democracy demands that there should be a an opposition.
Without an opposition, you can't have a democracy.
So certain kinds of dissidents are built into democracy.
And I think as a lawyer, as a trade unionist, as a human
rights activist, it's perfectly constitutional to be a dissident
in that form. In fact, it's required in order
that you actually have a, you know, living, growing democracy.
So for you, what is the true meaning of freedom?
I think the true meaning of freedom is to be able to what
one thinks is right, to be able to be with people and what I've
done all my life. Which is be with people, be
along with them in their fight to have a better society.
That is my greatest freedom within whatever limitations.
I mean, I have to be here in Mumbai and I can't go back to
the place of my work. That's why I call it an exile.
But Despite that, I would say within my restrictions, I'm
still continuing with my life. In the same way.
How do you and your daughter prepare for the future?
Being lodged inside the jail one more time cannot be ruled out,
right? I think this is the reality that
we have to face. I mean I am still only out on
bail. The trial is extending ahead of
us, though I believe that I will be acquitted.
But trial is yet to happen and the the judgment is yet to be
passed. Do you ever discuss this
possibility? My daughter doesn't like
discussing it and I quite see why.
I just hope that I get the time at least to help her stand on
her own feet before such an eventuality comes.
And I also hope that we will all be acquitted of this case.
Do you believe that you will get justice from the system?
I think justice and equality are two things which are very innate
to the human being. Even if they're two very small
children and you give one child one roti, give another child 2
rotis, the child with one roti will throw away that one roti
and say you give me just like that person.
So the sense of equality and justice is very deep inside us,
and I believe that that cannot be suppressed for long.
Even if for some time in a system it appears that these
these very basic fundamental emotions are being suppressed,
it cannot go on forever. No kind of suppression, no kind
of tyranny can last forever. It's not possible.
So you are an optimist and. Very much I believe in, in
humanity, I believe in people, and I think they're powerful
enough sometime or the other to make those changes.
Today's episode was produced by Jayaraj Singh and Anuja Singh.
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