Gujarat cops detain Jignesh Mevani, Kanhaiya Kumar, Reshma Patel in Mehsana, stop Una anniversary Azadi Kooch

Kanhaiya Kumar, Jignesh Mevani, Reshma Patel

Tens of activists, including top Gujarat Dalit rights leader Jignesh Mevani, Jawaharlal Nehru University student leader Kanhaiya Kumar and Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti leader Reshma Patel, were detained on Wednesday for holding Azadi Kooch or Freedom March from North Gujarat town Mehsana, about 60 kilometres from Ahmedabad.
Azadi Kooch was part of Mevani’s Rashtriya Dalit Adhikar March’s state-wide protests to mark anniversary of the gruesome Una Dalit flogging incident, which shook India last year. Permission for taking out the Azadi March, granted on June 27, was revoked by the Gujarat police on July 8, citing possible law and order problems.
According to Mevani, the permission was cancelled “at the behest of deputy chief minister Nitin Patel.” Patel belongs to Mehsana, and is said to have been feeling jittery over political influence slipping out his hand, with Patels joining Dalits in the protest rally.

Detained Azadi Kooch leaders

The Azadi Kooch began at Somnath Chowk in the afternoon in Mehsana with Dalit and Patel leaders coming together to protest against the Gujarat government.
Those who joined the Azadi Kooch meeting at Somnath Chowk included prominent participants of the week-long Kisan Mukti Yatra, a farmers’ march being taking out across India. It began its Gujarat leg on Tuesday at Vyara in South Gujarat.
Those present included Swarajya Abhiyan’s Yogendra Yadav, CPI-M leader Hannan Mollah, Maharashtra farmers’ leader Raju Shetty, senior Mines and Minerals and People activist Ashok Shrimali, Adivasi Ekta Parishad’s Ashok Chowdhury, Khedut Samaj-Gujarat (KSG) leader Sagar Rabari, and Gujarat Lokhit Samiti’s Nita Mahadev.
Addressing people who had gathered at Somnath Chowk, Yadav said, this was a “great moment” for him, as farmers and Dalits have stood together in their struggle. Soon after the Kisan Mukti Yatra left Mehsana towards Rajasthan to continue with its march, the cops swooped on leaders of the Azadi Kooch.

Kisan Mukti Yatra leaders in Mehsana

“Somnath Chowk is significant, as it is the same spot which saw some of the worst anti-Dalit riots in 1981 and 1985, triggering a Patel-Dalit divide. This was for the first time after so many years that the two communities came on one platform”, Shirmali, who belongs to Gujarat, told Counterview.

Meanwhile, Mevani has claimed, his and his leaders' detention took place immediately after a Sangh Parivar cadre tried to attack him by “seeking to drive his motorbike” through his leg.
Soon after the incident, Mevani appealed to activists across India, though a social media message, to “phone up Gujarat director-general of police Geetha Johri (9978406287), asking her to provide solid police protection and grant permission for Azadi Kooch.”
The Azadi Kooch was proposed to continue for a week, and end at Dhanera, a small town in Banaskantha district, on July 18. A Mevani aide said, they were expecting the Gujarat government to arrest them.

Unza Dalits listen to Azadi Kooch leaders

The police claimed it detained 17 persons, an FIR was registered under IPC section 143 against them for being a part of an illegal assembly, and after some time were let go afterwards.
Late at night, the Azadi Kooch leaders addressed a largely Dalit gathering at Unza town, known for being biggest and richest agricultural marketing yard for cash crops in North Gujarat.

Comments

Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management

While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi , authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link .

Environmental report raises alarm: Sabarmati one of four rivers with nonylphenol contamination

A new report by Toxics Link , an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund , a global non-profit headquartered in New York, has raised the alarm that Sabarmati is one of five rivers across India found to contain unacceptable levels of nonylphenol (NP), a chemical linked to "exposure to carcinogenic outcomes, including prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women."

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.

Tracking a lost link: Soviet-era legacy of Gujarati translator Atul Sawani

The other day, I received a message from a well-known activist, Raju Dipti, who runs an NGO called Jeevan Teerth in Koba village, near Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. He was seeking the contact information of Atul Sawani, a translator of Russian books—mainly political and economic—into Gujarati for Progress Publishers during the Soviet era. He wanted to collect and hand over scanned soft copies, or if possible, hard copies, of Soviet books translated into Gujarati to Arvind Gupta, who currently lives in Pune and is undertaking the herculean task of collecting and making public soft copies of Soviet books that are no longer available in the market, both in English and Indian languages.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members. As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu. The most striking comment came from BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, who stated : "When a train derailed in the 1950s, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned. On the same morality, I demand PM Modi, HM Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Naidu resign so that a free and fair inquiry can be held. All that Modi and his associates have been doing so far is gallivanting, which must stop." Amidst widespread mourning, some fringe elements sought to communalize the tragedy. One post ...

Revisiting Gijubhai: Pioneer of child-centric education and the caste debate

It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn't received much attention from India's education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.

Search This Blog