Skip to main content

Girish Patel was an ardent supporter of Narmada dam-affected people: NBA

By A Representative
The Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) has described the demise of advocate Girish Patel on October 6, 2018 morning a great loss to all people's struggles and causes of democratic and human rights. Calling him a legal luminary and social activist, who remained committed to all causes of human and Constitutional rights as well as civil liberties, NBA, in a statement signed, among others, by Medha Patkar, says, "He was an ardent supported of the movement by the Narmada dam-affected in Gujarat, taking a courageous and confident position."
NBA particularly recalls that Girish Patel's book "Kona bhoge, Kona mate", saying, it raised "all the issues related to the Sardar Sarovar dam which have proved to be correct even today". It adds, "He was active in various ways against atrocities against dalits, adivasis and influenced hundreds and thousands of social activists to sensitise intellectuals, including lawyers and law students, who he continued to educate till his last breathe."
Noting how he with "utmost sensitivity, courage of conviction, grit of the greatest order, remarkable articulation, determination" swam "against the tide", NBA says, "As the founder of Lok Adhikar Sangh in Gujarat he supported the legal and mass battles of dalits, adivasis, the displaced, labour class, as well as the harassed and government employees facing legal violation."
Others who have signed the statement are Devram Kanera, Kamla Yadav, Mukesh Bhagoriya, and Jagdish Patel.

Comments

TRENDING

Xi Jinping’s visit to USA: Recognition that China can't be contained?

By Vijay Prashad   President Xi Jinping’s forthcoming visit to the United States must be understood as more than an encounter between two heads of state, but it must be seen as an encounter between two possible futures. In one future, the United States imposes a spiral of confrontation against China. Trade disputes harden into economic warfare, then economic warfare intensifies into technological blockades, technological blockades produce military encirclement, and finally military encirclement creates incidents, and incidents the danger of becoming an unimaginable war.

Swaminarayan, untouchability and the 'we are not Hindu' argument

By Rajiv Shah   Following my blog on why the Eiffel Tower authorities should take all the blame for giving in to the Swaminarayan sadhus ’ bizarre demand to “invisibilise” women, including its female staff, during their visit to the internationally renowned Paris tourist centre on September 5, an interesting comment by one of the top academics drew my attention to something I vaguely knew about one of India’s most powerful and richest religious sects.

From margins to microphones: The rise of Dalit hip-hop in India

By Tersina Maria Toppo*  A protest does not always arrive as a slogan shouted from a street corner. Sometimes, it arrives on a beat. A microphone replaces the megaphone, a music video becomes a public square, and the smartphone becomes the space where a history once pushed to the margins is narrated, debated, and shared.