Opinion A year without G N Saibaba: What his life and death taught us

After his death, every time I came across Professor Saibaba’s name I would wonder about the idea of fear. His death made me want to find the answer to why a powerful state would come after a physically disabled professor. As I was thinking this over again this week, news flashed that at least 10 students of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, were booked by the police for commemorating his first death anniversary. They were accused of raising slogans in support of student activists Sharjeel Imam and Umar Khalid, which invited charges of “prejudice to the nation”, “enmity between groups” and “unlawful assembly”. The FIR reportedly followed a complaint from the institute’s administration.

Last year in June, I got an opportunity to meet Professor Saibaba for the first and only time. He was to deliver a lecture that day. Afterwards, I got an opportunity to dine with him. As soon as we sat down, I felt like I was a student all over again, in the familiar presence of an astute teacher. Like an excited student who catches hold of a professor after a class in the school corridor, I seized the opportunity and kept talking while he kept listening intently, the professor’s eyes steady and searching, weighing and probing the sincerity in the student who is keen on learning. He remained silent as I kept jumping from the significance of mass movements to my work as a lawyer and the need for prison reforms and then finally to the abstractness of hope and why it was elusive in our times.

He still did not speak, so I concentrated on my plate of food. All of a sudden, he broke his silence and said, “I would like to work with you on this issue of prison reforms.” He quickly asked me for my office address and said that he could come whenever I had time.

I was overwhelmed but also confused — Professor Saibaba was in touch with more experienced experts on the subject who were present at the dinner gathering. I chose to ignore my confusion and cherish the silent test of conviction. I completed the meal thinking about the questions that I would ask him when we met next, a meeting which never happened. Since then, every time his name is in the news, I think about his poem, “Why do you fear my way so much?”

While trying to find an answer, I started realising that the targeting of teachers, writers, poets, and public intellectuals who dare to think differently is not incidental. It is a historic pattern. Across regimes, the act of teaching critical thought or humanising the marginalised has been so threatening for the state that it has felt the need to recast intellectuals and educators as seditious and subversive.

History bears witness that politics that challenge oppressive regimes built on conformity is perceived as a threat, its proponents banned and attacked. For long, I thought it was the politics that evokes fear. It took me time to realise that what truly induces fear is the spirit to question, to seek answers, to empathise, and, most of all, to think for oneself — an act that defies control. The education of empathy is dreaded so much that professors are punished for teaching how to exercise it. The imprisonment of people like Professor Saibaba sends a message to young minds — that to think, to question, to love people without discrimination could mean risking everything — life, career, future, and safety.

A year on, as the leaves fall again this October, perhaps I have received my answer. People die but the ideas they nurture live on. Professor Saibaba paved the way for love, courage, and truth. To uphold his legacy, we must strive to make room for a dissent guided by the transformative power of education, love, and empathy, something that Professor Saibaba taught through his life and death.

The writer is a human rights lawyer practicing at the Supreme Court, currently serving as Secretary, People’s Union for Civil Liberties