Recalling the Life and Death of a Suspected ‘Maoist’: G N Saibaba | Arup Kumar Sen

While reporting the death of G N Saibaba on October 12, 2024, The Hindu noted (October 13, 2024): “Prof. Saibaba was arrested from Delhi in 2014 for having alleged Maoist links and subsequently convicted by a Maharashtra sessions court in 2017. Later, in October 2022, the Bombay High Court ordered his release saying legal processes were not followed during the trial. But within 24 hours, the Supreme Court overturned the order stating that the charges against Saibaba and other accused were ‘very serious’ and needed a new hearing.” In fact, the 57-year-old former Delhi University professor G N Saibaba died seven months after he was cleared of all charges of alleged Maoist links and released from jail in 2024 after nearly a decade. (indianexpress.com)

The recently published book titled ‘Why Do You Fear My Way So Much? Poems and Letters from Prison: G. N. Saibaba’ (Speaking Tiger, New Delhi, 2022) throws light on his life and brutal sufferings. To put it in the words of a letter addressed to Saibaba by his beloved wife, A. S. Vasantha Kumari: “The backwater village that you were born in only consisted of wide fields and less than twenty huts. The concept of a polio vaccine did not even exist and you lost your ability to walk at the tender age of five. From such a place, you still were able to get the district first position in tenth grade. This is no small achievement…After completing your graduation, you worked hard to earn a seat in the M. A. English literature programme in Hyderabad Central University. Until that moment you never stepped out of Amalapuram or the East Godavari District…Your efforts yielded fruit and you obtained a permanent faculty position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Ram Lal Anand College, affiliated to Delhi University.” She also wrote about the inner strength of Saibaba: “Mass struggles and social movements became your legs and made you walk… Your selfless dedication to the struggles made you close to the people and endeared you to them.” (ibid.)
Vasantha Kumari documented the dedication of Saibaba as a teacher: “…you devoted yourself to the teaching profession and worked unceasingly with a sense of dedication. This is why your students and your colleagues loved and respected you. You made the students excel not only in the classroom but also in their lives. Against such a dedicated teacher like you the authorities under the guise of disciplinary action terminated your job in 2021. They detached you from the profession which you loved the most, that too because of a false allegation and a wrong judgment.” (ibid.)

The brutal treatment meted out to G N Saibaba by the State tormented his wife: “But they cannot give you, a 90 per cent disabled wheelchair-bound professor, parole for even a few days to attend your mother’s funeral. You cannot go to the toilet on your own, you cannot take a bath or lie down without help. Why should they incarcerate you without even a little respite?” (ibid.). Saibaba communicated to his beloved wife, brutality of ‘Covid times’ in a letter: “As the Corona lockdown merged with the rigid walls of the prison, I was left in complete darkness…The virus and the confinement it brought along transformed the jail into a concentration camp and the outside world became akin to a massive prison…The lockdown and policies enacted under the shadow of the virus have only succeeded in making people’s lives miserable. The virus has become a tool for people’s oppression. The real plague and pandemic is not the virus, but the tyranny and repression that are eroding our freedom.” (ibid.)

The poems incorporated in this collection were not written as poems. Meena Kandasamy, an activist writer, poet, and translator from Chennai, stated in this context: “Censorship by the prison authorities is extremely severe, so each and every poem that you encounter on these pages was written as a letter addressed to various people. These are words that carry the latent fire of resistance, words that have been smuggled past the heavy censorship of Indian prisons, words which shine light on oppression.”

The following ending lines of G N Saibaba, in a poem addressed to his wife, Vasantha (in March 2018), recalling the wedding anniversary and long and enduring companionship, is a testament of his love and poetic imagination:

My eyes refuse to acknowledge
the high barren walls
that barricade my existence.
Life survives in no isolation,
Life thrives entwining life.