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Stan Swamy: A continuing legal struggle to safeguard his legacy
Stan Swamy, a Jesuit priest and a renowned tribal rights activist, was charged for his alleged role in the violence that followed the 2017 Elgar Parishad event
The Bombay High Court is set for its Christmas break starting December 24 but senior advocate Mihir Desai has his task cut out during the 10-day vacation.
Desai, representing the Society of Jesus, known as the Jesuits, is preparing to challenge the clean chit given to Maharashtra prison administration in the death of Father Stan Swamy, one of the accused in the Bhima Koregaon case.
Stan Swamy, a Jesuit priest and a renowned tribal rights activist in Jharkhand, was among the 16 people charged with Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for their alleged role in the violence that followed the 2017 Elgar Parishad event in Pune. According to the National Investigation Agency, provocative speeches delivered at the congregation on December 31, 2017, led to caste violence the next day near Bhima Koregaon, resulting in one death. Eight years on, the trial in the case has yet to begin. Stan Swamy, who suffered from Parkinson’s was allegedly given minimal medical treatment, and disallowed the use of a straw or sipper to drink water in jail. He died of heart failure in 2021 at the age of 84.
The Jesuits have since been trying to clear his name. Working closely with Desai is former principal of St Xavier’s College and Jesuit Coordinator for Social Justice and Ecology, Mumbai, Father Frazer Mascarenhas. “I am representing the Society of Jesus, and specifically, the Jesuits of the Jamshedpur province to which Father Stan Swamy belonged. This is on behalf of all the Jesuits in India because Father Stan was one of us. What he was doing to empower the tribals in Jharkhand is something we are all committed to. That’s part of our mission and our work,” Mascarenhas told HT.
Last week, the Bombay High Court disposed of an earlier petition filed by him asking for quashing of NIA’s allegations that “besmirched” Swamy’s reputation. These allegations, the petition said, violated Stan Swamy’s fundamental right to reputation under Article 21 of the constitution.
“The Jesuits in India”, said Mascarenhas while emphasising the reasons for a fresh petition, “were absolutely clear that Swamy, who was an exemplary scholar-activist, was unjustly implicated in a case he had no connection with. Once we are convinced about it then there is no question of his name being besmirched like this.” Mascarenhas said he had known Stan Swamy since the 1970s when he was a student of Swamy who was then the director at the Indian Social Institute (ISI) in Bengaluru. “He could have easily stayed at the institute but he chose to go back to Ranchi and work among the tribal people he was so committed to,” said Mascarenhas.
Father Joseph Xavier, former director of ISI in Bengaluru and head of the Stan Swamy Legacy Committee appointed by the Jesuit Conference of South Asia in May 2023, said a criminal case is considered abated if the accused dies while still an undertrial. “The Jesuits felt that leaving the case as ‘abated’ would leave a permanent scar on the name of Stan and the Society of Jesus, and looked for ways to resurrect the case to establish his innocence in the court of law,” wrote Xavier earlier in an article for the Jesuit magazine Pax Lumina.
Xavier described Stan Swamy as a person who was deeply moved by the pain of tribal communities. After he took the cloth as a young man from a village near Trichy in Tamil Nadu, Swamy relinquished his family. “The Jesuit companions are his legal heirs,” Xavier told HT from Madurai, explaining why the Society of Jesus is the one approaching the Bombay High Court.
Days before his death, Swamy spoke to Xavier on the phone from the Holy Family Hospital in Bandra on June 28, 2021. “He said you must take forward the struggle of the adivasis for a dignified life,” said Xavier. The relationship between tribals in Jharkhand and Jesuits goes back a long way, he added. The Chhotanagpur Tenancy Act, a legislation that protected tribal land from being sold to non-tribals in British India, was made possible with the efforts of Father Constant Lievens, a Belgian Jesuit priest who arrived in a village near Ranchi in 1885, he pointed out. Lievens worked with the tribals to educate them about their rights and prevent their exploitation. Many in the region embraced Christianity after his arrival.
Somy Mathew Mannoor, Secretary, Integral Formation of the Jesuit Conference of South Asia in Delhi said the accusations against Swamy are without any basis. “That is why we want his name cleared in the pending case... He always stood for the truth. Some of us knew him and worked with him; others may not have known him, but we all want his name to be cleared. It’s unanimous.”
Desai explained why a legal recourse to clear Swamy’s name was important. He said events or memorial lectures held in Stan Swamy’s name were disrupted this year in Mumbai and Chennai. “Technically, the trial is abated after his death. On paper we don’t need such a decision but if we get it from a court then it becomes helpful for various causes. Every time there is an event in his (Swamy’s) name, they say he is a terrorist and the organisers are forced to back out.” Desai cited the example of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi who was an accused in the Bofors scandal in the 1980s. A petition was filed in the Delhi High Court following his assassination in 1992, which sought to clear his name of the charges. The Delhi High Court had then passed such an order, said Desai.
His fresh legal challenge will also question the circumstances that led to the deterioration of Swamy’s health in the Taloja prison where he was lodged after his arrest in 2020. “A heart failure was the stated cause of his death but what led up to that? He went to jail fully functional,” said Mascarenhas, who visited Swamy in hospital every day for a month until his death on July 5, 2021.
