Academics from all over the country are speaking about Porf. Hany Babu. Below are the comments from Prof. Apoorvanand Professor, University of Delhi; Souradeep, Writer and Professor at Ashoka University and an excerpt from the Statement of Condemnation issued by All India Forum for Right to Education against his arrest.
Last year, my father called me and informed me that, “It is being reported on the TV that the police have raided the house of a professor of University of Delhi. Immediately I asked “Is it Dr. Hany Babu’s house? ”. I still do not know why my first thought was about Dr. Hany Babu. Probably due to the fact that Hany Babu had shouldered a very dangerous position as the Chairman of the Committee for the Defence of Sai Baba formed when another professor at Delhi University, GN Saibaba, was arrested by the police.
Prof. Apoorvanand, who teaches Hindi at the University of Delhi and was himself recently subjected to psychological violence by the Delhi police in the farce of investigation about North East Delhi pogrom.
Prof. Apporvanand says- Prof GN Sai Baba was arrested by the government on charges of involvement with the Maoist party and was sentenced in 2017. Dr. Hany Babu shouldered the responsibilities of the Committee for the Defence of Saibaba which intended to make the public aware of the facts against the ones he was charged with and to ensure that GN Saibaba’s human and constitutional rights are not violated. As a result of his relentless efforts to, the attacks by the state on the wheelchair-bound activist working for the people and an intellectual, Prof GN Saibaba was made public.
2. Also Read: Incarcerated Prof.GN Saibaba´s mother passed away
When Dr. Hany Babu was arrested on 28th July 2020, we all felt painful that we didn’t know when would we again have a chance to peek into Dr. Hany Babu’s classes which used to be filled up with students listening to his enchanting words as we walked past the corridors of the university. While running across the corridors between classes, we would now not get to see Dr. Hany Babu smiling at us. This left us dejected.
‘Hany Babu’s arrest was not an unexpected one at least for me. All of his friends and colleagues had long ago had understood that his commitment to the protection of the Constitutional Rights of the Dalit and Marginalized communities and his willingness to confront and overcome whatever obstructed him from working towards his commitment, could be dangerous to the present regime. However, we are very worried about the reason that National Investigation Agency (NIA) has noted to raid his house once in 2019 and again on 28th July 2020, and to call him for trials at Mumbai.
According to the NIA, one of the strongest reasons for Hany Babu’s arrest is that he was spreading anti-government and pro-Naxalite ideologies. This very argument is very strange to me. First, the NIA has not specified what is a pro-Naxalist ideology; this definition is very vague. Anyone dissenting against the government can easily be booked under this definition. Also, even if Hany Babu was dissenting against the government, how is it a justified reason for an arrest?
Why do we forget that the leaders of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the leaders of the state have for more than 60 years been campaigning against the ruling governments and are exercising their democratic rights?
Another allegation made by the NIA is that the computer hard disk confiscated from Hany Babu’s house had evidence that he was in contact with the Maoists and the blueprint of attacks to be made to uproot the government. The NIA wants us to believe that there was a blueprint of the most dangerous subversive attacks on the government on the desktop of a professor who did not even have a password, so anyone can get access to his computer. We can understand that such claims were made to falsely accuse Hany Babu and other intellectuals. We also witness that these kinds of accusations were also made against the other arrested intellectuals’.
