"Andolanjeevis secured India’s freedom, and they will protect it too"

A 97-year-old Mumbai-based Gandhian has urged those invested in protecting India’s hard-earned freedoms, including the freedom of expression, to shed the fear of going to jail. "Almost everything that we value in our democracy was earned by people who not only did not fear going to jail, but, in fact, saw it as a rite of passage," he said.

Dr G G Parikh, popularly known as GG, was reacting to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent "andolanjeevi" jibe, aimed primarily at the farmers’ protest raging currently in Punjab, Haryana, and parts of UP, but also rapidly gaining currency in other states. Parikh said Modi must realise that it was "andolanjeevis who secured India’s freedom from the British rule, and that it will also be andolanjeevis who will protect it."

Dr Parikh, who stopped visiting his clinic in Tardeo only in March last year after the Covid-19 outbreak precipitated a lockdown, remembers fondly the time he spent in various jails, a consequence of participating in almost every agitation that is credited with shaping a modern India – the Quit India movement, the students’ movement led by Jay Prakash Narayan in 1974, the anti-Emergency protests, and the recent anti-Citizenship Amendment Act demonstrations.
The ravages of age have caught up with Dr Parikh – reflecting in his voice, his hearing, and the wrinkled skin – but his patriotic fervour and desire to stay updated on national and international developments is undiminished. He reads two newspapers every day and spends a couple of hours following news on TV. "The prime minister is frustrated by his inability to deal with the farmers’ protest. The coinage "andolanjeevis" is born out of this frustration," he said and reminded Modi that India most important andolanjeevi, Mahatama Gandhi, never indulged in name-calling and did not ever flinch from an "honest dialogue."
Referring to the recent arrests of stand-up comics, student activists, civil liberties lawyers, and journalists, Dr Parikh said none of the movements he was part of would have been possible if he or his associates or the leaders they followed were afraid of going to jail. "I quite enjoyed my time in jail. For one, you get a lot of time to read. A bulk of my reading – which informed my sense of right and wrong and shaped my political understanding – was done in jail. So, embrace the prospect of going to jail. Don’t be scared of what they are trying to scare you with. Atmakalesh – inflicting pain on self – will make you strong," he said.

Following the secular traditions espoused by the Mahatma, Dr Parikh founded the Yusuf Meherally Centre in Tara in Raigad district in memory of Yusuf Meherally, a freedom fighter who was elected mayor of Mumbai in 1942 while imprisoned in Yerwada jail in Pune. The centre was founded to recognise and highlight the contributions of minorities in the Indian freedom struggle.
Calling himself a proud andolanjeevi, Dr Parikh said jails are temples and must be seen as such by all who wish see a just and equitable society. "If I was not put in jail, I wouldn’t have become what I have become," he said.
Both he and his wife were active in Bombay’s railway strikes led by former defence minister and socialist leader George Fernandes. The strikes were called to demand an eight-hour working day for locomotive staff and a raise in pay scale, which had remained stagnant over many years. "When George was arrested in 1974, I was the one who went out to the trade unions and said we must react. For the first time in the history of Bombay, the motormen went on a strike for a day," he said.

The last protest Dr Parikh participated in was against the Citizenship Amendment Act, mainly fronted by students across the country. "I delivered speeches at the August Kranti Maidan and Byculla’s Mumbai Bagh. When students take up the good fight, they bring about positive changes. While I read everywhere that the youth today is self-absorbed, all my hopes rest with them."

Videos by Raju Shinde, Produced by Vinay Arote