“My identity is Based on My Dad’s As an Activist” Says GN Saibaba’s Daughter Manjira

On the International Day of Persons with Disabilities (December 03), Vancouver-based Spice Radio journalist Gurpreet Singh speaks with Manjira, the daughter of the late Prof. GN Saibaba, a physically challenged scholar who died due to health complications created by inhuman jail conditions after being incarcerated under trumped up charges for questioning power. 

Here are some excerpts from the conversation:

Q: What can you tell us about some early memories of your dad? 

A: In my early childhood, like for the first five-six years of my life, I spent it with my grandmother, because both my parents were full time activists some days traveling all over the country. They were not settled in one city and I would always look forward to the time when my dad would come. I was really tiny at that time, I used to like to get on top of my father’s stomach and I would not leave him alone till he told me many stories of different things. I would constantly keep asking and I had to be put to sleep with some effort. He would sing me a song about a worker working so hard doing everything for us. So he used to sing revolutionary songs about workers to me as lullabies. That’s like one of the earliest memories that I still remember so fondly about him.

Q: Being an educator, what else did he teach you as a child, apart from helping you in learning your school lessons? 

A: Both my parents, they taught me that there is this inherent inequality in society, in the way things are structured and some people are in a position of privilege and power. And at first I didn’t understand things exactly. You know, when I was a kid, I would attend all these meetings and protests my parents would be a part of, but I never understood or felt that glaring inequality of wealth, of class and caste.

But that was one of the first things my dad told me about. I was really fascinated by all these western things when I was a kid. When I was in fourth or fifth grade, my dad took me to a new mall that had been built in Delhi and he told me that all these brands are built on top of exploited workers’ labour. He told me that before the mall was built there used to be a slum here where so many people lived. 

He used to bring such lessons and awareness everywhere and in all little things he did in life. But for me, the one key thing my parents have taught me is to recognise the privilege and inequality that exists in the world and to question it. Also to hope and aim for a society and a world that is filled with equality and ideas of liberty and solidarity.

Q: How challenging was it for you to be the daughter of a human rights defender, who had to face persecution?

A: There are two different sides to this. One side is that it is definitely not easy in India right now. To be a human rights activist itself, is a life threatening job. Whether it is my mother, my father, several of my family friends that I know, you are treated almost like a terrorist. The moment UAPA is slapped on you, whether you are proven guilty or innocent, with the atmosphere of fear that the government creates you are immediately treated as a criminal.

Society and people look at you through that lens without even digging deep into the matter and looking into all the false cases that has been initiated against human rights activists. To defend peoples’ rights and demand equality has become such a big crime. So that is one aspect which is certainly threatening. Several people I know face this constant fear as to what will happen next. But on the other hand, if you tell me to go back in the past and ask me to tell my dad not to do what he was doing I would never do it. I am sure even he would not think to go back to the past and stop doing his activism. He was not worried whether he was in danger of getting arrested or tortured.

Clearly, my identity is based on my dad as an activist. He would not be able to get a peaceful sleep if he wasn’t defending people’s rights because he himself has come from such a place of struggle.

Listen below to the audio interview broadcast on Spice Radio, Canada.