Lok Adhikar Sangh and Narmada Bachao Andolan, Ahmedabad, Gujarat
2–3 minutes
“This was the first agitation against the Official Secrets Act of 1923 (OSA) in whole of India and it happened in our Narmada struggle. The OSA had become completely outdated…No meeting could be conducted at any place where the Act was in place… any information collected was also considered as revealing official secrets. The punishment was severe…The OSA was really meant for intelligence purposes—acts of spying and such other things…But now, it was sought to be used for these purposes also…This was a major issue in law: free speech versus official secrets…never before had the conflict come up in such form…The Right to Information Act that has been formulated subsequently is an outcome of the (struggle against) OSA…The court had never before received such a matter of OSA! There was no other lawyer among us but I…it is a about civil liberties where these people cannot be arrested in the matter of OSA…Government also realized as lots of people had opposed across Gujarat…Government decided to drop the charges under OSA. We were to be arrested the next day…”-
Girishbhai Patel
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Girishbhai Patel, popularly known as the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) man of Gujarat was a renowned human rights lawyer of Gujarat. Importantly, Girishbhai was into the thick of all the important people’s movements of Gujarat since the time of India’s independence; be it the Adhyapak Movement, the Maha Gujarat Andolan, the Navnirman Andolan or the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA). A founder of the Lok Adhikar Sangh, during his life time, Girishbhai filed over two hundred public interest litigations for the rights of the marginalised and the protection of the environment. His involvement went beyond mere legal actions, and he actively and directly participated in many struggles of the marginalised communities of Gujarat. A founding member and an ideologue of the NBA, Girishbhai’s role in the movement has been phenomenal.
In the short clip excerpted here, Girishbhai explains how the court cases of the tribals displaced by the Ukai dam and the sugarcane cutters known as Koytas who worked in the fields of South Gujarat irrigated by the Ukai dam helped him understand the many issues emerging out of big dams. Girishbhai also talks about the issues concerning Public Interest Litigation as a strategy in a people’s movement, the struggle of the tribals displaced by the construction of the Sardar Sarovar’s Project Colony at Kevadia, the issues around the Land Acquisition Act and the NBA’s struggle against the Official Secrets Act.
I specially wish to thank Amita Baviskar and Nirjhari Sinha for the photos used in Girishbhai’s interview. The other photo credits are acknowledged in the Acknowledgement section.
Interview Duration: 0:31:00
Language: Gujarati and English, Subtitles in English
Subtitles can be switched on and off by clicking ‘CC’ button at the bottom right of the video
Girishbhai Patel’s booklet titled, Kona Mate, Kona Bhoge, meaning- for whom and at whose cost, in Gujarati as well as his letters to the editor, could be accessed at National Centre for Biological Sciences Archives in the collection titled Shiripad and Nandini’s papers of the Narmada struggle here .