Fr. Stan Swamy, a martyr of our times

Human Rights are commonly known across the Globe and especially among the countries that subscribe to its shared values as the basic rights and freedoms that belong to every person, regardless of where they are from, what they believe or how they choose to live their life. 

Today we focus our attention on a matter relating to human rights, though not on its disputed status as currently prevailing in Sri Lanka nor on any other Sri Lanka-related matter, at least not in today’s column, which is centered around the life and times of a Jesuit priest in India, lovingly known among ‘his people’, the Adivasis, as Fr. Stan Swamy. 

He passed away on July 5, 2021 at the age of 84 while under a long period of incarceration in an Indian prison. His crime was that of having a conscience which led him to fight bravely, tirelessly and relentlessly for the human rights of the poorest of the poor in India. 

“Fr. Stan Swamy was hounded because of his staunch support for the struggle of the basic human rights of the Adivasis,” Fr. Stanislaus D’Souza, President of the Jesuit Conference of South Asia said in his homily, citing the Gospel passage about the flagellation of Jesus.

In his eulogy, Fr. Frazer Mascarenhas, a friend of Fr. Stan Swamy said he was gentle; someone who loved peace rejected all forms of violence and considered all those working for humanity
as his comrades.

Born and raised in Trichy in Tamil Nadu; a major influence on his later life is said to have been his studies in sociology in the Philippines and the public protests he witnessed there against the government. He would often speak to his friends of Brazilian Catholic Archbishop Helder Camara, who said, “When I give bread to the poor, they (the authorities) call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor remain poor, they call me a communist”.

Fr. Stan Swamy and the Adivasis he supported in an impossible battle for their own ancestral lands are pawns pitted against mammoth mining companies. Falsely branding activists as Maoists is the easiest way to condemn and to enable vested interests to finish them off, The Wire news agency said.

It said his crime was to have defended the rights of Adivasis from exploitation in their homeland, Jharkhand. Father Stan has been falsely accused of having links to a Maoist plot connected to the Bhima Koregaon case and was arrested by the National Investigation Agency. 

Fr. David Solomon SJ, former Director of Bagaicha, a civil society organization which Fr. Stan helped found, told PTI that the words, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race,” from the Bible seems to sum up the life of the 84-year-old Stanislaus Lourdusamy or ‘’Stan Swamy’’ as he was so fondly known. Fr. Stan, a Jesuit priest, who spent long years working among his beloved Advasis in this eastern Indian tribal state, died in Mumbai, hours before the hearing of his appeal for bail in a case where he was ironically accused of being
an `Urban Naxal’.

“I was present when Stan was arrested. Born on April 26, 1937, he entered Jamshedpur Province of the Society of Jesus or the Jesuits to become a Jesuit priest and worked in the tribal regions of what is now Jharkhand,” Fr. Solomon said adding that Swamy chose to “dedicate his life to poor tribes after he was ordained a priest on April 14, 1970”.

Indian writer and human rights activist Arundathi Roy, in a withering indictment on the Modi-government, told Scroll.in that the excruciating, slow-motion, custodial murder of 84-year-old Father Stan Swamy, who spent decades of his life in the service of India’s dispossessed, took place in the show window of our democracy.  “Our judiciary, police, intelligence services, and prison system are responsible, our mainstream media too. All of them were aware of the case, and of his failing health. And yet, he continued to be ground down,” she said and added that this gentle, frail yet tremendous man died as a co-accused, one of 16, in what the state calls the Bhima Koregaon conspiracy. “The slow murder of Father Stan Swamy is a microcosm of the not-so slow-murder of everything that allows us to call ourselves a democracy. We are ruled by fiends. They have put a curse upon this land,” Arundathi Roy said.

Fr. Stan Swamy is indeed a martyr of our times and even in death, may he be a beacon of light for those who choose to walk in his footsteps.