Once again, Syed Abdul Rahman Geelani meets, before histime, in an only half unexpected fashion, his old friend Death. The goodprofessor, having been sent home after the reversal of a death-sentence, wasshot at five times outside his lawyer’s residence on the night of February 08,2005. For over three years now, there has been a massive legal and civiccampaign to assert his innocence and protest his wrongful implication in aconspiracy to blow-up the Parliament House on December 13, 2001. But even on theverge of acquittal by the highest court of the land, the right to live, and tolive freely and safely under the rule of law, has eluded this haplessindividual.
Geelani was suspected of being part of a plot to attack the Indianlegislature for reasons that had nothing to do with his overt or covertpolitical activity: he was of Kashmiri origin and in contact with relativesstill living in the Valley, he was a Muslim in the regime of a BJP-led coalitiongovernment, and he taught Arabic at a college in Delhi. Once he had beenarrested under the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), every effortwas made to frame him as a terrorist. He was tortured in police custody, treatedas fair game by hostile fellow-prisoners, pronounced guilty in a media trialthat was based on prejudice rather than truth, and given the death-penalty. His release at the last minute came as the result of a powerful case foughtrelentlessly by his legal team, under the leadership of, among others, NanditaHaksar, who has made it her mission to defend the human rights and civilliberties of those falsely accused of being enemies of the state. Shattered bycustodial abuse, but nevertheless eloquent in his call for justice and hisdefence of democracy, Geelani walked free only to have bullets pumped into hisstomach a few months later.
What is the meaning of the person of S.A.R Geelani inthe political life of our nation? Who is this man, and why does death stalk himin the guise of an antagonistic and ruthless state? Does his nightmarishencounter with the criminal-justice system and with police power reveal to us,in the most alarming way possible, our own exposure as citizens of India, toviolence at the hands of the very forces that are supposed to guard our life andguarantee our liberty? What is at stake for all of us, every single person themember of some minority or other, in the life and death of this young academic,the father of two small children, a teacher of language and literature, aninhabitant of the city of Delhi – this man who is ordinary in every way, andyet singled-out for extermination?
The contemporary Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agambenhas written in a manner that is both intellectually persuasive and ethicallypressing, about a figure found in ancient Roman law called the homo sacer. Thisis a man who is the most vulnerable denizen of the political community, becausehis absolute vulnerability is the condition for the absolute power of the ruler.The homo sacer is placed under a ban – that is to say, he is banished from thecompany of other men, and at the same time abandoned by the legal and juridicalorder. This state of banishment and abandonment renders the life of the homosacer less than the politically-defined and legally-protected life of a citizen:he is reduced to what Agamben calls "bare life" or "naked life". In thisstate, which lies outside the realms of both politics and the law, the homosacer may be killed, without any entailment in the form of punishment or reward,by anyone who wishes. The killing of this person is neither a crime (for no lawis broken), nor a sacrifice (for no ritual is fulfilled).The ban excludes himfrom both human law, which governs the sphere of political activity, and divinelaw, which governs the sphere of religious activity. The life of the homo saceris less than a life; consequently, it can be extinguished with impunity..
Agamben delves deep into the political and philosophical treatises of ancientRome to understand this strange figure because he finds, within the murderousspace of the Nazi concentration camp, the same utter abandonment / banishmentthat does not make sense in the inclusive framework of modern citizenship. Thedenizen of a camp is not only less than a citizen, but s/he has no recourse toman or God, to human help or divine intervention. The life of a camp-inmate hasno legal or scared value attached to it – it can be ended without any pretenceof due process, and equally without any justification as to the ritual purposesof such killing. In a camp a human being’s life is precisely and only hispotential to be killed. This is why Hitler could speak of the extermination ofJews "as lice". Thus every person in Auschwitz, according to Agamben, is ahomo sacer: neither a criminal, nor a sacrificial victim, and yet consigned todeath. The sovereign power of the Nazi state is predicated on the reduction ofthe Jew to bare life. Primo Levi, the Holocaust survivor, described his fellowsin the Nazi lager as though they were the living dead.
Consider this startling fact: S.A.R Geelani is the homo sacer of the Indianstate, which seeks to bolster its fragile sovereignty by sequestering this man,chosen at random, from every discourse of law, justice, politics or religion,and killing him, plain and simple, because it can. If the state cannot kill him(because the judiciary curbs the absolute power of the state even as Geelani isstepping up to the hangman’s noose), then it turns out that actually anyonecan kill him, because he is marked by the fatal ban: here is one who is castaway from the community of men and evicted from the shelter of the law; to takethe life of this man does not amount to homicide.
Why has Geelani become a deadman walking? He has not committed any crime. He has no discernible politicalambition vis-à-vis his home state and its problems with India – the furthesthe has gone taking any kind of public stand has been in speaking out againstatrocities in Kashmir, as a human rights activist. He was not chosen by anyPakistani jihadi group to be their martyr, nor was he designated by anyseparatist outfit to be their suicide bomber in the December 13 attack. He hasnever sought to identify himself as a Muslim in any politically meaningful waywhatsoever, leave aside by asserting his religious identity in a manner thatmight reasonably be construed as a challenge, an affront, an offence or a threatto a secular nation. He does not represent any terrorist organization, Indian orforeign, nor has he lent himself as a mouthpiece to any political party in thiscountry.
What Geelani does represent, unfortunately for him, is the capacityinherent in all of us to be killed – not just by the powers-that-be, but by anyone who decides to take the law into his own hands – the moment the armourof citizenship falls away from us. Back in 2001, in the immediate aftermath of9/11 public paranoia ran high, and the Parliament attack was promptly dubbed "12/13".Yet even at that time, the danger to our Parliament – and to the free and fairnation it supposedly stands for – came not from some plot that Geelani mighthave hatched (but in fact did not hatch) with others out to undermine Indiandemocracy, but rather, from the state’s own zeal to get Geelani, at whatevercost, regardless of his innocence.
Today it is not possible or desirable tospeculate about who made an outright attempt on Geelani’s life during theshoot-out near Ms Haksar’s South Delhi residence. The point is not that thisor that individual or agency tried to assassinate him, but rather, that throughthe deplorable sequence of events that has befallen this man over the last threeyears,he effectively has been rendered less than a citizen, and deprived of hisfundamental rights, his legal protections, and his proper place in the bodypolitic. What we need to understand so urgently is that if Geelani is grievouslywounded (no matter who aimed the barrel of a gun at him), it is our freedom thatlies bleeding at the door. This time he has barely escaped with his life, butthe message is loud and clear: if we are not careful about the state of ourfreedom, then we will be reduced to bare life.
And that is only a gunshot awayfrom death.
Ananya Vajpeyi is with the Centre for Law and Governance, Jawaharlal NehruUniversity, New Delhi.
