Farmers Movement Archive

HS Doreswamy: A Gandhian who fought for people’s rights till the end

At the age of 103, he believed that doctors should not waste a bed on him. While Bengaluru was praying that the centenarian recovers from Covid-19 at the earliest, freedom fighter HS Doreswamy was telling hospital staff that he had lived his life and his bed should be given to someone younger.The doctors, out of respect for what he had done in life, refused to listen to him. He recovered from Covid-19. Doreswamy, who was hospitalised on May 6 after he tested positive for Covid-19, was discharged on May 12 as his condition improved.But 14 days later, he died due to a cardiac arrest.“The primary cause of his death was his heart condition, but the precipitating cause was Covid-19,” said CN Manjunath, director of Sri Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and Research.For doctors such as Manjunath, letting a man like Doreswamy die on their watch was difficult.“He kept telling us that he had lived a full life and insisted that his bed be given to a young person. He questioned why he should get such good treatment. I tried to convince him and tell him we have no shortage of beds,” he said.Doreswamy has never held any political position and was the driving force behind several people’s movements in the state of Karnataka, often leading from the front, even at 102. He spoke for the people, regardless of the party in power.At the age of 23, he was first drawn towards the radical movement against the British government. With help of a friend, he began to plant bombs in government offices and postal boxes. “Our aim was not to harm anyone, but we wanted to disrupt the government machinery,” he told HT during an interview on February 18.His life took a turn in 1936 when he met Mahatma Gandhi in Bengaluru, and became his follower. “During the Quit India Movement, I helped organise a strike by all major cloth mills in the city, especially since they were stitching parachute cloth, used by the British in the Air Force during the war,” he recounts in his memoir Nenapina Suruli Teredaga, which translates as memories unravelled.He was jailed for 17 months between December 1942 and May 1944 for this, but Doreswamy described his time in the jail as being in university. “I learnt Hindi and Tamil. I even became good at volleyball during that time. We used to get lectures on politics from great leaders,” he said.From Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodan movement in the 1950s to Jayaprakash Narayan’s Sampoorna Kranti movement in the 1970s, to India Against Corruption movement in the 2010s, Doreswamy was part of the several movements that followed. He was even jailed during the Emergency for writing a letter against then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.“After the Emergency was announced, I wrote a letter to Indira Gandhi, saying she was a dictator. In the letter, I threatened to go from village to village and mobilise the people against her dictatorship. Soon after that, I held the first meeting in Gandhi Bazar (in Bengaluru). I was arrested. But I was in jail only for four months,” he recounted during the interview.“During the trial, the prosecution said that I had criticised the prime minister and that I was an enemy of the state. But that judge who was hearing my case said that I had every right to criticise the government and there is no proof to say that I am an enemy of the state. The judge then told the prosecution to ask the government under what charge should I be booked and released me,” he said.A vocal critic of the current Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, he hit the streets to protest the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the new farm laws, and was convinced that things would change.“Nothing is permanent,” he said when asked about the policies of the current government. “There will be ups and downs. During the freedom struggle there was Gandhi, during the emergency there was JP (Jayaprakash Narayan) and then Anna Hazare also came, even though he was misguided later. If not a leader, there will be a movement that takes on what is wrong in our country.”The centenarian was also a big believer in the young. When asked about the future of the movements he was part of, he had said: “Today’s young people are smart and wise. The young people of the country have always fought for the right causes. They know what should be done and no one can stop them.”It was almost as if he was passing on the baton.

Hindustan Times

18-06-2021

India